Dance Away with Me - Susan Elizabeth Phillips Page 0,42
she was invincible.” He rested his elbow on top of the piano, not far from the bell rope that dangled through a small opening in the ceiling. “She had money, an expensive apartment, and the city at her feet. Everything I didn’t have. She was a kid. I, on the other hand, was twenty-five, six years older, and a grown man. But she took me in and saved my life.”
He spun the schoolhouse globe on top of the piano with his index finger. “She rented a warehouse space for me and told me I had two months to get ready for an underground art show. I argued with her, but she wouldn’t back off.” He stopped the spinning globe with his palm. “She bought me paint, paper, canvas, big sheets of acetate for stencils. I had no pride left. I took everything she offered.”
“A smart move on your part.”
He shrugged that off. “She hired a construction crew and created buzz about the show with all her celebrity friends. It cost her over a hundred thousand dollars.”
“Wow. Why would she put herself out like that?”
“She had so many people controlling her career—agents, photographers, clients. I think she needed to be in control of something herself, and I was it.” He looked directly at her, making no effort to avoid eye contact. “I sold over a million dollars’ worth of work in three weeks. That quickly, I was the new hot commodity in the art world. Everything took off for me. She made my career.”
“It was your talent that made your career.”
“That’s not really true. I’d hit rock bottom. If it hadn’t been for her, I’d be dead by now.”
Tess thought about what it would feel like to owe so much to another person. He lit the fire he’d laid inside the potbelly stove. “And Bianca fell in love with you.”
He didn’t deny it. “She fell in love easily.”
“But you didn’t love her back.”
He closed the door of the stove. The flames highlighted his strong cheekbones and cast hollows beneath. “You saw how she was. Seductive. Charismatic. I owed her everything, and I was enchanted by her. Yes, I loved her. But like a brother for a kid sister.”
“And she wanted more.”
He moved away from the fire. “She kicked me out when she realized that wasn’t going to happen. It was right around the time I got my first big mural commission. I didn’t need her anymore.”
“And yet you stayed in her life.”
“For a couple of months, she refused to see me—wouldn’t take my calls. Then she fell into a bad relationship. . . .”
“And you were there for her.”
“Always. She’d been my caretaker. I became hers. She made messes. I cleaned them up.”
Tess rubbed a rough spot on her thumb. “When did you start to resent her?”
“How could I resent her? She saved my life. I would have done anything for her.”
“You did.” She gazed down at Wren in her arms. “And now, you have one more of her messes to deal with.”
“The biggest one yet.” He sank back into the couch. “For all the poking around you’re doing in my life, you haven’t told me anything about your own.”
She couldn’t imagine telling Ian North about Travis Hartsong. “A former nurse midwife. Currently employed as a nanny by an enigmatic street artist with a semisour personality that, I admit, I’m gradually warming up to. On temporary leave from a side job at a decidedly untrendy coffee shop in backwater Tennessee. No solid plan for the future. How’s that?”
“Now who’s dodging?”
She scooped up the baby. “Come on, Wren. Let’s get you a dry diaper.”
* * *
She’d been at the schoolhouse for ten days. Paul Eldridge had shown up once to help Ian sink the support posts for his studio tree house. If Ian wasn’t working on the tree house, he was out on one of his woodland excursions, bringing the smell of fresh air with him when he returned. He did everything but paint.
With the exception of another trip to Wren’s pediatrician and their brief visit to the Eldridge farm, Tess hadn’t been out of the house, and the outdoors beckoned her as enticingly as the smell of Cinnabons in a shopping mall. If only the third week of March hadn’t brought such raw, dreary weather, she’d have taken Wren outside for a walk, but it was too chilly for a newborn.
When she couldn’t stand the confinement any longer, she set Wren’s sleeping nest on the couch, and as Ian returned from