Sapphire and Shadow (A Woman's Life) (31 page)

She was running, he thought. He wondered if it was from him or herself. The need to know burned within him, but he banked it down. He had to give her time to readjust, time to fully trust him.

He lifted the young girl into his arms. Jocelyn went on sleeping. “Let’s go. My car’s in the parking lot behind the gallery.”

Chapter Thirty-two

It was Jocelyn’s first day at school and Johanna tried to keep that fact uppermost in her mind that morning, but other thoughts kept crowding in. They were making it difficult to keep her role as the sympathetic mother clear-cut. Mother was also a woman, a woman with a problem. She was having trouble with her emotions, with the path her feelings were taking. They were ganging up on her, surfacing, and it was all Joshua’s fault even though he might not know it. Joshua had been more than kind. But his kindness stirred something within her that she didn’t want roused. Not now, not ever. The girl in her, the girl who had fallen in love at nineteen and dreamed of living happily ever after, still yearned for commitment. But the woman who had endured a marriage of recriminations and deceit knew that commitment was tantamount to a death sentence. To commit to a man would only mean that you began waiting for the inevitable death of love.

She wanted Joshua to stay a friend, nothing more. But he was entrenching himself in her life, taking an interest in every aspect that concerned her and Jocelyn and he was making it so easy to lean, to relax, to dream again.

But she knew she couldn’t. She’d been there before and she had vowed that she would never let that happen to her again.

Yet the more she relaxed, the more tense she became. She was a living, breathing paradox.

She looked across the tiny table at Jocelyn. Her daughter had barely touched her breakfast. Normally, Jocelyn ate everything in sight.

Nerves
, Johanna thought.
Poor thing
. She reached over and put her hand over Jocelyn’s and squeezed. “It’ll be all right, honey.”

Jocelyn wanted desperately to be blasé, but all there was to draw on was terror. “No, it won’t.”

Johanna remembered first days and her heart ached for her daughter. “Everyone’s always nervous the first day at school.”

“What do they have to be nervous about?” Jocelyn complained. “They all know each other.”

“How do you know that? There might be a lot of new people coming in.” Johanna put her coffee cup in the sink, where it would remain until she had a chance to deal with it. Housework had acquired a fairly low priority in her life these days. She searched for the right words, something that would make her daughter feel better. “This isn’t a small town, honey, where everyone knows everyone else. People move around a lot in New York.”

Jocelyn looked unconvinced as she toyed with oatmeal that had grown cold and hard.

Johanna eyed the mess. She wouldn’t have eaten that on a bet. But Jocelyn had always loved oatmeal. Until now. “I borrowed Joshua’s car so I could drive you over.”

Jocelyn remained unimpressed. She pushed her breakfast away. “You like him, huh?”

In order to have something to do with her hands as she mulled over the right way to address the question, Johanna swept away the bowl of dried oatmeal and deposited that in the sink as well. “Joshua’s a friend from a long time ago.” It didn’t answer her daughter’s question, but then, she didn’t think she could answer the question, not honestly. She didn’t want to, not even to herself.

Jocelyn played with the button on her vest. “He seems pretty nice.”

A smile rose to Johanna’s lips. “Yes, he is.”

“Think he’d let me work at the gallery?” Jocelyn asked suddenly. Hope sprang into her eyes with a half-formed thought.

Johanna was about to ruffle her hair, then stopped, her hand still up in the air. Jocelyn had mumbled a blue streak over brushing her hair just right this morning. Johanna dropped her hand to her side and stuck it in her dress pocket. “You’re a little young.”

“He wouldn’t have to pay much.”

Why did it hurt so much to be young, Johanna thought. Not so long ago, she was this same insecure girl, wandering off to college in the big city. And then, she remembered, she had met Joshua and she wasn’t lonely any more. “If you mean in place of school, the answer is no. You’re too young. They’d send me off to jail.”

Jocelyn’s eyes lost their momentary light. “Just thought I’d ask.” She drifted off into her own little world as she looked out the window. “Did you know he had paintings of you?” she asked out of the blue.

“Who?”

“Joshua.”

Johanna walked over to face her. “What do you mean, paintings of me?”

