B00Z637D2Y (R) (24 page)

He loosened his grip on Clancy and met his brothers’ eyes. “I know I act like an asshole big brother most of the time, but I really do love you guys.”

“He’s definitely drunk,” Chance said, and they all laughed.

Will paused before opening the door. “Hey, Mikey. Be sure you put some clothes on if you decide to wander out. The tabloids would have a heyday with you traipsing around in your underwear.”

To Michael’s chagrin, Chance picked up one of the sweaters from the table. “Dude! Better being caught in your underwear than in this! What the fuck?” He held it by the shoulders and Will busted out laughing from the open door.

“There is no explanation, drunk or sober, I can give for that. It defies explanation.”

“He
has
found a sense of humor,” Will said.

“Nah. It’s just the booze talking,” Chance said before the door shut. “He’ll get his serious back when sober.”

Michael stared at the closed door for a long time. They’d advised him to use his logic and formulate a plan. Go with his strong points. Well, that’s what had had gotten him in a shit ton of trouble in the first place.

Clancy readjusted in his lap and he stroked along his soft fur. “You don’t use logic,” he said. “You use your heart. You just want love.” So did Mia. And to his astonishment, so did he. He wanted love. Mia’s love specifically.

What would it take to get her back? What would reach her heart? He had to find a way to prove she was more important to him than his job or any other facet of his life—including his public persona.

And it hit him. Hard. His heart had provided the answer, but now he’d take his brothers’ advice and make a plan—a hell of a plan. Something that would not require his control to succeed. Something that defied explanation.

He threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, Clancy. I hope to hell this works. If not, I am completely and totally fucked.”

And with that, he went to bed with Clancy curled up at his feet and got the first good night’s sleep he’d had in two weeks.

Chapter Twenty

Mia heard the Queen B’s before they even entered the rec room, laughing about another article they’d found. She sighed and shook her head, then pulled out the paints. After almost a month, she’d assumed things would die down, but that saying “sex sells” must have had a great deal of truth to it. She deserved this, though. Michael had tried to warn her, but she didn’t really listen. She didn’t hear past the orders and her own wrong assumptions.

She’d been dodging cameras ever since.

Fortunately, everyone who knew her, including the B’s and the owners of Heart’s Home, found it entertaining and didn’t buy into the title of “Duped Trollop” that one particularly seedy overseas tabloid assigned her. She chuckled at the silly name.
Trollop indeed
. And at this point, she wasn’t even sure about the “duped” part.

“Hoooee! Look at this one, Mia.” Betty said, waving a scrap of newsprint from the paper. “
Another Notch in the Anderson Bedpost
.”

“Lemme see,” Blanche said, snatching the paper from her fingers. “Aw, durn. It’s the same photo.”

Mia placed watercolor pallets in front of five chairs and went back to the counter for brushes and water.

“I still like the cartoon one that had him wearing a jacket made of fly paper with all the girls stuck to it.
‘Catching Them Like Flies.
’” Gladys laughed and slapped her knee.

After distributing the brushes and water, she returned with paper. “We’re working in watercolor today.”

“Have you heard from him?” Bernice asked, folding her walker and leaning it against the wall.

“No. And I don’t expect to.” She slid the paper in front of each woman and kept one for herself. “Today I want to talk about mood in painting.”

“She’s brushing us off because she doesn’t want to talk about it,” Gladys said.

Mia took a deep breath, “We’ve talked about color reflecting and evoking mood…”

“Yeller is happy!” Gladys said. “It’s why I knit with it.”

“Exactly. But shading and density also set the mood. Pale yellow versus your favorite sunflower yellow, for example, evoke different emotions. So, today, let’s show our mood through shading and density. Watercolor is a great medium for this because you can alter color density by simply adding water.”

“I’d rather knit.”

“I think we should use pottery wheels like in that movie with the hot ghost.”

Mia smiled and dipped her brush, wishing for the escape that painting sometimes brought with it. There were times she would be so lost in her art, everything would blur and all worry would disappear, almost like meditation. Only recently, the escape had evaded her. She could only focus on the pain. She wanted to stop hurting for just a day—a minute—a second.

