Sculpting Grace: A Light Romance Novel (Art of Grace Book 2)

by Samantha Westlake

  "Be calm, be cool, be smart," I told myself under my breath as I grabbed my purse out of my car and headed up the stone steps towards the house's front door. "You've got this, Becca. Just be professional, and you'll totally be able to handle this artist, no matter how grumpy he might be."

  I wasn't sure if I fully believed my own words, but I reached the front door without turning and dashing back to my car. I drew in one last breath, let it out slowly, and then pushed the button next to the door.

  After a moment of not hearing anything from inside, I frowned a little and pushed the button a second time. Was the doorbell working?

  This time, leaning in to put my ear closer to the cherrywood door, I definitely heard the buzz from the doorbell echoing inside the house. A moment later, just as I started to reach for the button for a third time, I heard footsteps thumping towards the front entrance.

  "Coming, dammit, I'm coming!" came a faint shout from inside the house. I had to fight to keep my frown from deepening. That already sounded dangerously grumpy.

  A minute later, the deadbolt slid back with a rasping sound, and a wild man yanked the door open, staring out at me. "What?" he snarled, glaring hotly at me as I took an unconscious half-step backwards.

  Dean Benjamin Preston de St. James looked like he'd let himself go a bit since the last picture of him was taken, I found myself thinking. He certainly didn't look anywhere near as cultured as his multi-part name suggested! His hair was wild and stuck out in all directions, jet black shot through with wide tufts of gray. His beard had the same colors and appeared similarly unkempt; my overall impression was of a half-unraveled cotton ball that someone had been using to smear shoe polish around.

  From inside the circle of wild hair, a strong face glared out at me. Even his unkempt appearance wasn't enough to lessen the impact of de St. James' iron gray eyes, his eagle's beak of a nose, his stern mouth. The man looked patrician, although maybe like a town elder had been trapped in a cave for several days.

  "What do you want?" he asked again, as I tried to pull my composure back together.

  "Er..." Confidence, Becca! "Are you Dean Benjamin de St. James?" I asked, stepping forward and holding out my hand. "I'm Becca Grace, from the Halesford Gallery in downtown, and I was wondering if I could have a few minutes of your time?"

  For a minute, I thought that de St. James might slam the door on me then and there, leaving me on his front stoop. I really didn't like the way that his eyes seemed to bulge slightly out of his head as he glared at me. Looking anywhere but his face, I realized that the man was dressed in a long, rather dirty brown bathrobe, knotted tightly around his waist and dropping all the way down to his ankles. Bare feet stuck out beneath the robe. I hoped desperately that he was actually wearing something, anything, beneath the garment.

  The silence between us lasted several seconds, my heart dropping lower with each passing moment. But just as I thought that I was about to get the fastest and most direct rejection of my life, he finally sighed and broke eye contact.

  "Fine. Come in," he grumbled, turning and walking away into his house.

  Still uncertain about the less than warm welcome, I stepped up through the still-open doorway, into de St. James' house. "Great, thanks," I said, a note of uncertainty clear in my voice as I followed after the back of the retreating man.

  As I entered the house, I looked around. Very quickly, I realized that despite the clean and elegant lines of the structure itself, de St. James didn't seem particularly interested in keeping up the house's interior. I'd expected to see elegance on the inside to match the outside, the place looking like an interior decorator's wet dream.

  Instead, I felt like I'd stepped straight into an episode of Hoarders.

  Drop cloths and tarps were spread everywhere, covering most of the floor. Areas of the floor that weren't covered with thick tarps instead had sheets of crunchy, wrinkled newspaper spread out over the surface; at no point did I catch a glimpse of the actual floor, and I wasn't even sure if I was walking on carpet, or just several layers of cloth or newspaper that lay between my feet and a more solid flooring material.

