Another Woman's Man (7 page)

“So how old are you?” he countered.

“Too damn old for you to ask me that question.”

“Fair enough.” He started walking again and she followed him. “Look, I'm going to take a quick shower and change clothes. I'll definitely be back in enough time to show you where we're holding the art class, though.”

“OK, I guess I'll wander around for a bit to kill some time.” She looked around the gym. “I'll go exploring and meet you back here in thirty minutes, if that works.”

He looked her up and down. “You know, I can show you where the women's locker room is too if you need to change clothes.”

Change clothes?
Dawn looked down at herself. She was wearing a plum-colored, fitted V-neck cashmere sweater, dark-wash skinny jeans, and high-heeled black calfskin boots. Compared to what she usually wore, her current ensemble was pretty boring. It had been an inner battle not to throw on more accessories or a more eye-catching top.

“What's wrong with my clothes?” she asked.

“
That's
what you wear to paint?”

“We're sketching, not painting!” She dropped her hand to her hip. “Besides, don't tell me you're going to be anal about this too! If I had to clear my wardrobe with you before I came here, you should have told me, Professor X!”

He shook his head and raised his hand in defense. “Hey, wear what you want. It doesn't make a difference to me.” He turned around and headed toward another set of steel double doors. “But if the guys in the class are more focused on you than on their sketches and no one gets any art done, then we know who to blame, don't we?”

 

“All right, quiet down! Quiet!” Xavier closed his eyes and sighed as the noise continued.

Dawn leaned against the steel desk behind her and fought back a smile. It looked like Xavier was having no luck calming down the room of thirty or so kids ranging in age from eleven to sixteen. They continued to laugh and shout at one another. One was dancing in the corner. Another was loudly reciting a popular hip-hop tune. Two were shooting spitballs across the room through bendy straws, using their sketch pads and easels as protective shields.

Finally, Xavier raised his fingers to his lips and let out an ear-piercing whistle that made everyone stop in their tracks. Dawn flinched at the harsh sound, but it worked. The clamor finally died down and all the kids looked toward the front of the room.

“Thank you.” He then pointed to Dawn. “All right, I want you all to say hi to Miss Gibbons.”

She waved to everyone. “Hello.”

“Hi!”

“Hey!”

“What's poppin', cutie?”
one boy yelled, making a few in the class erupt into a chorus of laughter.

Xavier gave the stare-of-death to the wannabe Casanova before he continued.

“Miss Gibbons was nice enough to fill in for Mr. Monroe. She'll be teaching today's class. So I'm going to hand things over to her for now. Tell them a little bit about yourself.”

All eyes in the room suddenly focused on her.

Dawn was accustomed to hobnobbing at gallery openings and shaking hands at benefits, but she had never experienced the same level of nervousness that she felt now with more than two dozen teenagers staring at her.

She stepped forward. “Well, my name's Dawn Gibbons. I'm not a teacher, but I'm an artist and the director for Templeton Gallery in Northwest, so I think I know enough to get us through today's lesson.” She laughed anxiously and looked around the room. “I heard your last lesson was sketching still life. I thought it might be a fun exercise to move on to portraiture.”

“What's that?” one of the students shouted.

“It means sketching a person,” she explained. “I want you guys to pair up and sketch each other.”

“Do we have to get naked like in the movies?” another one yelled.

Dawn laughed again. “No, you don't have to get naked.”

She spent the next fifteen minutes at the chalkboard, talking the students through a beginner's guide of how to draw a portrait. She started with the basic shape of an oval and eventually progressed to a recognizable face, answering questions as the students shouted them at her.

Meanwhile, Xavier sat quietly in the corner of the room in one of the student desks, watching her with his arms crossed over his chest. She tried to ignore him, but the whole time she could feel his eyes on her. He made her nervous all over again.

Dawn had been around fine men before. She had no idea why she was reacting so strongly to this one.

Forbidden fruit maybe
, she speculated.

“All right,” she said, wiping chalk from her hands and turning away from the board. “Everyone grab a partner and start sketching. I'll walk around the room to see how you guys are doing.”

Dawn had expected the kids not to take the lesson very seriously, but she was pleasantly surprised to discover she had been wrong. The room was mostly silent after the students paired off and began sketching. She walked through the hushed maze of teenagers and easels, observing each kid and nodding with approval. When it looked like they were all diligently working on their assignment, she decided to stop hovering. Dawn walked back to the front of the room and sat down on a chair beside the teacher's desk.

“You aren't going to draw anyone?” Xavier asked, strolling toward her.

She looked up in surprise. She had managed for a few blissful moments to forget he was in the room, but now she was fully aware of him again—his height, his body heat, and the smell of his cologne.

