by Lindsey Hart
“And Joe?”
Jill shook her head. Her knuckles whitened on the book in her hand. Her dark eyes reflected the sorrow that weighed heavily on her soul. “The whole town tried to help him out after. He just shut down. We all thought he’d eventually leave, but he hasn’t. He’s still shut into that house. People talk about him. It’s changed. You have to understand that people around here mean well, but they are scared easily. It’s a small town. There isn’t much to talk about. I think they wanted to help at first, but his grief was so frightening, so strange, that it drove them away. Unfortunately, Joe is usually at the forefront of conversation and that means that his legend has grown. No one knows why he’s still there. It’s like he’s chained to that house. He can’t leave. He can’t fix it and it’s just decaying around him. Maybe they’re a pair, that house and him. Lost. Stuck in time. Growing old and dying together. The sadness that clings to that place is unreal. It never used to feel like that, but it does now, if I happen to drive by. I can feel the loss and the pain.”
“I’m- sorry.” What else was there to say?
“Me too. It’s terrible what happened. Just terrible. People don’t know how to help Joe, so they’ve stopped trying. They’ve given up on him the way he’s given up on life. He comes into town, maybe once a month, for supplies and groceries. I’m surprised he doesn’t drive somewhere else, where people don’t know who he is. He doesn’t talk to anyone, even if they try. He walks around like a ghost. Like the night Ginny died, he was in that car too.”
Charity’s throat closed up. She had to force a hard swallow past the lump that lodged itself there. Her eyes prickled with hot tears. “You hear that sometimes,” she finally said. “About people giving up and losing the will to live.”
“Yes. Anyway,” Jill shook herself. “This book is really good. You’ll enjoy it. Let me find a couple more.”
“I’m only here for a month. I probably only need four or five.”
“Sure thing.” Jill buzzed about, extracting a few more books.
Charity felt the need to clarify why it was that she was there. “Joe… maybe he’s finally emerging out of his shell. Maybe he’s finally trying to move forward. I work as a model in Kansas City. He enquired about hiring someone for painting. I mean, he wanted someone to sit while he paints. He’s an artist. Did you know that?”
Jill thrust another book out, far too quickly. “Yes,” she admitted quietly, not meeting Charity’s gaze. “If he’s truly moving forward, I think that’s great. The poor man didn’t deserve an ounce of that sorrow. Some people take death really hard. Some people lose themselves for good.”
The image of that black canvas flashed in front of Charity’s mind and she had to suppress another shiver. “Yes.”
“Maybe you’ll help him.” Jill flashed a smile as sudden inspiration entered her eyes. “Joe lost his muse. Ginny used to mention that he painted her. She was always so flattered and embarrassed at the same time. She truly was the most modest, beautiful, humble soul.”
Oddly enough, a stab of irrational jealousy ripped through Charity. She was astounded at the twinge. She wanted to ask what Ginny had looked like, but of course, she didn’t. How can I even think that? How can I be jealous of a dead woman? What is wrong with me?
The sensation was so odd and unnerving, it was hard to push it away. Charity turned her eyes towards the book in her hand. It was a romance, something about time travel. Not something she’d usually read, but she’d just go with Jill’s judgment.
“How could I help?”
Jill shrugged. She handed two more books over. “I don’t know. I don’t even know why I said that. Sorry. Maybe just having someone there to keep him company would be good for him. That’s all I meant.”
“Yes, of course,” Charity quickly assured her, cheeks heating up. Jill flushed at the same time, oddly enough. It was clear she hadn’t meant to imply anything and that she’d keep their conversation to herself.
After a few more books were placed in her hands, Jill checked them out at the front counter. “Good luck,” she said softly, and it was clear she meant it. Charity realized that Jill was one of those rare people that had a truly old soul. She was far wiser than she should be or even looked.
“Thanks.”
“Come back anytime. Even if you don’t need any more books. Or if you don’t like those ones, don’t read them through. I won’t be offended. I’ll help you find some others.”
