Sculpting Grace: A Light Romance Novel (Art of Grace Book 2) (8 page)

"But how about this?" I went on, speaking without thinking, just wanting to avoid a meltdown. "I won't tackle everything on that list, obviously, but I'll take on one or two things. Just to show you that I really do have the best intentions for you, and that you can trust me to sell your art."

The artist blinked several times, looking down at the pad of paper as he lifted up one sleeve of his filthy bathrobe to blot at his eyes. "Ten things?"

"Three," I countered firmly.

"Five?"

He was trying to bargain with me? "Nope. Three."

He sighed, but I wasn't going to budge on this, even if he threatened me with the waterworks again. "Fine. Three." He grabbed his pen and started scratching items off the list with thick slashes.

After another minute, he finished, ripped the sheet of paper off of the notepad, and handed it to me. "There. Do these things. Then, maybe, we can talk about you selling my art."

"Great," I said a little faintly, accepting the list and wondering what I'd bitten off. I tried glancing down at it, but de St. James' handwriting was a chicken scratch that was next to impossible to read - and he'd slashed so fiercely at some of the other items on the list that I had a tough time telling which items weren't yet crossed off.

"And until you finish those things," de St. James went on, apparently now back in firm control, his momentary breakdown replaced by annoyance once again, "you can leave me alone to work on my art in peace!" He advanced towards me, putting one hand on my back and propelling me towards his front door.

It didn't take much more encouragement from him to get me out of the dirty, cluttered, claustrophobic interior of his house. I stepped out through his front door, guided by the pressure of his hand on my back - and he slammed the front door shut, right on my heels.

"Great," I said again, looking down at the list still held in my hand.

Behind me, the door opened up a crack. "Oh, and if I don't hear from you in a week, I'm giving up on you!" de St. James shouted out after me. He slammed the door shut once again before I could respond.

"Great," I said once more. "Just great."

Chapter Nine

*

After a cranky Dean Benjamin de St. James pushed me out of his mess of a house, I decided immediately that the best place to read through this half-crumpled sheet of demands was going to be someplace with alcohol.

Fortunately, I knew just the place - and also knew who could help me decipher some of de St. James' handwriting, and would gladly kvetch with me about having to deal with this prima donna of an artist.

"Sure, I'm always down for a glass of wine to de-stress!" Portia Skye told me enthusiastically over the phone when I called her up, sitting in my truck and still parked outside of de St. James' house. "Meet you there right after work, girl!"

"You're not even going to ask me why I need a glass of wine?" I asked, teasing her a little.

She sighed. "With you, honey, it's usually one of a dozen different things, and it's impossible to guess which one."

"Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence."

"Becks, dear, it's because you take on so much that you have so many problems," Portia continued without missing a beat. "I'm amazed that you're not gulping down wine like water, with everything that you do!"

I couldn't help but smile a little at how easily Portia turned a slight around into a compliment. "You're just trying to butter me up so that I'll pick up the tab, aren't you?"

"You see right through me, honey," she replied, and I could practically hear her smile through the phone. "So wise. So incredible."

"Okay, okay, ease up!" I begged, laughing. "But you're definitely reminding me of why you're still my best friend."

"You know it!" Portia laughed along with me, a clear tinkling on the line - but then stopped abruptly. "Oh shit, my boss is heading over towards my office. He either wants to complain about my layout designs, or he found the ass print in the photocopier. I gotta go."

"Bye, Portia," I said, fighting against giggles at the thought of my best friend, all elegant and sophisticated, pressing her slender naked ass against the glass plate of the copier in her office. I couldn't imagine it; it was like trying to imagine an elephant fitting through a mouse hole in a wall.

Since I still had a few hours until Portia got off of work, I headed out to a local Mexican restaurant to indulge a little for lunch. I ate far too many chips and salsa, and then took pleasure in sitting in the booth for a few more minutes, just lolling back and groaning as I rubbed my stomach.

"A mistake," I told myself as I reached forward for another chip, the last one in the basket in front of me. "You're making a big mistake here, Becca."

I was probably telling myself the truth, but that last chip still tasted delicious, despite how my stomach felt on the verge of exploding when I staggered out to my truck.

After managing to climb back up to my feet after that big lunch, I went back to the Halesford Gallery and checked in with Lizzie. She was chatting with a customer when I walked by the front desk, but it looked like she had matters under control, so I continued back to the back room of the gallery. I settled in at the desk in the back area, looking at the piles of paper that covered every inch of the desk's surface.

"Time to organize," I said aloud, trying to muster up enough energy to get started, instead of just crawling under the desk and taking an illicit little nap.

The paperwork really was out of hand, I had to admit to myself. For years before I took over for him, my uncle, Preston Halesford himself, had run the gallery. As far as I could tell, his system of organization seemed to be along the lines of "drop it in a pile and deal with it never." I didn't understand how he managed to stay in business and not have the electricity turned off for failure to pay his bills.

A few hours later, a bit after four in the afternoon, I gave up and pushed the partially sorted stacks of paper aside. "I'll return to you later," I promised the stacks, not sure if I'd actually keep this guarantee. "But right now, I need a big, full glass of wine."

I headed out of the gallery and a few blocks over, to the building that housed, quite possibly, my favorite business establishment in the town of Davis. Vini Wine Bar was a modern cafe-like place, where custom dispensers would, at the push of a button, release a perfect serving of wine into a glass held beneath a spigot. The bar carried more than two dozen different varieties of wine, and they offered cards with little embedded microchips, so that I could walk in, grab an empty wine glass, and start choosing from the buffet line of different wines on display.

