Artfully Yours (20 page)

Jenny poked her. “If it wasn’t bad sex, then what’s going on?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I’m a smart girl.”

Elle blew out a breath. “He’s an artist.”

Jenny waited, and when Elle didn’t continue, said, “Sexy.”

She had
no
idea. “You remember that guy back in high school?”

“Can’t say I remember you having a guy back in high school. Mostly because I was a self-obsessed tween at the time and I didn’t notice much of anything. Only guy I remember you being connected with was that weird dude who jumped your bones out of nowhere. Remember how we had to lock Dad in the bathroom overnight to get him sober enough that he could go in and meet with the Principal, who was freaking about Miss Goody Two-Shoes going off the rails? Oh. Oh, no.
Him?
Ice-cream-gargoyle-hot-neighbor guy is the weird dude?”

“Yeah. It’s him.”

Jenny straightened. “There it is! There’s the smile! Damn. He’s still got a thing for you, has he? That’s so sweet, carrying a torch for you all this time. So romantic.”

“Yeah. Except it’s not a torch. It’s way, way bigger than that. I’m his muse.”

“
So
romantic. His muse? Be still my heart.”

“It gets worse. He’s been in a creative slump, and then when we bumped into each other again, he got kind of…revved up…and he’s had this intense outpouring of new work, all inspired by me.”

“How is that worse? That’s better! Who knew practical Elle Finley, super-serious nurse, could inspire an artist.”

“Didn’t get to the worse bit yet. This stuff he sculpted?”

Jenny fell back, a hand to her chest. “He’s a sculptor?”

“Metal artist.”

“With the welding and the mask and all that? He’s got muscles, hasn’t he? ’Course he has. Wrangling all that metal and fire and shit. Holy crap, Elle.”

“His sculptures are really…um…they’re all way over my head. You know me and the finer things in life. This is like a big cosmic joke, and as well as being over my head, they’re kind of rude.”

Jenny clapped her hands. “Love it!”

“As in explicitly rude.”

“I’m already jealous. You don’t have to bang it home.” She winked. “So to speak.”

“That’s bad, Jenny!”

“It was a joke. It’s supposed to be bad.”

Elle waved her hand. “Not the joke! The fact that he’s done these complicated sculptures and some of them—maybe all of them, I can’t tell—have my, uh, body parts. In them.”

Jenny sat up, used both hands to help swing her cast down, and turned fully to Elle. “What happened to all that talk about your relationship with Chris sputtering out and how you changed your life because you wanted more before you burned out?”

“Okay, but—”

“Then some romantic smitten artist pays homage to you, immortalizes his feelings for you in his work, and you think it’s bad?”

They stared at each other, Elle’s mind whirling.

“You big prude,” Jenny said. “It’s not like he’s putting pictures of your boobs up on Facebook.”

Elle scowled. “I know that.”

“So you’re overreacting why? Jesus. You know what I’d give to have some guy so gone for me he sculpts my anything?”

“It’s not technically
my
anything. It’s some sort of physical representation of what I make him feel, I don’t know—”

“Prude!”

“I don’t like being exposed! And I don’t freaking get it! Here I am, boring old me, nothing special, but instead of that he sees these
dimensions
of passion. I don’t get it and, fine, I admit it, I love it. Love it, and I’m in so much trouble because I think I might love… Anyway, I’ve got things straightened out here, I’ve got a job in the community as a nurse, and I’ve got you and Katie to think about. I’m not free to go prancing about playing the femme fatale whose rock star artist boyfriend is so open about his feelings he—”

“You’re not free?” Jenny’s voice was low and angry, and stopped Elle dead in her tracks. “What do you mean, not free? Why? Oh, I get it.
You’ve got me and Katie to think about.
Right? We’re the ones who make you not free. We’re the ones holding you back from the kind of life you want.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It’s what you thought.”

“You don’t know what I think.” Shit,
Elle
didn’t know what she thought.

Jenny scrubbed her hands over her face. “This is why I took so long, okay? This, right here, is why I took so long to ask you for help, Elle. This is why it wasn’t as easy as you seem to think. When I asked you to come back to Emerson, you do know that all I meant was geographically, right? Not time travel?”

“What?”

“I asked you to come back and help me out for a couple of weeks. That was it. But you moved your entire life back here—job, home. And I didn’t stop you because, damn it, I missed you and I wanted you here. But Elle, you have to know, while I want you here, I don’t
need
you here.”

Elle directed a pointed look at Jenny’s cast.

“Not once this is healed. I never asked, wanted, needed, or expected you’d come back and take it all on again.”

“I don’t know what you—”

“Me! The Finley name! The keeping up appearances. So people find out that you inspired your boyfriend’s dirty sculptures. So what?”

“They’re not dirty. They’re beautiful. And subtle. Screw it, I can’t see it. But they’re not dirty.”

This is love
, Alex had said.

“It doesn’t matter if they’re downright pornographic.” Jenny shocked Elle by grabbing both her hands and squeezing, her face soft but serious. “No one’s going to take me away, Elle, if things aren’t perfect. If you cause any kind of wave. I’m a grownup. I’m a mother. I’ve been married. I love you, and I always thought I appreciated how you raised me and held it all together for us, but I didn’t. Not until my life fell apart, and I was the one left holding it for me and Katie. I’m lucky, because I’ve got you to back me up. You didn’t have any backup, and you were still a kid. I can see how that would affect a person, could make you scared of being exposed again, but you know what? It doesn’t matter. You know what matters?”

Yeah. She knew what mattered.

“Love matters,” Jenny said. “Take a chance, Elle.”