“I hadn't planned on it.”

“So I don't get a portrait?”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Why, Mr. Hughes, are you asking me to sketch you?”

“Sure, why not?” He grabbed one of the extra pads and pencils on her desk. “I'll sketch you too. We'll do each other.”

Dawn had a saucy reply to that double entendre waiting to spring from her lips, but she bit it back.

Sister's fiancé,
she reminded herself for the umpteenth time that day.
He's also not even thirty yet.

“OK,” she said, flipping open her pad. “Why not?”

He pulled up a chair in front of her and they both sketched for several minutes, not saying anything.

“You're good at this, you know,” he blurted out, looking up from his sketch pad.

“I should hope so. I wouldn't be much of an artist if I wasn't,” she mumbled, trying to get the correct arch of his brow.

“I meant
teaching
. I meant you're good at teaching, Dawn. I've never seen the kids this focused during art class.”

She sketched the bridge of his nose. “Maybe my outfit was more of an inspiration than a distraction.”

“Seriously, would you consider coming back here to teach again? Maybe volunteering? We could use the help.”

“Would you consider holding still?” Dawn reached for him. “You asked me to sketch you, so stop moving!”

The instant she held his chin, she knew it was a mistake. An electric charge shot up her arm when she touched him. It made her catch her breath.

This time Dawn saw something lingering in those pale gray irises that she hadn't seen before. This time his gaze wasn't completely innocent.

“It's just your imagination,” the voice in her head admonished. “Get a grip!”

Dawn dropped her hand from his chin. “Almost . . . almost finished,” she whispered shakily, returning her attention to her sketch.

He returned to his sketch too.

“So how did you get into this?” he asked out of the blue a few minutes later. “What made you wanna become an artist?”

She relaxed a little. If there was anything she loved talking about, it was art. “I was doodling even when I was little. I would draw pictures of my mother, my grandmother, and my sisters. I took a few art classes in high school and won some awards for my watercolors and oil paintings. That's when I figured out what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be in the art world—in any shape or form. It didn't matter.”

“But you have to have a preference. Which would you rather be, gallery director or artist?”

She chuckled as she drew his lower lip, retracing the line. “Artist, by a long shot. But being a gallery director pays the bills.”

“You could get a rich guy to pay your bills for you,” he suggested.

Her gaze shot up from her drawing pad. She narrowed her eyes.

“If you did, all your problems would be solved,” he continued.

“Maybe . . . but I don't need a rich man to take care of me.”

“You mean you don't need a rich man to take care of you
anymore
.”

“No,” she said tightly, not shocked that he had found out about that part of her past. Most people did eventually. She guessed that explained why he was suspicious about her. But it irritated her that he was bringing it up now. “Not anymore.”

“So why the change?”

She sucked her teeth and lowered her pad and pencil. “Look, I don't know if this is really an appropriate conversation to have in front of a class of kids,” she whispered.

He tilted his head and nodded. “Fair enough.”

She returned to her sketching.

“So why'd you stop having rich men pay your bills?” he asked, making her sigh in exasperation and lower her pad yet again. She thought they were done talking about this.

“What changed?” he persisted.

“I'm pleading the Fifth on that one.”

“We're not in court, Dawn.”

“So stop with your line of questioning.”

“I'm only making casual conversation.”

“This is pretty damn heavy for ‘casual conversation,' ” she snapped.

“Are you always this evasive?”

“Are you always so
persistent?
”

He gave a charming smile that made her a smidge less pissed off. “I prefer to think of it more as curious than persistent.”

“I bet you do.”

“So come on! Tell me. What changed for you? What made you rule out rich guys?”

She relented. “Nothing, Xavier. I just want to focus on my work. It's hard to do both . . . serving two masters and all that.”

“So no more time for rich men, then?”

“No more time for men
period
.”

This time
his
eyes darted up from his drawing pad. He stared at her for several seconds. “I see,” he murmured quietly.

The class ended half an hour later. Dawn was shocked when a few of the students came to the front of the class and said how much they enjoyed today's lesson. A few even gave her a hug.

Maybe pimple-faced teenagers aren't so bad,
she thought with mild amusement as she packed her things. But she couldn't say the same for Xavier Hughes. All day long he had made her feel uneasy. His questions toward the end of class were the icing on the cake of awkwardness between them.

Dawn walked through the community center's doors and pulled her keys from her purse. She was only a few feet from her car when she heard the pounding footsteps of someone running up behind her. She turned and found Xavier striding toward her.

“Dawn! Wait up!”

“What?” she asked, frowning up at him.

