True Colors (11 page)

Emma laughed.

The tavern’s door creaked as it opened and
shut, admitting more patrons. A trio of young women came in
together, then another couple of ocean-smelling guys wearing
thick-soled boots and shrubby beards. Boats must be docking and
businesses closing for the day, freeing their employees until
tomorrow. The room vibrated with the energy of people ready to
decompress or to socialize, people chatting, people thirsty for
whatever Gus might pour into their glasses.

“Jimmy’s like comfort food,” Monica
explained. “I know what to expect with him. There’s no anxiety, no
worries. No big let-downs.”

“Wow,” Emma muttered. “It sounds so
romantic.”

“He’s good in bed,” Monica added.

Well, that was something.

The door creaked again and a couple of men
entered. The younger one wore leather and denim, and his hair was a
windblown mess of dark waves. The older man had a bluff, square
face and striking silver hair. He wore a police uniform. “Is the
place getting raided?” Emma asked, shooting a wary glance toward
the cop. “I’m over twenty-one. How about you?”

Monica grinned and shook her head. “That’s Ed
Nolan,” she murmured, although Emma doubted anyone outside their
booth could hear her. “He’s Gus’s boyfriend.”

“Whoa. She’s quite a cougar.”

Monica’s grin widened. “The older guy.”

Emma followed the two men with her gaze as
they crossed the room to the bar. A few more patrons trickled in
behind them, and the tables began to fill up. “Who’s the younger
guy?” she asked.

“Nick Fiore. He was a couple of years ahead
of me in school.”

His leather jacket carried a hint of danger.
So did his unkempt hair, his snug jeans, and his swaggering gait.
“How could you choose Jimmy over him?” Emma asked.

“I doubt he ever noticed me,” Monica said,
then pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Besides, he was
a mess back then.”

“He doesn’t look like a mess.”

Monica pursed her lips. “He got arrested,”
she said, then paused. “For trying to kill his father.”

Emma felt her eyebrows shoot up.

“It was very ugly,” Monica said. “Thank God
he got his shit together eventually.”

“I guess he must have, if his drinking buddy
is a cop.”

“He runs a bunch of programs for at-risk kids
through the community center. I mean, he’s a good guy, but… In high
school, he was definitely troubled. I kept my distance. And like I
said, he probably didn’t even know I existed.”

Emma watched the two men for a minute. They
stood at the bar, chatting amiably with Gus. At one point, the cop
slung his arm around the younger man’s shoulders and they
laughed.

The community
center
. Emma had passed it often on her
strolls down the hill. It was one of those utilitarian municipal
buildings constructed of textured tan bricks and steel-framed
windows. She’d entered only once, when she’d gotten caught in a
sudden downpour without an umbrella. The place had seemed pleasant
in a bland, civic sort of way, with a gym, a swimming pool,
assorted offices and multi-purpose rooms.

She wondered if the center had an art room, a
studio where she could teach her classes. If she remained in
Brogan’s Point, she’d be part of the community, wouldn’t she? And
that would entitle her to use the community center. If she wound up
renting a room in someone’s basement or over a garage, as seemed
likelier than her finding another modern mansion with ocean views
and excellent natural lighting renting for dirt-cheap, she could
continue to earn a modest living teaching at the community
center.

“What’s his name again?” she asked
Monica.

“Ed Nolan or Nick Fiore?”

“The one who isn’t the cop. Nick Fiore?”

Monica tilted her head,
assessing Emma. “Are
you
going after him?”

He was attractive, no doubt about it. But he
wasn’t Max Tarloff.

Which was the stupidest thought Emma had had
all day.

“I’m going after the community center,” Emma
said, sliding out of the booth.

Monica opened her mouth, but Emma didn’t wait
to hear her question. She had to approach Nick Fiore now, before
she lost her nerve or contemplated the logistics enough to conclude
that using a room at the community center for her art classes was a
stupid idea.

