True Colors (4 page)

He waited until she’d taken her seat behind
the desk before he lowered himself into a chair facing her. The
chair seemed better suited to someone her height than his; his
knees jutted out, nearly banging the desk. Inching the chair back,
he bumped the wall behind him. He felt like Alice after she’d eaten
the cake that said “Eat Me” and outgrew the house she was trapped
inside.

“It’s so nice to meet you face to face,”
Monica said.

He braced himself against the charm offensive
she seemed determined to launch. “Ms. Reinhart,” he said, choosing
to keep things as formal as possible. “I stopped by the house
before coming here. Some other person—who wasn’t you—was living
there.”

“Emma,” Monica said. “My best friend.”

“According to the lease—”

He was interrupted by the ringing of a
telephone on the desk. “Excuse me,” she murmured before lifting the
receiver and tucking it against her cheek. “Monica Reinhart
speaking… Hi, Dad. Yes, the tennis court guys were here…. They’ll
get it done before Memorial Day. Don’t worry…. Well, with the
weather, they couldn’t… It’ll get done, Dad. In time for the
season…. No, they’re leaving the fence. Just like we discussed….
Okay. ’Bye.” She lowered the phone and gave Max an apologetic
smile. “I’m sorry.”

He checked himself before reassuring her he
didn’t mind. He didn’t, really; after all, he’d just barged in on
her, interrupting her work day. He hadn’t made an appointment, and
he ought to be grateful she’d invited him into her office. But he
didn’t want things to get too friendly between her and himself. He
was pissed off, and he wanted to stay pissed off.

What had he been saying before the phone
rang? Monica thoughtfully reminded him. “According to the
lease…?”

He nodded. “According to the lease, you were
supposed to be the only person living in the house. No sublets were
allowed.”

“Emma isn’t subletting. She’s just staying
with me.”

“I rented to you, not to her. I wasn’t
renting the house to make money—obviously. The rent is way below
market value. I just wanted someone—one quiet, responsible adult—to
stay in the house and make sure the pipes didn’t freeze in the
winter.”

“They didn’t,” Monica said sweetly. “I made
sure.”

“The lease was a simple arrangement.
Straightforward. Low rent, one person. But you invited someone else
to live with you—and even worse, she’s running a school out of the
house.”

“It’s not a school,” Monica argued. “She just
does art with some kids. I don’t suppose it matters though, does
it? Andrea told us we’re going to have to vacate the premises in
June. Unless you’d like to consider renewing the lease.” She sent
him a hopeful smile.

“That’s not going to happen.” Damn Monica
Reinhart for being so pleasant. She was coming across as civil and
polite, and he was coming across as some sort of monster.

But he was
pissed off
. He’d flown
into Boston, rented a car and driven up to Brogan’s Point,
intending to make sure his house was still standing and then stop
by at Andrea Simonetti’s real estate office to discuss listing the
house for sale. Then he’d planned to drive back south to Cambridge,
to spend a couple of days visiting his beloved mentor, Professor
Stan Weisner, and indulging in a beer or two at one of his favorite
college hangouts.

He hadn’t expected to find that wild-haired
woman in his house—with a pair of kids in tow. And to learn that
she was living there, and running a commercial enterprise without
his permission, without a zoning clearance, without any of the
legal necessities…

He’d been taken advantage of before. He
wasn’t going to let that happen again, regardless of how civil and
polite Monica Reinhart was.

Her phone rang again. “Oh—excuse me,” she
said before lifting the phone and directing all her civility and
politeness toward her caller. “Monica Reinhart speaking… No, that’s
up to the landscaper. He has to work around the sprinkler heads.
Talk to Barry about it, okay?” Another contrite smile as she set
the phone back in its cradle. “We’ve really loved living in the
house,” she told him. “We’ve put every effort into taking good care
of it. We’ve shoveled the driveway all winter, even though
technically that wasn’t our responsibility. We scrubbed all the
outdoor furniture on the deck and stored it in the basement. We
thought about hanging some pictures—well, Emma did. She’s an
artist. She loves being surrounded by art. But we didn’t want to
put any nail holes into your walls, so we left them bare.”

“An artist. Right,” he muttered, a vision of
that short, curvaceous woman with her flamboyant mop of hair
flashing through his mind.

