Now You See Her (10 page)

Not for much longer, though.

He closed his eyes and forced himself to relax, but as he began to doze, he remembered her charge—he would demand time and sex and things like that, he thought was the way she'd put it. She was right on the money. He went to sleep with a slight smile on his face.

In the army, he had trained himself to sleep for a specified length of time, no matter how brief, and wake up when he wanted. Now they were called power naps, but then he had called it staying alive. He shut out of his mind the uncomfortable heat, ignored it as if it didn't exist, another trick he had learned in training. When he woke half an hour later, he felt rested despite the fact that his shirt was wet with sweat. Sweeney was warm, too; she had pushed the blanket down from around her face, and her fingertips were pink. As he had expected, she began stirring just a few moments later, rather than the hour and a half she had given herself; sleep was the body's reaction to cold, and once warmth was restored, the sleepiness was gone.

He was looking down at her, so he saw her eyes pop open. Like flashes of lightning, her expression was startled, then flickered to alarm. She sat up suddenly, catching his balls beneath her and pinning them. He barely restrained a yelp and swiftly shifted her weight in his lap.

“Oh, God, I can't believe I did that,” she muttered, scrambling off his lap in a tangle of blanket and coat.

“I can.” Wincing, he eased into a different position.

She looked down, and her eyes widened. “I didn't mean that,” she blurted. “I was talking about going to sleep in your lap. I'm so sorry.” She bit her lip. ‘Are you all right?”

A chuckle burst through his clenched teeth. Gingerly he moved again, and the pain began to
fade. “I don't know,” he said, deliberately pitching his voice high.

She threw herself back against the couch, shrieking with laughter.

Richard bent over her, framed her face with his hands, and kissed her laughing mouth.

She went still, like a small animal trying to hide from a predator. Her hands came up to clasp his wrists, clever hands, the skin soft and sensitive over delicate bones. He wanted to crush her mouth with his, but he gentled his kiss, treasuring rather than taking. Her lips trembled, just a little. He opened them and sought her tongue with his. Heat roared through him, white-hot and urgent. His entire body tightened with the need to cover and enter. Ruthlessly he restrained himself, knowing she was far from acceptance.

Then she kissed him back. The movement of her lips and tongue were tentative, almost shy at first, and then a low moan vibrated in her throat and her grip tightened on his wrists. He felt tension invade her body, felt her strain upward even though she never left her seat beside him. He deepened the kiss, his tongue slow and sure, both taking and inviting.

She tore away from him, launching herself to her feet and stomping several feet away. When she whirled to face him, her expression was tight with anger. “No,” she said, voice clipped. “You're married.”

He got to his feet, gaze locked on her face. “Not for much longer.”

She made an abrupt motion. “You're married
now,
and that's what counts. You're in the middle of an unfriendly divorce—”

“Is there any other kind?” he interrupted, tone as mild as if he were asking the time.

“You know what I mean. Candra's my business associate, and on top of that I like her.”

“Most people do.”

“Getting involved with you would be messy It wouldn't be right.”

His dark eyes narrowed. “Okay.”

Her eyebrows arched in surprise. “Okay?”

“For now. Until the divorce is final. Then ...” He shrugged, letting the word trail off, but from the way he still watched her, she could figure out what “then” entailed. “One question: What's your first name?”

She gaped at him. “What?”

“Your first name. What is it? I refuse to call a woman I've slept with by her last name.”

“We didn't—” she began, then scowled, because sleeping together was exactly what they had done. “You have to call me by my last name,” she snapped. “Because it's the only name I'll answer to.”

“Maybe. You might as well tell me,” he said maddeningly. “You had to fill out an application when you moved into the apartment. I can find out from that.”

Her scowl deepened. “Paris,” she said abruptly.

He didn't follow. “What about it?”

“That's my name,” she growled. “Paris. With one r. Like the city. Like the dead Greek guy. Paris Samille, if you want the whole enchilada. And if you ever—
ever
—call me either one, I'll hurt you.”

