The Art of Romance (27 page)

“Well, I do try to keep some manner of professionalism in an academic setting.” He tucked his pencils back into their box and slid it into an outside pocket of his bag.

“I want to see it.”

His heart thudded against his ribs. “See what?”

She reached over and rested her hand on the cover of his sketchbook. “I know you were drawing me, too. I didn’t get to see any of the students’ work, so I want to see yours.”

Swallowing hard, he picked up the book and angled it so she couldn’t see anything else as he flipped open to the appropriate page. He turned it around, set it down on the table, and slid it toward her, catching his bottom lip between his teeth.

Caylor studied the drawing for quite some time—long enough for him to hear her stomach rumble several times. When she looked up, extra moisture pooled along her lower lash line. She blinked several times to clear it. “It’s beautiful, Dylan. You’ve truly been blessed with a gift from God.”

If she truly believed that, why did she look so confused, so conflicted, when she said it? “Thank you.” He retrieved the book before she decided to flip through the rest of it. “I don’t suppose you had time to eat lunch before you came?”

Caylor straightened and went to the back of the room to put her blazer and coat back on. “Nope. I’ll probably just pick something up on my way home.”

Don’t let her walk away
. “Would you be interested in going over to Green Hills and grabbing a sandwich at Provence with me? I’ve got to go to an art store over there for some supplies this afternoon.”

“I love Provence. I can’t stay long, but that sounds great.” Caylor looped a fluffy pink scarf around her neck. “I’ve got to go back to my office and get everything I need to take home tonight. Why don’t I meet you at the restaurant?”

Dylan nodded—maybe a little too enthusiastically, so he stopped. “I’ll see you there, then.”

Other than getting him to admit—out loud—that the kind of art he’d been painting to please Rhonda the last four years had been making him miserable, the other piece of advice his counselor had given Dylan in their first meeting was to start communicating better. To stop assigning motives and start asking people what they really meant and thought and felt.

He needed to know what had spooked Caylor about his painting back before Christmas. Especially after her reaction to his drawing of her this afternoon.

The parking garage at the town-center-style shopping area had quite a few empty spaces. Dylan thought about leaving his jacket behind but changed his mind after noticing the wind that whipped up the main driveway into the structure. Caylor pulled in and parked across from him. She’d added fuzzy gloves to complete her look—pink scarf, purple peacoat, pink gloves, gray trousers, black boots. She could have stepped out of a catalog.

“You know, I figured you’d be used to this kind of weather—and worse—but you look just as miserable as I feel in this cold.” Caylor dropped her keys into her coat pocket and rubbed the fuzzy gloves together, shivering.

He motioned her toward the side exit closest to the café. “I never did get used to the cold up there. And I’m seriously considering pulling my parka out if it gets as cold as they’re predicting for this weekend.”

“I spent two winters overseas when I was in school—one in England and one in Ireland. I’ll take a Tennessee winter over those any day.”

As they stood in line and then waited for their food, they chatted about growing up in Nashville—Caylor had attended Harpeth Hall, so she shared several anecdotes about attending an all-girls private school.

Not ready to launch into a serious topic when they sat down and started eating, Dylan cast around for something to keep the conversation light. “So what TV shows do you watch?”

“Pretty much only stuff that’s available to watch season by season online or on DVD.” Caylor pulled a corner off her grilled cheese panini and dipped it into her tomato-basil soup. “I don’t really have a lot of time to watch anything during the school year—between school, participating in the drama department’s productions, and writing—so when I’m traveling in the summer, it’s nice to be able to chill in the hotel in the evenings and catch up with shows a couple of episodes at a time on my laptop.”

Ah, another topic. “How long have you been writing?”

The mischievous sparkle he’d seen in her eyes when she’d been painting her fluorescent flowers last night returned. “How long have you been drawing and painting?”

“Touché.” Oh how he loved it when she grinned like that.

“I finished my first novel when I was eighteen. It garnered me a drawer full of rejections, but also a lot of feedback and suggestions on how to improve. So I joined a couple of writing groups, studied the industry, and kept at it.” She finished off her tomato-basil soup.

“How long did it take you to get published?” He left the crust from his ham and cheese sandwich on the plate and started on the potato salad. The need to ask her about the painting kept getting drowned out by the joy of sitting and carrying on a civil conversation with a woman about something other than what he should or shouldn’t be doing.

“A few years.” She laid the last corner of her sandwich down on the plate and pushed it back. “What’s the equivalent in the art world to getting published?”

“Probably getting into certain galleries or museums for showings.” He explained a little about the competition between artists to gain recognition through shows and reviews. “Mostly, a lot of it comes down to connections—it’s who you know and who they know.”

“It’s a little like that in publishing, but I can only imagine how much worse the subjectivity is in your field.” Caylor looked at her watch. “Oh, I didn’t realize how late it’s getting. I’ve got to run—I have a meeting at church at five thirty.”

Dylan grabbed her plate and bowl and stacked it with his to carry to the busing station. She was in the process of buttoning her coat when he returned to the table.

“Thanks again for filling in for your sister today.” He shoved his arms into his jacket, annoyed with himself for not following through on his counselor’s advice.

“Not a problem. I’m always happy to help out another instructor.”

He opened the door for her, and she waited on the other side to walk back to the garage with him.

“Do you have any pets, Dylan?”

Her question came out of the blue, making him wonder where she was going with it. “No. My mother is allergic, so we never had pets. I had a roommate in New York who had a dog, though.”

“What kind?” Caylor pulled her keys out of her pocket and pointed the remote at her SUV.

