by Amy Andrews
‡
Faith insisted on meeting Raf at the Met. It made more sense with him already being in Manhattan and she could take the subway. She scanned the glut of people milling around the entrance and the street. Tourists and locals alike weren’t going to let a freezing February morning and an overnight dusting of snow put them off one of the world’s most prestigious art galleries.
She spotted him waiting on the steps. Her breath hitched at the sight of him. Somehow screaming speedos and sunshine despite his long winter coat and herringbone scarf. Then his gaze landed on hers and his face broke into a slow broad smile and suddenly Faith felt like they were the only two people there.
After days of stealing kisses and the odd grope or two she was aware of him like she’d never been aware of a male before. Her whole body was buzzing and ready to burst.
He waved to her and she made her way through clusters of people, catching several different languages as she wound her way around them. When she reached the wide, flat stairs it was all she could do not to vault up them.
“You made it,” he said as she drew level with him and then hopped up another stair so she could look right into his eyes.
“I’m sorry I’m a little late,” she said, “I missed a connection.”
“I’m just glad you’re here,” he said, pulling her closer.
A weak ray of sunshine trying to push its way through heavy grey clouds was blocked from sight as his head descended and his warm mouth landed on hers. And right there on the steps of her favorite place on Earth he kissed her like the world was about to end. And she kissed him right back, a storm raging in her chest and coursing through her veins.
Life continued on around them, nobody blinking at a couple who really should be getting a room kissing in such a public space.
A noisy crowd of tourists, laughing and joking in their own language, jostled them as they went past dragging them back from something that was careening out of control.
“God,” he groaned, his hands in her hair, his forehead on hers. “I’ve been wanting to do that since the other night. I think I’ve had a hard-on for four days.”
Faith laughed. None of their stolen moments had been quite so unfettered. It was hard to believe she was more comfortable kissing Raf in front of a couple of hundred strangers in Manhattan than in her own home. “I know exactly how you feel.”
He grabbed her hand. “Let’s get inside before we get arrested for public indecency.”
Faith stood her ground. “Or we could…” Her heart banged against her ribs at what she was about to suggest. “Ditch the Met and go spend the day in your hotel room?”
Yes, she loved this place. It was her Disneyland. But right at this moment she’d give it up in a heartbeat for Raf’s king-sized bed.
His green eyes stared down into hers, a veritable storm of emotions swirling in their aquamarine depth. “You have no idea how tempting that is.” He bent his head and kissed her again. Short and swift this time, stealing her breath. “But I want to see the Met. I want to see it through your eyes.”
Faith couldn’t decide if she wanted to hug him or jump him. He sure as hell knew all the right things to say.
“Let’s go,” she said.
*
It was blissfully warm inside the lobby and they took off their coats.
“So…” he studied the map. “Where to?”
Faith studied him instead. He was in another pair of hip-hanging, thigh-hugging jeans and she wondered how many pairs he owned and what he might look like in one of those wetsuits surfers sometimes wore.
“That depends,” she said when she realized he was waiting for an answer. “It’s a big place and you can be here for hours. What do you want? An overview or the Faith Sullivan highlights?”
He glanced up at her. “You have to ask?”
Her heart glowed like a freaking light bulb in her chest. “Good choice.”
He handed her the map. “Keep it,” she said, waving it away. “This place is like a second home.”
He looked impressed and she was pleased. She was suddenly desperate to show him she was more than just a Brooklyn barmaid. “Lead on,” he murmured, gesturing for her to precede him.
Faith took him straight to her favorite permanent galleries where the French impressionists were housed. A veritable Who’s Who of famous European painters hung on the walls. Van Gogh, Monet, Degas, Gauguin and Cezanne to name a few. They walked past every painting hand in hand and she talked about each one.
By the time they reached the end, Faith realized she’d been talking non-stop for an hour. “Sorry,” she said grimacing “I do tend to get a bit carried away.”
He shook his head. “No. Don’t apologize. That was awesome. You were awesome.” He raised her hand to his mouth and kissed it and Faith’s heart gave a funny wobble. It seemed like such an intimate gesture, more so even than the full on open-mouthed kiss from earlier. “Why impressionists?” he asked as they walked on.
“I guess they were such a departure from what had been previously painted both in style and in subject matter. The impressionists often painted outdoors en plein air and painted ordinary everyday things like flowers and haystacks. There was so much light and color unlike the old masters.”
“You don’t like the old masters? Da Vinci, Titian, Rembrandt? Raphael? Isn’t that…” he lowered his voice and looked around him in a faux conspiratorial air, “sacrilegious? Don’t they revoke your membership for that?”
She smiled. “I can admire them for their skill and talent but they’re so…somber and dark. All battles and avenging angels and death.” She shuddered. “The impressionists are like a breath of fresh air.”
“Which artist is your favorite?”
Faith didn’t have to think twice. “Claude Monet.”
“Do you have a favorite painting of his? Is it here?”
She nodded and tugged on his hand, wandering back through a couple of open doorways until they were standing in front of Bridge Over A Pond of Waterlilies.