Richard checked the time as he stood and picked up his jacket. He wasn't an idiot, so he didn't so much as smile. “All right,” he agreed. “I promise I'll never call you anything you don't like.” Before she could evade him, he bent and kissed her again.

“I'll lay off,” he said softly. “For now. But when this divorce is final, I'll be back.”

Sweeney didn't say anything, just watched silently as he let himself out of the apartment. Was that a promise, or a threat? The decision was up to her, and she had no idea which it would be. The only thing she knew for certain was that when he kissed her, she had left safety far behind.

*   *   *

Sweeney picked up first one canvas and then another, trying to decide which she should take to the gallery. She didn't like any of them, and the thought of anyone else seeing them embarrassed her. The bright colors looked childish to her, garish. Twice she started to call Candra and tell her she wouldn't be bringing anything over after all, but both times she stopped herself. If what she was doing was crap, she needed to find out for certain now before she wasted any more time. She didn't know what she would do if it
was
crap; therapy, maybe? If writers could have writer's block, the equivalent had to be possible for artists.

She could just hear it now; a therapist would solemnly tell her she was trying to resolve her childhood issues by
becoming
a child again, seeing things through a child's eyes. Uh-huh. She had resolved her childhood issues a long time ago. She had resolved
never to be like her parents, never to use her talent as an excuse for selfish, juvenile behavior, never to have children and then shunt them aside while she pursued her art. Her mother advocated free love and went through a period of trying to “free” Sweeney from her inhibitions by openly making love with her various lovers in front of her young daughter. These days, she would have been arrested. She should have been then, too.

The wonder, Sweeney thought grimly, was that she had had the courage to paint at all, that she hadn't gone into something like data processing or accounting, to get as far away from the art world as possible. But she had never considered not painting; it had been too much a part of her for as long as she could remember. As a little girl she had eschewed dolls, choosing colored pencils and sketch pads as her favorite toys. By the time she was six, she had been using oils, snitching the tubes from her mother whenever she could. She could lose herself in color for hours, stand enraptured staring not just at rainbows but at rain, seeing clouds as well as sky, individual blades of grass, the sheen of a ripe red apple.

No, there had never been any question about her talent, or her obsession. So she had tried to be the best artist she could, and at the same time to be normal. Okay, so she sometimes slipped and forgot to comb her hair, and sometimes when she was working, she forgot and shoved her hands through said hair, leaving bright streaks of paint behind. That was minor. She wasn't promiscuous; she paid her bills on time; she didn't do drugs even on a recreational
basis; she didn't smoke; she didn't drink. There wasn't a swag of beads anywhere in her apartment, and she was a regular June Cleaver in her personal life.

The most abnormal thing about her was that she saw ghosts, which really wasn't so bad, was it? Like maybe a sixty-seven on a scale of one to ten.

Sweeney snorted. She could stand there and philosophize all day, or she could pack up some canvases and get them over to the gallery.

Because she had said she would, and because it didn't matter which she chose, finally she just picked three at random. She thought they were all equally bad, so what difference did it make?

As an afterthought, she picked up the sketch she had done of the hot dog vendor. She was pleased with that, at least. She had just guessed at how he would have looked at six years of age, as a teenager, as a young man, but she had kept that same sweetness of expression in all the sketches in the collage. She hoped he would like it.

Her mind made up, she left the apartment before she could talk herself into dithering further. The rain the day before had left the air fresh and sweet; after a moment, surprised, Sweeney had to admit the weather forecast had been accurate: it
was
a beautiful day. That weird chill was gone, chased away by Richard's body heat, and she felt warmer than she had in a long time. If it wasn't for the anxiety that kept gnawing at her, she would have felt great. She decided to enjoy being warm and forget about how she had gotten that way.

The hot dog vendor wasn't in his usual spot. Sweeney stopped, disappointed and unaccountably uneasy. As if she could will it into appearing, she stared at the location where the cart was usually parked. He must be sick, because she had never before walked down this street without seeing him.

