True Colors (20 page)

Why had Vanessa chosen to floor the house in
white carpet? It was pretty, but so impractical. Had she planned to
make visitors remove their shoes at the front door, and pad around
in their bare feet? Would she have provided slippers for her
guests?

He didn’t exactly mind the white carpet, but it
would have to go. He knew nothing about interior decorating, and
even less about color. Would brown carpeting be boring? Would green
make the house look like a golf course? Would red be too garish?
Once he had the place recarpeted, should he ask the installers to
save a scrap of the carpet from the stairs to the loft as a
souvenir of the hottest sex he’d ever experienced?

In the kitchen, he found an empty wine glass on
the counter by the sink. It looked clean, but when he lifted it to
his nose, he could smell a residue of wine in it. A bowl containing
a banana, a couple of apples, and a twig of green grapes sat on the
center island. Surely if Emma and Monica had moved out, they
wouldn’t have left their fruit behind. Or a dirty glass. The last
time he’d been in this kitchen, when Emma had made him a delicious
omelet for breakfast, he’d been impressed with how tidy the place
was.

Of course she and Monica hadn’t moved out. They
had another month and a half on their lease. Monica was probably
with her boyfriend, and Emma was with…

He didn’t want to think about it.

He felt a little
like a trespasser as he moved through the airy, sunlit rooms on the
first floor.
You own this
house
, he reminded himself.
It’s yours.
Yet it felt
like Emma’s more than his. More, even, than Vanessa’s. Emma had
lived there for only a few months, but in those few months she’d
made the place her own.

He circled back to the great room and started
up the stairs to the loft. At the top, he froze.

Emma lay sprawled out on the floor, her hair a
tangle of fiery red around her face, her baggy cotton sweater and
jeans spattered with paint, her feet clad in her familiar,
paint-stained canvas sneakers. A smear of paint marked her chin
like a blue scab. Her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm. She
was sleeping.

Beside her, on an easel, was a painting of Max,
staring out at a panoramic view of the ocean. In the painting, he
might be seated on that ghastly, uncomfortable stool, which stood
exactly where it had been when he’d posed on it just twenty-four
hours ago. He might be gazing through the wall of glass at the
Atlantic Ocean at the bottom of the long, panoramic hill on which
his house stood.

His house. Emma’s home.

He scrutinized the loft. The table at the
center of the room held tubes of paint, a jar filled with several
paintbrushes in various sizes, and a plate smudged with blends of
paint—some blue, some yellow merging into a rich, dark green, the
color of the sea in the painting. Dollops of black and brown
swirled together like veins in marble, just as his hair in the
painting was black with veins of brown. Two intense blues lightened
with pale paint to create the color of his eyes.

The table also contained another empty wine
glass, and an empty green wine bottle. The glass in the kitchen
assured Max that Emma hadn’t drunk the entire bottle herself.
Someone—Monica, he hoped—had drunk at least a glass of it. And Emma
didn’t look drunk. Her breathing was relaxed and steady, her
complexion a healthy peach hue.

Besides, if she’d gotten drunk, she couldn’t
possibly have produced such an amazing painting. Max knew all the
myths about tortured artists drinking or ingesting or shooting up
assorted intoxicants and then, under the influence, allegedly
creating masterpieces. He didn’t believe those myths. Great artists
might be substance abusers, but the artwork they accomplished while
drunk or stoned was never as beautiful or moving as what they might
accomplish while sober.

Max was a scientist. He indulged in alcoholic
beverages when the occasion called for them. And he’d never come up
with as good a solution to a programming challenge after drinking a
few beers or a vodka as he’d come up with after consuming a mug of
strong black coffee or a glass of steaming Russian tea.

Emma wasn’t drunk. Just asleep. Since this
painting hadn’t existed yesterday, she must have painted it
overnight. No wonder she was exhausted.

She couldn’t possibly be comfortable, sleeping
on the rumpled, stained drop cloths spread across the floor of the
loft. To pick her up and carry her to her bedroom would be awfully
presumptuous. But to leave her on the floor seemed
heartless.