  The drop cloths and tarps were held in place mostly by piles of stone and stacks of paint cans, many of the cans with their lids cracked open and dried paint forming an ersatz seal. The whole place smelled of paint fumes, and I tried to breathe shallowly through my mouth. If I had to stay here for long, I'd probably leave the house too buzzed and loopy to drive. Further splashes of paint marked the walls, seemingly at random. It looked like de St. James would test the color of the paint on the wall and then leave that splotch to dry.

  Following after the man down the hallway, I glanced in the first room that we passed - and immediately regretted it. I guessed, from the arm of a couch sticking out from beneath the debris, that this room had once been a family or living room of some sort. Now, however, trash bags and more chunks of rubble practically filled the area, hiding any other furniture beneath a layer of, well, garbage.

  de St. James was, I was quickly realizing, a very different type of sculpture artist than Onyx.

  The man ahead of me, still hurrying along without a backward glance, disappeared from my view. I picked up my pace, trying to ignore how some of the floor coverings sucked slightly at my shoes, as if reluctant to let go. There, a doorway. I took a few more steps and came around the door, hoping that I'd find a better, cleaner area on the other side.

  No such luck. I'd arrived, I saw immediately, at what had to be de St. James' studio and working area. The place was slightly more organized than some of the other rooms in the house I'd passed, but that wasn't saying much; it was a low bar to clear.

  Inside this studio area, de St. James immediately headed over to a large, partially finished statue that stood in the middle of the room, where he crossed his arms across his bathrobe-clad chest and glared up at the thing as if it had just made some wildly offensive comments about his deceased mother. I, meanwhile, looked around the room and wondered if there was any surface safe enough to support my weight.

  The room looked a bit like a workshop, albeit one where a homeless man (or a crazy artist) decided to make his new nest. Racks of chisels, hammers, and other tools hung on the wall, although it looked like most of the tools that had once decorated these racks were now scattered around on various benches and other surfaces. A heavy wooden drafting table was loaded down with sheets of paper and several hammers, and several other makeshift surfaces had been built out of stacks of paint cans with large boards laid across the top. Chunks of stone covered the floor; clearly, de St. James did his carving in here and didn't bother to sweep out the discarded pieces of rock from his creations.

  "Thanks for giving me a few minutes of your time," I said, stepping carefully over a large five-gallon bucket of very dirty water with dozens of paintbrushes mouldering inside of it. "As I said, I'm from the Halesford Gallery-"

  "Look, I got here on my own, no matter what anybody else says!" de St. James snapped at me. "And frankly, I don't care what you print about me. My artwork speaks for itself."

  My mouth snapped shut at this non sequitur. "Okay," I said slowly, although I don't think he even heard me speak as he continued to rant.

  I tried my best to listen, but the words didn't seem to make much coherent sense together. de St. James appeared to be telling me a combination of his personal history and, at the same time, attempting to decry critics' accusations that his work was anything less than groundbreaking. I wondered if he'd even really heard who I was.

  I made a couple attempts to slip a word in edgewise, but de St. James clearly wasn't listening. Finally, I gave up and started poking around the workshop, trying to find a mostly safe place to sit. I figured that, sooner or later, he'd simply run out of steam and I could explain what I needed.

  Eventually, I found a stack of two five-gallon paint cans that appeared mostly full, but weren't covered in dirt, dust, or dried paint. I pushed on them a couple times to make sure that they wouldn't to
pple over and then, once I'd assured myself of their structural integrity, plopped my butt down on top. It wasn't the most comfortable seat in the world (I thought briefly, regretfully of that couch back in Onyx's warehouse... which also held the added appeal of having Onyx on it with me as well), but it wasn't going to make my butt go numb after five minutes.

  Now sitting, I crossed my arms over my breasts and frowned at de St. James. I tuned out his actual words, just focusing on watching his face, waiting for him to realize that I wasn't paying attention to his ramblings.

  Finally, just as I was worrying that I'd need to clonk him with one of his own hammers, just to get his attention, he stopped talking and focused his eyes on me. "What?" he asked, perhaps finally realizing that I wasn't listening intently to the topic of his half-disjointed complaining.