“Did she tell you about her Dream Portraits?
This is so cool—she paints a portrait of a person and surrounds the
portrait with that person’s dreams. The one she’s working on now is
a portrait of a little girl who dreams about being a princess. So
she’s painting a castle, and a crown… I think she’s going to
include a unicorn, too. She’s so amazingly talented.”

Max didn’t want to hear how amazingly
talented she was. “She’s painting this portrait in my house?”

“Oh, she’s very careful. She’s laid
drop-cloths all over the floor.”

Wonderful. She was not only running a school
in his house, but also painting castles and unicorns. “There are
licensing and insurance issues—”

The phone rang again. Monica held her hand up
like a traffic cop, halting him, and then answered the phone.
“Monica Reinhart speaking… Where’s Donna? She should be handling
that.” Monica listened for a moment, then sighed. “All right. I’ll
be there in a minute.” She hung up the phone and sighed again.
“I’ve got a nervous bride-to-be who wants to change her menu for
the fifth time, and our events planner took the day off to get a
root canal. I’m sorry. I really have to deal with this.” She rose,
and Max reluctantly stood, too. “Do you have a place to stay while
you’re in town?”

“I was planning to stay in Cambridge.”

“But you’re here, and it’s such a beautiful
day. Why don’t you spend the night at the Ocean Bluff Inn as my
guest? It’s off season. We’ve got some vacant rooms. Please. As my
guest,” she repeated.

She was being too damned nice, which made him
suspicious. And he hadn’t intended to stay in Brogan’s Point during
this trip. Brogan’s Point had never particularly appealed to him.
Sure, the ocean was pretty, but Vanessa had been the one who wanted
to live here. He was more of a city person. He’d grown up in New
York, he currently lived in San Francisco, and this place was too
quiet. Too tranquil.

“Thank you, but—”

“I insist.” Monica circled the small room to
the door. “Why don’t I have Kim set you up in a room, and then you,
Emma and I can meet for a drink at the Faulk Street Tavern at—” she
glanced at her watch “—six o’clock and we can discuss this whole
lease thing. You really can’t leave Brogan’s Point without having a
drink at the Faulk Street Tavern. And you can’t leave Brogan’s
Point without spending a night at the Ocean Bluff Inn. I’ll have
Kim take care of it.”

With that, Monica strode out of the office
and down the corridor, her sensible leather shoes carrying her at a
brisk clip.

He didn’t want to stay here, in this
beautiful New England resort. He didn’t want to have a drink at the
Faulk Street Tavern, wherever that was. He definitely didn’t want
to get friendly with Monica Reinhart and her illegal roommate.

A castle. A unicorn. If there was one thing
Max loathed, it was whimsy.

He should just drive over to Simonetti Realty
and let Andrea take care of everything. Get Emma out of his house,
inspect the premises, have an appraisal done, get the place listed.
He could drive back to Cambridge and enjoy a drink at one of his
old haunts instead of some picturesque little seaside tavern. He
could get on with his life.

That was what he should do… But another
memory of Emma Glendon, her lush hair and her even lusher lips,
lodged itself in his brain. And he found himself at the counter in
the lobby, allowing Kim to book him into a third-floor room.

Emma had been to the Faulk Street Tavern only
a handful of times since moving to Brogan’s Point. She knew it was
a landmark—although why, she couldn’t say. It was kind of scruffy,
just this side of drab. The drinks were inexpensive, but given her
finances, she couldn’t even afford inexpensive. Why go out for
drinks when she could buy a cheap six-pack at the supermarket for
not much more than a single drink at this bar? The wait staff at
the Faulk Street Tavern was soft-spoken and mellow, but most people
in Brogan’s Point were soft-spoken and mellow, especially compared
to the barmaids Emma had encountered in Brooklyn. The décor was
pedestrian. The only special thing about the Faulk Street Tavern
was the funky antique jukebox standing against one wall.

But when Monica had phoned her, told her to
put on some decent—by which she meant not paint-spattered—clothing
and haul her ass over to the place at six o’clock, Emma didn’t
argue. Apparently, Mad Max had tracked Monica down at the Ocean
Bluff Inn and conveyed that he was not happy with his tenants. Or,
more accurately, his tenant and Emma, whom he regarded not as a
tenant but as some sort of toxic intruder.

