He didn’t say a word. She could tell by his expression that he knew she was running away.
She knew it, too.
* * *
THAT NIGHT, AFTER Scott put the kids to bed he went to the living room and sat on the sofa looking up at one of Isabelle’s faerie paintings, which she’d given him years ago. He’d always loved her paintings, but he knew she was driven by some inner passion to excel. Isabelle would never be satisfied with what she’d accomplished yesterday.
She was all about setting goals and pushing her limits.
It was one of the things that had drawn him to her. He’d been like that once, back at the Tribune. He’d pushed and challenged himself. He’d raised his own bar.
“That’s why I want you to do this, Isabelle,” he said aloud, raising his coffee mug to the painting.
Isabelle was right. This was her chance. And she’d been courageous to take it. He admired her for that.
He could also tell she was a bundle of conflict. He’d seen that today at the shop. She’d delayed going back to her easel because she’d wanted to spend time with him and the kids. She’d laughed and bonded with Bella and Michael and for a few precious moments, he’d slipped into that delusion that they were a family.
But we’re not. Not yet.
Scott was aware that Wes was attracted to Isabelle, but did she see him as anything more than a famous artist? He imagined it was tough for a protégé not to be swayed by the lure of success. After all, that’s what Isabelle had always wanted—to be the best she could be.
Wes and his uncle could give that to her. Scott couldn’t.
He was just a guy who’d loved her for a long time.
He took a long, thoughtful sip of his coffee. When he’d kissed her today, Scott believed something significant had changed between them.
She’d looked at him with an appreciation he hadn’t seen before.
When she interacted with the kids, she’d been kind and caring. For a woman who claimed she didn’t want children, she certainly could have fooled him.
He’d always known she was giving and generous. He’d seen that with her girlfriends and her family. And with him. As much as he’d sometimes been frustrated by her lack of recognition for how much he did for her, he had to admit that she’d returned his favors in her own way. Like gifting him with her paintings. The times when she helped fill in at the bookshop when he was short-handed. Since the kids had come to live with him, she’d been even more generous.
It was possible that her new opportunity with her art was allowing her to look at every part of her life. And if he was part of that equation, so much the better.
These past months had been an eye-opener for him, too. He must have lost his mind thinking that becoming a father would fill up his life.
He loved the kids. They fulfilled him in a way nothing had before. But they hadn’t pushed Isabelle out of his heart.
He finished the coffee.
He had a new house, children and a new perspective. But that place he’d carved out for Isabelle was still there, and it was cavernous.
He would never truly be happy until she came to stay. Forever.
CHAPTER TWENTY
ISABELLE CLUTCHED AT the collar of her white wool coat as she trudged through a strong March wind, lugging her wire cart filled with paints and a canvas toward Malcolm’s studio.
It was a miserable slate gray day that wouldn’t give her much in the way of natural light, she thought as she reached the red brick building. She guessed the place had been built in the late 1930s, before the war. The symmetrical square windows punched into the exterior walls looked like vacant, hopeless eyes. As she took out the key Malcolm had given her, she scoffed at herself for the grandiose images she’d had about what an artist’s studio would look like. This was no more than an old workshop in need of rehabilitation.
She slipped her key into the lock and it spun. The door was unlocked. She pushed inward.
Loud classical music poured into the entryway. The energy of Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture, with vibrant violins that made her think of bumblebees, was familiar to her. She crept down the dark paneled hall toward the open door at the end.
Light flooded out, pulling her forward. She parked the wire cart beside the door and slipped into the studio.
She felt like an intruder on a sacred ritual as she watched a barefooted Wes, dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans, fling black paint onto a huge canvas on the floor, moving to the music. Floor-to-ceiling canvases reminiscent of Jackson Pollock creations hung on three of the walls.
She withdrew into the shadow of the doorway to watch him work.
He was in his element. As the music rose to a crescendo and the tubas boomed, Wes lunged at the canvas like he was a fencer and the paint stick was his foil. With a flick of his wrist, he sent the paint across the surface in a horizontal line.
Isabelle scooted down to a crouch and hugged her knees to her chin, trying to absorb all that Wes was creating.
He splashed vortexes of black, red, amber, blue-gray and tonal white that gave a luminance to the entire work.
Another classical piece began with a staccato movement that caused Wes to jerk and flick his paint onto the canvas. He changed colors as the violins, piano and other strings segued to a moderately fast tempo.
Amazingly, the crimson blotches were symmetrical, each forming a precise “tail” in perfect alignment with each other as a geometric pattern began to form.
Isabelle didn’t dare announce her presence or the fact that she’d come here to paint, as well. Her work, her canvas would remain blank for today, but her mind would not. With each of his movements and the corresponding marks on the canvas, Wes was teaching her to think differently. She could almost feel her craft expanding. Wes was every inch the master and she was the pupil—even though he wasn’t aware of it yet.
