He finally stopped his visual scan of their surroundings and met her eyes. “The phone book, Stella. You’re listed.”
Oops. Maybe Kat was right. She was turning paranoid these days.
She turned to hide her embarrassment, heading back to the couch and her sketch pad. “Well, since you’re here, you might as well see what I’ve come up with for the design. That way if there are any changes, I don’t have to start over Monday at the theater.” Not that there’d be any. This time, he had to like it.
He took the pad she offered and sank down on the edge of the couch, resting his elbows on his knees, glancing back and forth from the sketches to her. “This wasn’t why I came.”
There didn’t need to be any other reason. She pointed to the notepad, a desperate effort to keep his attention and effort directed only toward what mattered. Toward the only thing that could be between them. “Gold and silver. What do you think?” She’d shaded in with colored pencils all the spaces she’d outlined at the theater the day before, while Dixie had napped half on her shoulder.
It had turned out pretty, in her opinion. Regal, almost. Once he approved it, she’d plug the ideas into the computer programs she always used to experiment with color and find the perfect shade, and then finalize her designs and print them.
“Stella . . .” Chase’s voice trailed off as he flipped the pages. He sighed, then shook his head as he shut the book and handed it back. “It’s still not right.”
She sat down hard on the couch, not even worrying about the proximity she’d tried so far to avoid. “How could gold and silver be wrong? It’s not overly done, but it’s elegant. No red, no black. What else do you want?”
“It’s elegant, yes.” He pushed his hands through his hair, frustration evident. “But where’s the color? Where’s the life?”
Her own frustration boiled. That was Chase. Always unable to be pleased. Always rushing off toward the next thing, the next idea.
The next girl.
With no regard or consideration for anyone’s feelings around him.
She was sick of it. Briefly she visualized what might happen if she slapped him across the head with her notepad. “That’s not fair. There was plenty of color in the design you originally shot down.”
“The red?”
Yes, the color she was currently seeing. “The red and black and white. You hated that idea.”
“Red isn’t a color.”
Huh? “Excuse me? Have you ever seen a rainbow? You know, the big pretty promise God gave Noah and the rest of the world?” Her sarcasm was taking over by now, but she couldn’t stop it, couldn’t stop the broken dam of words pouring from her mouth. She ticked the colors off on her fingers. “Red, orange, yellow, green—”
He covered her fingers with his hand and gently lowered it to the couch between them. “I know red is technically a color, but you know what I mean, Stella. Black and white and red? That’s done. That’s dark.” His voice trailed, lowered. “That’s . . . morbid. Red is blood.”
Stella frowned. “But blood is life.”
“No. No. Not always.” A dark shadow crossed his face, and he abruptly pulled his hand away from hers. “What I’m trying to say is that the Cameo deserves color. A color that’s hope and beauty and—”
“Why do you get to decide what’s considered beautiful?” She jumped off the couch, away from him, away from his misplaced logic. Why were there always men in her life telling her the definition of beauty? The pageant judges. Dillon. Chase. Pluck this. Plump that. Enhance here, minimize there.
This wasn’t about the Cameo anymore, or colors, or design schemes. It was something much more. But she didn’t know how to stop.
She glared down at him, fury beating a rhythm in her chest. “Trust me, Chase. Beauty is beyond overrated.”
He stood to face her, inches away. “And what—you think you can hide from it because you throw on sweatpants and don’t slap on any makeup? You think that saves you from beauty? You think that changes anything?”
He was almost yelling now, the pain shooting from his eyes proof that he was also fighting a private battle she knew nothing about. They were engaged in two different wars, sharing a battleground and catching each other in their own crossfire.
It had to stop.
Stella released a long breath, deflating both her anger and the hot air rising within. “Why did you come, Chase?” She snorted a laugh. “Pretty sure it wasn’t to yell at me about the color wheel.”
“I was yelling, wasn’t I?” Chase ran a hand down the length of his face, fingers scratching against the five o’clock shadow claiming his lower jaw. “Oh, man. I’m sorry, Stella.”
“I yelled too. And probably yelled first.” She sat back on the couch and motioned for him to do the same.
He sat down, cautiously, farther away than before. “I actually came because I want a truce.”
“Ironic.”
“Tell me about it.” He laughed a little, the heavy shadow that had consumed his features moments before lifting slightly. “I just . . . I don’t want to work with all this awkwardness, you know?”
“I know.” She didn’t, either. But where was he going with this? Did he want them to pretend as if nothing had happened, or was he actually implying being friends?
Or more?
Her traitorous heart skipped a beat and a rush of memories flooded her senses. She felt her neck flush at the memory of his arm tight around her waist. The roughness of that five o’clock shadow under her chin. His lips pressing a kiss on her forehead.
“So I think it’s best if we call a truce.”
She stumbled off Memory Lane. “A truce?” So he wasn’t suggesting them getting back together. Duh. Of course not, she’d never agree to that in a million years anyway.
Well, maybe never in a thousand.
“An agreement. To forget the past and just move forward.” Chase gestured with both hands, as if pointing them toward some unknown, drama-free future. “A fresh start.”