I'd just dispensed a glass and settled into a booth right in front of the bar's huge front window when I spotted Portia outside, climbing out of her car on the other side of the street. I waved to her, even though I wasn't sure if she could see me through the front window of Vini from outside.

As Portia crossed the street and headed over to Vini, I had to take a moment to push down the little spurt of jealousy that I always felt when I saw her. Not for the first time, I marveled at the fact that this elegant, composed, perfect seeming woman somehow managed to end up as my best friend.

Portia certainly attracted several stares, both from men and women, as she crossed the street and slipped into the wine bar! She stood just a hair under six feet, with long, glossy dark hair that cascaded down her back in a waterfall and sometimes forced me to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't the "before" model in a shampoo commercial. Her features were delicate and perfectly symmetrical, and she always dressed perfectly for her body type. She looked like the kind of model-beautiful woman who might run a Sotheby's auction, displaying incredibly rare Ming vases that would sell for millions of dollars. Standing next to her, I always felt like a frumpy, disorganized mess.

Yet despite our differences in appearance and elegance, the two of us had been best friends since elementary school. In high school, she'd been the dark-haired seductress who kept half a dozen boys charmed around her little finger, while I sputtered through a couple of awkward high school boyfriends. Perhaps in another life, I would have become Portia's preferred target of ridicule. The two of us were so different, after all; by our senior year, Portia looked like she'd just stepped off of the model's catwalk, while I appeared more like I ought to be dressed in black and operating the spotlights from the shadows.

But instead of teasing and attacking me, Portia had decided that I needed a good best friend, someone to help me avoid the worst of the potholes on my road through Life. She took on this mantle for herself, always doing her best to steer me clear of the next upcoming disaster. It worked out well for both of us, I was pretty sure - I got level-headed and smart advice, while Portia got to vicariously live out some of her crazy ideas by watching my trainwreck of a life careen along, always on the verge of tumbling off the rails.

Now, she spotted me right away when she walked into Vini, and let out a huffing sigh as she dropped her Prada bag carelessly onto the table beside my glass of wine. "Oh man, I've definitely earned a glass or two of wine for myself," she announced, peeling off a well-fitted dress jacket to reveal perfectly toned bare shoulders that probably made at least one man in the bar accidentally take a bite out of his wineglass.

"Rough day? They figure out that it was your ass getting copied on the photocopier?" I asked, grinning up at her.

She shook her head, her long hair moving in billowing waves from the motion. "Thankfully, my anonymity remains intact - but it's still been a long day of clients complaining about stupid things, insisting on ridiculous changes."

She stepped away for a moment to grab a glass of wine, and then dropped into the booth across from me. "What about you?" she asked, as she lifted the glass up to her lips. "What's making you stressed?"

In answer, I pulled out the sheet of folded yellow paper from de St. James and set it on the table in between us. Portia immediately snagged it and spun it around so that she could read it. She frowned, leaning forward and peering closer at the paper as her brow furrowed.

"What is this?" she finally asked, pushing it away.

I sighed. "This is my to-do list, apparently. Ever heard of a sculpture artist named Dean Benjamin de St. James?"

"No, but that's a heck of a mouthful," she answered. "He's a big deal?"

"Yeah, he was - but he's also totally bonkers. Uncle Preston wants me to try and get him to sign on with the gallery - and honestly, it would be great if I can pull it off. He attracts a lot of attention, and we're going through a pretty slow sales period. Having him as a featured artist would bring in more customers."

"Which means more commission for you, too," Portia finished; she'd heard me complain about the lack of customers at the Halesford Gallery many times before. "Well, that sounds like a good thing!"

"It started off that way," I nodded. "But I went over to talk to de St. James this morning, and he turned out to be this crazy guy, a recluse who hides away in his dirty, garbage-filled house. He doesn't trust anyone, and he told me that if I wanted to get him to agree to let me help him sell the art, I need to accomplish the stuff on his to-do list."

"Ah, and this is the list itself?" Portia peered again at the list in front of her, but it clearly didn't seem any more legible than it had appeared before. "He really is crazy. I can't even read most of the stuff on here."

"Well, that's actually because he crossed off a lot of it - not that it disproves his insanity," I amended. "He started writing pages and pages of the stuff, and I told him that I'd only do three items. So he crossed off everything except for three things and then gave the list to me."

Portia tried turning the sheet of paper around, as if it would make more sense upside down. "And what are the three things?"

I shrugged. "I honestly haven't figured it out yet," I admitted. "I figured that I'd need at least a glass of wine in front of me before I try to decipher de St. James' writing."

"Maybe you need to drink a couple of glasses just to be able to read it," Portia added. She gave the sheet one last glance, and then passed it back to me. "Can you read any of these?"

I took the sheet of paper and frowned at it. "Okay, how about this one? This looks like it isn't crossed off. Is that a 'T' or a 'J', do you think?"

Portia looked at where my finger indicated on the sheet. "I think I need to finish this glass of wine before I make any sort of judgment," she answered, tilting back her wine glass.

After another glance at the sheet, I followed her example. If I was going to get through de St. James' sheet of demands, I'd need a good bit of alcohol in my system to endure his horrible handwriting.

Chapter Ten

*

"Okay, I think I've got it figured out," I said, reaching out for my glass of wine to award myself a swig in celebration. "These seem to be the three requests that he didn't cross off, so they're what I need to do!"

"Hooray!" cheered Portia from across the table from me, swaying slightly as if caught in a nonexistent breeze. We'd both consumed about the same amount of wine as we worked together on decoding the list that de St. James had given me, but Portia was a perennial lightweight, never able to hold more than a glass or two of wine or liquor without getting practically falling-down drunk.