The Colors of Love (28 page)

He was not her keeper! He owed her nothing, and if she was too damned stupid to close her door when he left—

He jammed the shift lever into reverse and gunned the engine. If he didn't get out of here now, he'd be back up those stairs. God help him, he could end the night again in her arms. Even now, he needed her with a fever that wouldn't leave him.

Chapter 15

"I haven't heard from you in over three weeks." Even over the telephone, Liz's voice showed concern. "You haven't answered your phone. Were you away?"

"I have paintings for you," said Jamie, knowing Liz would recognize the words for an evasion. "I'll bring them this afternoon. I need to make room here."

"You've been productive?"

"Yes."

"Come this afternoon then."

Jamie spent the rest of the morning getting the paintings ready to take to Liz. She hauled the big sheets of cardboard out of the storage space under the balcony, wrapped canvases, and strapped them with packing tape. Last year, when she'd taken her paints and easel and driven along the coast, she'd had the paintings crated before shipping them to Liz, but the cardboard was good enough for a trip across town in her own car.

She'd be glad to be rid of the canvases. After Alex had left, she'd gone straight to her easel, but had found only empty blackness—no colors. For almost a week she'd been frozen, unable to paint. She'd walked, endless walks, had paced the floors of her tiny house. She hadn't called Liz or her father, had known she couldn't bear to be with anyone but Squiggles, and Sara.

When Sara visited, Jamie tutored the child through another drawing of her cat, then enticed her onto the balcony, where she got Sara involved in building a scratching tower for Squiggles from pieces of plywood and carpet.

After seven days, Jamie could no longer bear the numbness. Just before midnight she left her sleepless bed and walked barefoot into her studio. She pulled away the cloth protecting the two paintings of Alex, and forced herself to look. She would never show these paintings, yet how could she keep them? How could she live, seeing Alex's image before she slept each night, waking to it each morning?

She picked up a blank canvas and began to pour out everything she had held trapped inside for the last seven days. She painted in the fury of compulsion, driven to create canvas after canvas, colors of dreams, of love, of loss. Sometimes her tears forced her to stop until she could see again; sometimes she painted for hours, dry-eyed and empty.

" You use everything, everyone,"
he'd said.

With the brush in her hand and the love she'd dreamed of on canvas, she admitted his truth. Hadn't she once told herself that when it was over, she would paint her pain, would sell the pain?

* * *

In the back room of the gallery, Liz gasped when Jamie unwrapped the first painting, then silently set to work helping strip the cardboard away from the others.

"My heavens," she whispered when the paintings were ranged against the wall. "They're incredible. I didn't know."

Jamie stared at the paintings, realizing she'd failed. She would paint her grief, she'd said, and here it was, but painting hadn't freed her and she could feel no joy in Liz's awe at the paintings.

"I'm going to talk to Enders in San Francisco," said Liz. "We'll do something big, not just a simple showing in my gallery. New York, too. I'll get on the phone to Jason Tempers."

"I'm going away."

Liz jerked her attention away from the paintings. "You look terrible, Jamie. And these—" She crossed the floor to Jamie. "It's him, isn't it?"

"I'll call," Jamie said, needing to get away before Liz's concern turned to active sympathy. "Bye, Liz."

"Jamie!"

She ran out of the storeroom, across the elegant floor of the gallery, down the stairs, and out the door. She couldn't see to unlock her car door, struggled, and finally stumbled inside her car and jammed the key in the lock. Yes, she'd get away, far away. She'd take paints and canvases and she'd drive clown the coast.

No, somewhere different this time. North perhaps, up into Canada. She'd keep driving, north and north and north until she found herself in Alaska.

She started her car and drove slowly, very carefully, recognizing her state of mind as uneven, undependable. Hadn't he said that about her, that she was undependable? That she used everything, everyone, for her art. It was true, but it didn't mean she loved him less.

He had never wanted to believe in her love.

She parked outside her house, frightened because she'd got here without remembering the drive. In this state, she daren't go driving off into the unknown. She thought of Sara, of the terrible thud when her car struck the little girl.

She couldn't risk anything like that happening again. And Sara, the child would be expecting to visit Squiggles. So there would be no escape, no running away from the love or the pain.

Inside her house, Jamie went to the two paintings of Alex on her drying rack.

When Alex had seen the first of them, it seemed as if everything he felt for her was destroyed. She touched the canvas, tracing the texture of the paint as it formed his eyes.

She'd painted love in his eyes. If he didn't love her, why would it bother him?

But if he did love her...

* * *

Vanda carried the parcel into Alex's office just after Jason's visit. "It came by courier," she said. "Do you want me to unpack it?"

"No," snapped Alex.

Vanda left with a backward look that told him he'd been snapping too often, and he glared at the big parcel leaning against his desk. If he stripped off the packing, the room left inside would be just the size of one of Jamie's canvases.

He carried the parcel into the storage closet behind his desk, pushed the intercom, and told Vanda to bring his next patient in. Then he did his best to forget Jamila Ferguson and focus wholeheartedly on examining Sandra Berkley's eight-month-old twin girls.

Two hours later, after he congratulated his last patient—a thirteen-year-old anorexic girl who'd achieved a seven-pound weight gain—he could still feel the painting waiting for him behind the closet door.

Someone knocked, saving Alex from opening Jamie's package.

Dennis stepped into Alex's. He'd forgotten Dennis was coming—had forgotten so many things in the last three weeks, but not once, for one moment, had he forgotten Jamie Ferguson.

"You're done?" asked Dennis. "Patients gone?"

"Done," agreed Alex. "What did you think?"