“This is one of my favorites. Monet painted a bunch of them just like this one from his own garden. Most of them are in the Musee de l’Orangerie in Paris.” She sighed. It had been one of her dreams to go to Paris. “I’d love to see all of them.”
“You’ve not been to Paris?”
Faith shook her head. She hadn’t been anywhere. “One day,” she said. “It’s on my bucket list.”
“Paris is wonderful,” he said.
Faith looked at him. Of course he’d been there. “So they say.”
“When you do go, go in September.”
She nodded slowly. When he looked at her like that she actually believed she’d get there. “Okay. I will.”
They stared at each other, caught up in a strange wistful moment heavy with something she found hard to define. Longing, maybe? She was grateful when he finally broke it. “So?” he asked looking around them, “Where to next?”
Faith smiled, shaking herself free of her pity party. “To those old masters you love so much,” she teased. “You’ll see exactly what I mean now you’ve spent an hour here.”
He shrugged. “I believe you.”
“Yes, but you want me to educate you, right? So a comparison is definitely needed.”
“Okay,” he nodded. “Educate me.”
*
A couple of hours later a menu was thrust into Raf’s hands as he sat down in the members’ dining room opposite Faith. His head was swimming with facts and he was more than a little bit smitten. There was something about Faith Sullivan that just kept creeping up on him.
He’d dated his fair share of women and he’d enjoyed every one of them but he’d always felt a little like he was giving a performance – the perfect date, the perfect escort, the perfect lover – because women deserved that level of respect and consideration and he enjoyed being with them. He liked the way they were put together and how good they smelled and how fun it was to get to the end game. Whether it was for a night
or a few nights or a couple of weeks.
But that all suddenly seemed a little superficial.
Faith was different. He kept forgetting he was on a date. With Faith he forgot about trying hard and being charming. She wasn’t out to ensnare or impress him and that made it so much easier to just be himself around her, be the real person.
With no agendas or expectations.
It was easy.
Many would have said that attracting women came too damn easy to him anyway and that was true. But he’d never felt this level of ease around any of them.
“I didn’t think we’d get a table here given how busy the other cafes are.”
Raf looked up from his menu. They’d tried a couple of the public eating places with no luck and then Faith suggested the members’ dining room given she’d been a fully paid-up member since the age of twelve. He’d watched the delight spread across her face when the maître d’ had ushered them straight to a table near the windows.
“I’m pleased we did.” He looked out the magnificent bank of sloped glass to the frozen stillness of Central Park. “You can’t beat this view.”
She smiled at him and shook her head. “It’s pretty good,” she murmured. But she wasn’t looking out the window and he smiled back at her because that felt easy too.
They ate fish then ordered key lime pie while they talked about what they’d seen and he listened to her talk some more about this place she obviously loved so much. Her eyes shone with it and a smile constantly hovered on her mouth.
It was most distracting.
“Mercy told me you’re a painter?”
It was the second time today her smile slipped. The first time had been when she’d talked about Paris. “I was.”
“Did you study it?”
She shook her head, her curls bouncing. She wore a purple top today which gave an amethyst hue to her indigo eyes.
“I was going to. Fine art. At Columbia.”
“What happened?”
She shrugged like it wasn’t important. “Pop had his first heart attack a month before I was due to start.”
Ah. Raf nodded, filling in all the gaps. Faith had put it on hold to take care of her father. “You didn’t decide to start again when things settled down?”
She shook her head, avoiding him as she looked out the window. “Pop was more important.” Her gaze tracked something and he turned to look. A woman and a child in a bright red coat trudged down an icy path.
“Yes but…why was the onus on you? Because you were the girl?”
“No.” her response was emphatic. And irritable. “Because I was the freest agent, so it was easier. And I wanted to. I know people don’t understand that but it’s the truth. I. Wanted. To. He’s my father. The man who supported five kids by working long days and nights to put a roof over our heads and food in our bellies and send us to good schools with nothing but a day trip to Coney Island once a year as a break. If Mom had still been alive she’d have done it but she wasn’t and I was.”
Raf nodded. She made a good reasoned argument citing all the practicalities and it was obvious she didn’t want to be given a medal for doing something she’d quite happily volunteered to do. But she had sacrificed a lot.
The pie arrived then and Faith’s defensiveness fell away in a blink as her eyes lit up. “Ooh. Key lime is my favorite.”
“Enjoy,” the waiter said with a smile, putting their plates in front of them.
She was savoring her first mouthful before Raf had even picked up his spoon. “Mmm,” she sighed, her eyelids fluttering in much the same way they’d done the other night in the throes of her orgasm. “So good.”
He chuckled. Watching her eat was a real turn on.
“What?” she asked around a mouthful of pie.
“Nothing. I just like watching you do things with your mouth.”
Her next spoonful faltered halfway to its destination. She looked around to see if anyone had overheard and he chuckled again. She rolled her eyes but if he wasn’t very much mistaken she made a real show of sucking every morsel of pie off her spoon this time.
He waited until she had one small piece left before broaching the subject of painting again. “So what area of painting is your specialty? Are you oil or a watercolor artist?”
