City Girl (15 page)

Fine, she thought after a minute. If he wanted to sit there and read, or if he wanted to watch television, she’d go along with him. But the minute he tried to kiss her, she was out of there! Fast. Running all the way.

* * * *

Liss lay in bed later that night and stared up into the darkness. Kirk hadn’t read all evening. They hadn’t watched television. While she was putting the boys to bed, he’d made hot chocolate and popcorn, and they had spent the next two and a half hours playing Scrabble, talking, laughing. Not once had he tried to kiss her. Not one remotely suggestive word had crossed his lips. He hadn’t even given her one of those smoldering glances of his, or the kind of smile that made her insides quiver.

They quivered, though, and her heart even stopped beating, when she heard his steps on the stairs, heard him heading down the hall, heard him pause outside her door. Then he walked on and she started breathing again. Still, it was a long time before she slept, and she didn’t wake up until late.

Kirk had taken the boys to Kristy’s for their first riding lesson. He’d left a note asking Liss to join them, and giving her detailed instructions on how to get there. She did, and to her amazement she soon found herself astride a horse for the first time since she was six years old. Even more surprising, she thought she might enjoy it once she felt more confident.

What with riding lessons on Saturday, church on Sunday, and dinner at the Fontaines’ later that day, the weekend was busy, giving Liss little time to dwell on what had gone before. She took the boys back to school Monday morning, shaking her head at their pleading to be allowed to stay all day, to carry lunch boxes and ride the school bus.

By Wednesday she acceded to at least part of their request and packed lunches for them.

“Can we come home on the school bus?” Ryan begged, his eyes huge and dark under his straight black brows. She laughed and hugged him. “Not this time, sweetie. When you go to kindergarten next year, then you can ride on the bus. And yes, Jase, the following year, it’ll be your turn. You’re only staying all day today and tomorrow, and maybe Friday, because I’ll be there, too, painting Christmas scenes on classroom windows.”

. Kirk, who had come into the kitchen for coffee glanced over at her. “That’s good of you, Liss.”      

She shoved her fingers into the back pockets of her jeans and fixed him with a level gaze. “Yes,” she said dryly. “I think so, too, considering that I wasn’t the one who all but volunteered my services. It seems somebody told somebody else that I might know one end of a paintbrush from the other.”

He tipped his hat to the back of his head. “I wonder who that could have been.” He looked so supremely innocent that Liss had       to laugh, watching while he studiously, busily, sorted a handful of nails and screws he’d taken from his jacket pocket and dumped on the counter.      

“Quite a mystery, wouldn’t you say,” she asked, “since I told only one person in this valley about my background?” She poured his coffee and set it on the table. “Of course, you didn’t have anything to do with it.”

He laughed, his eyes glistening like chips of silver. “Well, I guess maybe I could have mentioned it to Patty. In passing, you know. Just that you’d been to art school. After all, I don’t know if you can paint, do I?”

She shook her head solemnly. “No, you don’t. Poor kids, they might end up with one-eyed Santas with feet coming out of their ears. You know what crazy things some artists do.” She lowered her voice to gossip level. “Especially artists from the city.”

He hung his jacket over the back of a chair and flipped his hat to the top of the refrigerator. “No,” he said, hooking a chair out with one foot. Instead of sitting down, though, he opened his arms, as  if inviting her in. “I don’t know what kinds of things artists do. Go ahead. Do something crazy. Show me.”

His laughing eyes dared her, and Liss’s heart went wild for a long, almost painful moment as she admitted to herself how tempted she was to show        him exactly how crazy he could make her feel with nothing more than that smile of his. The smile faded as she met his gaze, and she shook her head, hearing Mrs. Healey’s cane thumping along the upstairs hall.

“Ah, Liss . . .” he said softly, his face filled with frustration. She detected a tremor in his fingers as he held out a hand and grasped hers. He tugged gently, and she let him draw her toward him. Lifting her free hand, she slid it up his muscular forearm, over the bulging biceps muscle, and on to his broad shoulders. She reveled in the feel of him, in the desire she saw flare in his eyes. For that brief time, she forgot Mrs. Healey’s threats, forgot Kirk’s saying “Aren’t you asking for too much, too soon?” and remembered only the magic they created together each time they kissed. She longed for it again, tenderness for this big, craggy-faced man making her ache. But as Jason came in from the        utility room with his coat half on, one sleeve inside out, she stepped back from Kirk and he dropped her hand. The moment was lost.

