The Art of Romance (9 page)

“What are you doing to find another one?” Dad leaned back in his chair as if settling in for a long conversation.

He told them about going out to campus to talk to Dr. Holtz and the potential for freelance work with Lindsley Road Publishing.

“Good. Those are respectable prospects. Grace, you want to tell him about your idea?”

Mother turned sideways in her chair to face Dylan. “The firm has a client who owns a small storefront right here in the Village. It’s vacant for the moment. But we thought we could do a campaign event there.” Her eyes shimmered in the way they had when she’d learned she’d been short-listed for an appellate court seat. “An art show event. We’ll display your art and then have an auction, and all the proceeds will go to charity. It should generate great press.”

He wanted to say no so badly his throat ached. After all these years and all the snide comments about his doodling never amounting to anything, now they wanted to use him to get what they wanted.

“Just think about it—all those wealthy campaign donors looking at your artwork, learning your name, buying your paintings.” Mother reached up and brushed an errant curl back behind his ear.

And all the money going to someone other than him.

His generous side kicked in and reminded him how many people were much worse off than he. Mother was right: It was a great opportunity to get his name and work out in front of people with disposable income who loved buying art and, just like the hoity-toities in Philly, would love to know they had something by a rising new talent—as the reviewer in the Philadelphia fine arts magazine had called him.

Besides, he could get rid of all of that stuff Rhonda had encouraged him to paint and start focusing more on the kind of art he enjoyed doing. “Okay. Just let me know when, and I’ll work with the building owner to get everything set up.”

Mother leaned over and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “Thank you, son. You’ll actually be working with the event planner from the campaign committee. But I’m glad you’re on board.”

“I meant it when I said I’d help out however I can.”

Across the table, his father stood and shrugged into his long, dark gray overcoat. “The event planner will be in touch with you shortly. We’re thinking about February or March for the show, since the special election will most likely be in April. In the meantime, you work on getting those employment opportunities squared away. We can’t have you living on your grandparents’ charity for too long, can we?”

“I’m on it, Dad.” Dylan helped his mother into her coat and was surprised when she turned around and hugged him.

“We may not always show it, but we’re glad to see you. And especially glad you’ll finally be home for Christmas this year.” She gave him an extra squeeze then released him to button her coat as they walked around the table to join his father.

“We are glad to have you home, Son.” Dad squeezed his shoulder. “Just remember: no more screwups.”

Since his whole life seemed to be, in his father’s eyes anyway, one big screwup, Dylan didn’t answer beyond a tight smile and a nod.

He really should have driven himself to church this morning.

W
hen the last remaining student came up to the front, put her blue book on top of the stack on the desk, and said, “Merry Christmas, Dr. Evans,” Caylor looked up from the spiral-bound journal in front of her—which she strategically folded her hands atop—and returned the sentiment. In truth, the interruption had jarred her out of sixteenth-century Italy where the old-maid daughter of a wealthy aristocrat was in the process of falling in love with the handsome but poor artist hired by her father to paint her portrait so it could be used in the quest to find her a husband.

After the student left, Caylor closed the notebook with a sigh. Giovanni and Isabella would have to wait. No matter how much she loved losing herself in her fictional worlds, grading final exams must come first.

She tucked the notebook and examination booklets into her bag, pulled on her coat, and draped her baby-soft scarf—hand-knitted by one of Sassy’s friends—around her neck. If possible, the temperature had dropped even more in the two hours she had been inside the classroom building. She tied the scarf into a thick knot to protect her neck from the cold, buried her hands deeply in the coat pockets, ducked her head into the icy wind, and hurried across the quad to Davidson Hall. Back in her office, she turned on the space heater under her desk before unwrapping her warm layers. She had an hour before the next exam, so she might as well get started grading.

No sooner had she settled down at her desk and opened the first exam booklet to start grading than there was a knock on her door. Dr. Wetzler stood in the doorway still in her coat, scarf, and gloves.

“What can I do for you, Bridget?” Caylor rolled the rubber grip of her pen between her forefinger and thumb.

Bridget hesitated, which was not like her at all. “I want to ask you a question, but I don’t want to make things weird between us.”

Caylor would have laughed if the drama professor hadn’t looked so serious. “You know you can ask me anything.”

Bridget cleared her throat. “Okay…um…are you going to ask Dylan Bradley to the faculty holiday party?”

Caylor pushed her bag containing her story-idea journal a little farther under her desk with her toe. “I hadn’t planned to, no.” Even though she’d been trying to figure out how to spend more time around him—just to observe him for the sake of her character.

“Would it bother you if I asked him?” Bridget studied the pointed toes of her black boots intently.

“Why should it bother me?”

Bridget looked up with a cautiously optimistic smile. “Because it seemed like you and he hit it off really well at the dinner the other night. I just didn’t want to overstep my bounds if something was happening between the two of you.”

Now Caylor did give in to the urge to laugh—though she wasn’t quite sure why. “Bridget, if you want to ask Dylan Bradley to be your date to the faculty holiday party, go for it. He’s too young for me; and besides, you know I don’t date anymore.”

Bridget held her hand out in front of her like a stop sign. “That is a conversation for a whole ‘nother day. But if you’re sure you don’t mind, I think I will ask Mr. Bradley to come to the faculty holiday party. Not as a date, mind you—because if he’s too young for you, he’s definitely too young for me—but just so he can start getting to know some of the other instructors and adjuncts in case he does get a position here next semester. If you want to flirt with him while he’s here, feel free—it’s not like it’ll be a
date
date.”