“Alright.” Charity had the feeling Jill was inviting her back for conversation. She wasn’t a gossip, she was just trying to be friendly. It gave Charity a warm feeling. She didn’t often come across people who were just genuinely nice without expecting anything in return “Thanks again.”
She exited the cool library, the heat of the sun striking immediately as soon as she stepped out. Her car was the worst sweat box she’d ever experienced. She set the books on the passenger seat, cranked down her window and sat with her hands folded across the steering wheel. She didn’t want to go back yet, back to that house, to all of Joe’s sorrow.
She thought about leaving. About packing up and telling him she couldn’t do the job after all. She wasn’t equipped to deal with his pain. She hadn’t come to heal anyone. She didn’t know the first thing about offering a helping hand. She couldn’t even swim herself, so how could she save someone who was drowning?
She dismissed the thought. She’d given her word that she would stay and take the job and that’s what she’d do. Her heart rate accelerated as Joe’s face with those infinitely sad, piercing blue eyes, swam through her mind. She didn’t truly want to leave. She was just scared. There was something about Joe McAllister that both repelled and drew her in. As hard as it was to think of staying, it was strangely even harder to think of leaving him behind.
CHAPTER 6
Joe
Joe woke covered in sweat, haunted by dreams of Ginny’s face and her hand, as always, outstretched, beckoning him to follow her, to join her. He saw her as she was, hair shining in the morning sunlight, hopes and dreams alive in her emerald green eyes.
He groped in the dark for his watch. The thing was ancient, from the late nineties. He resolutely refused to choose another. The tiny hands and even smaller numbers contained some iridescent effect that made them glow in the dark.
It was just after six. The sun would soon be rising.
He shoved back the quilt and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Like everything in the house, it was from another era. The thing had been fully furnished when they bought it. God knew what filled the mattress. Whatever it was, it was lumpy as hell. Like everything else, it had become his regular. He’d learned to live with the life he never wanted, a life he’d never imagined for himself, alone, the same way he learned to live with the house in its ramshackle condition. They were a pair. He could no more fix the house than he could fix himself.
He had on a thin black cotton t-shirt and a pair of black boxers. He reached up and wiped the sweat from his forehead on his bare bicep. He winced. He would have given anything, after those night sweats, for the ability to have a shower. As it was, he’d have to crank the hand pump in the kitchen or just outside the house and fill the tin tub in the kitchen.
He wondered how long it would be before his new guest asked him for a bath. Where would he put the tub to give her privacy? Her room, perhaps. He would heat the water in the kitchen on the propane stove and haul it down the hallway for her.
The thought brought a hard flush to his face. He closed his eyes and behind them, he saw Ginny’s face again. He didn’t see Charity, her perfectly rounded, womanly curves. He didn’t smell the sweet floral scent that clung to her. He didn’t think about the silk of her alabaster skin, her pale grey eyes, her beautiful long, silky hair or her coral-hued lips.
As an artist, he noticed people. Women especially. It was hard not to, as they were built to be noticed. True beauty always drew the eyes of an artist. That was the way he noticed Charity, with the passing int
erest of a painter, not as a real man. He’d never wanted anyone but Ginny that way and that didn’t end with her death.
He stood. The room was already warm. Just because darkness fell didn’t mean the summer heat dissipated.
He shrugged into a fresh set of faded jeans and didn’t bother to change his sweat-soaked T-shirt. His limbs felt as though they’d been infused with a sort of madness. His hands itched to paint and he sure as hell wasn’t going to try it out in the garden again. Not in the spot that had once belonged to his wife. That spot was sacred. He’d been a fool to think he could put another woman out there and successfully paint her.
He threw open the door of his room and stalked down the hall. He made it quickly past the room that used to be his and Ginny’s, the room with a hundred odd nails in the door. There was another room, a larger one with enough room for three or four king-sized beds. It was empty save for an ancient red chaise, dusty and dirty and sagging in all the wrong spots. It looked mouse eaten though he doubted it was.