“In his apartment. I saw them the night you worked late at the show. I kind of found them leaning against the wall in his bedroom.”

Paintings? Paintings of her? He had been painting her? Her pulse quickened and then stayed at that high rate. No, it wasn’t what she thought. She wouldn’t romanticize it any further than the truth. Joshua has always said she had great lines for a model. It was as simple as that. “What were you doing in his bedroom?”

The thin shoulders beneath the vest shrugged. “I was kind of, you know, bored, so I explored.”

“What else did you explore, young lady?”

Jocelyn made a face. Johanna felt a touch of guilt for interrogating Jocelyn when the girl was really so nervous. “Nothing.”

“Let’s go,” Johanna linked her fingers with Jocelyn’s. Icy hand met icy hand. She was nervous for Jocelyn as well. Jocelyn’s eyes held a question in them. “Mothers get nervous for kids, too. C’mon, before traffic gets heavy.” For the time being, she locked away the information that Jocelyn had given her.

A bright royal blue sweater was carelessly tossed over Jocelyn’s shoulders, its sleeves knotted about her neck the way she had seen a friend in L.A. wear it. “If I’m lucky, there’ll be gridlock.”

“Let’s go, optimist.” Johanna shut the door behind them.

Johanna had chosen the private school on Lexington and Third because she had hoped for a better environment for her daughter. Jocelyn was used to a certain lifestyle and while Johanna didn’t condone elitism, she had to admit that the idea of sending Jocelyn off to a public school in New York City frightened her. From what she read in the newspapers, the element there was just what she was trying to get Jocelyn away from: drugs and easy sex begun too early. Knowing that it was next to impossible, she still wanted to try and protect her daughter as much as possible.

As she dropped her off at the imposing double front doors, Johanna prayed that Jocelyn would like the Rosewood Academy.

“Want company?” Joshua asked.

Johanna whirled around, dropping the album of prints

she was holding. Joshua made a grab for it. Together they rescued the book from crashing to the ground. “Thank you,” she murmured, feeling clumsy and foolish. She let Joshua take possession of the gilt-edged album that featured some of the paintings the gallery had to offer. “What did you say?”

“I asked if you wanted company.” He set the book down on the black onyx tabletop. “You’ve been looking at your watch every five minutes for over an hour. I figure it’s almost time to pick up Jocelyn. I thought that you might want company.”

Yes, she wanted company, and yet, she knew it was a mistake to get so accustomed to having him around all the time, to keep enjoying his company. She sought refuge in a simple ploy. “But the gallery—“ Johanna gestured around as if it were another entity that needed constant watching.

“Kathy can take care of anything that comes up this afternoon. Besides,” he pointed out, whispering the news to her, “in case you haven’t noticed, it’s like a morgue in here today. Might as well take advantage of slack time.” He grinned.

“What do you mean?” Because he beckoned, she followed him to the back office.

Joshua took out her purse from the bottom drawer of the desk and held it up before her. “Haven’t you ever wanted to play hooky?”

Yes, oh yes, from everything. “Not recently.” Johanna accepted her purse.

“You don’t lie very well, Johanna. I can see it in your eyes. You’re a born hooky player.” He ushered her out into the gallery. “Kathy,” he called out.

The young woman came around the corner, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “Yes, Mac?”

“I’m taking off with Johanna to pick up her daughter. I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Keep the home fires burning, okay?”

“Sure thing.” Kathy sighed as she watched them leave.

Romance always made her sigh and she could spot one a mile away.

Joshua was certainly laid-back about work, Johanna thought as she sat down in the passenger side. How unlike Harry he was. All Harry could ever think of was “better,” every movie always had to be better than the last one. He had always been trying to make a bigger blockbuster, reaching out toward sensationalism at the cost of substance.

“A penny for your thoughts,” Joshua said as he guided the car out of its narrow parking spot.

Instinctively, she knew he didn’t want to hear that she was thinking about Harry, even fleetingly. “Do you always just take off?”

“No, sometimes I work around the clock.” He stopped the car, waiting for an opening in the flow of traffic on the street. Waiting was an art one developed while driving in New York. “Then I reward myself.” He saw his chance and took it, squeezing his car in behind a cab. A horn blasted behind him. He didn’t seem to notice. They had merged into the slow, endless stream of traffic. “Otherwise, the gallery would own me instead of the other way around.”

