The Art of Romance (20 page)

She opened the cabinet below the bookshelves and pulled out a banker’s box. Opening it, she reached for the large folder standing upright along the side of the box and pulled it out onto her desk.

Taking a deep breath, she opened the folder and looked at the glossy copy of Patrick Callaghan’s artwork for the cover of her fourth Melanie Mason book. She closed her eyes, pressed the heels of her hands to her temples, and then looked at it again.

It wasn’t the twelfth-century armor worn by the hero, holding tightly to his side the heroine, in an elaborate bliaut with flowing sleeves and elaborate gold embroidery that drew her eye. It was the large brown dog standing his ground beside them as they faced the oncoming column of knights in the far distant landscape that grabbed her by the throat.

The exact same dog had been beside the hero in later-period armor in the middle painting hanging on Dylan’s wall.

She turned to the credenza and pulled out the folder labeled
templates
. Shuffling through all of the pages of printed images of men who inspired her to think about romantic heroes, she pulled out every drawing or painting of the model who graced the cover of each of the six Melanie Mason books.

Laying them out side by side with the books, she could no longer deny her suspicion.

Sliding down in her chair until her head rested against the midheight back, she stared up at the eggshell ceiling. “You know, God, I knew You had a sick sense of humor. I knew I was making trouble by allowing myself to obsess over that cover model. But
this
? Seriously? How am I going to be able to look him in the eye ever again? What exactly is it You’re trying to tell me here?”

God apparently didn’t feel like chatting, because He didn’t split the ceiling and come down to have a heart-to-heart with her.

Dylan Bradley was Patrick Callaghan. But not only that, Dylan Bradley was the cover model who had inspired every hero in the novels she’d written in the past eight years, including four of the Mason books—the cover model she’d fallen in love with a little more with each book she’d written.

T
hanks for the loan, D.”

Dylan glanced in the rearview mirror in time to see Spencer pull off the
Utah!
sweatshirt he’d worn on the plane. Mother would’ve had a cow if her favorite child hadn’t shown up in the mandated uniform today. “No problem.”

“So we’re really going to be in her campaign ads?” Spencer pulled the button-down shirt off the hanger and thrust his arms into the sleeves.

“And on her website and in her print ads. That’s why she wanted all of us in white shirts, nice jeans, and casual brown shoes or boots.” Tyler kicked the back of Dylan’s seat with one of his brown lace-up boots. Poor kid, having to squeeze in behind the driver’s seat. But no way would all of them have fit in Pax’s two-door Mini Cooper.

“And shorn and shaved.” Pax ran his hand over his newly trimmed hair, making Dylan glad he’d decided on his own to get his cut before the Robertson holiday party last week.

Oh man, he’d meant
not
to think about anything having to do with JRU or any of their faculty. He’d made it almost a solid four hours without being plagued by questions about Caylor’s reaction to seeing his paintings Saturday.

He’d studied the painting that had caused her reaction. Sure, the style was similar to the covers he used to do, but why would that have bothered Caylor? No way she knew about those. Perty had shown him the books Caylor wrote. No one who wrote squeaky-clean stuff for the Christian market ever could have read books like Melanie Mason’s.

Though…her friend Zarah did have copies of them on her bookshelf. Maybe she’d seen them there? But she’d have to have a photographic memory—and be able to extrapolate quite a bit stylistically—to figure out he was the same artist.

“So where are we going to eat after the photo shoot?” Spencer finished buttoning his shirt.

“No can do, brother. We have to stay and have dinner with Mother and Dad—photos of
family time
.” Pax angled in the front seat so he could see all three of them. “We’ve got to do indoor and outdoor, video and still, and somehow make like it’s not the beginning of winter, since most of these ads will run in the spring. Mother suggested we’d probably be there till late.”

Tyler and Spencer groaned. Dylan changed lanes to take the I-40 West split at the end of the I-440 Parkway. “How do you know all this?”

Pax shrugged. “I asked. That’s the foundation of the scientific method. If you don’t ask the questions, you’ll never learn the answers.”

This would be the first time Dylan would sit down to dinner with his entire immediate family since the last time he came home for Christmas, his senior year of college. The year after that, Mother and Dad had torn down the home he’d grown up in and built a new house.

He wasn’t certain what to expect, except what he’d seen in the few photos his brothers had sent him over the years. The sun started angling toward the western horizon as Dylan navigated the old, winding roads through Belle Meade. Amazing how, after all these years, everything seemed the same—yet different. The small ranch houses and bungalows and cottages that had been the mainstay of this area when he was growing up had, by and large, been razed to make way for starter mansions and mini-estates. But the roads, and the trees lining them, all felt familiar.

His heart hammered when he signaled his turn onto their street. Here the houses were far apart, each one on at least two acres. He slowed then turned into the fifth driveway, which wound a few hundred feet through crepe myrtle trees—now bare—before straightening to reveal the house.

The place where Dylan had grown up—but not. Farther back on the property from where the original low, sprawling ranch had been now stood a tall, imposing cream-colored French chateau, complete with multiple gables, arched windows with decorative masonry details, and iron-fenced Juliet balconies on the two square turrets on either side of a small courtyard to the right of the massive main entrance.

He started to park in the wide, paved area at the base of the steps up to the path leading to the columned front porch.

“Don’t park here,” Pax said. “Pull around to the side of the house.”

Sure enough, a secondary cobblestone driveway led straight to—no
through
—the house. He drove through the archway that connected the main part of the house to what turned out to be one of two double garages with a large parking area between them.

He parked and pulled the key out of the ignition. He’d always thought Gramps and Perty’s house grandiose. But their historical Victorian, no matter how nicely remodeled inside, seemed understated and humble compared to this.

“You coming?” Tyler opened his door.

