The Art of Appreciation (25 page)

“Why?” Matt crouched by her feet and slipped off one of her sandals. “It’s the truth. I love you, Abby.” He gently brushed sand off the top of her foot before pressing a kiss there. He trailed his mouth upward, cradling her calf in his hand as he brushed her ankle with his lips. “I love you,” he murmured, looking up at her but not moving his mouth from her skin.

Abby closed her eyes. “Please don’t…”

Matt shifted his weight to his knees and slid her skirt up her thigh. He kissed the inside of her knee and smiled at her indrawn breath. “Don’t stop?” he said, choosing his own ending to her sentence as his lips traveled higher. “Okay. I love you, Abby.”

Abby tugged at his shirt, pulling him over her so she could bury her hands in his hair and kiss him fiercely.

“Can I take that as an ‘I love you too?’” he joked, pushing her hair off her forehead.

Abby’s eyes filled with tears as she stroked his face. “So, so much.”

“Then let’s go upstairs,” he said, untangling his legs from hers and standing. He twitched her skirt down and held out a hand to help her up. “Couches are for kids. I need more room to stretch out if I’m going to do this right.”

“No, wait,” Abby said, tugging him toward the back door. “I have a surprise for you.”

“Outside?” he said doubtfully. “Can’t it wait?”

“Can’t you?”

Matt considered. “Nope. Can’t wait.”

“Tough.” Abby backed toward the door.

He stopped on the deck and grinned. Abby dropped his hands to grab a lighter and go from table to table to light small candles that had been set about. The low tables usually flanked a padded bench underneath the pergola. It was one of his favorite places to relax with a book and catch the ocean breeze undisturbed because the greenery largely screened his haven from view. Tonight, though, the bench was gone, and his blanket-lined hammock was in its place. His down comforter was folded at the bottom.

“When did you do all this?”

Abby shrugged and started unzipping her dress.

Matt rested his hands on her shoulders for a second before pushing the straps aside, following his hands with his mouth. “You’ve succumbed to the lure of the beach?”

“Well, I’m still not willing to get sand all up in my business, but yes, I get the appeal now. I want you to be happy, Matt.”

“I don’t need this,” he whispered. “You make me happy.”

Her hands were against his skin, fingers light and cool against his belly as she unbuttoned his shorts. “Show me, Matt. Love me.”

He did his best, letting his hands and mouth travel the curves that had absorbed him for months. Soft words and whispered laughter made a cocoon that wasn’t carried far by a kind wind that seemed to die down just for them. Matt closed his eyes and relished the feeling of her hands moving against him, the motion of the gently swinging hammock bringing a new dimension to the rising and falling of their bodies. He could taste sea salt and sweat on her skin when he nestled his face on her neck. He fought to memorize each sound she made, and the smell of her, and the way her fingers curled into his lower back as she arched below him.

Shifting until she was above him, Abby rested her hands on his shoulders. She relaxed when he grasped her hips tightly and groaned out his pleasure. When he opened his eyes, Matt stared at her. With her face dappled with shadow from the wisteria, she looked insubstantial, like a dream that could pass away in the morning light. He didn’t think he would ever forget that exact second.

“This rarely works out for anyone, you know,” she whispered.

“We’re not anyone, remember?” He draped the comforter over them. Curling around her, he held her against his body. The heaviness of sleep caught him, and he could barely keep his eyes open. “Pancakes for breakfast?” he mumbled, feeling her soft laugh as she held his hand against her chest.

“Matt? Honey, wake up.”

Matt tried to roll over. His eyes flew open as the hammock swung, and he remembered where he was. The blue light of dawn lit the sky behind Abby as she crouched beside him, fully dressed.

“Wha…?” was all he could get out of his sleep-sodden brain.

Abby tried a tremulous smile. “I promised I’d wake you up before I left, remember?”

Matt blinked rapidly. He pushed himself up on one elbow and reached out for her.

Abby clasped his hand tightly. “I can’t do this if you…I need to get going.”

Matt tried to sit up. “No.”

She stood and stumbled back. “I can’t handle a sad, drawn-out goodbye. I want to do this right—no regrets.”

“Abby, wait.” He swung his legs over the edge of the hammock and scrubbed at his face. “Don’t go.”

Abby took a shaky breath. “I have to. December isn’t so long, right?”