  I waited another second, letting the silence stretch a little further, just to make sure that I had his full attention. "Ready to actually listen to what I have to say?" I asked, raising one eyebrow.

  His face darkened, and I feared for a second that he might order me out of his mess of a house, but he nodded. "Yeah, okay. What do you want?"

  Chapter Eight

  *

  I sat on top of the two five-gallon buckets full of paint in de St. James' dirty and cluttered studio, stretching out the silence. The man had finally stopped ranting, and was waiting for me to tell him what I was doing there, why I was disturbing his angry little sealed-up life.

  "As I said, I'm Becca Grace," I repeated, and held out my hand to him.

  After a second of looking suspiciously at my extended hand, as if worried that this was some sort of trap, he advanced and gave it a brief shake. He still had a strong grip, and his hand didn't feel sweaty or clammy. I tried to take heart from this small bit of encouragement.

  "And as I also said before, I'm the manager of the Halesford Gallery, in downtown Davis," I continued after releasing his hand. "Despite the state of your house, you're quite the well recognized artist, and we were interested in setting up a deal to sell some of your work through our gallery space." I carefully didn't mention his leave of absence from the art world over the last few months, remembering Onyx's warning.

  Finally, this seemed to catch de St. James' attention. "I don't sell to galleries," he said shortly.

  Well, crap. However, despite making this blunt statement, de St. James kept on looking at me, as if waiting to see how I'd respond. I decided that, if this was an opening, I'd give it a shot and try to convince him to change his mind.

  "Are you sure?" I asked. "I mean, this is something that could work out well for both of us. You'd get more sales, maybe enough to..." I racked my mind for ideas. "...hire a maid to come in here and tidy up, or something-"

  "What's wrong with my house?" he burst out, as something small with multiple legs vanished into the crumpled up newspapers behind him.

  "Nothing, nothing!" I yelped back, dragging my eyes away from the pile of newspapers behind him and drawing my feet up onto the buckets that served as a chair, off of the floor. "But you'd sell more, and the gallery would help promote your artwork. It seems like we'd both get a win out of it!"

  I hoped that this might convince de St. James, but his expression didn't change. He looked at me for a moment, as if turning the idea over in his head beneath that wild shock of salt-and-pepper hair, but then shook it back and forth in a negative. "I'm not convinced."

  "Well, how can I convince you?" Please, please don't ask me for a date, I begged silently inside of my head. I already had two confusingly appealing men in my life, and didn't need any other additions.

  And besides that, with his age showing in the lines around his eyes, plus his wild hair (and lackluster cleaning skills, and apparently no sense of smell and a permanent paint fume high), de St. James wasn't even meeting my admittedly low criteria. Even Barry, my ex-husband, had seemed to bring more to the table when I accepted his disastrous proposal.

  Instead of asking me out, however, de St. James just frowned at me. "Every other agent or professional I've worked with has let me down," he sighed, reaching up and running a hand through his hair. I was impressed that he didn't get his fingers caught in the wild tangle. "It's part of what's fueled my rise, in fact - I insist fiercely on independence."

  A part of me wondered if an agent or other professional might make him get a haircut and take a shower, which he clearly refused to do. "True, but I'm not exactly a professional," I said, and then hastily backtracked as I heard my own words. "I mean, I'm not going to be all soulless and corporate, like those others might have been. The Halesford Gallery is very small, and you'd be our highest profile client. I'd do whatever you need to be satisfied."

  As I spoke, I hoped that Onyx wouldn't get wind of these comments - or any other artist who sold in the gallery, for that matter. Sure, having a high profile artist like de St. James selling his art there would help everyone by bringing in more foot traffic, but I had already come to learn that every artist had an ego that they needed to be stroked and encouraged regularly, and nothing made an artist angrier than getting slighted in favor of another. If any of our patrons heard me refer to de St. James as our "highest profile" client, they'd throw a royal snit, and I'd need to waste a ton of time and effort soothing their ruffled feathers.