She closed her eyes and imagined colors without shape. Red and pink and black. Lots of black. And while she knew the B’s were still chatting, she focused only on the colors as her feelings seeped into the paper through the brush.
“Art comes from your soul,”
her teacher had told her once. Right now, her soul ached.

I miss him
.

Part of her wanted to call. To just say hi. The other part knew she’d crossed a line with the things she’d said in anger. She’d been right—he’d let his control freak nature get in the way. But she’d also been terribly wrong. He hadn’t been protecting his image; he’d been protecting hers. The papers had called her the
flavor de jour
, but she knew Michael, and though he may have had lots of women, she was not like that to him. Even if he didn’t care for her now—and that would be understandable—he had cared for her then.

Only seeing color, and no shape, she focused on her page.

Sometimes you do things because you love someone.
He’d been protecting her, not pushing her away. And she’d hurt him. She felt a tear slide down her cheek but ignored it.

She was better now. Stronger than before she’d met him. He’d given her a gift. She knew who she was and she liked that person. No more self-deprecation. No more doubt.

No more Michael.

Her hand stilled and the fuzzy edges came back into focus, including four very concerned sets of eyes all trained directly on her.

“Are you okay?” It was the first time Gladys had ever spoken to her directly.

She set her brush down, wiped her eyes, and nodded. “Yeah. Just kind of got into it a little bit. I do that sometimes.”

“It looks like a square full of bubble gum,” Blanche said.

Betty squinted and leaned closer, then wrinkled her nose. “Bubble gum someone stepped on.”

“Or one of those amoeba things we used to look at under a microscope in university biology.”

Blanche tisked and shook her head. “Bernice, you’re not making any sense at all.”

“Is it a…?” Betty cocked her head, then shook it. “What is it?”

Mia looked down at the page and really saw what she’d painted for the first time. It was completely obvious to her what it was. But then, it was her own broken heart she’d painted.

“It’s loneliness,” she said. “And regret.”

“What’s the black thing?”

The cage I’ve constructed around my heart.
“It’s what’s keeping it in.”

Blanche reached across the table and took her hand. “Mia, honey. Listen to me. You need to call that young man up and make this right. Stop letting pride get in your way.”

“It’s not pride. It’s just that he was so bossy and controlling when the photographers showed up, and I thought he was…Well, I jumped to the wrong conclusion and I said some awful things he didn’t deserve.”

“Then apologize.”

“He’s going to have a hard time living down the damage done in the papers. I doubt he wants to see me.”

Blanche set her brush aside. “Honey, that boy’s stock went way up when the photo of you two kissing made the tabloids. You worry about you, not him. You’re a mess.”

“I’ll tell you the truth. If someone had done to me what I did to him, I doubt I’d ever want to see that person again.”

“But this isn’t just someone,” Betty said. “It’s someone you love. Turn the tables here. If
he
had done the same thing to you that you did to him, would you want to see him again?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s different for him?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.”

She leaned close. “Open this, Mia.” She pointed at Mia’s painting in front of her. “Set it free.”

Mia stared at her face a long time, letting her words sink in.
Set it free. Yes.

There was a commotion outside the door and then Bernice gave a shrill squeal and clapped her hands.

Oh, good heavens.

Toenails clicked on the highly polished vinyl floor, and Clancy trotted into the room wearing the yellow and green sweater Gladys had knitted.

“Will you look at that,” Betty said. “What a cutie.”

“There’s something in its mouth,” Bernice said.

Clancy stopped right in front of her and sat. Gingerly, she removed the object from his mouth. It was a rolled up piece of paper. She stretched it open, but it was wound tightly and sprung shut, launching to the floor before she got a good look at it.

“What does it say?” Betty and Bernice said in unison.

Blanche snapped it up. “Lemme see.” She placed it on the table and unrolled it. “The course of true love never did run smooth.”