Worried, she walked on to the gallery. Kai rose from his desk and came forward to take the wrapped canvases from her. “Great! Candra and I have been talking about you. I can't wait to see what you're doing now.”

“Neither can I,” Candra said, coming out of her office and smiling warmly at Sweeney. “Don't look so worried. I don't think you're capable of doing a bad painting.”

“You'd be surprised what I can do,” Sweeney muttered.

“Oh, I don't know,” drawled a thin, black-clad man with stringy blond hair, sauntering out of Candra's office. “I don't think you've surprised any of us in a long time, darling.”

Sweeney stifled a disgusted groan. VanDern. Just the person she least wanted to see.

“Leo, behave yourself,” Candra admonished, giving him a stern look.

At least, Sweeney thought, seeing VanDern chased away her anxiety. Hostility overrode anxiety any day of the week. Her eyes narrowed warningly as she looked at him.

Like her mother, he epitomized what she despised most, dramatizing himself by wearing black leather pants, black turtleneck, black Cossack boots. Instead
of a belt, a hammered silver chain was draped around his skinny waist. He wore three studs in one ear and a hoop in the other. He was never clean-shaven, but cultivated the three-day-stubble look, expending more energy on appearing not to shave than he would have on shaving. She suspected he went months, certainly weeks, without washing his hair. He could go on for hours about symbolism and the hopelessness of modern society, about how man had raped the universe and how his single glob of paint on a canvas captured the pain and despair of all mankind. In his own opinion, he was as profound as the Dalai Lama. In hers, he was as profound as a turd.

Candra unwrapped the canvases and in silence set them on some empty easels. Sweeney deliberately didn't look at them, though her stomach knotted.

“Wow,” Kai said softly. He had said the same thing about her red sweater the day before, but this time the tone was different.

Candra was silent, tilting her head a little as she studied the paintings.

VanDern stepped forward, glancing at the paintings and dismissing them with a sneer. “Trite,” he pronounced. “Landscapes. How original. I've never seen trees and water before.” He examined his nails. “I may faint from the excitement.”

“Leo,” Candra said in warning. She was still looking at the canvases.

“Don't tell me you like this stuff,” he scoffed. “You can buy ‘pitchers' like this in any discount store in the country. Oh, I know there's a market for
it, people who don't know anything about art and just want something that's ‘purty' but let's be honest, shall we?”

“By all means,” Sweeney said in a low, dangerous voice, stepping closer to him. Hearing that tone, Candra snapped her head around, but she was too late to preserve the peace. Sweeney poked VanDern in the middle of his sunken chest. “If we're being honest, any monkey can throw a glob of paint on a canvas, and any idiot can call it art, but the fact is, it doesn't take any talent to do either one. It takes talent and
skill
to reproduce an object so the observer actually recognizes it.”

He rolled his eyes. “What it
takes,
darling, is a total lack of imagination and interpretive skills to do the same old thing over and over again.”

He had underestimated his target. Sweeney had been raised in the art world and by the queen of sly, savage remarks. She gave him a sweet smile. “What it
takes,
darling”—her tone was an almost exact mimicry of his—”is a lot of gall to pass your kind of con off on the public. Of course, I guess you have to have something to offset your total lack of talent.”

“There's no point in this,” Candra interjected, trying to pour oil on the waters.

“Oh, let her talk,” VanDern said, languidly waving a dismissive hand. “If she could do what I do, she would be doing it, making real money instead of peddling her stuff to the Wal-Mart crowd.”

Candra stiffened. Her gallery was her pride, and she resented the implication that her clientele was anything but the crème de la crème.

“I can do what you do,” Sweeney said, lifting her eyebrows in exaggerated surprise. “But I outgrew it somewhere around the age of three. Would you like to make a small bet? I bet I can duplicate any of your works you choose, but you can't duplicate any of mine, and the loser has to kiss the winner's ass.”