Country Roads Page 6

  “Mrs. Bostic was singing Paul’s praises as the mayor today,” Julia said.

  “They tried to talk him into running for the state legislature,” Tim said. “I offered to be his campaign manager, but he turned me down.”

  “Your size would have scared the voters away,” Paul said.

  “Why didn’t you run?” Julia asked.

  He twirled his wineglass by its stem. “I guess I subscribe to the axiom that all politics are local, and I wanted to keep mine that way.”

  Claire muttered something about “your brother” before she stood abruptly and picked up a couple of plates. Paul gave her a sharp look, and she gave it right back. As Tim pushed back his chair, Claire said, “No, no, everyone else relax. I’ll just clear enough to bring out dessert.”

  Julia ignored her and got up. “I’d like to help. I want to get another look at the Salvador Dalí collage you have in the kitchen.” Picking up her plate and Paul’s, she followed her hostess out of the dining room and stopped in front of the collage. “I love his use of texture in this.”

  Claire took the plates from Julia and stacked them on the counter. “Dalí was a master of mixed media.” Lifting a cardboard bakery box out of the restaurant’s cooler, she put it on the counter, pulling out a pair of scissors to cut the string around it.

  Julia took a deep breath. “Thank you for looking at my paintings. I really needed a different perspective from someone who was, well, an outsider.”

  Claire put down the scissors. “I’m honored you came to me.”

  “I want to ask you one favor.” She tried to inject all of her need into her gaze. “Please promise you’ll always be honest with me.”

  “But my opinion is just one person’s.”

  Julia shook her head. “That doesn’t matter. I trust you.”

  Claire went still. “It’s strange how life works out,” she said, before picking up the scissors to cut the last string around the pastry box. “Back in New York, when your uncle took the wrappings off the first painting I ever saw of yours, I felt this instant sense of connection. It was as if you showed me a better way to look at the world.”

  “That’s a pretty incredible compliment.”

  Claire spread her hands on the stone countertop and stared down at them. “I’ve been where you are, not trusting my own judgment.” She looked up. “Tim is not my first husband. I was married to the man who owned the gallery your uncle brought your paintings into. My then husband and I disagreed about the merits of your work, and he made me feel as though I had completely lost my ability to appraise art.”

  “Oh God, I’m so sorry my paintings caused a problem for you!”

  Claire shook her head. “Milo was doing everything he could to destroy me. In fact, your painting was the first thing I fought my ex-husband for and won. That was when I started rebuilding myself.”

  Julia had been listening with growing anger and incredulity. The idea that this dazzling woman had been torn down by a vindictive husband was horrifying. “I’ll make sure Milo never gets another of piece of my work to sell.”

  “That’s wonderfully supportive of you, but Milo’s gallery went out of business a year ago. I even found it in my heart to be sad for him.” A secret little smile played over Claire’s mouth, and Julia knew she was thinking about Tim. “He’s an unhappy person, and my life has turned out quite well since we parted.”

  Julia wasn’t so charitable. “I would have spray-painted ‘Serves you right’ across his gallery windows as soon as I heard the news.”

  Paul was lounging in his chair, lulled into a satisfied stupor by food and wine, when Claire broke the candlelit silence. “Tim, why don’t you show Julia the rest of the house while Paul and I clean up?”

  “Julia, are you game?” Tim asked, standing up. “Claire picked out all the art, so you should find it interesting.”

  Paul watched the way Julia’s expression blazed with a combination of surprise and delight. She always looked thrilled when someone invited her to do something with them, as though she didn’t expect to be included. Claire referred to her as a recluse, yet he saw nothing shy or retiring about this vibrant woman. It seemed even less apt when you considered she had the gumption to drive a rust heap of a car several hundred miles to ask a total stranger to look at her paintings, especially when she thought they might be bad. There had to be some other reason for her seclusion, and he suspected it was her controlling uncle.