“I—I don’t even know what to say,” he rasped out, searching the sand around his feet for his shorts. “I talked to Claire last night, and I’m ready to tell Baker to go to hell—I don’t care if he sues me. I was going to tell you over breakfast—I’m coming to Boston with you.”

“No. Don’t do that.” She wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, kissing him with quick desperation as her façade crumbled and tears started to fall. Before he could do more than grasp at her shirt, she was backing away from him. “I love you, Matt. I don’t want to be what holds you back. I’ll call you from the road tomorrow morning, okay?”

“Doesn’t this—don’t we—matter?” Matt surged out of the hammock, but not before she disappeared around the corner of the house. He heard the Hyundai’s tiny motor roar away before he could yank his shorts over his hips.

Matt stumbled into the house. He found a pot of coffee already brewed and a pastry on a plate beside the carafe. Ignoring the food, he poured a cup and sank down onto a chair, wondering what would happen next. He had an urge to call his dad and compare notes—how was he supposed to handle this morning? The sun continued in its arc as the coffee grew cold in his cup.

He ignored a tap at the French door, but Claire entered anyway. She slid into the chair opposite his and waited for him to acknowledge her. When he hadn’t after several minutes, she reached out to touch his hand. “I’m sorry, Matt. Abby stopped to leave a note, and Charles talked to her. I came right over.”

Matt clutched his cup, swallowing the cold, bitter liquid.

Claire flopped back in her chair. “What a crapfest this summer has turned out to be. If it makes you feel any better, three months isn’t really that long.”

“It doesn’t,” Matt said shortly. “And it won’t be that long. I can’t do this—I’m leaving today.”

“Matt, be reasonable,” Claire pleaded. “At least finish the sculpture that’s almost done like we talked about last night. I might be able to reason with Baker…” Her voice trailed off, and she blew out a great gust of breath. “Fat chance of that. I really thought she might stay with the job offer.”

“Please. She has some self-esteem. Charles’s offer was kind, but…”

“Not Charles’s,” Claire said, playing with the salt shaker. “Mine.”

Matt froze. Abby would have no reason to take a personal assistant job that was so far from her skill set and so much below her education, but an offer from Claire…that was a whole different thing. “You offered her a job?”

“Yeah. She didn’t tell you? She didn’t even seem to consider it, though I assured her it was genuine. She did say she’d apply in December if the position was still open.” Claire chuckled in reluctant admiration. “Proud woman. Anyway, what’s your decision? Going into the studio, or am I helping you pack?”

He thought for a minute, his mind a jumble of betrayal and suspicion about her desire to not be the one to hold him back. Maybe the business end of his art was more important to her than he’d realized. “Studio. I have to respect her decision, right?” He pushed himself away from the table.

Time to get to work.

And to pray that they weren’t “anyone” after all.

L
OOKING
B
ACK
L
ATER
, Abby would have liked to have been able to say that the Matt-less months passed easily, if slowly—at worst, to say that they left her numb. But then she’d be lying to herself, and if there was one lesson she learned that fall, it was that lies come back to bite you in the ass. The reality was that numb was nowhere near any of the shifting emotions she’d felt during the endless drive back to Boston.

After placing her last bag in the back of the car early that morning, Abby had walked around Matt’s house, putting things back where they’d been the first time she’d seen them. She wasn’t foolish enough to think that leaving would be easy on either of them; the least she could do was to leave Matt’s life the way she’d found it. He wouldn’t want reminders of her popping out at him when he tried to relax.

To hear Matt say he was willing to risk a lawsuit and a ruined career over Baker’s statues was serious business. There was a singular thrill in knowing that she was that important to him. Closely following that, though, was a shiver of uneasiness. Abby had seen enough relationships founder under disappointment when one person felt they’d sacrificed too much. Despite Matt’s seeming indifference to the importance of the connections he was making, Abby knew that personal lightning rarely struck twice in a lifetime.

Three months. She could do three months without him.

The miles passed quickly at first, fueled by Abby’s determination that she was right, but eventually monotony and doubt set in. It started with the memory of Matt’s expression as she fled around the corner of the house. The mixture of confusion and sleepiness was bad enough, but the pain she’d seen at the end was worse.

Abby turned up the radio, singing along to a song she hated just to distract herself. “He’ll be fine, I’ll be fine, end of story,” she said, tossing back her fourth cup of coffee.

That was the first lie.