Someone must have stuck a
coin in the jukebox, because as Emma strolled across the dance
floor to the bar, the room filled with the sultry baritone of Elvis
Presley singing “Jailhouse Rock.” Well,
that
had to be a sign, she thought
with a smile. She still wasn’t sure what the jukebox had been
trying to tell her when she and Max had been enveloped in Cyndi
Lauper’s plaintive voice crooning about true colors, but if Elvis
could sound so downright cheery about incarceration, the jukebox
must be telling her that Nick Fiore was fully rehabilitated and not
too messed up any more.

“So I said to this bozo, ‘Telling a cop to
eff himself is usually not a good way to avoid getting arrested,’”
the officer was saying as Emma approached him and Nick Fiore, “and
he says, ‘Gee, you’re right, officer. I should have told you to eff
your mother.’ Needless to say, I arrested him.”

“My tax dollars at work,” Nick muttered.

Behind the bar, Gus said, “I know the F-word,
Ed. I raised two boys. Nothing shocks me.”

“But I didn’t want to shock this lovely young
lady,” the policeman said, turning his bright smile on Emma. Nick
traced the policeman’s gaze to Emma and smiled as well.

“You girls ready for another round?” Gus
asked.

“No, we’re fine,” Emma told her. “I wanted to
talk to…Nick Fiore, right?” She extended her right hand. “I’m Emma
Glendon.”

“I hate to tell you, honey, but he’s already
taken,” the policeman warned her.

Emma grinned as Nick shook her hand. “I want
to discuss business. Or art. Or both.”

“That sounds ominous,” Gus said. “You sure
you don’t want another drink?” Although her voice was as dry as
chalk, Emma suspected she was joking and obliged her with a laugh
and a shake of her head.

Nick lifted his beer and angled his head
toward an empty booth. “Sure, we can talk. But I’ve got to warn
you, I don’t know much about art. Or business, for that
matter.”

She followed him to the booth, settled across
from him and took a deep breath. “I’m a friend of Monica
Reinhart’s,” she began, then pointed toward Monica, who had twisted
in her seat to observe Emma and Nick. Realizing that they were both
staring at her, she smiled feebly and fluttered her fingers in a
wave. “You went to school with her, but she said she didn’t think
you knew who she was.”

“Her folks own the Ocean Bluff Inn, don’t
they?”

So he
did
know who Monica was. Too bad he
was already taken. Emma had exchanged less than a dozen words with
him, but that was enough to convince her he was a much finer
specimen of manhood than Jimmy. “Right. Anyway, she and I are close
friends, and we’re about to lose the lease on the house we’re
renting. The thing is, I’m an artist and an art teacher, using a
loft in the house as my studio. Once we lose our lease, I’ll lose
that space to teach my art classes. Monica said you worked at the
Brogan’s Point Community Center, and I thought, maybe there’s a
room there I could use for my classes.”

Nick didn’t say no. He didn’t scowl or guffaw
or shove her off the banquette. He drank some beer and ruminated.
“You want to rent a room, or access a room for free?”

“Well, I’d prefer free,” Emma said. “It’s not
like I make tons of money teaching art to children and retired
doctors.”

“That’s who you work with? Kids and
retirees?”

“I’ll teach anyone willing to pay me. I’m an
artist.” She hoped he understood what that meant: she was
chronically broke.

“Okay. So you want to charge money for your
classes, but you don’t want to pay rent on your studio space.”

When he put it that way, it sounded cheap and
chintzy. “I’ll pay rent if I have to, and if I can afford it. Or
maybe I could earn the use of the studio by doing other work at the
center. Like, maybe I could teach a free class for kids who can’t
afford to pay, and then I could charge the retired doctors—who,
believe me, can afford to pay. Maybe we could arrange something
like that.” She hesitated, then added, “Or I can scrub sinks and
mop floors.”

“The community center’s janitorial staff is
unionized,” he informed her. “So forget about that.” He ruminated,
sipping a little more beer. “I run some after-school programs at
the center,” he said. “Sports activities, mostly. Maybe we could
incorporate some art activities, too. I don’t know if I’ve got the
budget for that, or if we’ve got a room you could use. I’d have to
discuss it with the center’s director.”

“Jailhouse Rock” stopped booming from the
jukebox. He still hadn’t said no. “I’d be very grateful if you
would,” she said. “Or if you could tell me who the director is, and
I could meet with him myself.”

