The Art of Romance (12 page)

“Gramps? Perty?”

“In the sunroom, dear,” she called.

Dylan came in, looking ruggedly windblown, his curly hair pulled back from his face with a band that hugged the crown of his head. He’d shaved for church Sunday, but not since then, apparently. Not that she minded at all. In their younger years, when on vacation, Gerald would forgo shaving, and she remembered liking that quite well.

“You left a message that you wanted to see me?” He unzipped his jacket to reveal a maroon flannel shirt over a white turtleneck. With well-worn but nice jeans, a brown belt, and brown outdoorsy lace-up boots, he could have passed for Paul Bunyan.

She pulled her feet off the ottoman and patted it, not wanting a crick in her neck from looking up at him.

He pulled off the jacket and tossed it over the footstool before sitting down.

A lump formed in Perty’s throat. How many hours had he sat there, on that stool, elbows on his knees, chin on his fists, listening to her read? Yet then it had always been with a sense of excitement in his eyes, a smile never far from his lips. What did she need to do to bring that back and erase the dolefulness that hung about him like an albatross?

“I figured you’d be at the museum all day, that we wouldn’t see you until later tonight.”

“I got a call from Dr. Holtz at Robertson to go in and sign the paperwork to teach next semester. Renaissance art history and a portraiture studio.” He ran his thumb over a worn spot in the denim near his left knee.

“That’s wonderful. I know you’ll love teaching there. Are they day or evening classes?”

He told her the schedule, and a bit of the melancholy left him as he talked about it, though with an economy of words. Still no smile, no sense of excitement or anticipation came to the surface by the time he finished.

“That will be a great foot in the door there if you decide you want to pursue a full-time faculty position should one come open next year.” Still no flicker. Maybe he would cotton to her next idea. “I had an idea last night that I wanted to run by you. You could make a little money from it if you wanted to, but it would mostly be a free service you’d provide.”

He raised his thick, dark brows—a genetic gift from her Eastern European roots—which she took to mean he was amenable to listening to the idea.

“Would you be interested in teaching an art class for the senior adults at church? It can be afternoons or evenings, whatever you prefer—but daylight hours work best for most of us—and you could charge a registration fee if you really wanted to, though most people would be doing well to be able to afford basic art supplies.”

His expression went through a myriad of changes—first attention, then interest, then—confusion? Confusion over what she was saying?

“Dylan?”

“Why?” He shook his head, the skin between his brows folding together in a frown.

“Why…what?” Now she was confused, too.

“Why do you want me to get up in front of all of your friends? As Dad pointed out Sunday, I know I’m a disappointment to everyone in the family.” He shrugged as if this were an inconsequential statement.

Perty leaned forward and pressed her palms to his stubbly cheeks, forcing him to look at her. “I may be disappointed in your actions, but I am not disappointed in
you
. I love you, and I could not be prouder of your accomplishments and talents. And I want to show all of my friends just how accomplished and talented”—she pulled her hands forward until his lips began to pucker—”and handsome my grandson is. Do you think I could take Paxton to that group and have him teach them something? No one would understand a word coming out of his mouth, bless his heart. Have Spencer teach them international business structures or Tyler talk to them about math?”

His face moved under her hands, both cheeks pulling upward. Her throat constricted as Dylan slowly smiled. He captured her wrists in his hands, pulled them away from his face, and kissed her palms.

“Thank you, Perty.”

“For what?”

“For proving me wrong.”

C
aylor reached up under her glasses to rub her eyes. She would swear that she’d heard her eyes scream at the thought of putting her contact lenses in this morning. After only five hours of sleep last night, the insides of her eyelids had taken on the consistency of coarse-grit sandpaper. But with only two tests remaining to be graded, she might be able to get all of her grades recorded before the noon deadline and take a nap this afternoon.

“Knock, knock.” Sassy’s white hair appeared between the balusters of the railing that lined the opening for the stairs at the other end of Caylor’s office. She peeked over the rim of the floor.

Caylor turned down the instrumental movie sound-track playlist running on the computer. She’d been playing it louder than usual, trying to drown out the song “Gary, Indiana” from last fall’s production of
The Music Man
, which had decided to reprise, repeatedly, in her head today. “Come on up, Sassy.”

Her grandmother came up the remaining few steps, a basket filled with something that smelled absolutely wonderful cradled in one arm, a coffee mug in her other hand.

“That smells like—”

Sassy pulled back the tea towel covering the contents. “Birthday cinnamon-sugar muffins!”

Caylor closed her eyes and breathed in the luscious aroma of cinnamon and nutmeg and baked goods. Wait—”Sassy, these are still hot. And we don’t have an oven.”

“No.” She set the basket down on the credenza and pulled a small paper plate out from where she’d stashed it in between the basket and the towel liner. “But we do have a toaster oven. And back before we had central air-conditioning, if I could, I’d always prefer to use the toaster oven rather than the wall ovens, to keep from heating up the whole house.”

She set one of the muffins, dipped in melted butter and then in cinnamon sugar after baking, on the small plate and handed it to Caylor.

“We really shouldn’t, you know.”

“I only made a half dozen, since that’s the size pan that fits the toaster.” Sassy sat on top of the credenza next to the basket and pulled out a small plate and muffin for herself.

Caylor pulled the paper away from the bottom of one side of the fluffy muffin and bit into the top. The cinnamon sugar and butter had formed a perfect crust. Her taste buds sent up a rousing hallelujah as the spicy sweetness cascaded over her tongue.

