The Art of Romance (5 page)

A woman with hair as curly and bushy as his—though not nearly as dark and quite a bit longer—turned from the plate of hors d’oeuvres she’d just set down on a high side table in the dining room. She extended her hand in greeting. He started to lean forward to press his right cheek to hers—the expected greeting in the socialite circles in Philly—but when she made no reciprocal move, he released her hand and backed up slightly so he wouldn’t freak her out.

“Dylan, I’m so glad you could make it tonight. When a guest canceled at the last minute, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Fortunately, the call came in right after your grandmother had popped down to my grandmother’s house while I was picking up some serving dishes and utensils.” Zarah looked from Dylan to Caylor and back. “Now, I’m the kind of person who likes to be introduced around whenever I go somewhere I don’t know anybody. But I know some other people actually enjoy mixing and mingling on their own, so I didn’t want to presume which you would prefer.”

He preferred being treated like an adult instead of led around by the hand and shown off to Rhonda’s friends like a precocious child. “Thanks. I’m comfortable with just mingling.” He looked down at the plate of food on the buffet table—were those sausage balls? A staple of Perty’s holiday table, these were Dylan’s favorite, and he hadn’t eaten one in at least five years, since the last time he’d been home for Christmas his senior year of college. Oh how he had missed them. Having given in to pressure and followed the trend of becoming an organics-only almost-vegetarian upon moving to Philadelphia five years ago, his extremely high metabolism would reduce him to nothing if he didn’t eat constantly. So maybe being back in Tennessee where sausage balls, cheese straws, and fried everything were staple food items wasn’t a bad thing.

“Where do you want this?”

Dylan tried not to let his surprise register at the sight of the man who came into the dining room from the kitchen. Though he probably was not much, if any, taller than Dylan, the man’s muscular bulk made Dylan feel scrawny in comparison. And if Dylan was ever to attempt a portrait of this guy, he was pretty sure he’d never be able to translate onto canvas the aggressiveness of the guy’s square jaw.

After sliding the large tray onto the buffet where Zarah indicated, the guy turned to Dylan, hand extended. “Hey, I’m Bobby Patterson.”

“Dylan Bradley.” He returned the firm pressure of Bobby’s handshake.

“Zarah, I think something is about to boil over or burn or something.” The panicked female voice shrilled to them from the kitchen.

A look of comical surprise came over Caylor’s face. “You left Flannery all alone in the kitchen? Are you nuts?”

Bobby held his hands up in front of him as if surrendering. “Mea culpa. I should have waited until Zarah got back to the kitchen before I left it.” With a parting glance at Zarah that explained the large diamond on her left hand, Bobby returned to the kitchen.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Dylan asked.

“No no. You’re a guest.” Zarah’s gentle smile made her light-blue eyes sparkle. A little bit of silver metallic paint with one of his finest brushes might come close to replicating it. “Everyone else should be arriving shortly. Flannery can give you a tour of the house. It will get her out of the kitchen.”

Moments later, he had been foisted off onto the blond woman who apparently did not want to be in the kitchen any more than the rest of them wanted her there.

“House tour…house tour. Well, this is the dining room. And these are the sausage balls.” She picked one up, took a bite out of it, and closed her eyes in apparent bliss.

While Flannery finished enjoying the biscuity-cheesy-sausagey treat, Dylan glanced around the dining room. He had a piece a former roommate had given him in lieu of cash for rent that would go perfect with the décor and color in here.

“Are you sure you don’t want one?” Flannery nodded toward the trays of hors d’oeuvres.

“I’ll wait.” Though he really didn’t want to. He wanted to dive into their fatty, carbohydrate-laden goodness headfirst.

“Okay, well, I know they don’t want me in the kitchen, so we’ll go this way.” She led him back into the living room—another room that would benefit from a couple of paintings he had back at the carriage house.

“Not much to see here, I guess.” Flannery moved down the hall to their left, and Dylan followed. Unlike the bedroom hallway on the second floor of his grandparents’ house, where the walls were covered from floor-to-ceiling with framed family photos, only two framed photo collages hung on the walls. Dylan didn’t examine every picture in them, but at first glance it appeared they were all photos of Zarah, Caylor, and Flannery, not pictures of Zarah’s family.

