True Colors (3 page)

The collaging materials with which she’d
armed the girls were indeed messy, strewn and scattered across the
work table. They were messier than Emma’s hair or her clothes,
messier than the drop cloths protecting the carpeted floor. She
supposed she should be grateful that Max Whatever hadn’t come
upstairs and seen Emma’s class in action.

The hell with gratitude. If he’d climbed the
stairs to the loft and viewed the bedlam of two exuberant
eight-year-olds creating collages, Emma’s fate would have been no
worse than it already was.

He was evicting her.
Now,
he’d
said.

“What’s a landlord?” Tasha asked.

Emma pasted a brave smile on her face. Tasha
and Abbie’s mothers were each paying her thirty dollars an hour to
teach their daughters some basic art skills. They weren’t paying
her to whine about her imminent homelessness.

“A landlord,” she said, bending to pick up a
linty cotton ball which had migrated from the table to the floor,
“is someone who owns a house.”

“My daddy is a landlord,” Abbie bragged.

“Well, it’s someone who owns a house—or a
building—and rents it out to other people to use. That man owns
this house, but he rents it to Monica and me so we can live in it.”
Using a present-tense verb to describe what the man was doing
didn’t seem quite accurate, but Emma decided a shade of dishonesty
was allowed, under the circumstances.

She needed to phone Monica to warn her that
Max Whatever was in town—and worse, that Max Whatever was ousting
Emma from his home. Possibly Monica, too. He’d seemed mad enough to
kick them both to the non-existent curb.

Yes, he was mad. Mad Max.

She suppressed a bitter laugh and reached for
her cell phone. Just a few minutes ago, she’d been about to tap in
the emergency number, summoning the police to the house to save her
and the girls from an intruder. Wouldn’t that have been fun. Maybe
the cops would have carted Mad Max away before he could give Emma
the boot. A mistaken arrest would have pissed him off even more,
but the result wouldn’t have been any worse for Emma. It couldn’t
be worse.

She stared at her phone for a moment, then
shoved it back into her pocket. She couldn’t call Monica while her
students were present. Besides, when Monica was working, she
usually turned off her cell phone, which meant Emma would have to
try to reach her through the inn’s switchboard, and that in turn
might mean having to leave a message with an assistant. This was
not a situation about which Emma wanted to leave a message.

She checked her watch, peeled a blob of dried
rubber cement off its face and said, “Class ends in five minutes.
Let’s finish what you’re doing and tidy up the studio.” Calling the
loft a studio made the entire enterprise seem just a little more
professional.

Which would no doubt piss Mad Max off even
more.

While the girls scrambled to adorn their
collages with a few final items—gummed gold stars in Tasha’s case,
a heart-shaped patch of paisley fabric in Abbie’s—Emma gathered a
few more fallen bits and pieces from the floor surrounding the
table. While she tossed the detritus into the trash pail, she
thought. About her impending homelessness. About how miserable
she’d been sleeping on Claudio’s cousin’s couch before Monica had
rescued her by inviting her to move to Brogan’s Point.

About Max.

He wasn’t what she’d pictured the few times
Monica had mentioned their landlord. Max seemed like an old man’s
name, but Max Whatever couldn’t have been much older than thirty.
He was tall and thin, clad in jeans, sneakers, a brown wool blazer
and a muffler wrapped several times around his neck, the kind of
knitted scarf a girlfriend might make for her guy.

Emma tried to imagine Max’s girlfriend. Tall.
Thin. Bristling with self-righteous indignation, like him.

Beautiful, like him.

Only now, when he was safely out of the
house, could she allow herself to contemplate the intriguing lines
of his face, the contrast of his straight, narrow nose and his
thick, wavy hair, the juxtaposition of that dark hair with his pale
blue eyes. His eyelashes had been downright phenomenal.

Not that Emma paid attention to a man’s
eyelashes, except in a detached, appraising way. She painted
portraits. She noticed facial details—professionally. Men’s
eyelashes did nothing for her personally. As an artist, however,
she found them intriguing.