Before he could decide what to do with her, she
stirred. A soft sound—half a purr and half a sigh—slipped past her
parted lips. They looked rosier than he’d remembered, in contrast
with her smooth, pale skin and that blot of blue paint staining her
chin. Then her eyes fluttered open. She peered up at him, looking
sweetly befuddled. At least his presence didn’t alarm her. Finding
him in her loft didn’t cause her to scream or recoil in
horror.

“Max?” Her voice was thick with
drowsiness.

“You didn’t answer the doorbell, so I let
myself in. I’m sorry.”

“No, that’s all right.” She rubbed her eyes
with one hand and pushed herself up to sit. “It’s your
house.”

He almost retorted that it was hers more than
his, but he wasn’t sure if that was true. He also wasn’t sure if
his apology was for having entered the house or for having said the
wrong thing yesterday—or for having failed to say the right
thing.

“I thought you’d gone back to California.
Monica said you checked out of the Ocean Bluff Inn.”

“I just went down to Boston,” he said.
“Actually, Cambridge. I wanted to see an old professor of
mine.”

“Oh, you’re a Harvard man?”

“M.I.T.”

She shoved a heavy tangle of hair back from her
face and sighed again.

“Either way, I guess you’re a genius, right?”
She remained seated on the floor, apparently not quite fully
conscious. She yawned, rubbed her eyes, rolled her shoulders,
yawned again.

He needed to move down to her level, rather
than towering above her. He considered sitting on the stool—no, too
uncomfortable. Or on the stairs—no, too erotic a memory attached to
that place. Instead, he dropped onto the floor facing her, but not
too close, not crowding her. He crossed his legs, rested his elbows
on his knees, folded his hands, and watched her.

“To be able to paint something like that—” he
gestured toward the painting “—is genius. It’s amazing.”

“It still needs work,” she said. “I’ve got to
extend the seascape and the sky. The ocean needs more turbulence, I
think. And I didn’t get your sweater right. I have to do some more
shading, give it some more dimension. It’s funny—I had no trouble
picturing your face, but your sweater caused me
problems.”

He shot the painting another awed look. “You
did all that last night?”

“Last night into this morning, until I finally
had to take a nap.” She yawned yet again, reminding him of a cat. A
beautiful, sexy cat stirring awake after dozing in a patch of
sunlight.

“It’s extraordinary.” He peered up at the
painting from his position on the floor. “Different from the
painting you did of the little princess girl.”

“That painting
was much more representational,” she agreed. “This one is more
impressionistic. Rougher lines, less blending of color. I don’t
know. If I’d done it during the day, when I was fully rested, and
I’d relied on the photos I took of you… But I didn’t want to. I
wanted to
feel
the
painting, not copy the photos.”

“Well.” He
continued to study it, then shook his head, trying to wrap his head
around the idea that she’d created the painting without photos,
without him posing for her. By
feel
. “It’s amazing,” he repeated,
wishing he had the vocabulary to capture the painting’s effect on
him. Did she
feel
the wistfulness with which she’d imbued the painting? Did
she
feel
the
loneliness he saw in the her rendering of his eyes, the
stubbornness in her rendering of his mouth? Did she
feel
how troubled he was,
how desperate to make things right and how worried that his attempt
would only make things worse?

“Feel free to name a price,” she said, then
gave a half-hearted laugh that made him wonder if she seriously
wanted to sell the painting to him. “We never discussed what I
charge for my work, let alone signed a contract. But I sure as hell
could use the money.”

Okay. She’d raised the issue, however
unwittingly, before he’d had to. He drew in a breath and said, “We
have to talk.”

“If it’s about the house—”

“It’s about the house and a lot more,” he said.
Her eyebrows lifted slightly. She looked intrigued.

He didn’t want to intrigue her. He wanted to
make her understand who he was, and to love him not because of it
but in spite of it.