She seemed to hesitate for a moment before she answered. “Oils mostly when I paint. I sketch in charcoal.”
“You sketch?”
Her gaze slid away from his and she brushed at imaginary crumbs on the table as if she was nervous. “Sometimes.”
“Done anything lately?”
Brush, brush. “Not really…But, actually,” she said, looking up at him, the nervousness suddenly gone, “Mercy asked me if I would do a small job for her.”
“Like what?”
“The family are launching a rosé and they haven’t had any luck with designing a unique image for the label so she asked me if I’d like to have a go.”
Raf could tell from the sparkle in her eyes that Faith was excited. He sat forward. “That’s great,” he enthused. “Are you going to have a go?”
She nodded and smiled a secret kind of smile like she’d only just decided for sure right now. “Yeh, I think I am. She emailed me a bunch of stuff a couple of days ago. I’m just trying to wrap my head around.”
“Any ideas or inspirations so far?”
“A couple. Maybe…” She shook her head. “To be honest I feel out of my depth. It’s been such a long time since I did anything seriously. I’m thinking I might maybe enrol in a community college art class. Brush up on my skills”
“I think that’s a great idea,” he enthused. Faith needed a life outside the pub. “Tell me more about Mercy’s thing. What’s the name of the wine?”
“It’s called Rosa which is Spanish for rose so I guess I’ve been kind of thinking along those lines.”
“A rose?”
She nodded. “Of some description. But you know, she wants something beautiful and feminie and tactile and unique. She wants something priceless. I don’t know if I’m up to that.”
Raf smiled at her encouragingly because whether she felt up to it or not he could tell she needed it. After years of being behind a bar she’d clearly lost her artistic drive. And after listening to her here today, aglow with the wonder of the paintings all around her, he thought it was probably high time she found it again.
“Sounds like the waterlilies,” he teased.
She frowned. “What does?”
“Unique. Feminine. Tactile. You don’t get much more priceless than Monet, right?”
She stared at him blankly for a long time like he hadn’t made any sense, then her expression morphed and it was like watching a lightbulb come on over a head. “No,” she said eventually. “No. You don’t…”
She smiled at him then, a grin that lifted every feature in her face and glittered in her eyes. Raf was pleased he was sitting down. “What?”
“The rose. The label. I could do an impressionist take on a rose, maybe by itself, or…a bunch of them climbing over a trellis under the Argentinian sun. And to make it tactile the label could be embossed.” She ran her finger tips over the table cloth as if she was already fingering the finished product. “Some of the petals could be done in gilt as if they’re being struck by rays of sunshine.”
There was silence for a moment or two and her eyes took on a dreamy faraway look as if she was picturing the label in her mind’s eye. Raf decided he liked watching her very much.
“What do you think?” she asked, her voice a little husky, a little uncertain.
Raf smiled. “I think it sounds amazing.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Absolutely. I can’t wait to see it.”
She gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Neither can I.”
“Could be the start of a whole new career for you,” Raf said. “Vintners from around the world will be clamoring for your impressionist labels.”
She laughed, clearly thinking the idea
was fanciful. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
“Why not, Faith?” he murmured. “You gotta dream big, right? Like Paris. Tell me what you wanna do when you get there.”
“To Paris?”
“Yes. You must have thought about it?”
She looked like she was going to resist his line of questioning for a moment, like she was so used to keeping a lid on such thoughts that voicing them was a completely foreign concept. But then she relaxed and that dreamy faraway look returned. She leaned in a little closer to him on her forearms.
“I’d hire a little place in Montmartre and paint from sunup to sundown. And when I wasn’t painting I’d haunt all the galleries. And maybe I’d travel to the south of France, to Arles and visit the area Van Gogh loved so much.”
“Sounds perfect,” Raf said grinning.
“Yes.” She sighed and it was so full of longing Raf wanted to whisk her away to Paris on the next available flight.
A waiter came and picked up their dishes. “So, what’s next?” Raf asked after their plates were gone.
She glanced out the window then back at him and smiled. “Let’s go for a walk.”
Raf looked out over the frigid stillness of Central Park so different to the pictures he’d seen of it in full summer glory. Bare branches stuck out like bleached coral under their covering of snow and ice, the barren brown earth looked frozen solid.
“It’s a little on the cold side, don’t you think?”
“It is cold,” she agreed. “But there’s something magical about the park in winter.”
He looked at her and quirked an eyebrow. “Magical huh?”
“Absolutely. But…” She looked at him with breathtaking directness. “I hear there’s something magical about the Marriott this time of year too.”
Raf’s mouth curved up. “I heard the same thing.”
“Maybe we should check it out?”
Raf grinned. “Maybe we should.”
He liked the way she thought. He liked it at lot.
*
They arrived back at Sully’s just before six-thirty. Faith slipped in behind the bar, giving Finn, who seemed to be coping very well with the building Saturday night crowd, a kiss on the cheek and introducing him to Raf wondering how much Dawn had told her brother. Did he know that she was seeing Raf?