“Get out of here.” Caylor waved in dismissal but with a smile. Laughter trailed Bridget down the hall.

Why hadn’t she thought to invite Dylan to the faculty party? She had the perfect out to keep it from sounding like she was asking him on a date—after all, their grandmothers were best friends.

After giving her last exam for the day and meetings with two of her seniors stressed out about their oral exam presentations tomorrow—on which she was certain they would do perfectly well—Caylor packed up and headed home to work on grading. Only during finals time did she envy the science and math professors who could give fill-in-the-bubble tests that could be graded by machine. Comprehensive British literature exams didn’t really lend themselves to multiple-choice questions. At least the final exam for the students in her Rhetoric and Comparative Literature classes would be brief oral presentations of their theses—which she’d finished grading at two o’clock this morning.

At home, her arms full of books and folders, she struggled to open the side door into the kitchen—and was greeted with the acrid odor of something—electric?—burning.

“Sassy?” Caylor shoved the door open with her hip, hating that the door dragged on the floor, making it that much harder to open.

Her grandmother stood at the wall-mounted double ovens just inside the door, fanning smoke out of the lower oven with a dish towel.

Caylor dropped everything onto the kitchen table. “What happened?”

“Heating element shorted out…again.” Sassy coughed into her shoulder as she continued fanning. “Fortunately, it was just preheating—I hadn’t put the sponge in yet.”

Caylor crossed to the fuse box behind the door. The one labeled O
vens
had already been unscrewed. “I’ll call Gary and see if he or one of his guys can come out tonight.” She looked around at the Swiss roll pans and other ingredients Sassy had laid out on the counters, including yellow sponge-cake batter still dripping from the beaters in the old stand mixer. “Were you making Bûche de Noël?”

The holiday cake—thin yellow sponge slathered with milk chocolate buttercream, rolled, then frosted with dark chocolate buttercream and textured to resemble the Yule log for which it was named—was one of Caylor’s favorite desserts of the season. Not that she’d ever met a dessert she didn’t love.

“I’ll call Perty, see if she has oven room for me in her kitchen.” Sassy pushed up on the oven door and let it slam closed. “Of course, she never uses that gorgeous kitchen of hers.”

Relieved the house wasn’t burning down around her grandmother, Caylor picked up her bag, purse, books, and folders. “You know, Sassy, the only thing that’s keeping you from having a kitchen like Perty’s is sheer stubbornness and the idea that you’re spending your kids’ inheritance. Considering you’ve got at least another good twenty years in you, the money you spend remodeling and modernizing this kitchen would give a better return on investment than just sitting around in a savings account.”

Sassy leaned her hip against the edge of the counter near the mixer. “You only want me to remodel the kitchen so it’ll be easier to sell this house when I die.”

Caylor crossed the room, arms full again, and leaned down to kiss her grandmother on the cheek. “Yep, that’s exactly why I want you to remodel a kitchen that now has two ovens that don’t work, a five-burner stove with only three working burners, a dishwasher that leaks, and a refrigerator that’s older than me. It’s not because I’m concerned about your safety at all.”

“You skedaddle.” Sassy waved the dish towel at her. “I’ll call Perty and get her to come pick me up so I can finish this over there.”

“Are you sure? I can take you—”

“No, you need to work. Plus, then you can be here if you can find someone who can come out this afternoon.”

“Okay. If you’re sure.”

At her grandmother’s nod, Caylor headed upstairs to her loft, added on to the house five years ago when she’d agreed to move in to be Sassy’s main means of transportation. The contractor had taken one look at the fuse box in the main house and insisted on running completely separate electrical for the office, bedroom, and bathroom that comprised Caylor’s living area. The only thing the loft lacked to make it a complete apartment was a kitchen and a separate entrance—which could have been accomplished by running stairs down the back of the house from the small balcony where Caylor liked to sit and write during nice weather.

She hated it whenever Sassy talked about dying. Logically, with her grandmother having just celebrated her eighty-third birthday this year, she knew Sassy wouldn’t be around another twenty years. But Caylor didn’t want to think about what life would be like without her—even just a mundane thing like selling the house after she was gone. Sure, even in its original 1950s condition, the house was now worth at least a hundred times what Papa and Sassy had paid for it more than half a century ago—and it hadn’t been cheap then. And Caylor had given up her freedom, living in a large house near Hillsboro Village with Flannery and Zarah five years ago, to live rent-free in Forest Hills, one of the poshest, most expensive neighborhoods in Nashville—though she did insist on paying all the utility bills.

When Caylor agreed to move in, they’d had to do a little bit of reconfiguration downstairs—they’d needed to add a staircase, after all, which had taken the main level down to two bedrooms but created a family room where one of the three original bedrooms had been, and they’d added a three-quarter bath in Sassy’s room.

Caylor tossed her bag on top of the credenza at the end of her large corner desk. Her journal slid out of the top, just a little.

Oh how she’d love to spend the rest of the day in Renaissance Italy with her new characters. The image of Dylan Bradley floated before her mind’s eye. As soon as the semester ended, she was going to work on figuring out where she knew him from.