He wanted her to love him.

So much was at stake. But if he wasn’t honest
with her, nothing else would matter. He took a deep breath for
courage and said, “I’m very rich.”

Emma snorted. “Compared to me, everyone is very
rich. Even Monica.”

“No, Emma. I’m
talking
rich.
Top
one-percent rich. Top one-tenth-of-one-percent
rich.”

She angled her head slightly, as if appraising
him in this new light. “Well, I assumed you weren’t poor. This
house isn’t exactly a shack, and you were renting it to us for
peanuts. I figured either you were stupid or you were nuts. Or you
were so rich, you didn’t need to charge us a high enough rent to
cover your mortgage and taxes on the place.”

“There is no mortgage. I paid cash for it.” Did
he sound arrogant? Snotty? “Emma…I’m one of those gazillionaires
you read about in the business pages—assuming you read the business
pages, which you probably don’t,” he added when he saw the faint
smirk curving her lips. “I’m a computer scientist. A software
engineer. I developed an encryption program that protects credit
card transactions, among other things. I got some venture capital
funding, hired a small staff, and developed the software until it
was ready to market. A major player in the industry offered me a
ton of money for the company. So I sold it.”

“And now you have a ton of money,” Emma
concluded.

“Yes and no.” He considered his words and
reminded himself to be honest. “Yes. I have a ton of money. But a
smaller ton of money than I might have had. I’ve got a seat on the
board of directors of the company that bought mine, which pays a
ridiculous amount to each of us whenever the board meets. I’ve made
some smart investments in other start-ups. But even without that
income… After the sale, I distributed shares of the profit to my
staff and investors. But I had an obscene amount of money. More
than I knew what to do with. More than was right,
frankly.”

“Right?” She looked intrigued again. “Is there
a right amount?”

“No one should have as much money as I did, not
when there are so many people in the world who have so much less. I
set up a foundation—the New World Foundation—and put most of my
money into that. It funds educational programs, both here and
abroad. One of our focuses is education for immigrants, helping
them to assimilate and get up to speed. I was lucky I was young
when I came to America—I learned English quickly and started school
with my peers. My parents spoke some English, which helped. But we
have so many immigrants in this country who have so much to
contribute, and they come here unprepared for our schools, or with
language issues. New World funds a lot of educational programs
devoted to helping them.”

“That’s nice,” Emma said. She looked mildly
perplexed, as if unsure why he was telling her all this.

So far, he’d told her only the good parts. He
pushed onward. “When I sold my company, there was a party to
celebrate the acquisition. I met a woman at the party.
Vanessa.”

He’d half expected Emma to react in some way.
Most women didn’t like to hear about other women, at least not in
the context of romantic entanglements. But Emma didn’t seem the
least bit jealous or annoyed. She sat unflinching, her eyes now
fully in focus, her expression curious. “Your fiancée?” she
asked.

“My ex. Yes.” He
ruminated for a moment. “She was…how can I put this? I was a
computer geek from M.I.T. She was the sort of woman you expect to
see on the cover of the
Sports
Illustrated
swimsuit issue. There was more
to her than her beauty, of course. She was intelligent. She was
fun. We started seeing each other. We got
engaged.”

Emma said nothing. She simply watched him,
waiting.

“And then, we broke up.” Not true, and he
corrected himself. “Vanessa left me. But not before I’d bought her
this house.”

Emma’s brow dipped in a frown. “You’re still
not over her, are you.”

“I’m very much over her,” Max assured her. “But
I bought this house only because she wanted it.” He fidgeted for a
moment with his watchband, stalling. He hated to admit what an
idiot he’d been. But he had to be honest with Emma, and being
honest required him to acknowledge his foolishness. “She’d grown up
in New England, and she said she’d always wanted an ocean-view
house. We looked at a few places in Maine, but the winter weather
is so brutal there. Then we found this house. She said she wanted
it, so I bought it. I told her to decorate it any way she wanted.
It was hers.”