By the time she neared the Nevada state line, she was making deals with herself.
If he calls before I cross, I’ll go back. Never mind that I’ve wasted a whole day and will have to start out again tomorrow. Maybe the next day. I’m sure they can get along without me for one more day.
But Nevada came and went, causing another storm of doubt and frustration and more than a little self-pity.
I guess this isn’t as hard on him as it is on me
, she thought, slouching lower in her seat and trying to ignore the fact that she’d told Matt she would call him.

That was the second lie.

She gave up in Salt Lake City, pulling into a small motel and dragging herself through the door of her room to flop on the bed. She toyed with her phone for a minute, debating whether she was ready to talk to Matt, before she tossed it on the nightstand. Abby slid between the sheets and stared at her phone.

It stared accusingly back at her.

She snatched it up and switched on the lamp.
Just a text to let him know that I’m okay.

Third lie.

She didn’t even have time to drop the phone back on the nightstand when it rang in her hand. Abby glanced at the name and almost dropped the phone in her rush to answer.

“I said I’d call you in the morning.” The words tumbled out of her mouth as she tried unsuccessfully to restrain a grin.

“I thought I wouldn’t wait.” Hearing Matt’s voice, strong and warm, brought tears to the surface. “How are you doing, Pretty?”

Fine!
This lie stuck in her throat. “I’m…” She took a shuddering breath. “I’m awful. I miss you.”

“Good. You should feel awful. I know I do.” The tinge of bitterness was softened by the concern in his voice.

“I know.” A few words were enough to lay out her whole sorry thought process, and when she was finished, she waited anxiously for his reaction.

“Can we be in agreement that I’m capable of making my own decisions? I thought I mentioned once or twice that I’m not a kid, Abby. I know what has to be done to balance work and life.”

“I’m sorry,” Abby murmured, picking at the comforter.

“I am too.” Abby heard the creak of wicker as he settled back, and she imagined the way the breeze would be drifting through the deep porch, bringing the scents of sea and sun to wrap around him. “Come home?” he asked.

Wiping her hand under her eyes as they welled again, Abby paused a minute before answering. “I can’t. Not because I don’t want to,” she added when she heard his indrawn breath. “I just can’t do this again in a day or two. And that’s all I’d have, at most.”

“Right,” Matt sighed. “Don’t cry anymore, Abby. You’re breaking my heart, here. We’ll survive. So, tell me about your trip so far.”

They talked until Abby couldn’t hold her eyes open any longer. The mood gradually lightened as they found places to laugh together at how tormented their individual days had been. Abby could even giggle at Matt’s strangely intense description of how much he’d accomplished that day. Drifting off to sleep with his last good night still whispering through her head, Abby relaxed, convinced that nothing had changed.

As she dragged herself through the back door of the Fiona Grant Shaw gallery and stumbled to her office, Abby wasn’t so sure that was true. Three days in the car had turned to four when she realized that one driver alone couldn’t make the same time as a pair of drivers, and as a result, she’d only had one night to rest before returning to work. Maybe that was why the Boston traffic and crowds that used to make her feel vibrant and alive now drained her of patience and energy. The trundling delivery trucks that had awakened her at four thirty that morning had gotten a sound cussing out, too, before she’d sleepwalked into her shower and realized that the soap in the dish had turned into a brick in her absence and her shampoo had been left behind at Matt’s house.

“Abby? Oh
my!
What happened to your
hair?”

Abby dropped her purse on her desk and turned around to smile at her intern. “Nice to see you, too, Clint.” Her smile turned into a grin when the intern’s slight face flushed. “Don’t worry about it. I just got back into town yesterday, and I haven’t had time to get it cut.” She pivoted to look into the ornate mirror that hung behind her desk.

Boston Abby was almost absent. Her trimmed and straightened bob now curled around her shoulders, while the porcelain-pale complexion she’d protected from the sun for fear of lines was light gold with a sprinkling of freckles. Just remembering the thorough way Matt had kissed each spot, how he examined every tiny line and declared that she was finally smiling enough, the feeling of his face nuzzled deep in her hair made her shiver.