She sat back. “You have a point.”

“I always have a point,” he told her and was rewarded by the sound of her soft laughter. It echoed around him in the car. It was good to see her smiling again. These photos he had seen of her in the various magazines, the smile always seemed artificial, as if it had been pasted on just for the moment. He had always wondered if she was happy. Now he knew.

He also realized that he should have fought to make her stay when she had told him about her intentions. There was no time like the present to make up for the past.

“How does Rockefeller Center sound to you?” he asked suddenly.

“In reference to what?” She looked up in the rearview mirror and watched a car stop just inches away from their bumper as the light turned red in front of them.

“Dinner.”

Johanna’s mind swung around to the conversation. “I, um—“

There was fear there. Always that little flash of fear. “With Jocelyn.”

She let out a breath. “You want Jocelyn to come with us?”

“Why not?” he asked easily. The car moved forward again as the light turned green. A pedestrian darted by quickly, trying to make it across. “The fact is, she doesn’t eat with her hands and only rests her elbow on the table when she thinks you’re not watching.”

“Joshua, you don’t have to be this nice to me.”

“Why?”

Because you’re melting me, that’s why.
Because my daughter says you have paintings in your bedroom with my face on them and I’m afraid to think about what that means. For both of us. “If you have something else to do—“

He pretended to turn the matter over in his mind for a full two seconds. “Not a thing I can think of. How about it?”

“Let me ask Jocelyn. She might just want to go home and kick the furniture.”

He laughed. He knew the feeling. “That happy about going to school, huh?”

“I almost had to drag her. The last time 1 had to do that, she was in kindergarten. I think they still have her heel marks in the cement back there.” Johanna grinned fondly. All of her most memorable flashes from the past involved Jocelyn. Only Jocelyn. “She can be very stubborn when she wants to be.”

He leaned over and touched her chin as he braked at yet another red light. Miss one, you miss them all, he thought. “Wonder where she gets it from.”

“I’m very easygoing.”

“Ha.”

“What do you mean, ‘ha?’”

He shifted his foot to the accelerator as they inched further along. “Don’t forget, I sat next to you on the debating team.” It was then he had fallen in love with her passion. It was evident in every word when she argued for a point she believed in. He had always wondered what that passion would feel like, directed toward him.

“It’s hard arguing with someone who knows all your skeletons. “

“Not all, Johanna.” He said it so mildly, Johanna looked at him for a moment.

No, not all. But I will, he promised himself. And when I do, we’re going to find a way to make you forget them and not be afraid to live again.

There was no parking allowed in front of the school. Joshua double parked next to a light blue mustang across the street.

“Here, you get out and wait for her. I’ll circle the block.” He glanced at the traffic that was thickening on the street. “Easier said than done,” he murmured with a sigh.

By the time the three of them were together again, it was half an hour later. Jocelyn looked thoroughly miserable about the day she had spent.

“I don’t want to go back,” she informed her mother as she sat in the back seat her arms folded defiantly in front of her. Her new textbooks had been dumped unceremoniously on the floor. Jocelyn rested her heels on them in absolute contempt.

“That bad, eh?” Joshua asked. He glanced to his right and saw the distressed look on Johanna’s face.

“They were awful. Somebody said I had an accent. Can you imagine? Me? They’re the ones with an accent.” She glared out the window at the streets as they drove by. “I hate it here.”

Johanna opened her mouth, but it was Joshua who said, “Give it time.”

“Why?”

“It might grow on you,” he suggested.

“Yeah, like a fungus.”

He turned to look at her for a split second. “Got homework?”

“No. Just covering my books and things. Why?”

“Well, I thought that if you didn’t have any homework, we might stop at the Strand after dinner. There’s a new Rick Renfield movie opening tonight.”

He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw her eyes open wide.

She leaned forward, grasping the seat with her hand. “Can we, Mom?” Can we?”

Johanna looked at Joshua. “I think you’ve earned yourself a friend for life,” she said in a stage whisper. Joshua saw the gratitude in her eyes. “How did you know she liked Renfield?”