In fact, she had found all of Max’s features
intriguing. The faint hollows beneath his cheekbones. The sharp
angle of his chin. The hint of bronze in his complexion. Even if
Monica hadn’t mentioned that he lived in California, Emma would
have guessed that he hadn’t spent the past few cold, snowy months
in Massachusetts.

As riveting as his features were, he’d tried
hard—with reasonable success—to keep his emotions hidden. His anger
hadn’t exploded from his face. She’d noticed it in the tension
around his mouth, in the flinty chill in his eyes as he’d regarded
her. But unlike, say, Claudio, who used to erupt like Vesuvius at
the slightest provocation, Max had been restrained, his emotions
held in check.

That only made him seem madder to Emma. She
was used to people who flung their emotions around like confetti on
New Year’s Eve. Artists didn’t erect many walls between themselves
and the world. They needed to be able to see, feel, experience
everything around them. You couldn’t pick up on the subtle details
of a flower or a seascape or a face if you had a thick wall of
self-protection separating you from everything out there.

Painting Max’s portrait would be a
fascinating challenge, she thought. Especially painting it as a
Dream Portrait, with his amazing face surrounded by his dreams.
Unlike Ava Lowry, who dreamed of being a princess, Max probably
dreamed of…what? Being obeyed by his tenants? How would Emma depict
that visually on a canvas?

The doorbell rang, and she flinched, panic
seizing her at the possibility that Max had returned with a
constable in tow, perhaps, or a sheriff. Who was in charge of
evicting tenants? Was it something the local police could take care
of? Would they point a service revolver at her and force her to
pack all her things and remove them from the house while they
watched? Fortunately, she didn’t own much, other than her art
supplies.

Where would she store her easels and paints
if she wound up living in a cardboard box on the corner of Atlantic
Avenue and South street? Would the teeny-tiny apartment Monica had
access to at the Ocean Bluff Inn be big enough? Doubtful. Monica’s
wardrobe alone was at least three times as big as Emma’s, and then
Monica had all her make-up and toiletries. She wouldn’t have room
for Emma’s things as well as her own.

Emma realized that the person ringing it was
probably Tasha’s mother. The girls’ mothers carpooled, and Abbie’s
mother had picked them up after their last lesson.

The girls snatched their collages from the
table and raced each other to the stairs. Emma watched them clamber
down to the first floor, giggling and elbowing each other. What if
one of them fell? Would she be sued, or would Mad Max, the home
owner, be held liable? What sort of insurance would he need for her
to hold her art classes here? Would he require special insurance if
Emma didn’t call them art classes? What if she said they were
simply occasions when she invited a couple of young friends over to
make collages?

Fortunately, Abbie and Tasha
were agile. No falls, no injuries. If anyone
had
gotten hurt, it wouldn’t do them
much good to sue her. She had no money to pay any
claims.

Correction: she had sixty dollars, the two
checks Tasha’s mother handed her before oohing and ahhing over
their collages. She thanked Emma and chased the girls down the
front walk to her van, parked at the edge of the road. Emma waved
them off, then turned away and closed the door.

Her vision took in the entry hall, with its
stark white walls and white carpet. The walls needed some paintings
hanging on them. Better yet, they needed color. The kitchen had
slate-gray tile on the floors, and the living room sofas were a
dark gray. The furnishings had come with the house—a good thing,
since Monica, having grown up in a hotel, didn’t own much in the
way of furniture, and Emma owned even less. But as much as she
loved living here, sharing the airy rooms and the splendid views
with her best friend, Emma didn’t much like the décor.

Not only was Mad Max a nasty landlord, but he
was also a tasteless one. He’d had the good sense to purchase this
fabulous house, but he’d given it a chilly, colorless ambiance.
Emma decided she hated him.

She’d still like to paint him, though.

Max entered the Ocean Bluff Inn and zeroed in
on the clerk behind the burnished wood counter. She was dressed
neatly in a blazer and blouse—the counter blocked his view of her
lower half, so he couldn’t see whether she was wearing slacks or a
skirt, but he felt safe in assuming that whatever she had on was
appropriate. Her hair was neat, her lips glistening with a soft
pink lipstick.

Monica Reinhart, he guessed. The proper
professional he’d rented his house to. The young woman Andrea
Simonetti had sworn would make a perfect tenant, taking care of his
property until he decided what to do with it.