  “Lead the way,” Julia said to Tim, almost leaping out of her chair.

  As they walked out of the room with Tim’s miniature Doberman dancing around their feet, Paul was struck by the contrast between the big vet and the red-haired wood sprite.

  “Do Tim and I look that odd together?” Claire asked, her eyes also on the pair.

  “No, because it’s clear you were made for each other.” He said it without thinking, surprising himself.

  She reached out to touch the back of his hand. “Thank you. That means a lot coming from my oldest friend.” She propped her elbows on the table and changed the subject. “So what happened at the meeting today?”

  He picked up a fork and twirled it through his fingers. “They said I was the obvious choice for the position.”

  She let out a whoop of excitement. “That’s fantastic! Why aren’t you happier?”

  “I didn’t accept it.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Because there’s one significant factor to be ironed out: the location of my new office.”

  “I thought it was going to be in Charleston. Putting it in the state capital makes sense.”

  “Well, it turns out they want the project to go beyond West Virginia. They want it to be national in scope.”

  Her eyes went wide. “That’s even more exciting.”

  He had thought the same thing. In fact, he had started the Pro Bono Project with the idea that it could expand beyond his state’s borders. At lunch when ABA president Ben Serra had put down his knife and fork and leaned forward to say, “We want you to take it nationwide,” adrenaline had surged through Paul’s body so he felt like a racehorse at the starting gate. He was already mentally expanding the scope of his plans when Ben dropped the bombshell that destroyed his euphoria.

  “The office would be in DC.” Paul spun the spoon so fast it blurred. “For political reasons.”

  “Oh dear. That’s a problem.” Her defeated look echoed his own feelings. “There must be some way to work things out for your brother so you can be away during the week at least.”

  He grimaced. He’d run through every possible scenario, but he could come up with no way to keep tabs on Jimmy while working in DC. “I don’t see how. I could have commuted to Charleston every day, but with DC I’d have to stay for the work-week. You know what happened when I took the job in Atlanta. I can’t risk it, for Eric’s sake.”

  The thought of his nephew growing up without his father’s presence in his life was too heartbreaking to consider.

  “Oh, Paul, I’m so sorry. It’s such a brilliant idea.”

  A stab of regret lanced through him, sending the spoon skittering out of his grasp. “It will do a lot of good no matter who runs it.”

  “And you’ll always know you were responsible for it.”

  “Virtue is its own reward?”

  Something in his voice or expression sent Claire on to a new topic. “Well, your virtue was certainly rewarded when you rescued your latest damsel in distress. I never thought I would get to meet the reclusive Julia Castillo.”

  “Are her new paintings good?” He retrieved the spoon and placed it carefully beside his empty coffee cup. “Or were you just being kind?”

  “It would not be kind to tell her they were good if they weren’t.”

  He pushed the glass away and relaxed back in his chair. The suspicion that Claire might have felt sorry for a suffering artist had nagged at him, mostly because he thought the new paintings were so much more interesting than Claire’s famous one. Since he was
no art expert, he figured he must be wrong.

  “It’s strange,” Claire said, picking up the dessert plates. “She’s much younger than I expected based on the emotional depth of her work.”

  He joined her in collecting dishes. “She’s much more Irish than I expected based on her name.”

  “That too. All that red hair is gorgeous. And I think she’s wearing an original Villar. I’d kill for one of those.” She sighed with envy.

  “A what?”

  “Her blouse. I think it’s by an artist named Reuben Villar, who occasionally makes one-of-a-kind clothing. He always insists on a photograph of the purchaser to make sure his creation will suit them and vice versa.”

  “He sounds like a control freak.” He stood up and balanced a stack of dirty cups on one forearm.

  “Of course he is. He’s an artist.”

  As Paul picked up another pile of dishes, Julia and Tim walked back into the dining room. “Careful! You’re going to drop something!” Julia squeaked, diving toward him as he started toward the kitchen.

