Country Roads (29 page)

Tears burned behind her eyes and she blinked hard. If only he knew.

“We’d better get going. You’ll catch a chill once the sun starts going down.”

Leaping to his feet, he bustled around, scooping up her now-dry lingerie and handing it to her before he finished dressing.

She tried to think of a way to stop all the activity so she could drag the truth out of him, but his smooth, implacable facade was back in place. Anything she said would just slide off it. So she followed him up the path to the motorcycle, exchanging nothing more than pleasantries. She strapped on the helmet and climbed on behind him, pressing up against the sun-warmed leather covering his back.

As they roared along, she tried to savor the wind and speed and sense of being melded into one piece with Paul and his Harley, but her mind kept stumbling over the fact that her week in Sanctuary was blowing by faster than the scenery.

As she contemplated returning to her home, the image sprouted metal bars on the doors and windows, sending a shudder of revulsion through her.

She didn’t hate her home or her family. Maybe she felt a little smothered sometimes, but she understood their concern for her. It came from love.

She just didn’t want to leave the fascinating man whose waist she had her arms wrapped around. Anywhere she went without Paul was going to seem bleak.

So why not extend her stay in Sanctuary past the gala? Carlos couldn’t force her to go home. She could afford the inn and she had a free studio for now.

Would Paul want her to stay? If he did, for how long?

Julia faced the fact that she didn’t know much about how this sort of relationship worked. Paul was firmly settled here with his practice and his family and his strong connection to the town, so she would be the one moving, if it came to that. The idea didn’t conjure up any monsters.

But she would have to tell him the truth about herself at some point. She clutched harder at his waist.

Not yet. She wanted him to think she was perfect just a little longer.

The next morning, Julia settled into the heavy oak chair, rolling it forward so she could reach the mouse. When Paul had kissed her good-bye after a night in her bed, he’d advised her not to read Paxton’s blog until Claire vetted it. But both he and Claire underestimated her toughness when it came to her work.

The inn’s computer stood on a massive antique lawyer’s desk strewn with papers and brochures, lit by an old brass library lamp. The sleek lines of the large-screen monitor with its plastic base looked like a spaceship that had landed in a Victorian parlor. The office was empty and quiet. She wasn’t sure if someone
had instructed the staff to give her privacy or whether they were all busy elsewhere.

She wound her hair into a bun and took a deep breath before she clicked on the Internet icon. The blog loaded quickly. Evidently, state-of-the-art equipment wasn’t considered an impediment to historic atmosphere.

Paxton Hayes didn’t feel the need for a catchy title for his blog; it was called simply “Paxton Hayes on Art.”

Julia Castillo Goes to the Dark Side
was his headline. She chuckled at his unintentional double meaning.

Popular equine artist Julia Castillo has resurfaced with a new style, one that appears to have more depth and interest than her pleasantly bucolic earlier work.

“Ouch!” She wasn’t happy about the condescending description of her older paintings, but it didn’t destroy her, either. Maybe it was because she’d left that period behind, or maybe she had more confidence in herself, thanks to her new friends in Sanctuary.

The new work, which Castillo calls her
“Night Mares,”
offers psychological layering and a disturbing power that was absent from the idyllic landscapes she has created up until now. While this critic has always acknowledged its technical virtuosity, the painter’s earlier work invited no further analysis.

“And here I thought you were an art critic, not a psychiatrist.” Julia was starting to enjoy herself. The man was so pretentiously nasty it was impossible to take him seriously.

Hayes briefly recapped her career up to this point, inserting photos of Claire’s treasured painting and a couple of others that were especially well-known. There were references to pastoral pleasantness and her youth with an implication of immaturity, all subtle denigrations of the work, but it bounced off her newfound armor.

She frowned at his discussion of the run-up in prices of her work since the supply had been cut off two years ago. Hayes speculated about it being a deliberate ploy to create pent-up demand for her new and different style. He chose to ignore the carefully crafted explanation she and Claire had come up with: that she didn’t want to bring her new work to the market until she was satisfied with its quality.

“Jerk,” she said, but more in irritation than anger.

He quoted her a couple of times, accurately but out of context, so she came across as a combination of naive and airheaded. She skimmed through those.

Finally she got to the all-important paragraph.

Those interested in Castillo’s new work will have the opportunity to reach their own conclusions this Friday when the Gallery at Sanctuary will show five of the
“Night Mares.”
Despite the gallery’s remote location among the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, this blogger confesses to having his curiosity piqued and plans to attend.

Julia whooped in triumph. Not only was Hayes coming, he had announced it to the entire art world!

“Everything okay?” Lyle Lee, one of the inn’s two owners, poked his head in the office door.

Julia knew she was grinning like an idiot. “I’ve been insulted up, down, and sideways, but the jerk is coming to my show.”

The man raised his eyebrows. “He must be an important jerk.”