“It’s not
that
bad, Abby.” Clint brushed his own fashionably shaggy hair to the side. “I can make you an appointment with George right away.” His voice dropped as he sat on Abby’s desk and made himself comfortable. “Just don’t let Gretchen find out I did it. She’s been a
total
dictator since you left. I think she wants me to be her own
Igor
, but I told her ‘personal aide’ isn’t in my job description, and then
she
said…”

Abby sat down and shrugged into the same sweater that had hung on the back of her chair for the last few years, letting Clint’s running commentary on office gossip and politics fuzz out. The one-upsmanship that she’d thrived on, that was an integral part of pulling oneself up and putting oneself forward in a tight and very specialized job market, a part that she’d been very good at playing, now just left her…tired. Her mind wandered back to her call with Matt the night before. They’d laughed at Claire’s attempts to be diplomatic with a patron who’d donated what could most kindly be termed a mess of a statue. It was apparently going to end up as yard art at the Eastmans’ house…very near the sea, in hopes that a tide might want it more than Claire did. As funny as it sounded, Abby could appreciate the lengths her friends would go to save someone’s feelings.

Not much chance of that happening here
, Abby thought, tuning into Clint’s scathing appraisal of the gala a fellow curator had planned and hosted in Abby’s absence.

“Can you
believe
that she brought in a trio and not a quartet?
Totally
unsuited for the period of the display. And the caterer…my
God
…” Clint snorted laughter, and Abby had had enough.

“Speaking of the display, how has attendance been? And what happened to…what’s his name?” Abby felt bad for not remembering her second intern’s name, but he was apparently gone anyway. She straightened her chair and looked at Clint with a perfect, plastic smile. Catching the hint, Clint gathered some data from his own desk before delving into the minutiae of what Abby had missed in her months away.

After a few minutes, her attention wandered, and she heard nothing but the sea. It was only Clint’s bark of laughter that brought her attention back into the office.

“Hmm?” she asked.

“I’ve been reciting the names of all the states and their capitols for the last ten minutes.” Clint laughed again. “Am I that boring?”

Abby scrubbed her hands over her face and shook her head. “I’m sorry. I got in late, and I guess I still have…road lag? Is there such a thing?”

“There is now.” He rose from his perch on her desk and gestured to the door. “Let’s get you on your feet and out on the floor. You missed the illuminated texts display, of course, but I could really use your help with the Ibo masks.”

Following Clint out the office door, Abby listened closely this time, determined to get back on top of her game. After a snapshot check of all the different displays, including a rundown on upcoming events, she felt far more clearheaded and in control. This was what she did best, after all. Comparing the treasures that were under her care to her own few watercolors and oils was like comparing a symphony to a jug band.

Still, though…Abby paused in the middle of her favorite room and closed her eyes, allowing herself the satisfaction of sensory recall: the satisfying feeling of a brush between her fingers as colors blossomed on the canvas in front of her. For just a minute she could hear Matt’s absent humming as he worked…and then she opened her eyes, sighed, and smiled at Clint. Abby was surprised that he was being so helpful. Maybe a few months alone with Gretchen had taught him a lesson about being careful what you wished for. Or maybe she was the one who’d changed.

“Shall we move on?” she asked.

“Are you even listening to me, Abby?”

The sound of a happy lunch crowd broke through Abby’s mental fog, along with the smell of the lobster roll that lay untouched on her plate. She focused on Sarah and tried to remember her last few words. Lunch…Sarah’s car…damn tourists…birthday…yeah, that was it. “What? Of course. You were telling me how David’s birthday party went.”

Sarah picked up her fork. “About five minutes ago. Did you catch the part where I thanked you for showing up?”

Abby groaned and laid her head on her arms. The scratchy tweed of her jacket sleeve was irritating. “I’ve apologized fifty times since Sunday. I was up late talking to Matt on Friday night and ended up sleeping all day Saturday.” She peeked up with one eye to see Sarah gazing at her skeptically. “Give me a break. I just got back to town a couple of weeks ago. I did send you the SD card with Tyler’s band for party entertainment.”

“Another thing to thank you for. David…not so much. He choked on birthday cake when he caught the title of the song. Though the rest of the party guests didn’t understand what was so funny.”

Abby laughed loud and long.

Sarah held her exaggerated frown for a few seconds before leaning back and joining in. The deep tan that she’d sported in Santa Cruz was already fading, though her dark eyes were bright with more contentment than Abby had seen in them for a long while. Her city “uniform” of black-on-black clung to her lithe figure and served to highlight the glittering emerald on her ring finger. She kicked the leg of Abby’s chair. “It’s good to hear you laugh. I’ve missed you, kid. About time you got out of your house or the gallery.” She studied Abby. “You look like hell, though.”