Now You See Her (18 page)

She was comfortable alone, comfortable with her life, but in that moment she accepted that things were going to change. He was going to change them. More important, she
wanted
them to change. For the first time in her life, she wanted to be part of a couple. She wanted to give this relationship thing a shot. Life was a lot more predictable when she had only herself to consider, but she wasn't the island she had always thought herself to be. She couldn't always be totally self-sufficient. Twice now she had needed him, and twice he had been there to help.

Having someone else on whom she could depend was novel, but intensely comforting. She had never known that kind of security before, not even as a child. Especially not as a child.

“Get dressed,” he said softly, standing up and turning his back.

Dressing was only a matter of pulling on her sweatshirt and stepping into her jeans, accomplished in seconds. She pushed her hair back from her face, relaxed and still a little drowsy, wonderfully warm. She didn't feel any chill at all. All she felt was a sense of well-being, of physical contentment.

“This way.” She led the way to the studio, though in a four-room apartment it wouldn't have been difficult to find. The studio was actually supposed to be the main bedroom, but her bed fit into the smaller room, so there was never any doubt about where she would sleep and where she would work.

She had put the painting of the vendor in the closet. She couldn't bring herself to throw it away, but neither could she bear to have it out where she could see it. She went to the closet, but instead of following her, Richard walked around the room, pausing before each of the canvases she had already completed. Tension suddenly knotted her shoulders. Candra's opinion of her new work had been important to her career, but Richard's opinion was important to
her.

“You've changed,” he said abruptly, stopping before a particularly vivid landscape she had propped against the wall. He squatted down so he was at eye level with it.

“I didn't know you knew anything about my work,” she said, surprised, and still uneasy. She stared at the long line of his tanned back, well-defined muscles delineating the furrow of his spine. Why hadn't he put on his shirt? He should have put it on, for her peace of mind if nothing else.

“Sure. I met a lot of artists through Candra, but I paid attention to the ones I liked.”

That could be taken two ways. “Professionally or personally?” she asked, her tone wary.

He glanced over his shoulder at her, a smile in his dark eyes. “In your case, both.” He turned his attention back to the landscape, reaching out to run a fingertip over a stream of water swirling around a rock in its path. Running water was difficult to execute, because you had to convey motion and energy as well as capture the play of light on the surface. Water that wasn't muddy took its color from its surroundings; it would look blue under a clear sky, green in the shadow of a mountain, dull on a gray day. She had spent years painting the St. Lawrence and never tired of it because the water was always different.

“How did you do this?” he murmured. “It looks three-dimensional. And the color ...” He fell silent, moving on to the next painting, a sunset in Manhattan with the dark, faceless buildings silhouetted against a brilliant sky. She had painted the sky a glowing pinkish orange, and what could have been an ordinary skyline was turned into something exuberant. It had taken her two days of experimentation to get that exact shade.

He didn't say anything, and finally she couldn't stand the silence any longer. “Well?” she demanded, the word tart with impatience.

He turned to face her, eyeing her taut stance. “You've always been good, and you know it. Now you're better.”

Her shoulders relaxed and she ran a hand through her hair. “I can't paint the way I used to,” she confessed. “Like everything else, my style changed a year ago. I look at what I'm doing now and it's almost as if a stranger painted it.”

“You've
changed, and that's what changed your style. Maybe all of this is linked, maybe it isn't, but I'm damn glad it happened.”

She gave him a curious look. “Why?”

“Because you never saw me before. Now you do.”

He was serious, his gaze intent and unwavering. He could probably hypnotize a cobra with that look, she thought. It was certainly working on her, because she couldn't look away. She started to protest that of course she had seen him before, but then she realized what he meant. She hadn't seen him as a
man
before. In her mind men had been desexed, neutralized, of no importance to her. She hadn't wanted to deal with the messy complications of sex and emotional demands, so she had closed herself off from them. With her parents' example of what
not
to do always before her, and her own desire to concentrate on her painting, she had turned herself into an emotional nun.

Whether the weird changes had something to do with the shift in her attitude or the simple passage
of time had healed her fears, that phase of her life was over and she didn't think it would ever be possible for her to return to it. Her eyes were open, and she would never again be oblivious to Richard's sexual nature, to the male hunger in his eyes when he looked at her.

“Did you see me?” she asked. “Before, I mean. We met. . . what? Three times?”

“Four. Yes, I saw you.” He smiled. “I've always known you're a woman.”

The way he looked at her then made her nipples tingle, and she suspected that if she glanced down, she would see they were nothing more than tight little points poking at her sweatshirt. She didn't look. She didn't want to draw his attention, in case he had missed it.

“Are you turned on, or cold?” he asked softly, and she knew he hadn't missed a thing.

She cleared her throat. “I guess I'm turned on, because I'm sure not cold.”

He threw back his head and laughed. She wondered if she should have feigned ignorance, or maybe played it cute and flirted with him. She had a lot to learn about this come-hither stuff, but for the first time she realized the process could be fun.

But not now. Not yet. She cleared her throat again and turned to the closet behind her. “The painting's in here.” She had to steel herself to open the door, reluctant to face the ugliness of death. She couldn't avoid looking at it; because the paint hadn't been dry when she put the canvas in the closet, it was turned facing out. The artist in her
wouldn't let her do anything to deface even this painting, though ordinarily she would never put anything in the closet to dry.

Hurriedly she reached in and got the canvas, then propped it on the wall next to the closet. Richard walked over and stared down at the painting, his expression hard and shielded. Sweeney went over to the window and stood looking out.

“You did this before you knew he was dead.” It was a statement, not a question, but then in any case, she had already said so. “Do you know what happened to him?”