"Tell me again, why are we doing this when we don't have Thurston's answer yet? Wouldn't it make more sense to wait until we know?"

"I'm not waiting." Alex felt the familiar pressure build in his chest. If he didn't do something about this new tension, he'd be developing some stress-related illness.

Cool Hand Alex,
Emma Garrett had called him once.
It doesn't matter what happens, you never lose your perspective.
If Emma could only see the view from inside his head today.

"What does Jamie think of this idea?" asked Dennis.

"What?"

"Don't bite my head off. I just think that if you're determined to do this, we could use a second opinion. You're talking about putting up your house, your investments, every asset you have."

"They're my assets."

"True enough, but I don't believe you're thinking straight. You'll have nothing left for operating costs. Jamie would tell you that in a minute."

"Jamie doesn't know a damned thing about money."

"Of course she does. She's a CPA and a damned good one. I don't know if she kept up her designation after she went to art school, but she still has the knowledge. Her father said she had more natural talent for auditing than any accountant he'd ever seen."

Jamie a CPA?

Alex shook his head. "I'm not showing these figures to Jamie. We're not—that's over."

"Maybe that's the problem," said Dennis. He put the papers back in his briefcase. "I can't support you on this, Alex. If you put this plan into practice, you'll be bankrupt in a year. Slow down, give Thurston some time. Then, if they don't come through, we'll look elsewhere."

Alex felt rage boil through his veins. Jamie had betrayed him, and now Dennis.

His brother-in-law stopped at the door. "You know what I'd do? Forget the treatment center for a couple of weeks. Go see Jamie and make up with her. Then maybe you'll be able to think straight."

"Get out!" Alex growled.

Make up with her? That's all he needed, wisdom from his brother-in-law who didn't know a damned thing about Jamie—except that she'd been a CPA.

His irresponsible artist a CPA?

James Ferguson's daughter. What was it she'd said that first night they met? Her voice echoed in the office as if she were here, right here.
"You're obviously used to managing people, Dr. Kent, but I'm not accustomed to being managed anymore."

He'd wanted to know who had tried to manage her, but hadn't asked. He'd tried so damned hard to walk away, to escape her pull. Had tried and, at the same time, walked right into her arms as if without her he would never be truly alive.

She'd told him she went to college, as her father wanted. Ferguson would have wanted her to take accounting, building her in his image, creating a young CPA with a future as an auditor. But Jamie's heart beat with the need to create art. She'd tried to be what her dad wanted, tried hard enough to spend years training as an accountant, and at least some time working with her father, enough for Dennis to have heard of her auditing skills.

Liz's voice joined Jamie's in the room, saying,
"The first time I met Jamie, she was twelve years old, a very sad little girl who had lost her mother."

A motherless girl trying to be what her father wanted, because he was the only family she had left and she wanted him to approve of her. It was lucky she'd found Liz, who recognized the artist's spirit and fostered it.

Slowly, he walked into the closet and brought the parcel out. With his penknife, he sprung the strapping and uncovered the painting. She'd framed it, and somehow the nakedness in his own eyes was even more overwhelming now that the painting was framed.

He heard a door open, didn't look.

"Alex?" The voice behind him was low, feminine, recognizably Emma Garrett's. "Alex, do you have a minute to talk about Betty Emerson's limp?"

He couldn't turn, couldn't look away. His mind was filled with the memory of waking, seeing Jamie across the room and feeling his heart reach out.

"That looks personal," said Emma softly.

Alex swallowed, still staring at the painting. "It is."

"I thought she must have walked out on you. I guess I was wrong."

Alex couldn't speak.

"You've been so cranky. The woman, whoever she is—this is her, isn't it? She painted this, but she didn't walk out on you. It was you who did the walking, you fool."

He was focused on Emma now, had the strange sense that she was about to say something very important.

She rested her hand on her abdomen in that way pregnant women have, and smiled sadly. "You've got it bad, Alex. You only need to open your eyes. The woman who painted that picture is obviously crazy in love with you."

"Jamila—Jamie. She prefers to be called Jamie." He swallowed, staring at the painting. "You can't know, from looking at this." He'd looked, had seen his own raw vulnerability, had seen Jamie's knowledge that, no matter what, he would never be free of her. She'd even said so, in words, the day he found this painting.

Emma said, "When I knew how hopelessly in love with Gray I was, if I could have painted him, I would have put that look in his eyes, on his face. I dreamed he would look at me like that, as if I were his world. Alex, you lovesick fool, find her, tell her it's true. Tell her she painted you exactly as you are."

Emma left the echo of her words behind.

What does a painter paint?
he asked himself.

Her dreams, her fears, her pain?

She'd painted Sara, yearning for the mother who would never return. Of course Jamie would be drawn to Sara. She'd lost her own mother, could feel the child's pain and wanted to ease it. Jamie... he'd tried to hold the image of her as Jamila, exotic and dangerous, not quite real, as if he could protect himself by keeping her distant.

He'd used distance all his life, protecting himself from coming too close. When he looked for a wife, he'd actually
sought
distance, reaching for women who were friends, not lovers, keeping his heart safe.

He hadn't even shared himself with his own sister, avoided more of her invitations than he accepted, changed the subject when Paula tried to talk about their mother. As for Mother—maybe he hadn't given her a chance either. Cool phone calls and dinner at Eduardo's when she came to town. He'd never invited her to stay at his place.

He'd never forgiven her for Ricky's death.

He picked up Jason's case notes.

Jason's parents seemed helpless to moderate their son's excesses of diet. Why didn't he blame them in the same way he blamed his own mother? Or more to the point, if he held them only partially responsible, why continue to blame his mother?