Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,142

numbers on my cell phone. “You should be the one to make the call, not me,” he’d told me once Lisa was gone. “She’s your artist.”

The number rang for a very long time, and I pictured Judith Shipley hobbling into her kitchen to pick up the receiver of an old-fashioned wall phone. Or maybe she used a wheelchair. Or maybe she was in a nursing home and no one was going to answer this call at all.

Finally, though, I heard a click, and a moment later a curt female voice—decidedly not elderly—said, “Shipley residence.”

“Hello!” I said, quickly putting my phone on speaker so Oliver could hear. “My name is Morgan Christopher. May I speak to Ms. Shipley?”

The woman didn’t respond and I had a terrible feeling that “Ms. Shipley” might be dead. Finally, she spoke.

“Ms. Shipley is unable to come to the phone,” she said.

“Oh, well, I’m calling from the new Jesse Jameson Williams gallery in Edenton, North Carolina, and we’d invited her to be an honored guest at our opening tomorrow, since we have a couple of her paintings here, but—”

“I already sent our regrets,” the woman said coolly.

“Yes, we received them but I was hoping I could change her mind. Could I talk to her, please?”

“Ms. Shipley no longer travels,” the woman said, and I heard the click as she hung up the phone.

I made a face at Oliver. “Did I screw that up?” I asked, wondering if Oliver should have made the call. If he might have had some magical way of getting a different answer.

Oliver shook his head. “There was no way that icicle of a woman was going to come around,” he said. “Maybe when we get a definitive answer from the authenticator, we can try writing to Judith personally.”

Oliver and I returned to work on the mural. I kept looking over my shoulder, afraid Lisa would show up again and find him helping me.

“Do you really think she’ll care at this point?” he asked, and I shook my head. I’d done ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the work on the mural myself. I thought that would be enough to satisfy anyone.

It was nearly three A.M. by the time we finished. I was dead tired, but I couldn’t stop looking at the golden-hued signature in the lower right-hand corner of the mural and the delicate iris curled around the D. Oliver nearly had to drag me out of the gallery to his van.

He drove through the dark, deserted streets to Lisa’s house. We were both quiet. Utterly depleted. But when he pulled into Lisa’s driveway and I reached for the door handle, he said, “Morgan?”

I turned to look at him, waiting. The streetlight picked up the perfect line of his nose. His lips.

“I just want you to know…” He hesitated, turning toward me. “What you said tonight about never being loved? I just want you to know that you’re wrong.”

It took me a moment to understand. “You?” I whispered.

He nodded. “Me.” He gave me a half smile. “And not as a big brother, either. You’re a good person, Morgan Christopher.” He reached out to brush my hair away from my throat, and the touch of his fingers … or maybe it was his words, or maybe just the solid, comforting presence of him … I couldn’t have said … but something made my eyes sting and my throat tighten. For a moment, I was too stunned to speak.

Then I seemed to pull myself together. I leaned across the console to kiss him and felt the warmth of his hand against my cheek. The intensity of his touch as his fingers wrapped around the side of my throat. I heard him groan, ever so slightly, just enough to let me know the kiss was having the same effect on him that it was having on me.

He drew away, but didn’t let go of me. “Damn console,” he said with a smile.

“Damn console,” I agreed. I wanted my body next to his.

“I’ve wanted to do that ever since the first day you walked into the gallery,” he said.

“You just wanted to kiss that Mary Travers singer, and I happened to look like her,” I teased.

He shook his head. “Nope. It was you I wanted. You, with this sexy tattoo”—he ran a finger over my shoulder—“and your cute knees poking out of the holes in your jeans, and your silky hair … and … I could go on and on about your … sexiness, but it’s really the person you