A cockroach? A bedbug? A
lethal dose of radon? Just because she and Monica had stretched the
terms of the lease—no, they’d merely
interpreted
it differently from
him—didn’t mean she posed a threat to his precious
house.

To be safe, however, she’d obeyed Monica’s
edict and dressed in a long brown skirt, a tunic in an interesting
weave of brown, tan and moss green, and her most expensive shoes, a
pair of tooled leather boots that Claudio had bought for her when
things had been going well between them and that, obviously, she
couldn’t return to him once things had stopped going well. Before
dressing, she’d taken a shower and washed her hair, just to make
sure there were no flecks of paint or glue in her long,
unmanageable mane.

She understood the
importance of making a good second impression on Mad Max, even if
her first impression had flunked the test. This meeting needed to
go well. It was bad enough that he seemed inclined to evict her and
Monica because they’d breached—no,
misinterpreted
—the lease. What if he
sued them for damages?

She’d have to pawn her boots, for
starters.

“We’re going to make nice,” Monica had
explained when she’d phoned. “We’re not going to be stubborn or
sarcastic. Are we,” she added for emphasis.

“Who, me? Stubborn and sarcastic?”

“Like that. Behave, Emma. Keep your mouth
shut and let me do the talking. I’m better at this kind of thing
than you are.”

Anyone in the world had to be better at it
than Emma.

But she’d washed her hair and donned her
boots. And she’d arrived at the Faulk Street Tavern only five
minutes late, even though she’d had to walk all the way down the
hill into town from the house, a hike of nearly three miles. She
couldn’t afford a car. Living in New York City, she hadn’t needed
one. In Brogan’s Point, she’d gotten used to walking.

Fortunately, the boots were extraordinarily
comfortable.

Monica and Max were already seated in one of
the booths when Emma entered the bar. The place wasn’t that
crowded; it was a weeknight, and still a bit early for pub
crawlers. She strolled past the tables and across the scuffed wood
dance floor at the center of the room to the booth her housemate
and her nemesis occupied. Max courteously stood as she neared the
table.

God, she’d love to paint his
portrait. She’d remembered that his eyes were beautiful, but she
hadn’t remembered exactly
how
beautiful they were. Like precision-cut amethysts,
surrounded by those dense black lashes.

She slid into the booth next to Monica,
facing Max. “Hi,” she said. She assumed she was allowed to say that
much.

Max nodded and resumed his seat. Monica
beamed a thousand-watt smile his way. “Let’s order some drinks,”
she suggested, beckoning a waitress with a wave. “Max? What would
you like?”

He eyed her warily, then slid his gaze to
Emma and looked every more wary. “What do you have on tap?” he
asked the waitress.

She rattled off a list of beers. He ordered a
Sam Adams, and Emma requested one, as well. Monica opted for a
dirty martini. “Can you bring a bowl of nuts or something?” she
added. “What does Gus have that we can munch on?”

“Want me to get a menu?”

“No.” Monica aimed her blinding smile back at
Max. “I’m sure you’d like to save your appetite for dinner at the
inn. Only one of our dining rooms is open for dinner during the
off-season, but the chef is fabulous.”

Max pressed his lips together in a grim line.
Clearly, he was not buying what Monica was selling.

Emma tried not to fidget. The nape of her
neck felt damp; blow-drying her thick hair usually took forever,
and she hadn’t had forever that evening. She’d hoped her walk down
the hill in the brisk spring air would have finished what the
blow-dryer had begun, but apparently it hadn’t.

Or maybe the chill at the nape of her neck
was caused not by her shower but by dread. This time tomorrow, she
might be homeless.

“Mr. Tarkoff,” she began.

“Tarloff,” he corrected her as Monica kicked
her under the table.

“I’m sorry. I mean, call me Emma and I’ll
call you Max. Would that be okay?”

“Emma, let’s wait until our drinks get here,”
Monica said pointedly.

“I’ll let you do all the talking,” Emma
promised, then turned back to Max. “I just want to say that I’m
petrified about winding up homeless. I’ve taken really good care of
your house, and I have nowhere else to live, so I’m really up the
creek if I get kicked out. That’s all. If you two want to debate
the terms of the lease, I’ll stay out of your way.”