  Tim caught her wrist with a chuckle. “Paul has the manual dexterity of a circus juggler. He’s never even lost a butter knife.”

  “If the lawyer thing doesn’t work out, you’d make a terrific busboy,” Julia said.

  The candlelight gleamed in the strands of her hair, shimmered over the silk of her blouse, and twinkled like dancing imps in her eyes. He nearly dumped all the dishes on the ground so he could wrap himself in the glow surrounding her. “Busboy was my fallback career if I didn’t pass the bar exam,” he said before he forced himself to follow Claire.

  “Or a magician,” Claire said as she held the kitchen door for him. “He made money by entertaining at children’s birthday parties when he was a teenager,” she explained as Julia came in behind him.

  Putting down the dishes in his right hand, he dug into his pocket and palmed a quarter. As Julia walked by, he reached behind her ear and pretended to pull the coin out of her curls. “Do you always carry change in your hair?”

  She laughed delightedly, and he felt the bitterness of the afternoon’s disappointment begin to drain away. He should have known better than to fight the limits of his life.

  “That metal sculpture you have in your garden is fantastic,” Julia said, as she put the remains of the cake back in its box. “Tim said the local farrier did it. I’d like to talk to him.”

  “Blake’s not big on socializing,” Claire said. “Your best bet is to hang around Healing Springs Stables when a horse is due for shoeing. In fact, we should go for a trail ride together. The mountain paths around here are beautiful.”

  Paul watched in fascination as Julia’s skin went from pale cream to delicate pink. “Well, er, that would be nice. Except I don’t know how to ride.”

  The varying expressions of shock on the three faces turned toward her made Julia’s flush burn even hotter. She hated to admit this fact about herself. “I never learned.”

  She was not allowed to.

  Her stepfather, a skilled equestrian, had put her on a horse when she was six. She had been excited until the horse moved, and she looked down at the ground whizzing past far below her. Panic closed up her throat so tightly she couldn’t breathe, while a cloud of darkness spread over her vision. She woke up cradled against Papi’s chest as he frantically called her name while the horse grazed peacefully beside them. No one realized it, but that had been her first seizure.

  Although her family believed it was nothing more than a panic attack, when she asked to ride again, Papi refused. He was too traumatized by what he thought he had done to his little stepdaughter to attempt it.

  Wanting to please her new daddy, she began to draw the horses she couldn’t ride, trying to grind her terror down by understanding them in little pieces: their hooves, their manes, their slender legs and big bodies, their huge, liquid eyes. Then she fell in love with their power and beauty.

  A few months later, she was watching the antics of a new foal, her drawing pad balanced on her knees, when the next seizure sent her tumbling off the fence she’d been sitting on. Her uncle found her rolled up in a ball inside the pen, sobbing, as the foal’s mother gently snuffled at her.

  It was no longer a panic attack. It was epilepsy.

  She’d lost count of the times she’d opened her eyes to find the anguished faces of her parents, her uncle, or her stepbrothers hovering over her. No matter how she tried to reassure them, her seizures distressed and terrified them, leading her relatives to cosset her in an effort to avoid another episode.

  As she scanned their astonished expressions, she knew she was not going to tell anyone in Sanctuary about the electrical storms that used to wrack her brain. Two years ago, the doctors had agreed to let her stop her antiseizure medication. She’d been fine since then, so there was no need to risk the pity or withdrawal the information always evoked.

  “But you paint your horses with such perception!” Claire looked the most flabbergasted.

  Julia wanted to shrink down and crawl away under the door. Until she felt the solid warmth of Paul’s arm circling her shoulders and pulling her against his side. He ran his palm up and down the silk covering her arm in a gesture of comfort. “It just makes your pictures all the more amazing,” he said.

  “Of course it does,” Claire said, looking horrified. “I’m sorry. I was just so surprised.”