  He didn't smile, but de St. James looked perhaps slightly more amenable, his frown decreasing ever so slightly. "Just words. That's all that you give me."

  "What else would you need?" I replied. A little part of me raised a flag of caution inside my head; it felt a bit like he was trying to lead me somewhere. That kind of calculating mind went at odds with his wild, crazy appearance, and I pushed the note of concern aside. "How can I convince you that I'm trustworthy?"

  I should have trusted my gut instinct.

  As soon as I asked this question, de St. James spun around and grabbed at the papers that covered the drafting table behind him. He swept his hand over the mess with annoyance, and I nearly fell off my makeshift paint bucket stool as several chunks of stone went slamming into the ground with muffled crashes. I almost expected the man to drop one of those chunks onto his bare foot beneath the bathrobe he wore, but he somehow managed to avoid taking off a toe or two from a falling rock.

  Finally, de St. James managed to find a pad of yellow lined note paper and a battered looking ballpoint pen. He turned around, pointed the pen at me as he clicked it open, and then began scribbling on the pad of paper.

  I sat there for a minute or two, but began to feel a bit self-conscious as he continued scribbling, now glaring down intently at the paper and not even looking back up at me. He hadn't forgotten about me, had he? Had he just been seized by a fit of artistic fervor and needed to capture his latest idea?

  After another couple minutes, however, de St. James lowered the pen and turned the sheet around a bit so that I could see. Looking partly over his shoulder, I saw that he'd scribbled down a list of some sort, already stretching all the way down the page.

  "What's this?" I asked, not sure what I was supposed to make of the list.

  He looked over at me, his bushy eyebrows climbing as if it should have been obvious. "It's a list of things that you can do in order to prove to me that I can trust you."

  "What, like I should pick one of them?"

  "Pick one?" he repeated, shaking his head violently. "No, you need to accomplish everything on the list!"

  I fought to keep my jaw from dropping. There had to already be at least twenty different items on the list - and as I tried to find the right words to reply without offending the man to the point of throwing me out of his house, he tossed back the first page and began scribbling even more tasks onto the second page of the notepad!

  "Not happening," I finally managed. "I'm not going to do all of that work for you, just to prove myself!"

  de St. James looked down at the sheet of paper, and then back at me, as if not quite understanding my refusal. "But this is what it will take for you to prove that you're tr
ustworthy," he started to say again, but I jumped down from my seat on the paint buckets and waved a finger in front of his face to cut him off. Even the thought of the insects or mice scurrying around the corners of this room wasn't scary enough to hold back my ire.

  "Listen, I'm trying to help you here," I snapped at de St. James before he could recover from my sudden move forward. "But I'm not going to do everything for you! Besides, what sort of gallery manager would be willing to go this crazy for her clients? These are things that you ought to be managing for yourself!"

  "But you said-" he began, but I didn't even let him finish the sentence.

  "If you want to be fully independent because of your artistic integrity, that's great," I snapped at him. "But that means that you'd better get used to doing all of... of whatever those things are on your list, all on your own! No one's going to help you with them, and that includes me. Just because you've got something I want, that doesn't make me your bitch."

  Dean Benjamin de St. James, cranky and particular artist, looked back at me with wide eyes as I finished this little speech. Was he actually a little scared of me, now? It almost seemed that way! Look out, world, this was bad ass Becca, on the loose!

  "I didn't mean to call you a bitch," he managed, after a swallow that I saw clearly, even through his wild beard.

  Okay, Becca, I thought to myself. This can work in your favor. You've got him on the defensive - now, just let him down easily and bring him back in. Get him feeling like he owes you, and you'll have this agreement all sewn up.

  "I didn't say that you did," I said, letting a little anger out of my voice, but keeping just a little edge of frustration in my words. "I just want to make it clear that I'm not here to do all your work for you."

  "Okay," he said, and to my surprise, I saw his whole face droop! Oh my god, had I pushed him too far? Was this big name artist about to start crying, right in front of me?