“He’s influential in the circles we needed to reach on short notice.” She stood up, mentally congratulating herself on being unaffected by Hayes’s criticisms.

Julia’s cell phone vibrated in her jeans pocket. “Excuse me, that must be Claire,” she said, pulling out the phone and putting it to her ear as she walked to a secluded corner of the lobby. “It worked!”

“Julia! Why did you speak to Paxton Hayes?” Her uncle’s voice was taut with anger. “I agreed to this show of yours because it was in a country gallery no one would hear of. Now word of it will be spread all over the place.”

Just like that, her balloon of confidence deflated. She thought Carlos was finally allowing her to make her own decisions, but he was just humoring her because he thought the show wouldn’t matter. His words pushed her back into the well of insecurity he’d dug over the past two years. She felt apologies rising up in her throat.

Her uncle didn’t give her a chance to speak. “This is a catastrophe. I cannot come today, but I will be there tomorrow to speak with Ms. Parker—”

“Arbuckle,” Julia corrected with petty satisfaction. “There is no point to your coming before Friday.”

“We must decide how to control this mess,” Carlos said. “We’ll find a reason to cancel the show.”

Julia thought of Claire’s carefully laid plans for the exhibit and forced herself to speak with conviction. “Paxton Hayes is coming. There’s no way we’re canceling.”

He muttered an unflattering epithet about Hayes in Spanish. “He called your paintings ‘bucolic’ and ‘pleasant.’ He knows nothing about what is good art.”

Her uncle’s partisanship lit a tiny glow of affection inside her. Even if Carlos didn’t like her
Night Mares
, he wasn’t going to allow Paxton Hayes to attack her work. “Thanks, Tío,” she said softly.

Her uncle sighed. “
Mi querida
, you must come home with me tomorrow. You cannot be exposed to what might happen.”

“What? No!” Every fiber of Julia’s body shrieked a refusal. She needed more time with Paul. She had to figure out whether he wanted her to stay or not. “I’m not walking out on the show. People are counting on me.”

“We will discuss it tomorrow, face-to-face,” he said. “I am only trying to protect you, Julia.”

“And I love you for it, but the time when I needed that has passed.” She hung up and slumped onto a hard wooden bench set beside the wall. It didn’t matter what she said, because Carlos refused to believe her. She slammed a fist into the bench as tears of frustration burned in her eyes.

Another thought made her sit up straight in horror.
Would Carlos try to use her epilepsy as leverage to convince Claire to cancel the show?

A
S
J
ULIA
’
S BRAIN
reeled at the possibility, her phone pinged, signaling a voice mail. Her hands shook slightly as she punched the buttons to play it. It was Claire, her voice vibrating with excitement as she conveyed the good news about Hayes’s promised attendance and dismissed the rest of the blog as not worth reading. “He’s a pretentious ass, but we already knew that.”

Julia frowned. Why did everyone think she was so fragile she couldn’t handle a bad review? Yes, she had driven all the way to Sanctuary to get a second opinion on her new paintings, but that seemed more pigheaded than feeble to her.

She stared down at the phone in her hand. Claire deserved an excited, congratulatory return phone call for the coup she had pulled off, but Carlos had destroyed Julia’s jubilant mood.

She forced the muscles at the corners of her mouth upward and dialed the phone. “Claire, you’re a genius.”

“Did you read it?” Claire sounded worried.

Julia shoved down a spark of irritation. “Yes, and he’s a jerk, but he walked right into our trap.”

“It really wasn’t bad for Paxton,” Claire said, her relief sounding clearly through the phone. “Not everyone considers ‘bucolic’ and ‘pastoral’ undesirable qualities in a painting.”

“He sure makes them sound repulsive, though.”

“You’ll have to talk to him at the show, but I don’t think he’ll have the nerve to be quite as awful face-to-face.”

“Paxton Hayes doesn’t scare me.” It was her uncle she didn’t know what to do about. She chewed on her lip before she decided she had to warn Claire. “My uncle Carlos saw the blog too.”

There was a pause. “How did he feel about it?”

“He’s coming here tomorrow.” Julia felt reduced to the status of a wayward child.

“What is he planning to do?” Claire sounded puzzled.

“He wants to talk you into canceling the show. Failing that, he wants to drag me home with him.” Julia kept her tone light. “He wasn’t happy about Paxton Hayes attending.”

“I guess you and your uncle lock horns frequently,” Claire said.

Gratification warmed Julia at Claire’s assumption that she had the strength to stand up to her uncle. “I felt I should warn you, in case he goes to the gallery first.” Julia hesitated. Should she risk making Claire suspicious that she was trying to hide something? She just couldn’t bear the thought of Paul hearing about her epilepsy from someone other than herself. “I know I can trust you to keep what he tells you in the heat of the moment confidential.”

“Of course you can.” The puzzled note was back in Claire’s voice but she continued, “Don’t worry about your uncle. We’ll convert him, just like we did Paxton.”