In a fit of grief, he’d boarded up most of the windows, especially on the rooms that were no longer used. The hammer he’d used five years ago sat on the floor with a few bent nails, right below the window.
Joe’s fingers curled around the hammer’s smooth wood handle. The thing was ancient, the metal claws orange and rusty. The itch in his fingers returned. He raised the hammer to the window’s edge, to the start of many nails, fitted the claw under the lip of the wood and pulled. The nails gave way with a horrible squeal of resistance. He pulled harder, applied more pressure until the board came clean off the window.
The grimy glass greeted him like a long-lost friend. It was still the same ancient glass he remembered. Dirtier. He could hardly see out of it. It would require a good washing, a scrubbing to even get it to the point where it let the light shine through.
A high-pitched squeal sounded in the hallway, a sure sign that the old floorboards, an alarm system in themselves, were being forced to bear the weight of another inhabitant. Joe spun, shoulders heaving with effort, hammer in hand. His shirt was soaked through and clung damply to his muscular body, to the broad set of his shoulders and his narrow waist. He walked endlessly during the day around his property. Sometimes he walked down the road. It was how he kept fit, trying to walk away from the past, trying to outrun his own memories.
He sometimes puttered around. Grew his own food in the garden he’d relocated to the side of the house, where there was enough shade provided by a few straggling trees, struggling to survive. His property was huge, most of it gone to weed. It was bordered on either side by fields that belonged to distant neighbors. Wild wheat or oats volunteered themselves in his backyard over the years.
“What are you doing here?” His knuckles whitened on the hammer’s wood handle.
“I…” Charity’s eyes grew wide as she eyed the hammer. Even in the near darkness, the fear on her face was apparent. “I heard a noise. A horrible squeal and I came to see what it was. I thought something had happened. I was… I’m sorry…”
He blinked. She was wearing a thin white tank top, so thin it was nearly transparent. He could see the rosy outline of her nipples. She seemed aware of his gaze at the same time he was aware he was staring. She carefully folded her arms over her chest as he tore his eyes away.
A strange flood of… something- some wild heat, filled his belly. It spread, suffusing his chest with heat. He felt on edge, as though every long dead cell and dormant nerve-ending had all awakened at once. It was almost sharp, the awareness he felt, almost painful.
“I’ll go. I’m sorry,” she mumbled again.
“Wait.” He commanded, surprised that he’d even spoken.
She froze and he carefully studied her plaid red pajama shorts and long, alabaster legs. They were shapely, the muscles of her thighs and her calves strong yet streamlined and entirely womanly. His hand ached to paint those legs, and worse, to touch them.
He wanted to find out if her creamy white skin was really as soft as it looked. He told himself it was purely an artistic question. If he understood the texture of her, he could paint it with clarity.
“Yes?” Her voice was hesitant, tainted with nerves, quiet and so damn purely woman.
“I want to paint in here. Can you be ready by nine? I want your hair up. Pin it at the back. Leave a few tendrils around your face. Do you have something black? Gauzy and flowy? A dress? I want you to sit in that settee, by the window. I’ll clean it so the lighting is better.”
She hesitated once. Finally, his eyes met her face. He had to look up, had to dare a glance up at her almost exotic features. “Yes,” she finally whispered. “Yes, I’ll be ready. I have a dress that will probably do, but it’s red. Is that alright?”
“Yes. It’s fine.” His voice changed. It was husky, far too breathless. It sounded foreign to his ears.
“Alright.” She turned to leave, her bare feet silent on the floorboards. They didn’t complain at her departure as they had at her arrival.
Joe’s eyes swiveled back to the window. Vinegar. Vinegar and water, that’s what he’d use. It would let in all the light he needed. He’d paint her, Charity. The woman he’d so impulsively invited into his gloomy domain.
What was I hoping? That she’d be a ray of light for me? That she’d take the curse of my life and break it?