“No, he looked okay to me.” She bit her lip. “But they all do, you know?” All the ghosts looked in the pink of health. Talk about ridiculous.

“What was his name?”

“Stokes. I don't know his first name. But his sons are David and Jacob Stokes. They're both attorneys.”

“I think I'll check into this, if you don't mind.”

“Check into what?” Curiosity made her turn to look at him.

“How he died.” He rubbed his thumb against the underside of his jaw. “Maybe it was an accident.”

“Because of the blood? I don't know how realistic that painting is; he could have had a stroke, or a heart attack. Maybe the blood's there because—I don't know—I associate blood with death. Or maybe he fell down a flight of stairs.”

“I'll check into it,” Richard repeated. He turned toward the door. She followed him as he went into the living room and picked up his shirt. She watched
him shrug into it, feeling a pang of regret as he covered that broad chest. Without a hint of self-consciousness, he unfastened his pants and began tucking in the shirt. A wave of warmth washed over her. She actually felt flushed.

“I have an appointment I can't put off,” he said as he rebuckled his belt. “Get a pen and paper; I'm going to give you my private number.”

She didn't have to search for either one; she was an orderly creature, so both were right beside the phone. “Okay, shoot.”

He recited the number. “Don't wait until you're so cold you can't function. Call me immediately. If you're right about it only happening when you've had an episode of sleepwalking, then you'll know as soon as you check the studio whether or not you need to call.”

“There's no way to tell how often that will be. You can't take the time to come over here every time I get
cold.”

“The hell I can't. It isn't just a chill; it's more serious than that and you know it. Look, for my peace of mind, call me every morning when you get up, okay?” He took her chin in his hand and bent down to kiss her. The kiss was light, his lips soft and barely moving on hers. Sweeney kept herself from clinging to him, but it was a struggle; the man was addictive. She wanted more of him, all of him.

He paused at the door. “Does the gallery have exclusive rights to sell your work, except for your portrait commissions?”

“Except for any directly commissioned work, yes.”

He nodded. “I want that one with the running water. Take it to the gallery to be framed, and I'll arrange the purchase through another person so Candra won't sell it to someone else just to keep me from getting it.”

And so Candra wouldn't know there was anything between them, she thought. She had been right to be reluctant to get involved with him; even though he and Candra had split, the situation was awkward, and finalizing the divorce probably wouldn't help a lot. In that moment she made the decision to dissolve the agreement between herself and Candra and begin the search for another gallery to represent her.

“I'll call you,” he said, and hesitated for a moment, looking back at her. She had the impression he wanted to kiss her again. Evidently he thought better of it, though, and he stepped out into the hall. He had probably made the right decision, she thought wistfully, as she shut the door and locked it, but the right decision wasn't always the most pleasurable. They had already become far more involved than was right, but at least he'd had the self-control to keep from taking things any further. Until his divorce was final, she thought, they couldn't risk a repeat of today's situation, because the temptation was too great to resist many times.

*   *   *

Richard frowned as he left the building. Edward saw him come out of the door, and within seconds the car slid to a halt in front of him.

“Just a minute, Edward, let me make a call.” He dialed directory assistance, and asked for the number of David Stokes, attorney, then asked to be connected.

A young male voice answered on the second ring. “Mr. Stokes isn't in,” he said in answer to Richard's request. “There was a death in the family, and he'll be out of the office for the rest of the week.”

“This is about his father's death,” Richard replied, taking the chance that Sweeney had been right about the vendor. Her story defied logic, but he wasn't inclined to dismiss it out of hand as nonsense.
Something
was going on, something that was causing her to go into shock, or something resembling shock, and everything she had said could be verified either by investigation or observation.

“Oh, are you a cop?”

“I'm investigating the death,” Richard replied easily.

“Everyone is shaken up by this. Have you found out anything?”

“I can't discuss that. Give me Mr. Stokes's home number.”

Richard scribbled down the number. He saw Edward watching him in the rearview mirror and their eyes met. Edward was normally the most impassive of men, but he looked interested in this new development.

Richard dialed David Stokes's number. A child answered, and when Richard asked for Mr. Stokes, the little voice said, “Just a minute,” then yelled, “Daddy!”

“Hello.”

“Mr. Stokes, my name is Richard Worth. I'm sorry to bother you at a time like this, but if you feel up to it, I'd like to ask you some questions about your father's death.”

“His murder, you mean,” said David Stokes.

C
HAPTER
    E
LEVEN

E
lijah Stokes had been murdered, the victim of a violent mugging. He had been attacked, dragged between two buildings, and beaten to death. He had died from severe head injuries, inflicted by a blunt object. A reluctant witness had finally told police she had seen a young man running from the alley on the afternoon in question.

Richard pondered on the details he had learned from the bitter, grief-stricken David Stokes. He didn't like any of them.

His daytime staff had long since gone home, and he was alone in the town house, his favorite time of the day. He usually worked at night, and in fact, he needed to study some reports that he should have read that morning, but he wasn't in the mood for profit margins and stock options.

He snagged a bottle of beer from the refrigerator
and sat down in front of the television. His fondness for the occasional beer had always reminded Candra of his peasant origins. Though she seldom said anything about it, he had always been aware of her mingled distress and disdain. When they were first married, when he had cared what she thought, he had restricted himself to her approved list of wines, mixed drinks, and whiskeys. Projecting the right image hadn't been important to him, then or now, but it had been to her. When she started cheating, he stopped caring, and from then on there had always been beer in the refrigerator.

He suspected Sweeney wouldn't know one wine from another, and furthermore wouldn't care to know. It was a refreshing attitude.