Flannery stepped through the first door on the right and flipped on the light switch. “Bathroom. Self-explanatory.” She turned the light off again before he had a chance to get a good look at the room—though the candle jar on the light countertop continued its warm, gingerbread-scented glow.

She came out around him and stepped into the room across the hall. The light clicked on and revealed what had once been a small bedroom that had been converted into what looked like a professor’s office, with built-in dark-wood bookcases lining the walls and even framing the windows. An antique-looking desk—the kind that looked more like a table—sat almost in the middle of the room facing the door, with a closed laptop sitting on a leather-trimmed felt desk blotter.

“This is my favorite room in the house.” Flannery ran her fingertips along the spines of the books on the shelf closest to her. “You know the old joke about people looking through someone’s medicine cabinet when they go to a party? Well, I look through their bookshelves. You can tell a lot about a person by the books they have.”

Heat flared in Dylan’s cheeks, and he turned his back on Flannery, feigning interest in the books. There were other things one could tell about people from books.

The row of mass-market-sized books on the top shelf, just above his eye level, caught his attention. The spines of several of them looked familiar. He pulled one down and flipped it so he could see the front cover—and mortification flared through his entire body. Why in the world would someone like Zarah Mitchell have books by Melanie Mason? The image of the bare-chested man being clung to by a scantily clad woman on the front cover turned his stomach. He didn’t have a chance to shove the book back into its place on the upper shelf before Flannery snatched it out of his hand.

“Oh—that’s not—Zarah doesn’t—she met the author, so those are collectible items, not something she reads regularly.” Flannery flipped the book over and looked at the back cover, then the spine, and then the front cover again. “Although I have to say, whoever this Patrick Callaghan is, he’s a good artist. I wonder what other cover design work he’s done.” She trailed her fingertips over the embossed letters of the author’s name as if reading them by Braille.

Put the book down. Please, put the book down. Don’t look at the image on the cover; just put the book away
.

Flannery looked up, her mouth open as if to speak. Then she frowned and looked back down at the book and her hands. “You know, if you had blond hair—and took steroids and worked out a lot—you’d look just like this guy on the cover. Well, maybe not just like him. But close.” She raised up on her toes and stretched her arm all the way up to try to reshelf the book but couldn’t quite reach.

Dylan took the book from her and jammed it back in the open space in the middle of all the other Melanie Mason books. Yes, he’d been correct. This was the worst idea he’d had in a very long time.

“You realize of course, that if we move into your apartment, I won’t be able to host this party anymore.”

Caylor grabbed the bowl of mashed potatoes and carried it into the dining room to avoid being caught in the passive-aggressive crossfire between Zarah and Bobby. Though no one had asked her opinion, after years of observing couples and coming close to marriage once herself, Caylor was pretty sure that one of the main reasons Zarah and Bobby hadn’t been able to settle on a wedding date was less about getting to know each other again after fourteen years apart—the reason they had given for waiting—and more about not being able to agree on whether to live in Zarah’s 1920s cottage or Bobby’s new, contemporary condo.

Personally, Caylor hoped they’d keep the house.

She spent the next few minutes welcoming the rest of the guests, taking their coats in to lay across the guest bed. She stood at the end of the hallway, looking into the living room for a moment. Taller than everyone else in the room—only because Bobby wasn’t in there yet— Dylan Bradley was easy to spot. But for all he said about wanting to mix and mingle on his own, he seemed to be doing a pretty bad job of it—standing apart from the three little clusters of people in the living room.

Flannery, of course, was in her element, flitting from group to group, ensuring everyone had been introduced, and making everyone feel welcomed.

Caylor greeted her invitees—the three professors from JRU—who had been coming to this dinner every year since Zarah had bought the house, giving them room to include others in what had become a tradition for the three of them back when they roomed together in college.

Hoping Dylan did not feel as uncomfortable as he looked, Caylor motioned him over and introduced him to the other professors. “Dylan is hoping to teach art as an adjunct next semester.” Caylor glanced at him for confirmation.