“I wanted to . . . to catch you,” he said between huffs of breath. “You never answered my question from earlier. I'm serious about that offer. I'd love for you to volunteer and teach here. We offer art classes about twice a month. Would you be interested?”

Me? A teacher?

The kids had made the experience at least partially fun today, but she couldn't imagine doing this all the time, let alone seeing Xavier twice a month. She didn't know if she could stand that torture.

“Xavier, I'm not—”

“Yes, you are,” he insisted. “If you're going to say that you're not a teacher, I beg to differ. I saw it today.”

She shook her head. “But I don't know if I can put the time into—”

“It's only two hours a weekend, two to three times a month, if you count the occasional field trip. I understand being busy. I'm general counsel for a Fortune 500 company. I'm busy too. And I get that you want to focus on your work, that you don't have time for men. You're an independent woman. Point made. But this . . . this doesn't take a lot of effort or time on your part, and as long as these kids are here, they aren't on the streets getting into trouble.”

Damn, he's laying it on thick.
Now he was making her feel like her refusal was the same as neglecting needy kids.

She pursed her lips.

“Try it for a month. See if you like it.”

She contemplated his offer for a bit. “Fine,” she finally said, wanting to kick herself even as she uttered the word.

He grinned. “You mean it? You'll do it?”

“
Yes!
I said I would!” She unlocked her car door and shooed him away. “Now leave me alone. This independent woman has about twenty errands she has to do today, and it's already almost two.”

He nodded, still smiling. “Sure, don't let me stop you.” He immediately stepped forward and opened the car door for her. “Sorry. You may be an independent woman, but I'm still an old-fashioned guy.”

“Uh, th-thanks.” She climbed inside, pretending not to feel the fluttering in her stomach as she brushed his arm. He shut the car door behind her.

“Drive carefully,” he said through the glass. “And thank you, Dawn.”

She nodded and pulled off.

The butterflies wouldn't be ignored. They were fluttering like crazy now, trying to beat their way out of her stomach.

“C
ome on!” Cynthia yelled before blaring her car horn again. “We're going to be late!” she shouted out the lowered tinted car window.

She watched as her sister Dawn ran down the sidewalk toward her double-parked Lexus SUV.

“Ow, damn it!” Dawn shouted as the heel of her calfskin boot got caught in a crack in the cement.

Dawn's purse dangled from her forearm, dragging near the ground. She was still shoving her other arm into her wool coat as Cynthia beeped her horn again. Dawn swung open the passenger-side door and climbed inside.

“I'm coming! I'm coming! Jesus!” Dawn yelled as she landed on the leather seat and slammed the door closed behind her. “If I knew you were going to be like this, I would have driven to the cake-tasting appointment myself!”

“Uh-huh.” Cynthia rolled her eyes, flipped on her turn signal, and pulled into traffic. She glanced at the speedometer and wondered how far she could go over the speed limit without getting a ticket. “That would mean you'd actually have to get involved in Mama's wedding planning and figure out where the hell the bakery is.”

“Wow!” Dawn buckled her seat belt and eyed her sister. “So it's like that, huh, Miss Gibbons?”

“
Yes,
it's like that!”

“Cindy, what the hell crawled up your ass and died? What's with the attitude?”

Oh, where to start,
Cynthia thought flippantly as she drove.

How about the fact that somehow all the planning for their mother's wedding had fallen squarely into her lap? Cynthia had suggested that their mother get a little more involved (hell, Cynthia had even found the cake baker and set up the appointment for today herself) or maybe even hire a wedding planner for the shindig, but Yolanda had shot down that idea. She said she sensed that something was going on with Reggie and he seemed to be getting more and more distant and ambivalent about their nuptials. Her mother worried that he was starting to get cold feet. Yolanda thought it would be better to concentrate her efforts on making sure her husband-to-be was taken care of and happy rather than deal with coordinating with a wedding planner to iron out the details.

“I'm sure whatever you organize will be wonderful, sweetheart,” Yolanda had said over the phone.

Cynthia had been tempted to remind her mother that she had a full-time job and it wasn't
her
wedding, but out of respect, she bit her tongue.

Another reason for Cynthia's burgeoning bad mood: She was having little to no luck on the romantic front lately. Her own finances were starting to get a bit shaky now that her daughter, Clarissa, had started college and seemed to require an endless stream of money for books, architecture class supplies, sorority pledge events, and so on. Cynthia needed a man of means like
yesterday,
but the only candidates she had so far either had way too little cash or would require too much time and effort that she just didn't have right now.

