by Nora Roberts
"A living can be made where you find it, if a living must be made.
You've a need to pick wildflowers and sea-shells, Allena. And there are those who are grateful for it, and notice the difference you make."
If she hadn't loved him already, she would have fallen at that moment with his words still echoing and his eyes dark with impatience. "That's the kindest thing anyone's ever said to me." She laid her hands on his cheeks.
"The very kindest." Softly, she touched her lips to his. "Thank you."
Before he could speak, she shook her head, then rested it on his shoulder.
Chapter 8
They shut out the world. Turned off time. Conal would have bristled at the idea that they were making a kind of magic, but for Allena there was no other word for it.
She posed for him again, in the studio where the afternoon sun slanted through the windows. And she watched herself be born in clay.
Because she asked, he told her of his years in Dublin. His studies and his work. The lean student years when he'd lived on tinned food and art. Then the recognition that had come, like a miracle, in a dingy gallery.
The first sale had given him the luxury of time, room to work without the constant worry of paying the rent. And the sales that followed had given him the luxury of choice, so that he'd been able to afford a studio of his own.
Still, though he spoke of it easily, she noticed that when he talked of
Dublin, he didn't refer to it as home. But she said nothing.
Later, when he'd covered the clay with a damp cloth and washed in the little sink, they went for a walk along the shore. They spoke of a hundred things, but never once of the star she wore against her heart, or the stone circle that threw its shadows from the cliff.
They made love while the sun was still bright, and the warmth of it glowed on her skin when she rose over him.
As the day moved to evening, the light remained, shimmering as though it would never give way to night. She entertained herself mending the old lace curtains she'd found on a shelf in the closet while Conal sketched and the dog curled into a nap on the floor between them.
She had the most expressive face, he thought. Dreamy now as she sat and sewed. Everything she felt moved into her eyes of soft, clear gray. The witch behind those eyes had yet to wake. And when she did, he imagined that any man she cast them on would be spellbound.
How easily she had settled in to him, his home, his life. Without a break of rhythm, he thought, and with such contentment. And how easy it would be to settle in to her. Even with these edgy flashes of need and desire, there was a comfort beneath.
What was he to do about her? Where was he to put these feelings she'd brought to life inside him? And how was he to know if they were real?
"Conal?" She spoke quietly. His troubled thoughts were like a humming in the air, a warning. "Can't you put it aside for now? Can't you be content to wait and see?"
"No." It irritated him that she'd read his mood in his silence.
"Letting others shape your life is your way, not mine."
Her hand jerked, as if it had been slapped, then continued to move smoothly.
"Yes, you're right. I've spent my life trying to please people I love, and it hasn't gotten me anywhere. They don't love me enough to accept me."
He felt a hitch in his gut, as if he'd shoved her away when he should have taken hold. "Allena."
"No, it's all right. They do love me, under it all, just not as much, or in the same way, or however I love them. They want things for me that
I'm not capable of or that I just don't want for myself enough to make a real effort. I can't put restrictions on my feelings. I'm not made that way."
"And I can." He rose, paced. "It's not a matter of feelings, but of being. I can't and won't be led. I care for you more than should be possible in this short a time."
"And because of that you don't trust what's happened, what's happening between us." She nodded and, clipping the thread, set her needle aside.
"That's reasonable."
"What do you know of reason?" he demanded. "You're the damnedest, most irrational woman I've ever met."
She smiled at that, quick and bright. "It's so much easier to recognize reason when you have so little yourself."
His lips twitched, but he sat down. "How can you be so calm in the middle of all this?"
"I've had the most amazing two days of my life, the most exciting, the most beautiful." She spread her hands. "Nothing can ever take that away from me now that I've had it. And I'll have one more. One more long and wonderful day. So andquot; She got to her feet, stretched. andquot;I think
I'll get a glass of wine and go outside and watch the stars come out."
"No." He took her hand, rose. "I'll get the wine."
It was a perfect night, the sky as clear as glass. The sea swept in, drew back, then burst again in a shower of water that caught those last shimmers of day and sparkled like jewels.
"You should have benches," Allena began. "Here and here, with curved seats and high backs, in cedar that would go silver in the weather."
He wondered why he hadn't thought of it himself, for he loved to sit and watch the sea. "What else would you have, were you me?"
"Well, I'd put big pots near the benches and fill them with flowers that spilled out and spiked up. Dark blue crocks," she decided, then slanted him a look. "You could make them."
"I suppose I could. Flowerpots." The idea was amusing.
No one had ever expected flowerpots from him before. He skimmed a hand over her hair as he sipped his wine and realized he would enjoy making them for her, would like to see her pleasure in them.
"Dark blue," she repeated, "to match the shutters when they're fixed up with the paint I found in the laundry room."
"Now I'm painting shutters?"
"No, no, no, your talents are much too lofty for such mundane chores.
You make the pots, sturdy ones, and I'll paint the shutters."
"I know when someone's laughing at me."
She merely sent him a sly wink and walked down toward the water. "Do you know what I'm supposed to be doing tonight?"
"What would that be?"
"I should be manning the slide projector for Margaret's after-dinner lecture on megalithic sites."
"Well, then, you've had a narrow escape, haven't you?"
"You're telling me. Do you know what I'm going to do instead?"
"Ah, come back inside and make wild love with me?"
She laughed and spun in a circle. "I'm definitely putting that on the schedule. But first, I'm going to build a sand castle."
"A sand castle, is it?"
"A grand one," she claimed and plopped down on the beach to begin.
"The construction of sand castles is one of my many talents. Of course,
I'd do better work if I had a spade and a bucket. Both of which," she added, looking up at him from under her lashes, "can be found in the laundry room."
"And I suppose, as my talent for this particular art is in doubt, I'm delegated to fetch."
"Your legs are longer, so you'll get there and back faster."
"Can't argue with that."
He brought back the garden spade and the mop bucket, along with the bottle of wine.
As the first bold stars came to life, he sat and watched her build her castle of sand.
"You need a tower on that end," he told her. "You've left it undefended."
"It's a castle, not a fortress, and my little world here is at peace.
However, I'd think a famous artist could manage to build a tower if he saw the need for one."
He finished off his glass of wine, screwed the stem in the sand, and picked up the challenge.
She added more turrets, carefully shaping, then smoothing them with the edge of her spade. And driven by his obviously superior talent with his hands, began to add to the structure, elaborately.
"And what, I'd like to know, is that lump you've got there?"
/> "It's the stables, or will be when I'm finished."
"It's out of proportion." He started to reach over to show her, but she slapped his hand away. "As you like, but your horses would have to be the size of Hugh to fit in there."
She sniffed, rocked back on her heels. Damn it, he was right. "I'm not finished," she said coolly. She scooped up more sand and worked it in.
"And what is that supposed to be?"
"It will be the drawbridge."
"A drawbridge?" Delighted, she leaned over to study the platform he fashioned with his quick, clever hands. "Oh, that's wonderful. You're definitely sand castle-skilled. I know just what it needs."
She scrambled up and raced to the house. She came back with some wooden kitchen matches and a bit of red ribbon that she'd cut in a triangle.
"Chain would be better, but we'll be innovative." She poked the tip of the long match into the side of the drawbridge, slid the other end into the castle wall. "Fortunately, the royal family here is having a ball, so the drawbridge stays down." She set a second match in the other side.
She broke a third match, looped her ribbon around it, then