For a few minutes, they uttered only groans of appreciation. Caylor fixed another cup of hot tea—so convenient to prepare in the mornings with the electric kettle she’d picked up in England twelve years ago—and started in on a second muffin.

“A contractor is coming in this afternoon to look at the kitchen and give us a bid on remodeling it.”

Caylor inhaled when she should have swallowed, and a chunk of muffin blocked her windpipe. She coughed and sputtered, eyes watering, and reached for her tea. “I’m sorry,” she rasped, “did you say you’re planning on remodeling the kitchen?”

“Don’t have much of a choice, do I?” Sassy brushed the excess cinnamon sugar from her fingers onto her plate and reached for another muffin. “When I was over at Perty’s the other day, we looked online at what it would cost to replace the appliances, and she told me how much they’d paid to have their kitchen redone—well, an estimate, since the whole house was done at the same time—and she convinced me that it would be better just to have the whole thing gutted and replaced: floors, cabinets, appliances, countertops. I don’t think I want stainless-steel appliances, though. Working in Perty’s kitchen, I realized just how hard those are to keep clean. I’m thinking black. Or maybe retro red.”

Caylor could only stare at her grandmother. After so many years of resisting spending any money on the house, it was strange to see the excitement gleaming from her blue eyes at the prospect of spending tens of thousands of dollars on just one room. “You realize that they’re going to have to do the electrical panel as well, don’t you?”

“Oh yes, I know. It’ll be safer to have breakers instead of fuses. Less of a fire hazard if they rewire everything.” Sassy swung her feet like a child and took a huge bite of muffin.

“Well, you know I’m all for it.”

Sassy downed a gulp of coffee. “I know. And I want you to be in the meeting with the contractor so that you can have your say about what it’s going to look like. You’re going to have to live with it longer than I am.”

Caylor grimaced and wadded the empty muffin papers before tossing them into the trash can under her desk. “Sass, don’t say that.”

“Why—are you planning on selling the house as soon as I die?” She grinned shamelessly and then stood and leaned over and kissed Caylor’s forehead. “Happy birthday, darling granddaughter.” She took the basket containing the two remaining muffins back downstairs with her.

Shaking her head, Caylor wiped up the crumbs and got back to grading. At least Sassy’s revelation had knocked “Gary, Indiana” out of her—

“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” Caylor turned the instrumental music up again to drown out the insidious song that started echoing through her brain again.

Two and a half hours later, she dropped face-first across her bed, grading finished and reported with time to spare before the deadline.

It seemed like that was all her life was anymore—a series of deadlines. Book deadlines. Grading deadlines. Deadlines to have her syllabi written and turned in so they could be posted online for the students. Maybe Dr. Fletcher was right—maybe it was time to start putting together a proposal for a sabbatical.

She snorted and flipped over onto her back. So many English professors took a yearlong sabbatical to write
a
book. She was carrying a full teaching load, serving on several committees, assisting with the drama department’s major production each semester, ministering in the music program at church, and she was writing
two
books a year and spending her summer “vacations” traveling to book signings, publishing industry trade shows, writers’ conferences, and speaking events to market her books.

Of course, she wasn’t writing anything that most schools would consider sabbatical-worthy. There was that research she’d been thinking about on the conventions of inspirational romance compared with general-market romances—with the gap seeming to widen yearly. When she’d first started writing, it had been okay that her books were steamy and sensual without actually getting overly graphic. In fact, she’d stopped writing them after the sixth book and the end of her contract when her publishing house kept insisting she increase the sensuality in her books—the explicitness of the scenes and how often they occurred. She’d never been completely comfortable with writing those scenes, even in very euphemistic terms, but had convinced herself it was okay because her characters were always married before they slept together. But the push toward more, more, more had pushed her right over the edge of conviction that God hadn’t gifted her with the talent for storytelling to be used in such a titillating manner.

She curled up on her side and grabbed her pillow. She’d be mortified if any of the senior ladies at church discovered what she’d written before she started writing romances fit to be sold in Christian bookstores.

Her brain spun off in several directions, and she drifted to sleep.

The shrilling of her cell phone, set to a tone she could hear no matter where her phone was, ripped her out of a very pleasant dream about her Renaissance-era Italian painter who looked just like Dylan Bradley. She stumbled into the office to grab the cell phone off the desk.

“The contractor’s here. Are you coming down?”

“Sassy? What—yes, I’ll be down in a minute.” She stepped into the bathroom, put on some foundation to cover the dark circles under her eyes, put her glasses back on, and fluffed her hair—which fell right back into lank tufts around her forehead, ears, and neck.

Whatever. It wasn’t as if she had to make a great impression on this guy. Or gal, she corrected herself, remembering the story idea the electrician had given her Monday.

Deciding her JRU sweats were good enough, she headed downstairs—this time purposely hitting the third step from the bottom so it squealed. Maybe the contractor would offer to fix that for them, too.

As soon as she walked into the kitchen, she wished she could have a do-over—or that she’d skipped the third step so she could quietly escape and make another entrance after changing clothes, putting on makeup, and doing something with her hair. Standing with his back to her, measuring the existing cabinets, was someone who could easily have graced the cover of one of her books—one of her
old
books—even without knowing what his face looked like.

Dark jeans hugged him in all the right places, and the pale-blue sweater he wore rippled with every movement of his well-defined and toned muscles. And when he turned around…

No man was this perfect in real life. Light-brown hair, blue eyes, perfectly symmetrical features. Maybe he had crooked teeth—nope, a perfectly straight, if overly white, smile.

He held his hand out and crossed the kitchen toward her. “Riley Douglas.”