The Art of Romance (10 page)

Sassy snapped the plastic lid onto the mixing bowl containing the double batch of cake batter for the Bûche de Noël right as a car pulled up to the house. She wiped her hands and crossed to open the door to let Perty in.

Short and plump to Sassy’s tall and slim, Perty bustled from the driveway to the carport and up the steps to the porch that shared the carport’s roof and connected the kitchen to the laundry-utility room.

Bundled in a silky, royal blue, quilted car coat, Perty dashed into the house. “Just heard on the radio they’re thinking we might have snow by Christmas.”

“They say that every year just to get children excited—and then it never happens.” Sassy closed the door, shivering from the cold blast of air.

“Not never. Just rarely.” Perty started recounting the handful of years in their lifetimes when there had been snow—or ice—on the ground on Christmas as she helped Sassy pack up everything she’d need for making the cakes.

The squeal of the third step from the bottom gave them a moment’s notice before Caylor appeared in the kitchen.

“Hi, Dr. Bradley.” Caylor winked at Perty, who never allowed anyone but Caylor to call her by her official title anymore. “I just came down to see if y’all need help carrying stuff to the car.” She’d changed into jeans, a green turtleneck that emphasized her red hair, and an oversized red-and-green flannel shirt that did nothing for her perfect hourglass figure.

“Certainly. If you can get that box”—Sassy indicated the cardboard banana crate they’d picked up on one of their recent Costco trips—”out to the car, that would be wonderful.”

Caylor lifted the heavy box with more ease than Sassy or Perty would have managed and took it out to Perty’s car. She came back in with another blast of cold air. “I talked to Gary. He’s got one of his guys working out in the area today already, so he’s going to send him over as soon as he’s finished with his current job.”

“Who’s Gary?” Perty asked.

“Our electrician.” Sassy loaded the large bag of confectioners’ sugar into the cloth grocery bag already holding the other ingredients for the buttercream frosting. “He goes to Caylor’s church.” She gave Perty an I’ll-tell-you-all-about-it-in-the-car look.

After helping them finish loading everything into Perty’s sleek, dark-gray Mercedes sedan, Caylor stood on the side porch and waved as Perty backed up.

“So, tell,” Perty insisted as she turned the car around.

“Gary is a young man who attends Caylor’s church. She’s a bit frustrated that the older ladies at the church keep trying to set her up with him.”

Perty headed down the long driveway. “Why won’t she go out with him?”

“She says she just doesn’t like him that way. I think it’s less about her than it is about him—he’s short, and he probably feels intimidated by her height.” Sassy squinted ahead through the windshield, but even with her glasses, everything beyond about ten feet was blurred directly in front of her. Her peripheral vision, though, remained strong.

“That is problematic. I remember that even with as tall as you are, it was hard to find men as tall as you wanted.”

Sassy nodded. At five foot nine, she’d always towered over the other women her age. “And when I first met Frank, I wasn’t certain it would work—he was only an inch taller than me. But he told me to keep wearing my heels—that he was proud to be seen with a taller woman. He always told Caylor the same thing—to hold out for a man who would be proud to be seen with such a statuesque beauty.”

“My grandsons are tall—but too young for Caylor.” Perty chewed the corner of her lip.

Sassy didn’t hold to such strict rules about ages in relationships as her friend, but this wasn’t the time to argue. “Well, I’ve come up with an idea, and I’ll need your help to plan it—yours and Gerald’s.”

“What kind of plan?” Perty turned to look at her as she waited on a traffic light to turn.

“A plan to kill two birds with one stone—introduce Caylor to some new young men and get my kitchen all fixed up at the same time.”

A grin split Perty’s face. “You mean, you’re going to have your kitchen remodeled—but hire a contractor who’s young, handsome, and single?”

“Exactly—which is why I need your help, since you and Gerald just redid your house. And if she doesn’t fall for the kitchen contractor, I may have to do what you’ve been bugging me to do for years—have the entire house updated. There must be any number of young, handsome, unmarried contractors in this town.” Sassy rubbed her hands together, already picturing the towering, muscle-bound, perfect example of manhood sweeping Caylor off her feet, like one of those medieval warrior types in the books Caylor used to write.

“If you can get that started soon, you may win the great-grandchild race before Trina and Lindy’s grandkids even make it down the aisle.” Perty pulled out onto Granny White Pike, headed toward her home.

“The whole house needs to be rewired.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Caylor muttered, head propped on her fist, slumped in one of the red vinyl chairs at the kitchen table.

The electrician—one she’d never met before—turned to give her a wry look over his shoulder. “We’ve been working over the last few years upgrading the electrical systems in most of the houses out in this area. Really helps with resale value.”

“Yeah…not a consideration here. I just want to make sure that the wiring isn’t going to short out and burn down the house one of these days—especially when my grandmother is here alone.” She uncrossed her legs and recrossed them the other direction. “Can the oven be salvaged?”

He shook his blond head. Sassy would be disappointed. The guy was classically handsome as well as buff and tall—a couple of inches taller than Caylor—and she guessed he was probably close to her age. But a platinum wedding band hugged the ring finger of his left hand. He was probably married to some petite, slender thing with long hair and dark, doelike eyes. That’s the kind of woman this kind of guy married in real life.

