True Colors (7 page)

Some surprise. If that song meant Emma would
be plagued with insomnia for the rest of her life, she’d be pretty
damned pissed. If, on the other hand, that song compelled Max to
find her a new studio…well, she couldn’t be pissed about that.

 “
Who’s Gus?” she
asked.

“The owner of the Faulk Street Tavern. That
tall woman with the short hair behind the bar.”

“I wonder if any of the songs ever changed
her. She’s in there listening to the jukebox every day.”

“I don’t know.” Monica glanced at her watch
and slid off her stool. “I’ve got to go. If Max stops by, be nice.
He seemed a little less prickly last night.”

“That’s because you were so sweet,” Emma
pointed out. “I don’t do sweet very well.”

“It’s time you learned. The sweeter you are,
the less likely he is to boot us out of the house before the lease
is up.”

“All right.” Emma stared at the strong black
coffee in her mug. Maybe she ought to stir some sugar into it.
Sweet coffee might sweeten her mood.

She remained on her stool, staring into the
mug while Monica rinsed out her dishes and stacked them in the
dishwasher. Would Emma’s next residence have a dishwasher? Would it
even have a kitchen? Would she have to eat off an aluminum
mess-kit, like a soldier in the midst of a battle?

She was in the midst of a battle now, and the
thought of eating caused her stomach to clench. She supposed
soldiers felt the same way. Not knowing your future could sure
suppress your appetite.

At least she wasn’t getting shot at.

She refilled her mug and trudged up the
stairs to the loft. Sleepy or no, distracted or no, she had to get
back to work on Ava’s Dream Portrait. Painting could be magical, as
she’d told Max yesterday at the bar. Perhaps if she wielded her
brushes, if she finished the castle, and added the unicorn and a
dazzling, bejeweled crown to the picture, some magic would rub off
on her.

The right kind of magic. Magic that would
provide her with enough money to live on and a roof over her
head—and the ability to get a good night’s rest. Was that too much
to ask for?

Andrea Simonetti seemed perturbed. “Monica
had a friend visiting her,” she told Max. “There’s nothing in her
lease banning visitors.”

“This is a bit more permanent than a visit,”
Max told the broker. The real estate company where she worked was
located inside a building that looked like an actual house, with
shingles and shutters and a cute brick chimney, although the house
sat on Main Street and was abutted by a driveway that led to an
asphalt parking lot in back. Andrea’s office was the size of a
small bedroom, but instead of a bed, it contained a broad desk with
a computer humming on it, and the walls were adorned with a few
framed certificates attesting to Andrea’s professional status and
several dozen glossy photographs of houses for sale.

“In other words, the friend is living in your
house,” Andrea surmised.

Max nodded. “Not just living there. She’s
running a business out of the house.”

“A
business
?” Andrea’s impeccably
tweezed eyebrows arched so high, Max was afraid they’d collide with
her hairline.

He laughed. “Not
that
kind of business.
She teaches art. And that’s the thing. I can’t have her running a
school in the house, with little kids doing finger-painting and
trashing the place.”

“Is the place trashed?” Andrea’s eyebrows
soared again.

“Not that I could see.”

“We need to do a walk-through,” Andrea said,
jotting a note on the small pad on her desk. “Monica is liable for
any damage to the place. We’ve got the security deposit, but—”

“The thing is, this second tenant…” What
could he tell Andrea about the second tenant? That her hair was the
color of fire and her lips made him think of plums, sweet and tart
and juicy? That beneath her baggy apparel he could detect the sort
of enticing curves most women went on drastic diets to eliminate
and most men dreamed of? That a stupid song had scrambled his
usually orderly mind and he was no longer quite sure of who he
was?

No. He couldn’t say any of that. Just
thinking it gave him a headache.

“She needs to work,” he said. “I want to help
her find someplace else to hold her classes.”

“I don’t see how that’s your responsibility,”
Andrea said, her tone indignant. “I’m so sorry. I should have
checked to make sure Monica was honoring the terms of the lease.
I’ve known the Reinharts for years. Monica is a good girl. I
assumed she would entertain friends in the house—and I assumed she
would do so in a civilized manner. No blow-outs, no keggers, no
inviting half the world over via Twitter.”