“Her. The director is a she.” Nick regarded
her thoughtfully. “Let me talk to her first, and poke around my
budget to see if I’ve got any spare change I could put towards art
in the after-school program. Or my summer program. Give me your
number, and I’ll call you after I’ve made some inquiries. How does
that sound?”

“Fantastic,” Emma said, doing her best not to
jump onto the table and indulge in a victory dance. She didn’t have
a victory to dance about, yet. All she had was the promise of a
possibility.

He pulled out his cell phone and she recited
her number for him to program into it. They shook hands again and
slid out of the booth. She watched him stride back to his friend at
the bar, then spun around and allowed herself a few prancing,
celebratory steps, her boots tapping gently against the dance floor
as she started back to the booth where Monica awaited her.

Then she froze as another
song emerged from the jukebox, slow and sweet and haunting—and
crazily familiar.
True
Colors
.

She turned to stare at the jukebox, and then
at the door, where Max Tarloff stood, staring back at her.

He’d had the hotel room in Cambridge lined
up. He’d had a plan for dinner with Stan Weisner and an invitation
for drinks with MIT’s president, who generally treated Max as
visiting royalty whenever he visited his alma mater. Max had
written some very large checks to the school. The president went
out of his way to make him feel welcome.

Ordinarily, he would have accepted the
president’s invitation and enjoyed dinner with Stan. But he’d wound
up taking a rain check on both engagements. He’d told himself he
wanted to return to Brogan’s Point because he’d left his toothbrush
at the Ocean Bluff Inn.

Yeah, right.

Arriving back in town, he’d driven directly
to his house at the top of the hill and found it empty. Not sure
where Emma might be, he’d steered back down the hill in the
direction of the inn. Slowed at an intersection by Brogan Point’s
modest rush-hour traffic, he’d spotted the Faulk Street Tavern on a
side street off Atlantic Avenue—a stolid, unpretentious building,
no neon sign calling attention to it, no velvet-rope crowd lining
up to get in. What the hell, he’d thought. Instead of having a
drink with MIT’s president, he could have a drink with some of the
locals. Until he sold his house, they were technically his
neighbors.

He didn’t want to acknowledge his hope that
Emma might be inside. It was too silly, too crazy. He’d driven to
Cambridge to put some distance between her and himself, yet he’d
spent most of the day thinking about her. About her fiery hair and
her flinty personality, about how he’d wanted to kiss her. About
how he’d agreed to let her paint his portrait. He was a rational
man, a computer whiz, a business mogul—and she was like an
insidious virus, invading his software and making him behave in
ways that made no sense.

He parked, entered the pub—and yes, Emma was
there. Seated at a booth with a man, leaning toward him, engrossed
in an intimate conversation with him. The man appeared to be about
Emma’s age. He was dark, scruffy, a bit dangerous-looking in a
black leather jacket.

Max immediately felt like an
idiot. He’d been fantasizing about Emma, agreeing against all
reason to let her paint his portrait when he ought to be furious
with her for living in his house without his permission, and
running a damned school there, too. And meanwhile, she was involved
with some other guy.
Shit
.

But then she stood, walked
from the table, and saw Max. And that stupid jukebox song began to
play again.
True Colors.

She walked directly toward him. She looked
fearless, and beautiful. Her baggy jeans failed to conceal the
sweet curves of her hips and the length of her legs. Her eyes were
wide, her tantalizing lips shaping a half-smile that made him want
to kiss her even more.

She reached him and her smile grew
fractionally larger. “They’re playing our song,” she said.

“Is that really our song?”

She shrugged. Her smile was tentative yet
inviting, warm yet slightly apprehensive.

“Can you—” he angled his head toward the door
“—step outside for a minute?”

She glanced over her shoulder to another
table—not the table she’d shared with the guy, who, Max noticed,
had also abandoned the table and was now standing with a police
officer at the bar, but another booth where Monica Reinhart sat
nursing a glass of wine. Emma held up a finger, signaling Monica
that she’d join her in a minute, and then let Max hold the door
open for her.