He’d put her down on canvas, capture a little of her magic and beauty and steal just a fraction of her essence. He’d make her timeless.
Like he’d done with Ginny. There were countless canvases inspired by his muse, his love of a lifetime. The woman who was his everything. He’d locked them all in that room. He’d debated setting fire to them or ripping them to shreds, but his wounded, bleeding heart couldn’t take it. Instead, he’d locked it all away with the rest of everything he could no longer bear to look at.
The hand that held the hammer shook slightly. His stance wavered and for a second, he thought he might actually crumple to the ground. He took a breath and the dizziness in his head cleared. He stared at the settee for a long moment, eyes caressing the piece of furniture, imagining it as it looked when it was new and whole and pure.
He imagined her on it, but it wasn’t Ginny. It was Charity. He imagined her grey eyes, her strawberry locks, her womanly body cloaked in red. He wondered what shade of red it would be. Would it compliment her coral lips and her pale skin?
Oddly enough, when he left the room to get the vinegar and a rag to clean the window, the image stayed burned into his brain. He found himself almost looking forward to their session, and not just because it had been too many years since he’d last created anything worth looking at. He didn’t like the new sensations Charity awakened in him, feelings that he’d lost and perhaps should have remained lost. God knew that feeling, feeling anything, was the most frightening prospect on earth.
CHAPTER 7
Charity
The upstairs room looked completely different with warm sunshine streaming in through the window than it had looked in the dark grey dawn of the morning. The apparition that had been standing at the window, the wild, sweat-soaked man with icy eyes wide with emotion, shoulders heaving with exertion, hand white knuckling the hammer, nails and plywood scattered all over the floor, was tamed.
The room had been cleaned, the nails picked up and the plywood dragged off. The window scrubbed until it shone, transparent once more. The settee was positioned in front of the window, so the light played over it. Joe had even cleaned the dust off the red fabric. It didn’t change the sorry condition of the piece, but it was beautiful in a rotted, decayed sort of way.
Joe himself even looked more put together than he had the past two times Charity saw him. His hair was combed and pulled neatly back at the nape of his neck. His eyes snapped with clarity and alertness, the grief that haunted them temporarily banished. He wore a clean plaid long sleeved shirt, thin since it was hot in the room once the sun got through.
Charity was almost afraid to disturb him, he
looked so at peace setting up his easel and canvas, mixing together paints once again.
She finally cleared her throat at the doorway and he glanced up, his hand stilling just above the paint pallet.
“Is this- alright?” She’d taken more care with her hair than she wanted to admit. His instruction had been so specific. She hadn’t bothered with makeup. Her hair could use a wash so it went up easily, the fine strands oiled after a few days of wearing it down and tousled from her disturbed sleep.
Joe’s gaze was hot and sharp. His eyes raked over her, piercing her with their intensity. She almost blushed as he took in every single inch of her body. The dress was one of the best she owned. She wasn’t sure what to pack, so she’d brought some of everything. It was flowy, gauzy, as he’d asked for. It was bright red, the kind that really set out the red in her hair and eyelashes and the natural hue of her lips. The dress clung to her shapely breasts, hugged her tiny waist and the natural curve of her hips. It was longer in the back than in the front, leaving her long, alabaster legs exposed.
She felt naked under that direct stare. She couldn’t meet it with her own eyes, afraid of what she’d see there. That strange heat, the same warmth that started from the inside out when Joe first painted her, was back. Her body felt heavy, languid, flushed, fevered.
“Yes. Yes, it’s fine.” He slowly indicated the settee. “Please sit down. Seat yourself in the position you think best. If you recline towards the armrest, your legs out, I think that is the most natural pose. Just follow the lines of the furniture itself.
Charity nodded. Her eyes stole to his face, sure he’d gone back to looking at his paints, but he hadn’t. He was studying her face in the most direct, open, unabashed manner. She’d never seen a man look at her that way before.
She couldn’t miss the heat in his gaze. He was staring at her like a man who noticed a beautiful woman for the first time.