Take a chance. A leap of faith. She could do that. She’d done it before, hadn’t she? Quit the ER, quit the wrong relationship, quit the city.

Huh.

Elle stared at the search engine window she’d opened on her laptop, cursor blinking. Her third coffee of the morning steamed on the kitchen table at her elbow. That was a whole lot less
I choose life!
and a whole lot more
I quit!
than she’d thought.

And she’d planned it all. Slowly. At least three months trying to find the right way to tell Chris it was over—and in the end, she’d gone with,
It’s over
. Six months researching the job market before she’d sent out a load of résumés and applications in one go.

Thinking about it this way didn’t sound like much of a leap of faith. Sounded like a trudge of faith. A plod.

Yesterday a beautiful artist had told her she was his muse and had been since they were teenagers. He’d seduced her on his dinner table, made love to her repeatedly in his bed, his bathroom, on his couch, bed again, and as a big finale he’d revealed that the passionate sculpture she’d inspired was him on his knees in worship.

Somehow, jumping in her Prius to drive over, knock on his front door and say,
Hey, sorry I insulted your masterpiece, called you a porn sculptor, and said you were pantsing me in front of the world, how about another date?
didn’t feel like it was going to cut it. It was practical, but…

Fuck practical.

She was going to be romantic.

Elle reached out and typed the words
Alex Zacharov
,
impotent
, and
Stephanie
into the search engine. She hit enter.

The article wasn’t horrible the way she’d expected. Instead of a vicious attack on Alex and his art, she read it as a melancholic meditation on an artist losing his way. Sure, it was a bit cruel to call him a creatively impotent monk, but the tone of the words sounded, to her at least, more of a call to arms. A challenge to him to look up to the stars and plot a new course, rather than lie down and accept the darkness.

Damn. She took a sip of coffee. That was poetic. Did she have some artistic sensibility in her after all? Elle zoomed in on the article’s lead picture, a black-and-white of Alex standing by a complex piece of towering art. She contemplated it. Nope. No clue. Her artistic sensibilities were as stunted as ever.

She felt herself begin to smile as she took in Alex’s familiar angry scowl. He was in jeans and a Henley, sleeves pushed up over his forearms. His hair looked like he’d been out in a high wind, and his straight brows were low over his eyes, burning with impatience. Big shoulders braced, arms crossed, chin up. Elle sighed, attention shifting between his compelling face and the weird sculpture that was, according to everyone, breathtaking and brilliant. She didn’t get his work. She didn’t entirely get him, either. But none of that was important. As Jenny said, only the one thing mattered.

After some more poking about, more perving on the hot photos of Alex she found online—she was going to have to start a Pinterest board
and never tell him about it
—she tracked down Stephanie’s email address.

She was going to do it. A great big romantic, unpractical gesture that would leave Alex in no doubt whatsoever about her feelings. She wasn’t going to wait for Stephanie to expose her as his muse. She was going to expose herself. All she had to do was write the email, hope she didn’t come across as a deluded fan/stalker, and hope Stephanie checked her spam folder more than once a month.

Ten drafts down the line, she’d come up with something that, okay, made her sound a complete dork, but a sincere and non-threatening dork worth a few minutes of Stephanie’s time rather than a swift click to the trash. It had taken her so long that Jenny and Katie were up, had eaten breakfast, and were now coloring at the table, chattering away. Elle had moved her laptop to the countertop to give them room, and she stood in the sunshine, hand poised over the keyboard.
Send it.

Hit enter.

Take a chance.

Someone banged on the front door.

“I’ll get it,” Jenny said.

“I’ve got it,” Elle said at the same time, running for the door.

Gabe Sterling filled the doorway.

Elle took an uneasy step back. This wasn’t the cheerful, joking guy she’d met yesterday. His mouth was tight and his eyes were obscured behind a pair of mirrored aviators. “Hi,” she said and hoped he couldn’t hear her nervousness.

“Hi.” That was it. No smile. Nothing. Slowly, he unhooked the aviators and tucked them in the front of his T-shirt. “Move. I’m coming in.”

Elle stared up at him, then swung the door shut in his face.

Before it latched, he shouldered it open, grabbed her by the hips to steer her out of his way, and barged past.

“Hey!”

“Where’s the kitchen?” Gabe didn’t wait for her to answer, just headed off.

“I didn’t invite you in!” Elle jogged after him.

Jenny and Katie wore identical expressions, both staring up at Gabe with his fauxhawk and bright tattoos, their crayons poised in the air.

Katie seemed particularly fascinated. “Are you a dragon, too?” she asked, breaking the silence.

Gabe didn’t miss a beat. He pushed up the sleeve of his shirt and pointed at one of the tattoos on his bicep. “Eagle.”

“Derek’s a dragon.”

“Uh-huh. What about you, kid? You got ink?”

“I’m four!”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were Elle’s sister.”

Katie wriggled in her chair, delighted, but said in a severe tone, “I’m her niece.”

“You must be the sister,” he said to Jenny and smiled. “I’m Gabe.”

Jenny turned beet red.

Elle was starting to get the impression that all the
tattoos squick me out
protests were a cover for
tattoos turn me on
.

“Jenny Finley,” she choked out, directing her eyes to the table and gathering up their crayons. “I’m the sister. Who’s leaving. Now. Come on, Katie.” She scooted Katie out of the room ahead of her, giving Gabe a wide berth. She paused at the doorway and mouthed at Elle, once she was out of Gabe’s sight-line,
Oh my God
.

“I can see your reflection in the window,” Gabe said.

Jenny whisked out.

“You Finley girls sure can run fast. She’s cute.”

“She’s taken.”

“The dragon?”

“He’s working on it.”

“Maybe I’ll work on it.”