But she couldn't reveal any of these worries to her sisters. No, all of them were too wrapped up in their own lives: Lauren with her restaurant and new family, Stephanie with her new man and her pregnancy, and now Dawn with her long-lost father.

No, none of them had time for
little ol' Cindy!

“I told you that we needed to be at the bakery by four, and for some reason you can't understand why I have an attitude,” Cynthia snapped at Dawn. “Mama is waiting on us, and you know how she hates to wait.”

“Well, sorry!” Dawn flipped down the car visor mirror and began to reapply her lipstick. “But one of the things I had to do today ran longer than I thought it would. It threw off my entire schedule. I didn't want to be late, but it was out of my control.”

“What thing?” Cynthia asked, glancing at her sister.

Dawn didn't respond but instead continued to stare at her reflection. She fluffed her bob, combing her hair into place with her fingers.

“What
thing,
Dawn?” Cynthia boomed.

“I was teaching an art class to teenagers! Damn!” Dawn muttered, flipping up the visor. “Cindy, you really need to chill the hell out.”

“Teaching an art class?”
Cynthia did a double take, almost missing the stop sign in front of her. She slammed on the brakes, barely missing an old woman who was hobbling through the crosswalk with her cane and a Yorkshire terrier. “Did you get a DUI and not tell anyone? Did the judge sentence you to community service or something?”

“No, I didn't get a DUI!” Dawn shouted as they pulled off. “I just agreed to teach at a community center in the city, that's all. Xavier said the center was in a bind and needed a replacement teacher, so I—”

“Wait. Who's Xavier?”

“I've told you about him before. I met him the same night that my father came to the gallery. Remember? He's general counsel at my father's company, seems to be the volunteer coordinator at the community center, and”—Dawn put the cap on her lipstick and dropped both back into her purse—“he's engaged to my sister, Constance, though I'm amazed those two are together. He's so serious and earnest and she's so . . . so ditzy. She's
really
self-involved and definitely not his intellectual equal.”

“Oh, really?” Cynthia cocked an eyebrow. “Sounds like this Xavier guy has made quite the impression on you.”

Dawn frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You don't think Constance is worthy of him, for one.”

“I didn't quite put it
that
way, Cindy. Don't exaggerate!”

“Secondly, you agreed to teach art to a bunch of kids at a community center to help him out when I know damn well there is no way in hell you would normally do something like that.”

“I was trying to be nice! He works for Herb. He's my future brother-in-law. I thought . . . I thought I'd do him a favor, you know? No big deal.”

“Yeah, no big deal, which is why you're getting all flustered.” Cynthia smirked.

“I'm not flustered! I'm simply trying to explain why . . .” Dawn loudly huffed. “Look, he's not even my type. He's boring, uptight, and way too young for me!”

“What's too young?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“Nice! Twenty-nine, huh? Being that young isn't necessarily a bad thing, girl. It could mean he has
a lot
of stamina.”

“Shut up, Cindy,” Dawn snapped.

“Now who has an attitude? Sounds like somebody definitely has a thing for Mr. Sexy Young Lawyer.”

“I do
not!”

Cynthia giggled, knowing that when her sister denied anything this vehemently, it was definitely true.

“Oh, please! You don't fool me! You're attracted to the man. Don't lie!” She glanced at Dawn, who now looked sheepish. “Boring and uptight, huh? I know the truth! He's young, probably smart, and I'm guessing cute. Plus, he's a lawyer at a big tech company, so he has to be pulling in the low six figures—
minimum!
Sounds like a good candidate. So are you thinking of stealing him from under ditzy Constance's pretty little nose? Planning to work the ol' Gibbons charm on him?”

“I can't believe you would even ask me that. You know the rules! I would never steal my sister's man!”

“
Your sister's man?
By ‘sister' you mean Constance?” Cynthia shook her head, sending her long hair whipping around her shoulders. “Oh, no, honey! The rules do not—I repeat—
do not
apply to her! She is not a Gibbons girl.”

“But she
is
my sister! She's not my most favorite person in the world, but we have the same father, so as far as I'm concerned, the rules
do
apply to her. I have no interest in stealing her fiancé.”

Cynthia squinted, trying to comprehend what she was hearing. “What in the hell are they putting in the Kool-Aid over there? What are they feeding you at Windhill Downs?”

“Huh? What are you talking about now?”

“You're acting like they're your family!” Cynthia shouted. “You said you were just doing this to connect with your father, and now you're talking about how you consider Constance to be your sister! What's going on here?”

“Cindy, they
are
my family! I didn't grow up with them like I grew up with you guys, but they're still my relatives. I'm not going to treat them like total strangers just because their last name isn't Gibbons. Not when some of them are making a legitimate effort to reach out to me.”