Dylan nodded and seemed to loosen up slightly.

“Really? Where did you go to school?” Bridget Wetzler, a drama professor, asked.

“I have my bachelor’s in studio art from NYU–Steinhardt and my MFA from PAFA—Pennsylvania Academy for the Fine Arts.”

“And you’ve taught before?” Dr. Fletcher asked. Almost seventy herself, the chair of the English department always assumed anyone under the age of forty couldn’t possibly have much, if any, experience.

“I was an associate professor of art at Watts-Maxwell Institute of Fine Arts in Philadelphia for five years.” His brown eyes took on a guarded look.

Sixteen different scenarios immediately ran through Caylor’s head as to why talking about his previous job would bring on palpable signs of defensiveness—and it appeared to be more than just Dr. Fletcher’s calling his experience into question. The firm set of his mouth was so familiar, Caylor could almost reach out and grab the memory of where she had met Dylan before.

“What kind of art do you do, Dylan?” Bridget asked.

“I’ve been focused on modern art—abstract painting, mostly—the last few years. But my focus in college was on portraiture.” Dylan’s face glowed red at this admission.

Such a strange man.

“Did I hear you say you’re an artist?” Jack Colby, Flannery’s boss at the publishing house, joined them.

Caylor made the introduction.

“Have you ever considered doing artwork for book covers?” Jack asked.

Though Caylor had not thought it possible, Dylan turned an even darker shade of red. “I…I have done some cover work before—when I was in college.”

Jack reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a business card, which he handed to Dylan. “If you’re interested in discussing some freelance work, give me a call.”

“While I can’t offer you the promise of paying work,” Bridget wedged herself in between Jack and Dylan, “if you’d like something to keep you busy, I’m sure we could use your help designing and painting the sets for the spring play.”

Interest chased the residual of embarrassment from Dylan’s expression.
“Much Ado about Nothing
, right?”

“Oh, so you’re familiar with it?”

“My…I had a…a roommate who loved the movie and watched it all the time.”

“Well, we’re going Italian Renaissance with our production, so it’ll be a little more elaborate than what you got used to seeing in the movie. We’re kinda thinking a Tuscan villa feel for the sets.”

That was news to Caylor, who’d suggested keeping the play set in the Renaissance time in which it had been written and using the Tuscan motif for the backdrops, instead of changing it to ancient Rome the way Bridget had originally wanted to do it—to reuse costumes, sets, and props from their production of
Julius Caesar
two years ago.

“I did my undergraduate art history thesis on the works of the Renaissance portraitist Titian. As part of my presentation, I did a gallery show in that style, so I should definitely be able to help.” The animation in Dylan’s eyes made Caylor long for a pen and paper. Her publisher and agent had been pushing her for a new series proposal. Until meeting Dylan Bradley today, ideas and inspiration had been sparse. But now, though there wasn’t a full-blown character or story idea yet, the sparks were definitely kindling.

Zarah came in and greeted everyone, and then Bobby asked the blessing, praying that each person present would remember to focus on the main reason for celebrating Christmas instead of getting caught up in all the busyness and materialism of the season.

When Caylor entered the dining room, she discovered that the place cards she’d put out had been moved around. She still had Zarah’s boss, Dennis Forrester, to her left. To her right now sat Jack Colby; and directly across the table from her was Dylan Bradley. Caylor looked around at all the food on the table and felt guilty. Zarah had taken the day off work to prepare dinner for twelve people, half of whom were not her friends but friends of Caylor and Flannery. In addition to the standing rib roast and baked turkey breast, Zarah had made homemade yeast rolls, sweet potato and green bean casseroles, scalloped potatoes from scratch, and a large, green salad filled with hand-cut vegetables. Sure, Caylor had brought some decadent desserts with her, but other than going to the grocery store to get some of the ingredients and then licking the spatulas and beaters as Sassy handed them to her, she hadn’t done any of the hard work of preparing them. Of course, she was pretty sure that most of the appetizers had been in boxes in the freezer section at Costco a few hours ago, before Flannery picked them up on her way over here from work. But that was okay—she and Zarah encouraged Flannery to buy stuff already prepared.