“Forget parties. Forget trashing the place.”
Max tried to steer Andrea back to the issue that concerned him.
“You know the available properties around here. Is there any
reasonably priced space where Emma could hold her classes?”

Andrea shrugged. “I’d have to research
it.”

“Please do.” Max rose from his chair.

Andrea peered up at him. Her lipstick was as
impeccable as her eyebrows, the dark pink applied with precision.
Max had never understood the allure of lipstick. If you wanted to
kiss a woman, you didn’t want to kiss some cosmetic product. And if
you didn’t want to kiss her, lipstick wasn’t going to change
that.

“What about listing the house?” Andrea asked.
“Do you want to go ahead with that?”

“I plan to sell it,” he assured her. “But
don’t list it yet. They have two more months on the lease.”

“Selling a house takes time. Especially an
unusual house like yours. It’s fabulous, but it’s not exactly your
standard-issue Boston area home. I know we’ll get a good price for
it, but it might take longer to find a buyer who loves it as much
as you did when you bought it.”

Max wasn’t sure he’d ever loved it. Vanessa
had. He’d bought it for her.

But that was none of Andrea’s business. “If
you want to get started on some preliminary work—have it appraised,
photograph it, make sure everything is in order—that would be fine.
But don’t list it yet. I’ll let you know when I’m ready to take the
next step.”

Leaving Andrea’s office,
passing two younger brokers at their desks in the front room and
stepping outside into the sunny afternoon, Max tried to puzzle out
why he was suddenly less than eager to sell the house. Every
remotely possible explanation led back to that stupid song.
Like a rainbow
? What the
hell did rainbows have to do with anything?

He strolled down the driveway to the lot in
the rear, where he’d parked his rental car, and climbed in. Had he
been at Logan Airport only yesterday, signing the paperwork in that
area of the terminal where all the rental car desks were clustered?
Had it been a mere twenty-four hours ago when he’d phoned the Hyatt
Regency in Cambridge on his way out to the rental car lot and told
them he’d be checking into his room that evening, after a quick
trip north to Brogan’s Point?

Why was he still here? Why had he spent a
night in the Ocean Bluff Inn instead of the Hyatt? Why hadn’t he
told Andrea to go ahead and list his house for sale?

Why did he want to help Emma find studio
space? Yesterday, when he’d seen her huddling inside the front door
of his house with those two little girls, her thumb poised on her
cell phone so she could dial 911, he’d had no interest in helping
her. Quite the opposite—he’d been startled and then enraged to
discover her living in the house. He’d wanted her gone.

Now… Now he didn’t know what he wanted.

Because of that ridiculous song? Or because
of Emma’s stubborn chin and her defiant attitude, her lush lips and
her amazing hair?

He pulled out of the driveway and cruised
slowly down Main Street and then Atlantic Avenue, searching for
studio space. As if he knew what such a thing would look like. The
businesses lining the street had signs and displays in their
windows: hardware store, boutique, gift shop, consignment shop,
knitting shop, diner. Nearly all the stores were occupied, and none
of them seemed like a suitable venue for an artist to hold classes
and paint.

What did Max know about artists, anyway?

He wondered what Emma had done to create a
studio in his house. Had she just taken a room and filled it with
art supplies? Was the room full of half-finished canvases? Did it
reek of turpentine?

Without consciously thinking about it, he
steered out of town and up the twisting back road that climbed the
hill to his house. Other houses stood along the road, nestled among
the pine trees. Some were set back from the street by long
driveways, and others loomed close to the roadway. His house sat at
the top of the hill on a two-acre plot. An architect had designed
the house for himself twenty-five years ago, and sold it only
because he’d reached the age when New England winters were more
than his arthritic joints could tolerate. Max was only the second
person to own the house—and he’d never even hung his jacket in one
of its closets. That was actually rather pathetic. An architect’s
dream come to life, and Max owned it, and he’d spent not one single
night under its roof.