“I’ll drive,” Kirk said. He gulped his coffee, grabbed his jacket and hat, and followed Liss outside. “If you don’t mind, that is. I have to go to the lumberyard.”

She tossed him the keys. “I don’t mind. I’d let Jack the Ripper drive as long as there was snow on the road.”

He grinned. “Powder puff.”

Complacently she agreed, and asked what he needed at the lumberyard. He didn’t answer until they were all in and buckled up. “Plywood,” he said, backing out of the yard. “I figured if I volunteered you to paint the classroom windows, the least I could do was make the scenery they’re going to ask you to paint for the upcoming concert.”

She stared at him. “You volunteered me to paint scenery, too?”

He shrugged one shoulder. The movement reminded her of the way his muscles had felt under her hand, hard and mobile and warm. . . . Oh, damn! Keep your mind where it should be, she told herself. She was fine as long as she didn’t dwell on the feel of him, the taste, the scent. . . .

“I didn’t exactly volunteer you,” he said, cutting into her thoughts. “But Patty thought if she got you involved with doing the windows, it would follow naturally that she could talk you into doing the rest of it.” He reached across the seat and touched her cheek. For an instant, he took his eyes off the road and looked into hers. “I’ll help you all I can, Liss, and set up a workshop for you in the barn, with plenty of lights and a table for your equipment. It’ll be a joint project.” Again, he flicked a glance at her. “It’s for the kids, Liss.”

After a long moment she said, “If it’s for the kids, of course I’ll do it.”

He caught her hand in a loose grip. “Thanks, Liss. You don’t mind, do you? Working with me?”

“I don’t mind,” she murmured.

He turned onto the highway. “Good.”

“Because what we’ll be doing is working together,” she said, emphasizing the verb.

He cast another quick glance at her and smiled faintly. “Of course we will be. Isn’t that what partners do?”

She nodded. “Partners,” she said, her voice as light as she could make it. “And friends.”

Chapter Seven

“If I paint the desert scene on one side and the manger scene on the other,” Liss said, “then the stage crew can come on between acts and change backdrops easily.”

Kirk was standing in the barn with her, reading the program provided by the school. He looked up and smiled at her. “Keep your paint light, artist, won’t you, since your partner is the aforementioned stagehand.”

“Oh, by all means. I wouldn’t want to overwork you.” She stepped back from the stage sets. “Kirk, I’ve been thinking. . . .”      

“You’re not supposed to think,” he said, “especially if you’re thinking you don’t need me. You’re merely supposed to create.”

“Ah, yes,” she said, laughing. “One can get terribly creative with a whitewash brush.” She aimed it at him.

       He picked up another wide brush and dipped it into the bucket of wash they were using to seal the plywood panes. “That’s true,” he said, approaching her. “Let’s see how creative I can get. I wonder how you’ll look as an old, white-haired lady.” Laughing and feeling brave armed with her dripping bush, Liss stalked him around the stage sets, reaching out from concealment to slap him on the arm with the brush.

“First blood!” she crowed, and he ceded victory to her, holding his brush high so wash dripped down his arm.

Liss was disappointed. “You didn’t put up much of a fight, friend.”

“How could I? You’re so little, you managed to skulk and hide and sneak up on me.” He sighed.       “No man should ever do battle with a woman. You all fight dirty, just to win.”

“I thought the whole idea of battles was to win them,” Liss said, beginning the first of the panels. She poked her head around the end and grinned at Kirk, who’d started working on the other side. “And if that means skulking and hiding and taking advantage of my small stature, then I’ll do it.”

He stood on tiptoe and looked at her over the top of the backdrop. “You cheat at Scrabble, too.”

“I do not!”

“Do so. What kind of sportsmanship is it to ruin your opponent’s concentration by leaning back and stretching, shoving your boobs out against your blouse till it looks as if your buttons will pop?”

Liss’s jaw dropped. “I never did that!”

