Petals on the Pillow (5 page)

Kelly gathered up her dishes and took them to the sink. She walked to the coffee maker to refill her cup and immediately wished she hadn’t wandered so close to Harrison St. John’s magnetic pull. The air around her sizzled as he slid the mug from her hand and refilled it himself.

“I trust you had more pleasant dreams after you returned to your room, Miss Donovan?” he said as he handed back her full coffee mug. For a moment, their fingers touched and he resisted her effort to pull away. The resonance of his deep voice thrummed through her, as did the heat from his hard blunt fingertips.

“I don’t know about the dreams. I slept though. And you?” Kelly returned his gaze evenly, although her breath had contin
ued to quicken and she knew her cheeks must be stained crimson. He released the mug, but the effect of his voice still had her wanting to cross her legs.

Harrison shrugged. A twist of a smile moved his lips.

Mrs. Jenkins bustled past them, apparently oblivious to the electricity that bristled between Harrison and Kelly. “Miss Kendra says that Mr. David will be paying us a call today,” she said over her shoulder.

Harrison glanced at his watch and Kelly watched his face go impassive, blank. It was a strange process and a unique one for an artist to watch. Used to picking out the subtle variations of shape and proportion that make everyone unique, Kelly still couldn’t quite pinpoint how Harrison rearranged those features into a blank mask at will. “Yes, in a few hours.”

“I made those orange currant scones he loves so much. I’ll bring them in with your tea.”

“That won’t be necessary, Dora. I sincerely doubt David will be here long enough for tea, much less scones.”

She turned from the butcher’s block, a hurt expression creasing her face. “Won’t be staying? It’s been so long since you’ve seen him. He’s barely been here since ... well, since before. I thought he’d be here at least for dinner.”

“Well, it’s time to think differently.” The iron in Harrison’s voice effectively stopped any further discussion. He looked at his watch again and set his mug down on the countertop with an exaggerated care that made Kelly wonder if he’d had a sud
den urge to throw it.

She cast a curious glance over at Mrs. Jenkins, but the housekeeper hid her expression by turning to the stove. Something in the set of her shoulders, however, made her think that the entire exchange had the older woman more upset than she wanted Kelly to see. Kelly mumbled a few words about not keeping Betsy waiting and crept out as quietly as a mouse.

***

Harrison watched the kitchen door swing shut and experi
enced the same mixture of relief and frustration he’d experienced watching Kelly’s balcony door close behind her last night. Then, the wind at his back and the cold creeping up his spine had only served to remind him of how warm she’d been and how tantalizingly close he’d come to tasting the honeyed heat of her lips. He’d been inches away from folding her in his arms and pressing the sweet rounded curves of her body into his. Damned if he hadn’t come close to it again just handing her her coffee this morning.

God, it had been way too long since he’d felt the yielding softness of a woman in his arms and in his bed. Way, way too long.

Last night, however, he had only had to turn his head a fraction of an inch to see the dock and remember why he was living in this self-imposed solitude. Shut away from society these past two years, he hadn’t had many temptations to resist. Which was just the way he wanted it. He took a deep breath and shoved his hair back with both hands. This woman had just taken him off guard. That was all. She’d banged in here with her sassy mouth and her amber eyes, as smooth and rich as melted caramel, and knocked him off balance.

When he’d rounded the corner of the Manor last night, he’d nearly frozen at the sight of her in her thin white nightshirt over a pair of jeans that seemed molded to her, drawing furi
ously in the moonlight. He’d watched, fascinated, as she nibbled at her lower lip with even white teeth and her hair floated around her like a living halo.

He had had to clench his fists at his sides to keep them from rising of their own accord to tangle themselves in Kelly’s wild mane. The idea had been in the back of his mind since he had watched her coming down the stairs to the drawing room. Golden and sun-kissed with her tawny hair and hazel eyes, she glowed against the silvered woods and house in the moonlight. A real girl in a treacherous fairy-tale landscape.

When he’d stepped closer to peer over her shoulder, careful to avoid a board he knew creaked in damp weather, he’d seen the woods in front of him, his woods, take shape before his eyes on the pages of her drawing tablet. With a few lines here and a few more there, she’d captured the shape of the trees as they reflected the moonlight from their branches and leaves. She had turned a charcoal stick on its side and the pebbly texture of the path had appeared under her fingers.

Then the dock had taken form. Elizabeth’s dock. The dock he forced himself to face every night so he wouldn’t forget. As if he could forget the unforgettable.

His shoulders twitched in another shrug. He had too much riding on the events of the next few months to be distracted. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—let this back-talking starving artist cloud his mind.

That thought returned again with the renewed force of a new day, and Harrison banged out of the kitchen behind Kelly and headed for his office.

***

“So if you don’t want Cinderella, what do you want?” Kelly asked as she smoothed spackle over a crack in the wall, gently blending the patch smooth.

“I don’t know,” Betsy replied.

“We’ve got to come up with something. I need to start some sketches. This spackle will take a day to dry. Then we’ll have to put on a layer of primer. We should let that sit for at least two days in this climate. God, it’s wet here. I think this island is worse than Seattle. Anyway, that gives us three days to go from preliminary sketches to final working drawings. Not the greatest of timelines.”

“Do you have to get it done right away?” Betsy asked anx
iously. “I mean, the longer you took to get the mural done, the longer you could stay. Right?”

Kelly smiled down at the little girl from her perch on the ladder. “That’s sweet, honey. I wish it could work that way, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to take your daddy’s money and run. What I’ll make off this mural is only about one third of what I’ll need to get through next year.”

“Is school that expensive?”

“Nah. My tuition and books are all paid for by a couple of scholarships. I still need to make some extra to eat and pay rent, but I have some other ... um ... commitments.”