Leaning over to get a better look, Bernice’s brow furrowed. “What an odd thing for a dog to have as a chew toy.”

Mia covered her mouth and closed her eyes.
Michael.
At that point, she was terribly glad her heart was caged, because otherwise it would have beat right out of her chest.

Bernice grabbed her walker and shuffled to the window. “Oh, my word. There’s a horse drawn carriage out front.” All the other women moved to the window and made various noises of surprise as Mia’s heart continued its attempted escape from the confines of its cage.

Michael.

“I’m sorry, sir, you can’t just walk in—”

“Yes he can!” Blanche shouted to the nurse.

And then he was there. Just inside the doorway, more handsome than she’d remembered, breathing heavily with windblown hair, bright blue eyes, adorable dimples, wearing Gladys’s sweater, which was even uglier on than it was off.

Gladys gave a loud
whoop
and clapped.

“I…” he began and stopped, appearing lost. He took several steps toward her, grimacing like he was in pain. He closed his eyes as if composing himself.

Needle-like prickles of panic trickled down her spine. She worried he was hurt or something. “Michael?”

He opened his eyes and stared at her. “Give me a moment. I’m a little overcome. I hadn’t really planned what I was going to say specifically, only generally, and then I saw you and…”

The weight of the moment bore down on her all at once. Michael Anderson was out of control and unscripted—raw, unmasked, and completely vulnerable. And he was amazing. And despite his discomfort, she smiled, and then laughed.

“Well, I see I’m off to a great start,” he said.

“Oh, you are, honey,” Betty said.

“Go right ahead. We’re listening,” Blanche added.

His smile appeared and the dimples followed, his eyes never leaving her face. “Okay. Let’s try this again. This time without being thunderstruck by how beautiful you are and how even though I’ve envisioned your face every moment of every day, I still wasn’t prepared for the reality of you.”

“It’s the spot of black paint on her nose that does it,” Betty said.

Mia wiped her apron across her nose and Betty gave her a thumbs-up, indicating she’d gotten it.

“I asked you a question and you answered with a resounding
no
. It was the wrong question and you answered it correctly.”

“You’re not making any sense, young man,” Blanche observed.

“Shhhhhh,” the others said.

His hand rose to his chest. “I’m changed. You changed me.”

Mia was certain her own features matched the awed, open-mouthed expressions of the B’s.

“You’ve made me better. I want you to know that,” he continued.

When she glanced around the room, it seemed that half of the residents and staff were crowded right inside the door of the rec room, but he didn’t seem to notice at all as he spoke, wearing that preposterous sweater and an expression so sincere it made her dizzy.

“I could make a multitude of excuses or throw out a lot of blame for what happened, and so could you. In your heart, you know what really happened and so do I.”

“What happened?” Bernice asked

“Shhhhhh!”

“Do you know what else I know, Mia?”

Unable to speak, she could only shake her head as he took her hands in his. The contact was exactly what she needed. His touch grounded her and gave her focus. As she reveled in the comfort of his warm hands enveloping hers, she realized he was trembling.

“I know that I love you. That my life is so much better with you in it. That I can’t imagine it without you.”

A collective “awww” traveled through the room. Mia took a deep breath and shifted her weight foot to foot, reticent to look away for fear this whole amazing moment would be a figment of her imagination, and that when it ended, she’d still be sitting at the table, caught up in her painting.

“Nothing. Not money nor power nor work comes close to you. I’d give it all up to have you.” He grinned. “Though, I’d rather it not come to that.”

She giggled, and he wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb, bringing home the fact that this was, in fact, real. She sniffled and he ran his fingers across her jaw as if touch grounded him as well.

“You told me that sometimes you do things just because you love someone.” He stretched the front of his sweater, displaying the crooked “M” on his chest. “Like wear a…” He glanced at Gladys. “…an
interesting
sweater. Or maybe even rethink your entire life.”

There was not a peep in the room when he paused, his shoulders lowering as he relaxed slightly.

“So, having done both of those things, I would like to now ask you the
correct
question.” He took her hand. “Please come with me.”