He grabbed another stick, this one coated with gray, and dipped it in a can of white. When he pulled it out, it revealed an interesting tone, like the smoky fog that whorled off Indian Lake in the winter. It was one of her favorite colors and sometimes if she looked closely between the lily pads and cattails, she would imagine a tiny water sprite waiting for discovery.
Isabelle cocked her head, content to watch and absorb. Time had no purpose in this place, she knew. This was the artist’s dimension. The hours passed or they didn’t. There were no responsibilities to others here, only the duty to art. To one’s talent.
Few understood that duty, or what it meant to her. Probably not even Scott.
The light in the room changed, and Isabelle lifted her gaze to the ceiling. Long panels of glass stretched across it without any shade or blinds to cut off the light. She’d been watching Wes for so long that the clouds had drifted away, revealing a clear blue sky.
Isabelle let out a small gasp as she took in the beauty of it.
Wes froze. He stepped back and withdrew his arm from its position over the canvas so as not to dribble paint on a place it wasn’t meant to be.
“Who’s there?”
He spun around, his eyes glazed and unfocused, as if he’d just awoken from a dream. She knew that kind of disorientation. It would take him a minute to see her.
“Oh, my gosh, Wes. I’m so sorry.” She rose from her crouch, her limbs stiff.
“Isabelle?”
“Hi,” she said, stepping toward him. “Didn’t Malcolm tell you I’d be here today?”
“Er. Uh. Yes.” He put the paint can on a bench and laid the stick over it. He picked up a rag and wiped his hands. His eyes were still dazed. He stepped around the canvas. “I came in early to get a head start. I guess I forgot the time. How long have you been here?” He glanced down at his wrist but he wasn’t wearing his watch. He ran a hand through his hair. “Guess I forgot a few things this morning.�
�� He chuckled.
“I see that.” She looked around him at the painting. “It’s magnificent.” She gestured toward the canvases on the walls. “They all are.”
“Mediocre,” he grumbled. “I know I can do better.”
“You’re not satisfied?”
“It’s a fault of mine, I know. Malcolm tells me that my critical eye will drown my creative eye and one day, I’ll go blind.”
Isabelle laughed. “I hate that he’s so astute.”
Wes moved up behind her, staring at his painting from over her shoulder. “What do you really think of this? Be merciless.”
But she couldn’t focus on the art at all. If she was honest, all she could think about was his spicy scent, the heat she could feel right through her wool coat. He was too attractive. And she had to put her attraction to him aside.
This is work, Isabelle.
He put his hand on her shoulder.
She wished he wouldn’t do that. He wasn’t helping the situation.
She stepped away from him. “I already told you—it’s magnificent. But my opinion means nothing. Wes, seriously. This is what we do, isn’t it? We throw our total selves onto a canvas.” Turning, she tapped his chest. “It’s what’s in here that matters. And how it flows into the work.”
Wes shoved his hands in his pockets. “When you put it that way...” He looked into her eyes. “You said magnificent.” His voice was solemn and direct.
Isabelle knew he wasn’t just talking about his art anymore. “Yes. The painting for sure, and from my limited experience with you, I would say you have a magnificent heart, too.”
He folded his arms over his chest and smiled. Blindingly. She wondered if he could see her knees quake.
“Then there’s one thing for us to do,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Increase your limited experience.”
She cocked her head. “I would think that with us working together in this studio, that’s inevitable.”
“And you’d be right.” He laughed.
Isabelle took a deep breath. Wes was the kind of man she’d hoped would walk into her life. The fact that he was an artist and lived in the art world, breathed its air and consumed its energy had everything to do with it. She could learn so much from him.
She liked to think that being part of a team would enhance both their careers and their lives.
He raised his eyes to the skylight. The sun was gone. Dark clouds had moved in from the west.
“Tomorrow, I’ll be better,” he said.
She glanced at his painting. “I don’t see how.”
“I mean, about making a space for you.” He gestured around the room. “As you can see, I’m messy, disorganized and—”
“A hog.”
“Huh?”
Laughing, she said, “You’re taking up the entire floor. I couldn’t get an easel in here if I tried.”
“An easel? Do you have one? I don’t. Maybe I should ask Malcolm.”
“It’s okay,” she assured him, holding up her palm. “I have a collapsible one in my cart. I have everything I need. Promise.”
Wes rocked back on his heels. “I’m sure you do.”
She cleared her throat. It was the oddest moment for her to think of Scott, to remember how it had felt to have his arms around her. His last kiss had barely grazed her lips, but she knew she’d remember it forever because she had wanted it to be more. She had wanted Scott.
A moment ago, she was feeling Wes’s breath on her neck and now she was wishing she were back in Indian Lake helping Scott fix dinner for the kids. Looking into Scott’s deep brown eyes.
“Actually, I can set up over there...” She pointed to the small space by the door to the office.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Absolutely.” She gestured to his painting. “You continue with your work. I don’t want to stop you.”