“Oh.” Betsy picked at the wrist of her cardigan for a few moments before she squinted up at Kelly again. “Like boyfriends?”

“No. Not like boyfriends.” Kelly backed down off the lad
der and began to clean the plaster off the little palette knife she’d used to smooth it on the wall. She plopped it back in her case. “All right, the wall is smooth now. So, what are we going to put on it?”

Betsy rolled her eyes and threw herself down on the big canopy-covered bed. “Anything but Cinderella.”

“Is there a movie or a book you’re crazy about?” Kelly plopped down on the bed beside her.

“Lots of them.”

“Like what?”

“I dunno.”

Kelly threw herself back on the bed and stared up into the pink and blue flowered canopy. “I need some help here, kiddo. Don’t leave me flapping in the breeze like this.”

Betsy giggled. “How about something from
Alien?.
I loved that movie. I’ve rented it at least four times now. It’d be great to see the look on Kendra’s face when she walked in here if there was something really creepy on the wall.”

“Great idea. We could do that scene where the alien comes out of that guy’s stomach,” Kelly said.

“Oh, yeah. That was totally gross.”

“And totally inappropriate, too. I can’t see your Dad forking over the last of the money he owes me for painting a scene of bursting entrails on your wall.”

“But if I’m your patron, who cares what Daddy thinks?” Betsy asked.

Kelly smiled. “Unfortunately for us both, you’re only a patron-in-training. Until you can sign a check, your dad gets the final say.”

Betsy made a face. “I don’t suppose you want to do something from
Jurassic Park?'

Kelly rolled over on her stomach and gazed at the wall in question. “I love dinosaurs. That could be really cool. We could do like a whole tropical type scene with all the plant-eaters in the water.”

“Too little kid.” Betsy shook her head. “I was thinking more about the part where the Tyrannosaurus Rex ate the lawyer.” Kelly arched a brow and grimaced at Betsy. “Let me guess. Kendra’s got a law degree.”

Betsy nodded.

“What have you got against her anyway?”

“I dunno. She just gives me the creeps.”

“What exactly did you mean when you said she’d ruined everything?” Kelly still squinted at the wall, tilting her head from one side to another as she watched the light patterns from the window move across what was to be her canvas.

Betsy swung her legs, kicking at the poufy eyelet lace bed skirt with her sneakers. “You can’t talk to Dad anymore with
out talking to her first. I thought if I came up with something really outrageous, Dad would at least talk to me about it. But no.” Betsy flopped backward on the bed, too. “Kendra had to step in and make everything so reasonable and easy, as usual. ‘Certainly, Harrison. I’m sure we can find a muralist.’ And ‘Of course I’ll take care of helping Betsy pick an appropriate subject, Harrison.’ It makes me sick.”

“You’re angry because she made it easy for your dad to hire me:

“When you put it that way, it sounds stupid.” Betsy sighed and plucked at her sweater. “She just gives me the heebie-jeebies, okay?”

“Okay. How long has Kendra lived here anyway?” Kelly asked.

“She moved in a few months before Momma died. Daddy wanted to spend more time working here and less time over in Seattle during the week. He said he couldn’t do it without some kind of assistant.” Betsy shrugged. “Kendra moved in and that was that.”

Kelly shrugged. “Okay. Back to our mural, if you want something more mature, tell me what you want to be when you grow up.”

“Promise you won’t laugh if I tell you.” Betsy buried her face in a pillow.

Kelly peeled the corner of the pillow away to peek in at Betsy’s face. “I promise I won’t laugh.”

“I want to be an astronaut.”

“An astronaut?”

“I knew you’d laugh.”

“Who’s laughing?
I think that’s great.” Kelly jumped up from the bed and began to pace Betsy’s bedroom. “We could have a lot of fun with this, kiddo. We could do a mural of famous women aviators.”

“Like Amelia Earhart?” Betsy offered from the bed.

Kelly turned and pointed her finger at Betsy. “Exactly. And Bessie Coleman. And what’s her face. You know, the first woman in space.”

“You mean Sally Ride. But who’s Bessie Coleman?”

“She was a black woman aviator. She lived at about the same time as Amelia Earhart.”

“How do you know about her? Are you into flying, too?”

“No. There’s a street near O’Hare airport in Chicago that’s named after her. That’s pretty much all I know about her. I don’t even know what she looked like or what kind of plane she flew.” Kelly sat back down on Betsy’s bed. “In fact, I don’t know what kind of plane Amelia Earhart flew or what she looked like either. We’re going to have to do some research.”

***

Three hours later, Kelly stood up and stretched. A sea of computer printouts surrounded the floor around her. “I can’t believe you know how to find all this stuff, squirt. You found pictures of everything we needed.”

Betsy grinned from over at her desk, which Kelly thought sported enough computer equipment to launch the space shut
tle. Kelly tapped Betsy on the top of the head with a rolled-up printout. “Let’s take a break. I think I’m almost to the point where we can at least let your dad know what we’re up to, but I need to get away from it for a while.”

“What do you want to do?” Betsy asked as she tapped but
tons and clicked her mouse until her computer shut down.

“I want to gather up the last of the supplies we’ll need for tomorrow and then I want a cookie and a cold drink,” Kelly announced.

“Okay, but can we have the cookie first? I’m starving.”

“Deal,” Kelly agreed readily and followed Betsy out into the hall.

“Do you think Dad’ll like the new drawings?”

“I don’t know. I sure hope so. I’m not sure when I’ve ever put together a working sketch like that faster than I did yours today. You inspired me.”

Betsy threw a grin back at Kelly over her shoulder. “When are we going to show it to him?”

“How about tonight before dinner?”

Betsy stopped abruptly. “In the drawing room?”

“At least we’ll have something to talk about,” Kelly said, remembering the stilted conversation and awkward silences of the night before.