“An Irish wolfhound. Let me tell you, not an easy dog to deal with in a small Brooklyn flat.” He leaned against the front fender of his truck, losing himself momentarily in admiration of the statuesque beauty before him.

Caylor nodded, lips pressed together, all her former humor gone. “Oh. Well…I guess I’ll be seeing you around.” She opened the door and climbed into her vehicle.

“See you.” Confused, Dylan didn’t move until Caylor’s brake lights disappeared around the corner. How had such a pleasant afternoon ended on such a sour note? What was it he kept doing wrong to make Caylor react so strangely?

Maybe by the next time he saw her, he’d have worked up the courage to ask.

C
aylor let out a low moan and rubbed her eyes. Though her earliest class today hadn’t started until ten thirty, she’d still been on campus by seven—between wanting to avoid the worst of morning rush hour, be out of the house by the time the construction crew arrived, and get to campus in time to grab breakfast before most of the students descended on the cafeteria.

She hadn’t taught four classes in a semester since being promoted to associate professor, gaining tenure, and taking on responsibilities advising and mentoring grad students. And with one of her courses being freshman composition filled to maximum with thirty students, she had the sinking feeling that this semester was going to be a lot harder than she’d initially expected. Of course, she had a couple of graduate students who weren’t yet ready for full teaching assistantships who would be helping out considerably with the comp class—doing some teaching and helping to grade the eight essay assignments throughout the semester—but then, that also meant she had her graduate students to work with and oversee.

Leaning against the edge of the counter in Zarah’s guest bathroom, Caylor wiped her makeup off with a disposable wipe—from the pack she’d had in her travel kit for last summer’s frenetic travels. As much as she loved Zarah and Flannery, she really wished she were at home tonight, in the quiet of her own loft, in the comfort of her big chair, in the space where she could deal with the chaos whirling through her head.

Freshman Comp. Graduate Rhetoric. Brit Lit. Literary Criticism. Essay, thesis, and dissertation topics. Student meetings. Committee meetings. Meetings about meetings.

Sassy and the house remodel.

Accents, pronunciations, and connotation of Shakespeare’s words in
Much Ado about Nothing
.

Sage.

Choir practice. Choir council. Meetings to choose Easter music. Ensemble practice.

Edits, revisions, cover art suggestions, marketing, fan mail, monthly newsletters, and blogging.

Dylan.

Ah, yes. Before she’d met him, all of these other issues—with the exception of Sage—had been manageable. Nonchaotic. Normal.

But then along came this tall, handsome artist with his messy hair, bad-boy accessories (which she suspected included at least one tattoo), facial scruff, and penetrating eyes—who might be the man in the drawings she’d thought about, dreamed about, and fantasized about for years—and her well-balanced life spun out of control.

She tossed the wipe into the small trash can, grabbed her glasses, and turned the light off before she could look at herself in the mirror again. Thinking about him—especially the amount of time she’d allowed herself to do it—created the problem. Therefore, all she had to do was make herself stop thinking about him.

“You look like you’re much more relaxed and comfortable now.” Zarah straightened from looking at something in the oven.

Having exchanged her slightly too-small navy pencil skirt, tights, tall brown boots, suede blazer, and blue shell for her oldest, most comfortable pair of jeans, thick socks and cushiony leather mules, and a french terry tunic, she definitely felt more comfortable now. Relaxed—well, she’d work on it. “What can I help with?”

“There’s a bag of dinner rolls in the freezer—you could get six of those out and put them on a pan.” Zarah glanced at the clock on the back of the range. “Flannery should be here in about ten minutes, and those take about fifteen with the oven on 350.”

Happy to feel useful, Caylor found the bag of roll dough—homemade by Zarah’s grandmother, she was pretty sure—broke the rolls apart, and set them on the cookie sheet Zarah handed her. Though she’d worked up a pretty good craving through the day for the Chinese food they’d talked about ordering in tonight, arriving to the pungent aroma of Zarah’s Italian casserole baking in the oven had immediately put thoughts of General Tso and his sweet and spicy chicken right out of her head.

“How did your first week of classes go?” Caylor opened the oven, closing her eyes against the initial blast of hot—though delicious-smelling—air. She slid the pan in and closed it.

“I haven’t started yet—the Middle Tennessee History class at Robertson was canceled because of low registration numbers. Now I don’t have to worry about missing church on Wednesday nights all semester, and the regular Tennessee History class at the community college meets on Tuesdays, so our first class is next week.” Zarah handed Caylor a large serving bowl, then went to the fridge and started passing her fixings for a green salad.

“Sage went out there yesterday to register. She’s decided to go to school full time and get her associate’s degree in office management.” Caylor opened the bag of romaine hearts, rinsed them, and started pulling off leaves and tearing them into the bowl.

“Really? That’s all she wants to do?” At eighteen years old, when Zarah arrived in Nashville to attend Vanderbilt and Caylor met her for the first time, Zarah had a singular goal in view: getting her PhD in history and working in that field in some capacity. Her undergraduate internship had led her to the Middle Tennessee Historic Preservation Commission, which had detoured her slightly—to a PhD in historic preservation from Robertson—finishing her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees in a total of six years.

“I know.…It bugs me that she seems to have no ambition for her life. And believe me, if some guy comes along who makes enough money to support her and asks her to marry him, she’d do it in a heartbeat and forget this whole school idea. She just wants to be taken care of.” Caylor ripped the lettuce leaves apart with more force than the poor vegetable deserved.

“Hmm…could that be because her big sister always took care of her growing up?” Zarah brought red and yellow bell peppers over and set them on the cutting board beside Caylor. “You have to admit, you have a tendency to do that.”