He reached his driveway and let the car roll
to a stop. The scent of the ocean, so prominent down the hill,
along Main Street and Atlantic Avenue, was overtaken here by the
fragrance of the surrounding pine forest. Although he couldn’t
smell the ocean, he could see it. The architect had cleared enough
trees to provide a spectacular vista from southeastern-facing side
of the house.

Max turned from the ocean view and regarded
the house thoughtfully. He could see why Vanessa had fallen in love
with it. Too bad she’d never really gotten to enjoy the place.
She’d furnished it, decorated it, discussed her plans with him. And
then everything had fallen apart.

At one time, that thought would have filled
him with bitterness. Standing on the front walk right now, making
his way to the porch, pressing the doorbell… The song he’d heard in
the bar last night drifted through his head, and to his amazement,
he felt no bitterness at all.

As she had yesterday, Emma peeked through the
sidelight. Unlike yesterday, however, today she felt safe in
opening it when she saw Max on the other side of the glass. Even
though he had a key and could have let himself in, he remained
standing on the front porch as she opened the door, gazed up at
him, and said, “Hi.”

As if she’d expected him.

“May I come in?”

“Sure.” She stepped back and he entered the
house.

He wanted to focus on the house itself, to
view it the way Vanessa had the first time Andrea had shown them
the place. He wanted to see it not as a burden to be shed but as a
home, a place where Emma and Monica lived.

White carpeting,
was his first thought.
Not very practical.

Emma smiled hesitantly. “I’m working right
now, so…”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt
you,” he urged her. “I just wanted…”
To
see you,
he almost blurted out. “To see
your work space. You need a new studio. What is that going to
entail?”

She turned and strolled ahead of him down the
hall. His gaze journeyed from the tumbling waves of her hair down
her compact body, clad today in baggy denim overalls. Her hips
shimmied gently with each step. Her feet were small, her sneakers
spattered with paint. Fortunately, all the sneakers left on that
impractical white carpet were tread marks. The paint must have
dried long ago.

As they entered the great room and neared
what Andrea had called a floating staircase—one that rose from the
center of the room, not bordered by walls—he heard what sounded
like a low chuckle coming from Emma. “What?” he asked.

“Did anyone ever tell you
you talk funny?” she asked, then hurriedly added, “I don’t mean
that as an insult. It’s just—I mean,
what
is that going to entail
? No one says
entail
in casual
speech.”

Max hesitated, his foot on the first riser as
she proceeded up the stairs. “They don’t?”

“No one I know does.”

“You know me.” He followed
her up the stairs to the loft. Few people noticed that he
spoke—well,
funny
wasn’t the word he’d use to describe his speech. He loved
language and all the words it provided for him. He used them
whenever he needed them.
Entail
was a perfectly good word. “English isn’t my first
language,” he told her. He wasn’t sure why he’d revealed that about
himself. But then, he wasn’t sure why he’d driven up the hill to
the house in the first place. He wasn’t sure why he was doing a lot
of things.

Emma had already reached the loft. She spun
around and stared at him. “Really? I never would have guessed. You
speak beautifully. You just use unusual words sometimes. What’s
your first language?”

He didn’t answer right away. He was too
distracted by the sight of the loft, which she’d converted into a
splendid work space. The floor was covered with thick, stained drop
cloths. Canvases stood stacked against a wall, draped in plastic
wrap to prevent them from marring the wall itself. Sturdy shelving
along another wall held supplies. A large table stood at the center
of the loft, old and scarred and covered with paints, brushes, and
a jar of murky solvent. Three easels stood near the table, the
center one holding a rectangular canvas, maybe two feet by three
feet, that featured a painting of an adorable little girl, her eyes
bright, her cheeks a soft, tawny peach hue, her rippling blond hair
topped by a bejeweled crown. Behind her face, a half-painted castle
loomed, and what appeared to be a unicorn stood on the stretch of
green lawn beside the castle. The easels flanking the painting held
photographs and sketches of the girl, the castle, and the mythical
horned creature.