Cynthia pulled into a parking space in front of the bakery's glass front. Their mother's Mercedes was already parked in the space next to them.

“I knew it,” Cynthia said, slamming her fist on the steering wheel.
“I knew it!”

“You knew what?”

Cynthia unbuckled her seat belt and turned to glare at her sister.

She had suspected this would happen. All her other sisters had fallen into this trap at some point, but she had hoped that Dawn wouldn't be dumb enough to do it too.

“I knew that you would get all sucked up in this romantic idea of being around your father and having a new family. But what does Mama always say?
We're
important, Dawn! Not those people. You obviously are going through a crisis of allegiance!”

“A crisis of allegiance?”
Dawn threw up her hands. “Would you listen to yourself? You sound like we're at war!”

“We
are
at war! We always have been! It's been the Gibbons family against the world.
Us
against
them!
But Lauren and Stephanie lost sight of that when they let their
vaginas
do the thinking for them! And now you look like you're about to fall in the same damn trap, except you're falling in love with another family instead of a man!”

Dawn closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “I'm really trying to understand the crazy-ass line of reasoning you're following, Cindy, but I can't. There is absolutely nothing wrong with me trying to connect with my father and his family.”

“Oh, there isn't? Then why haven't you told Mama about it yet? Huh?”

Dawn opened her eyes. “Well, because . . . because I . . . I mean, she's been so preoccupied with the wedding and . . . and I haven't had the chance to.”

“Is that so?” Cynthia asked as she threw open her car door. “Well, why don't we tell Mama
right now?
”

Dawn's large eyes widened, almost popping out of her head. “What? Cindy, don't!”

Cynthia slammed the car door shut and strutted toward the bakery with her high heels clicking over asphalt.

“Damn it, Cindy!” Dawn shouted frantically as she unbuckled her seat belt and climbed out of the car. “You better not tell on me!”

“Watch me!”

Cynthia glanced over her shoulder to see Dawn running toward her. She raced to grab the door handle just as Dawn grabbed a fistful of Cynthia's gray-colored wool coat and pulled. Cynthia tugged back. The two women grunted as they tussled.

It was like they were reenacting one of their childhood fights, except this time they weren't racing to get the last Rocky Road ice cream in the freezer or fighting over who would get to wear the pink sweater to school that day.

When Dawn grabbed another part of the coat, Cynthia simply shrugged out of the sleeves, leaving the entire garment balled up in Dawn's arms. Cynthia bolted inside and raced down the short corridor.

“Damn it, Cindy! Don't do it!” Dawn shouted after her.

“Why? You said there's nothing to hide!” she called before stepping into the bakery.

The space was well lit and filled with the fragrant smell of vanilla and sugar. Several displays of fanciful fondant cakes sat on glass pedestals around the room. One looked like an imperial egg embellished with fake jewels and gold. Another looked like a medieval castle with a moat and towers with spires.

Their mother, Yolanda, sat at a table near the counter with the baker, smiling as she idly flipped through cake portfolios.

“Dawn has something to tell you!” Cynthia announced breathlessly, making Yolanda and the baker look up at her in confusion.

Dawn immediately skidded through the open doorway with Cynthia's coat still balled up in her arms.

“Tell her!” Cynthia ordered.

“Tell me what?” Yolanda asked as she turned in her chair to face both of her daughters. “Girls, what is this about?”

Dawn cut her eyes at her eldest sister. “This isn't the time or the place,” she said through clenched teeth. “And you know it!”

Yolanda slowly rose to her feet. “The time or the place for what?”

“Nothing, Mama,” Dawn said quickly, making Cynthia shake her head in bemusement.

“You are
such
a coward,” Cynthia said.

“And you are such a bitch!”

“All right now! Both of you, stop it!” Yolanda caught herself, pursed her lips, and glanced at the baker, who seemed utterly astounded by what she was witnessing. Yolanda pasted on a polite smile. “I am so sorry. Would you please excuse us for a few minutes?”

The baker slowly nodded, closing the cover of one of the albums she had been showing Yolanda. “Sure, uh . . . Take your time.”

Yolanda's smile disappeared as she strode toward her daughters. She snapped her fingers and glared at them.

“In the hall,” she said tightly. They both followed her, though Dawn paused to give a menacing stare at her sister. She looked at Cynthia as if she could strangle her that very second. When they stepped into the corridor, Yolanda turned to them with her arms crossed over her chest. Her beautiful face was tight with rage.

“How dare . . . how
dare
you embarrass me like that! Acting as if you're bratty twelve-year-olds! I won't have it!”