Now, if he were the hero of one of her books, she’d put him with…who? Average height, average build—perhaps even a little on the plump side. Maybe a contractor or…or an architect. Yes. An architect, and they would be at odds over a project—

“Ma’am?”

“Sorry. My mind wandered there for a moment. What did you say?” She stood and retrieved the small legal pad from beside the refrigerator to get her idea written down before she forgot it.

“What do you want me to do? The ovens aren’t fixable. If I screw the fuse back in, it’s likely there’ll be a fire.” He hooked his hand around the back of his neck and rubbed as if he had a crick.

Ooh, she needed to write that mannerism down.

“Just leave it. It’s long past time that the appliances in this kitchen were replaced.” She scribbled a few more notes and then flipped the notepad over so there was no danger he’d see it. She wished she could figure out a way to take a picture of him for future reference if she ever did end up using this idea.

“Okay. I’ll put the panel back together and get out of your hair.” He turned his attention back to the fuse box.

It was worth the risk. Caylor picked up her phone, turned the sound off, brought up the photo app, and snapped several pictures of him in the few moments it took him to finish his work and write up an invoice for her.

She wrote a check and then let him out the kitchen door. She e-mailed the images to herself so she could put them in a file on her computer with the rest of the real-world templates for characters in her story ideas.

For good measure, she printed out the three best images and opened the bottom drawer of the lateral file that extended the work surface at the right-hand end of her desk. She pulled out the T
EMPLATES
file.

“Hello, dear.” She ran her index finger down the copy of a pencil drawing of the man who’d been the inspiration for the heroes of all of her novels to date.

She wasn’t sure where the artist, Patrick Callaghan, had found the male model—whose looks he’d changed only slightly from cover to cover of her six bestselling secular romance novels, based on the hair and eye color Caylor had given him in each book. All she knew was that there was something about that man that made her want to write about falling in love—to experience vicariously through her characters something she’d never felt in real life, not even for the man she’d almost married seven years ago.

The same something now stirred up by Dylan Bradley. She stuck the images of the electrician in the folder—under her favorite Patrick Callahan drawing, which always stayed on top—

Was it her imagination, or did the model in the drawing look eerily like Dylan Bradley?

She closed the folder and returned it to the drawer. “Okay, I’m losing it. There’s no way that guy is Dylan Bradley. Just wishful thinking.”

Just to prove it to herself, she crossed to the bookshelves that lined the other side of the U-shaped office and pulled down a couple of her Melanie Mason books. There, on the front covers, in full-color glory, was Patrick Callaghan’s artwork. And there—maybe he did resemble Dylan, slightly. But the guy on the covers was muscular, much broader through the shoulders and thighs than Dylan Bradley—who, though well built, was still rather slim.

Laughing at herself, Caylor returned to her desk and the finals she needed to grade. As if someone like Dylan Bradley would have modeled for a clench cover of a romance novel anyway. Preposterous.

N
ever having driven into downtown Nashville midmorning on a Tuesday before, Dylan had been uncertain what to expect. The experience once again left him wishing Nashville had a true public transit system. Traffic seemed to bombard him from every direction as soon as he got off I-40 at the Broadway exit.

It was enough to make him start praying again.

Just a couple of blocks up Broadway from the interstate was the imposing 1930s art deco building, once the main post office for Nashville, now the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville’s only art museum. It had opened when he was in high school, but Dylan had been forced to wait until he was seventeen and had his driver’s license before he’d been able to visit. Then every weekend when he wasn’t working or studying or adding pieces to his portfolio for college entrance applications, he was at the Frist, drinking in the ever-changing art exhibits from all over the world and representing all eras and mediums.

He slung the long strap of his bag over his head so it crossed his chest, and his sketch pad and pencils rested on his right hip, ready should inspiration strike. He made it to the top of the steps leading to the main entrance before he remembered he still had his cell phone in his pocket—reminded only when it started ringing.

Diverting from entering the door, he answered it. “Hello?”

“Mr. Bradley? Please hold for Dean Holtz.”

A frisson of excitement jolted through Dylan as the line went silent then clicked twice. The dean of Robertson’s art department wouldn’t be calling him personally if he didn’t have good news.

“Dylan, Leonard Holtz here. Wanted to tell you that I do need you for the spring semester. You’ll be teaching Italian Renaissance Art for the art history side and the special studies studio on portraiture for the BFA students.”

Portraiture. His first art love. And the talent that had led him astray—almost as far astray as Rhonda had led him. “Thank you, Dr. Holtz.”

“I understand from my secretary that you need to come in as soon as possible to fill out the paperwork and pick up the sample syllabi and curriculum requirements so you can start planning.”

Dylan glanced up at the stone facade of the art museum and let out a silent sigh. “I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

“We’re glad to have you on board.”

Dylan echoed the dean’s farewell, slipped the phone back into his pocket, and trudged down the steps and back around the side of the building to his vehicle.

His ability to draw and paint realistic—somewhat embellished—human forms had paid his way through college. And eventually had become the leverage Rhonda had needed to get him to do whatever she wanted him to do.