Dylan slid out and pocketed his keys. “Yeah, just taking it all in.”

“Massive, huh?”

Dylan turned, taking in the stucco walls surrounding the basketball court-sized parking area on three sides. Though they had plenty of windows, keeping it from looking quite so much like a fortress, other than the closed garage doors to his left and right, he didn’t see a single entrance into the house.

“Come on.” Tyler pulled his sleeve, and they followed Spencer and Pax back toward the portico he’d driven through. A glass-paned door opened into a kitchen—a kitchen smaller than Perty’s, though fancier, with moldings and finials decorating the light cabinetry and small central island. The six-burner industrial range appeared to be in unused, straight-from-the-showroom condition. And the soapstone tiles of the backsplash looked hand hewn.

“It’s about time.” Mother stood from the table in the tiled, window-surrounded eating area just beyond the kitchen’s stubby breakfast bar. “We only have about an hour to do the outdoor shoots.” She immediately flung open a french door to a covered patio that connected the house to a swimming pool.

A swimming pool? His parents hated swimming, had refused to let them take swimming lessons or compete on swim team in school because they didn’t want to have to sit in the natatorium near all that chlorinated water.

Pax turned and looked over his shoulder at Dylan. “I know, right?”

Beyond the house—which extended in almost a V-shape well beyond the pool on both sides—in the enormous yard where Dylan and his brothers had built forts, played hide-and-seek, chased each other, and climbed the old silver maple and hickory trees, at least a dozen people scurried around setting up cameras and lights. In addition to the equipment, a bunch of potted flowering plants and shrubs behind a blanket spread over the dead grass created a vignette in one area near the still cameras.

“Stop!” A middle-aged woman with a clipboard came running toward them just as Dylan was about to step from the paved pool deck onto the grass. “Jackets off and all of you come over here”—she pointed at the side yard just beyond the rear garage—”and group around Grace.”

Mother, dressed in her jeans—which probably cost more than the amount of Dylan’s final paycheck—and white shirt led the way and then positioned all of the rest of them around her. Dylan, of course, was farthest away, with Tyler and Spencer between him and her.

The video crew came over.

“Walk toward the camera,” Clipboard Lady shouted, “but don’t look at the camera. Talk and laugh, but be natural, all attention on Grace.”

Dylan couldn’t help but smile, remembering Caylor’s murmured aside to him when Dr. Putnam took the “candid” picture of them last week. She should have been here; she’d be able to demonstrate how to put on a good show without giving one thought to being self-conscious.

“Stop, stop, stop! You there, on the end—left side—my left side.”

Naturally, he’d be the one to be singled out. “Sorry?”

“Get a little closer and act like you’re actually part of the family. The smiling was perfect—spot on—but just act like you like your brothers.”

Once again, off in his own little world, which, if they were going for a genuine family dynamic, having him isolated off to the side would have been just about right.

But whose fault was that?

On a whim, he moved behind Tyler and Spencer and draped his arms around their shoulders.

“End guy, that’s perfect. Now walk toward the camera. Mom is saying something so funny, you love her so much. Grace and Davis, hold hands.”

After a few attempts, Clipboard Lady declared they’d gotten the footage they needed and told them to go over to the blanket by the bushes. She positioned Mother in the center front with Dad behind her. Spencer, the best-looking of the four of them, got prime positioning at Mother’s right hand. They had to put Tyler to her left—he was too small to hold his own on the outside or in the back. First, they had Pax and Dylan kneel behind everyone, but after a few shots, Clipboard Lady didn’t like it, so she had them move to the sides and sit beside their brothers, leaning toward Mother.

This setup must have worked, because the only instructions Clipboard Lady gave after that were minor tweaks: chin up, head angled, don’t make a fist, look at Grace.

“Now, since these are running in the spring, boys, I want you to roll up your sleeves.”

Dylan stopped his roll midforearm. Apparently that wasn’t to Clipboard Lady’s liking, because she came over, set her clipboard down, and rolled and pushed his right sleeve up over his elbow—and promptly gasped.

“What is it?” Mother’s head whirled around.

Clipboard Lady jerked Dylan’s arm forward. “I didn’t mind the jewelry, but this—it just won’t do.”

Just below the bend of Dylan’s elbow, stark against his indoor-kinda-guy pale skin, was the tattoo of his own somewhat simplified rendering of Titian’s “Allegory of Prudence” with three faces—one facing left, one forward, one right—depicting the three ages of man. Below it in a calligraphic script was the motto Titian had included over the heads in his painting.

“A tattoo?” Fury blotched Mother’s face. “A tattoo? I should have known.”

“Should have known what?” Spencer came up on his knees, unbuttoned his shirt, pulled it off his left shoulder, and pushed up the sleeve of his undershirt to reveal a tattoo of an intricately designed Celtic cross on his muscular upper arm. “That getting ink is something everyone does now?”

Mother looked like she was about to cry.

Clipboard Lady released Dylan’s wrist and stepped back off the blanket. “Boys, sleeves rolled up, but no tattoos showing. Grace Paxton-Bradley, future state senator, has good, clean-cut sons.”

Tyler rolled his eyes at Dylan and patted his right upper arm. Tyler, of all people? Dylan, who hadn’t thought he’d be able to force it, smiled freely for the remainder of the outdoor portion of the photo shoot.

On the way back into the house for the family dinner scene, Tyler asked to see Dylan’s tattoo. He angled Dylan’s arm so it caught the waning beams of the sunset.

“Ex praeterito praesens prudenter agit ne futura action—deturpet
. “He read the words below the image. “Latin for: ‘From the past, the present acts prudently, to not blacken future actions.’”

“Ironic that I’d have that permanently engraved on my body, huh?” Dylan rolled down his sleeve, lest he raise Mother’s ire again. “You’ll have to show me yours while you’re here.”