A fresh start. Was that even possible with Chase? Yet the Cameo—and her career—deserved her best effort. And he would probably be able to focus a lot better on his own work and on the crew if he wasn’t worried about offending her every two seconds or starting a fight.
It was just that . . . well, letting go of the past meant letting go of her guard, her wall, her defense. If she forgave Chase once and for all and treated him as she would any new stranger in her life, she had nothing left to hide behind.
She glanced at the door to her right, the one hiding her secret. She was still Stella. Dillon, and Chase, for that matter, hadn’t taken all of her away. She could hide behind her art. Deal with Chase at work, do what needed to be done, and then pour out her passion and aggression into her art. Maybe channeling her efforts and emotion like that into one place would help her find the breakthrough she needed in her creations.
She’d do it. For the Cameo, for Chase.
And for herself.
She nodded. “Agreed. Truce.”
“So no more screaming at me about rainbows?” Chase grinned, and she shook her head with a smile.
“No more screaming about rainbows.” They stood at the same time, and she reluctantly picked up her sketch pad. “And I’ll keep working on this.”
As if pleasing him would ever be possible.
“You’re getting there.” His teasing grin dissipated as they walked toward the front door. “You’re talented, Stella. You’re just holding yourself back.”
A spark of indignation flared, then quickly extinguished. He was being serious, not condescending. Not patronizing. He meant it. And it seemed as if he cared. A little, anyway.
Maybe more than was required for the project.
Or maybe he was just still really good at hiding the truth. She couldn’t quite tell—never had been able to. She nodded, instead, choosing silence, and opened the door for him. But he wasn’t done.
“Let down the guard, okay?” He gently touched her should
er. “I think you already know, deep down, what to do.”
Not really.
Well, maybe.
“And Stella?”
She licked her lips, not trusting her voice, not wanting to yell or question or, worse—cry. She raised her eyebrows instead, the touch of his fingers burning a hole through her T-shirt. The memory assaulted her—his arms around her, holding her, hugging her. She wanted that hug so badly, but feared the effects of it. She met his gaze, then avoided it, not trusting her response to that either.
“Don’t be afraid of color.” His hand slid from her shoulder down the length of her arm and briefly squeezed her hand. “Don’t be afraid of beauty.”
Then he was gone.
seven
The look in Stella’s eyes from Saturday night’s impromptu visit to her apartment played on repeat in Chase’s mind as he went through the motions at the Cameo. Tell Tim to sweep and bag up that pile of trash from the wall demo they’d just completed. Ask Lyle what he’d heard from the plumber on his time frame estimate. Then send Tim to the store for materials. It was time to sand the stage, choose a stain.
That would probably involve input from Stella.
Man, that look in her eyes—it had stuck with him all night, whether he had his own eyes open or shut. That look that begged for a hug. She’d always needed hugs. Nobody else knew it; she kept the stoic façade up so well that nobody knew she needed anything.
He wished now he’d given her more of them.
He’d finally given up on sleep after tossing and turning for three hours, and sat up in the living room with the Sports Channel on low. Thank goodness, Ethan had slept through his fitfulness. No way could he explain to his cousin he was up because of a woman.
But it wasn’t like that. He just couldn’t shake the sensation there was something Stella was hiding from him, something she was holding back. Not that he blamed her, with the history between them. And wasn’t he holding back from her too? She had no idea about Leah, about the wreck, that he’d been engaged to someone else . . .
Man.
How was this truce ever going to work if they had so many secrets? It would be one thing if they were strangers, thrown together on a project. Then they could duke out their conflict about the work involved and just go home each night and put it behind them as professional differences. He’d fought with interior designers before, more than once. It was the nature of the industry.
But it wasn’t that simple, because of their past and their history . . . their once tangled hearts . . .
Because he still cared about Stella.
The miles had made that a little easier to deny, but now that they were back in the same city—in the same room, for that matter—denial was a luxury he no longer had. He wanted her to be okay.
And something about that look in her eyes last night was absolutely not okay.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, fighting back the tension headache that’d been building all morning despite three cups of coffee. Maybe a truce was impossible, anyway. So much water under that particular bridge . . . with his luck, he’d just end up causing a flash flood.
He looked up and barked another order to Tim, softening the unintentional sharpness of the comment with a quick follow-up “please.” Wasn’t the boy’s fault he was tired and stressed. He just really hadn’t meant for that conversation with Stella to go anything like the way it had. How had he turned an attempt to form a truce into a yelling match about colors?
This wasn’t the Stella he knew. The Stella he knew would have been slapping bright colors on every square inch of surface in the theater. The Stella he knew would need to be held back, not pushed and prodded to let her ability shine.
Speaking of Stella . . .
He stiffened as she came down the theater aisle toward him, wearing jeans that looked a size too big and a simple navy V-neck top, a bulging bag slung over one arm. Her high ponytail swung as she neared. “Mornin’. How’s it going in here today?” Her pageant smile was in place, the one he hated. He’d rather her mope and frown than be fake with him.
That. That was what he meant when he told her the other night to let down her guard. Why did she hold back from being real? In both her interactions with people and with her work?