He took a deep breath and crossed the cozy
lobby to the counter. Another man might storm across the room and
light into the woman, but Max wasn’t given to displays of temper.
He was kind of surprised that Emma Glendon had triggered so much
anger in him, an anger hot enough that it hadn’t burned itself out
in the time it took him to drive down the winding, weaving roads
back to town and this hotel.

Monica tapped a few keys on
her computer and then turned and smiled at him. A middle-aged
couple descended the broad, carpeted stairs to the lobby, and Max
hesitated, figuring it would be better for Monica to assist them
first. Even if he didn’t lose his temper with his tenant, he didn’t
want to discuss her breach of their lease—or possibly
breaches
, plural—in front
of hotel guests.

But they strolled past him and out the front
door to the veranda, leaving him and Monica alone in the lobby. He
approached the counter and asked, “Monica Reinhart?”

Her smile unflinching, she shook her head.
“Kim Seaver. Can I help you?”

Okay.
Not
Monica Reinhart. He wondered if
Ms. Reinhart would turn up in baggy old pants spattered with paint,
like her illegal roommate. “I need to talk to Monica
Reinhart.”

“She’s in a meeting with the tennis court
people,” Kim informed him. “The court needs to be resurfaced before
the season starts. Is there something I can help you with?”

“No. It has to be Ms. Reinhart.”

Kim quirked one eyebrow, as if trying to
guess what he needed to see her colleague about. If it were her
business, he would have told her. He wished she would put her
eyebrow back down.

“You’re welcome to have a seat and wait. The
parlor is quiet.” She gestured toward an arched doorway off the
lobby. “Or you can have a drink in the lounge. Or the TV room—”

He didn’t want a drink. Or a TV. He wanted to
discuss his house with Monica, and then he wanted to sell the
damned place and get on with his life.

“Oh, wait—here she comes now,” Kim said, her
attention snared by chattering voices that drifted into the lobby
from a back corridor. “You’re in luck.” The smile she gave him was
oddly coquettish, which made him recoil. He didn’t trust
flirtatious women.

The woman he presumed to be Monica Reinhart
soon appeared in the hallway leading into the lobby from somewhere
beyond the check-in counter. She was flanked by two burly men in
work clothes—rugged jeans, flannel shirts, denim jackets. She,
however, was clearly a graduate of the same school of grooming as
Kim. She wore a tailored blue blazer over a plain white blouse, a
pale gray skirt, nylons and dark shoes with low heels. Her hair was
straight and dark, neatly trimmed to chin length, and her face was
buffed and polished. She seemed to be everything Emma Glendon was
not.

“Monica, this gentleman is here to see you,”
Kim said cheerfully, then gestured toward Max. Did she actually
wink at him?

He didn’t want to know. Seizing the moment,
he extended his right hand across the counter and introduced
himself. “Max Tarloff.”

Monica’s smile lost a bit of its luster as
his name registered on her. Then she brightened again, with some
effort. He could see the struggle as the corners of her mouth edged
upward. “Yes, of course. Max Tarloff.” After shaking his hand, she
slid hers free of his grip and turned to the workmen. “So—clay
surfaces, new nets, work with the landscape people and leave the
fence as is.”

“Right,” one of the workmen said. “We’re on
it.”

“Thanks.” She turned back to Max, then glided
around the counter. “I’m sorry—I didn’t know you were coming to
town.”

“Well.” He spread his hands
as if to say,
here I am
.

“Why don’t you come to my office?” She
beckoned him around the counter and toward the back hall. Kim gazed
after them, her expression calculating.

No,
he wanted to shout at Kim.
I’m not
here to flirt. I don’t have a personal relationship with Monica
Reinhart, and I don’t want a personal relationship with you. I want
to get that wild-haired woman out of my house and I want to put it
up for sale. And I want to forget it ever existed.

Doing his best to ignore Kim, he followed
Monica down the hall to an office barely large enough to contain a
small teak computer desk and a few chairs. The window behind the
desk looked out onto a patio. While she might boast her own office,
Monica was too young to roost high on the executive ladder at this
resort. He supposed the offices overlooking the ocean were reserved
for the head honchos.