  “Please, it’s fine,” Julia said. And it was, as long as Paul offered her the support of his body. “Just embarrassing when you’re known as an equine artist.”

  “You know, you can still hang around Sharon’s barn and talk to the farrier,” Tim said. “Sharon’s an admirer of your paintings too.”

  “Then I’d like to meet her.”

  Paul stepped away, and the side of her body that had been pressed against his felt chilled. “I’ll take you down there tomorrow,” he said.

  She felt a surge of gratitude for his matter-of-fact tone, but she didn’t want him to babysit her out of a sense of responsibility. It was time for her to stand on her own two feet. “Thanks, but I don’t want you to feel no good deed goes unpunished.”

  “I would hardly call a fifteen-minute drive with a famous artist punishment,” he said. His words were light, but he wasn’t smiling. She got the sinking feeling she had somehow insulted him.

  “A beautiful famous artist,” Tim interjected into the suddenly tense atmosphere, his eyes holding a twinkle.

  When she caught Claire throwing him an approving glance, Julia knew she had put her foot in her mouth. “Well, when you put it that way…”

  “Maybe Sharon will find you a whisper horse,” Claire said.

  “A whisper horse? What does that mean?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way home,” Paul said. “Claire’s explanation might make you question her sanity.”

  Julia’s curiosity was piqued when Tim smiled at Claire in a very private way, and said, “We owe a lot to Claire’s whisper horse.”

  Paul came back to Julia’s side, taking her elbow with his hand. “We should get going. I have an early meeting tomorrow morning.”

  Julia said her good-byes with regret. These people made her feel like one of their circle, but they didn’t handle her with kid gloves. Her uncle treated her like a hothouse flower that had to be protected from the elements and fed special food. But this flower was expected to grow in a certain direction.

  Chapter 8

  OKAY, IS A whisper horse like a horse whisperer?” Julia asked as soon as the ’Vette had cleared the first bend in the Arbuckles’ driveway.

  “I’ll explain, but you’re not going to believe it.”

  “I’m in the mood to believe anything.” Julia settled back in her seat with a contented sigh. “All that good food and wine have made me very receptive.”

  “Now that’s a good way to get yourself in trouble.” Paul’s voice vibrated low and sexy in the dim, enclosed space.

  Julia was glad he couldn’t see her blush. “You know wha
t I meant. Whisper horses.” Even though her comment had been innocent, it wasn’t far from the truth. She would meet him halfway if he decided to lean across the gearshift and kiss her.

  “The owner of Healing Springs Stables, Sharon Sydenstricker…” His voice held a husky rasp, and he paused to clear it. “Sharon, who is the most grounded human being in most ways, has this strange idea that every person has a special horse. Once you find this special horse, you will be overwhelmed by the desire to whisper all your troubles in its ear. Said whisper horse will then help you solve all your problems. And everyone lives happily ever after. In Claire and Tim’s case, anyway.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a strange idea. Horses are very good listeners. You can tell what the horse is feeling just by the angle of its ears.”

  “I don’t discount the effectiveness of talking out your problems. That’s part of the reason why people love their dogs and their cats and their birds, and even their lawyers.” His tone was wry on the last phrase. “However, Sharon thinks there’s one particular horse for each person, and the horse actually helps fix things.”

  “I’m still willing to go along with the concept because I think it might work psychologically. What about Claire’s whisper horse?”

  “Claire decided her whisper horse was Willow, a very sick, abused mare who Sharon rescued from a racetrack. Tim was the horse’s vet. When Claire was about to leave Sanctuary for good, Willow took a turn for the worse. That forced Claire to stay long enough for Tim to realize what a fool he was to let her go.”

  “And after that you still don’t believe in whisper horses?”

  He took his eyes off the road long enough to throw her a sharp look. “Tim would have come to his senses and gone after her.”

  She sensed a tension in Paul’s mood, so she shifted away from the subject of Claire and Tim’s love story. “So I guess you don’t have a whisper horse?”