What in the world had happened to Stella Varland?
“Pretty good, actually.” He didn’t smile back, wasn’t going to match her fakeness and be a hypocrite. “The inspector was here an hour ago and confirmed the ceiling doesn’t need as much work as I feared.”
“That’s good.” She set her bag in a theater seat and glanced up at the roof, even though she: a) couldn’t begin to see the details of the structure high above their heads, and b) wouldn’t know what to look for if she could.
“Yeah, the grid is still good, just need to replace the tile.”
She nodded as if she had a clue what that meant, and he suppressed a laugh. She was trying, which was more than he could say for some of the past designers he’d worked with.
“After church yesterday, I drove to the Bayou.” Stella pulled her sketch pad from her purse and clutched it against her chest. It was noticeably thinner than it’d been the first time he’d seen it. “Started the design from scratch, and . . . I used color.”
Her nervous laugh punctuated the tension between them, highlighting the fact that she was trying hard, so very hard, to make this a no-big-deal conversation.
Which only proved how important it really was to her.
Her grip tightened on the notepad, white-knuckled, even. Chase’s chest tightened at the pressure. He needed to like this design—because she needed him to. How would their truce work if they couldn’t ever agree, or compromise, for that matter? He’d seen the crestfallen way she’d taken every one of his “not right, try again” comments.
But this was business. He couldn’t pacify Stella at the risk of hurting her feelings. This was work—both of their reputations were stamped on this theater, and he was just getting started again in Bayou Bend. He needed a solid stand in the community.
But it was more than that—he knew Stella had what it took. All the years he knew her, her entire life was flashes of color. The gold of her hair. The pink of her smile. The blue of her eyes. Her very natural self resembled a living, breathing Photoshopped model with zero effort on her part.
But that light had dimmed since he’d moved to Houston. Her color had faded, her spark dulled. And it wasn’t just because of the drab clothes she seemed to favor now, or the lack of makeup. No, this was from the inside out. Even her eyes weren’t as striking as they were before. Something—someone?—had turned this rainbow of a woman into a gray cloud.
He recognized the color, because it was the exact shade he struggled to hide every day in the mirror.
“The Bayou, huh?” He’d wait until she offered the sketch. His instincts shouted for him not to reach for it. Maintain distance. Avoid eye contact. Slow and easy. Same instincts that applied to a snarling dog, or a frightened toddler.
The trouble with Stella was that you never knew which one you’d get. His interactions with her so far in the last week had been half terrified child, half rabid beast. She’d run the gamut from insecure, to paranoid, to defensive, to overly confident and insulted in a matter of minutes.
He missed the old Stella. The one who knew who she was, what she wanted, and how to get it, even if it was borderline too much. He’d much rather deal with saucy, mildly arrogant Stella than this shell of a woman he barely recognized. He missed her sass. And her—what was the word? An old classic movie word . . . moxie. That was it. Stella used to have moxie.
“Yeah, the Bayou inspired me. Think I’d just been inside too long.” Her grip loosened slightly, the sketch pad sliding an inch lower in her hands. Letting down her guard?
He should probably keep her talking. “You still go to that same spot with the picnic tables?”
She hesitated, a wall shooting up around her tightening shoulders. “Sometimes.”
&n
bsp; Dang it. That was a miss. He probably should have thought about the fact that was the same spot they’d had more than one conversation together—alone, in private—while he was still dating Kat.
Ugh.
He shoved his hands in his pockets to avoid smacking himself in the face. Why had he stirred that up? Now he was being beat with memories:
Shooting paper straws at Stella that afternoon they met for coffee under the pretense of needing advice about Kat. Whack.
The night he ran into her at the movies, and stayed for two more flicks afterward because he couldn’t bear to leave her side. Whack.
That time he and Stella sat on those very benches, shoulder to shoulder, denying the chemistry between them as they stared at the murky water and talked about the difficulties of life and the mysteries of God for hours. Whack. Whack.
“That carving is still there, by the way.” She said it carefully, like an inspector stepping onto a bridge for the first time after its construction. Not sure of the steadiness, unwilling to fall, but even more afraid not to try.
Because someone had to try.
“The one where we used to guess the owners’ initials?” He smiled at that memory, which dug in softly, not connecting nearly as hard as the solid thuds of the others. “D. M. and H. M.”
The letters were carved into a tree inside a wobbly heart, which wouldn’t have been all that noteworthy if it weren’t for the crude sketch of an umbrella under the letters. He and Stella used to sit and guess who the couple could be, and what the umbrella meant. A couple stuck in the rain? A couple under a cover of love? Their guesses had been abstract and vague and they’d never figured it out, but he’d also never minded the mystery because it kept Stella there, by his side, laughing at his corny guesses and wrinkling her nose as she considered all the options.
Stella nodded her confirmation, almost shyly, and for a moment, he considered begging. Throwing away his pride, throwing away the professional truce between them, and clutching his hands in a plea to hear her story. What had rocked her world so completely and left her so . . . uncertain?
Love Arrives in Pieces Page 9