“You do it all the time.” He dropped back down out of sight and she could hear his brush slapping on the other side of the panels. “And when you drink hot chocolate, you lick your lips. When you eat popcorn, you suck the butter off your fingers. You set out to win by driving me crazy, Liss Tremayne, and don’t try to deny it.” He came around to her side to dip his brush again, his eyes dancing.

“If you hate it so much,” she asked, “why do you insist we play Scrabble or rummy or watch TV or videos together every evening?”

He grinned at her. “Hey, did I say I hate it?” He wiped one finger across the tip of his brush and dabbed white paint on her nose. “Liss, I’ve never been happier than since you came here. I want to be with you every evening because I enjoy your company. I’m glad that we’re . . . friends.”

Slowly she smiled. “Me too.” And she was.

“Good.” He pulled the tail of his shirt out of his jeans and wiped the paint off her nose, then quickly stepped back around the sets.

“There,” Liss said twenty minutes later, standing back to admire what they’d accomplished. “I’ll give them another coat this evening; then by the time I get back from driving the kids to Kristy’s tomorrow morning, they’ll be dry enough so I can start the real work.”

“You’re a very talented lady,” Kirk said, leaning over the table and examining her preliminary sketches.

“Thank you,” she replied absently. She bent to pick up one of the kittens that had wandered from its nest in Kirk’s workshop. Cuddling it under her chin, she carried it back to its mother. The day Mrs. Healey had tripped on a kitten, mama cat and her babies had been banished to the barn. Kirk assured the boys they’d be much safer there, and it was where they belonged anyway.

“You are too,” Liss said a minute later, coming out of his shop with one of his carvings. They fascinated her. Carved out of four-inch-thick cottonwood bark, each one was different, yet each had a haunting, almost tortured quality, as if it were a manifestation of a pain that twisted deep within Kirk, a sadness he could symbolize and maybe alleviate in only this way.

He didn’t even glance up, but turned another page in her sketchbook. “I am what too?”

She smiled. “Talented, though not a lady. Kirk, why do you hide these things out here?”

His head shot up. When he saw what she was holding he took half a step toward her, then halted. He said nothing, only looked at her warily, and she sensed his deep protectiveness toward his creations, as if he expected her to scoff or jeer at them.

“You do beautiful work,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind my looking at your carvings.”

“If I did,” he said, “I’d lock them away somewhere.” He sounded so defensive, she knew he wished he had done so.

“Why do you keep them out here?” she asked, returning to his shop to select another carving to admire. “I mean, why not in the house?”

He shrugged and followed her inside. Toeing the litter of cottonwood bark at his feet, he said, “Look at the mess I make. Would you want that in the house?”

“No, but the finished product should be on display, not out here where no one can see it.”

 “Do you really like them?” he asked diffidently, an odd expression on his face.

It was as if, she thought, he were afraid that at any moment she’d start laughing derisively. His vulnerability sent a surge of tenderness through her, and she smiled again.

“Yes, Kirk. I really like them.”

He cleared his throat and touched one of the carvings with the same kind of gentle caress she’d so often felt on her face. Her skin tingled.

“Brose hated them,” he muttered. “He said they looked evil.”

She picked up the first one she’d held and tilted it to the light. “Oh, never,” she said. “But maybe slightly mysterious, as if they aren’t quite of this world.” She took another from the workbench and looked at it closely. “This one has a decided puckishness, as if it’s about to burst into wicked laughter.” She smiled at him again. “At someone else’s expense. I love it.”

Again, that strange expression crossed his face, as if he might be on the verge of snatching his carving out of her hands—or snatching her into his arms. “Would you sell this one to me?” she asked.

He smiled self-consciously. “Don’t be silly. If you want it, take it.”

She shook her head. “I won’t take it unless I can buy it.”

“Why not?” he asked, staring at her as if she were some kind of alien creature.

“Because . . .” She bit her lip, searching for words. “Because it’s something that . . . didn’t exist before you created it. You put a lot of work and time and . . . a lot of yourself into it. That makes it valuable.”

He laughed, but without much humor. “To me, maybe, but not to anyone else.”

“If you value it, you should expect others to do the same. Since the currency of our society is money, I want to pay you for it. Maybe then you’ll start to give your own creations the respect they deserve.”