“Okay. Thanks,” he said and picked up his pail and stick. Within moments he was totally focused on the canvas.
Isabelle went to the hall, grabbed her cart and rolled it to the space she’d chosen. The light was good here; it would help her get the feel she wanted in the piece she was working on.
She listened to the music and watched Wes out of the corner of her eye as she set up. There was no disruption in his flow. If she’d wondered if he could paint on cue, she knew now that he could. He was like a machine.
She blended paints but her mind wandered away from the canvas and back to Scott. It was Saturday. Was he at the bookshop with the kids or had his mother taken them for the afternoon? He’d told her that one Saturday night a month he went to a DCS family function with the kids. He’d said the socializing with other parents was informative, but what he liked best were the games and activities that Zoey and the counselors organized. And if they weren’t there, were they renting a movie or would he take them for a walk along the lighted trail at Indian Lake?
Isabelle took the top off a tube of paint. It was a tube Scott had picked up at the art supply store months ago. She remembered because it was a difficult color of gold-brown. She was still searching for the precise gold that shone in his eyes.
She missed him, she thought, chills spreading across her back.
How had she become so confused? What trigger had she missed?
And why would she start feeling this yearning for Scott at the precise moment when she had decided to move on? When he had, too.
Had she always been this foolish?
And now that she realized what he meant to her, was it too late?
She hadn’t received a call from him for two days. She knew he was busy. So was she.
But why did she feel so hollow?
“How’s it going there?” Wes shouted over the music.
She looked at her brush and moved it to the canvas. “Fine,” she said, knowing already this faerie would look like Scott.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“LET ME SHOW YOU,” Wes said, taking Isabelle’s hand and dunking it into the can of blue-gray paint she’d spent over an hour mixing until it had the right tone and value. The day was cloudy and the light from the studio skylight played havoc with the saturation, which was why she’d gotten frustrated.
Experimentation was the hallmark of any artist and Isabelle was no exception. Her faerie paintings sold well, and she was confident that Malcolm liked them, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that they weren’t the extent of her talent. Of all she could be. She liked to be challenged, and if she was to embrace this new opportunity, this time in this studio, she wanted to push herself out of her comfort zone. Maybe she’d fail. Maybe she wouldn’t.
She’d tried to explain her needs to Scott but he’d never understood. Too often, she’d felt like his admiration for her faerie paintings kept him from accepting her ambitions for growth in her art.
As much as she missed Scott and as much as she was counting the hours till she drove back to Indian Lake, she also knew that she’d regret it if she didn’t ask Wes Adams for advice.
Wes held his hand over hers, competent and strong. Was it possible for his talent to seep through her skin and transport her visions onto the canvas?
He’d taken her newly stretched canvas and laid it on the floor near his massive construction, like a fawn following a great buck. The mighty and the meek.
Isabelle had worked alongside Wes now for four days. Two weekends. And each day she’d studied him, marveled over him, encouraged him—though he didn’t need it. He was a universe unto himself.
“Just remember, no one comes to expressionism easily. Pollock spent years painting realist murals in the thirties.” His fingers were warm and caressing. Each time she gripped the painting stick too tightly, he nudged her to relax.
�
�I started out with surrealism myself. It’s a pathway to the unconscious. Or subconscious. I don’t know which, but for me it turned on the fire I feel now. Cubism can teach you the understanding of space. I saw a bit of cubism in your butterfly painting. Malcolm saw it, too.”
She barely heard the words he spoke. She was aware of his breath on her neck. The feel of his strong chest against her back as they leaned over the canvas.
“Is this right?” she asked.
She felt the undertow of him, his energy and charisma. It was impossible to believe he didn’t have a dozen women breaking down that door out front to get to him. Yet, here she was, in this studio with the incomparable maestro of expressionism. The next “Big One,” Art World magazine had dubbed him.
She was living every moment of the dreams she’d scripted all her life.
“Just about,” he said. “Ease up on the pressure here and let your mind guide the paint from the stick to the canvas. Will the paint to perform the dance you’re choreographing? Don’t let it stray. Control. You have power over that dribble, splotch or trickle.”
The paint fell. Dangled. Then swished and swayed and undulated into a line that resembled the eddies in the lake she was hoping to interpret.
“Now,” he said. “Again.” His fingers pressed against hers, demanding. Eliciting a response.
She flicked the paint this time, channeling the power of a roiling lake.
He twisted her wrist so that the last bit of paint rushed off the end and met with the canvas.
“More paint,” he said, dunking the stick so it held twice as much paint as last time.
His movements now were more energetic.
“Close your eyes,” he commanded.
They painted together as if they were one creative force.
“Feel your thoughts travel down through your arm. You’re using your will to make the paint dance from the stick to the canvas. It’s like telekinesis.”
“That’s impossible,” she guffawed and opened her eyes.
“Shut those eyes!” He was nearly shouting.
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