Cowboy Tough (28 page)

Cat leaned the last painting up against the wall of the front parlor and took a step backward. She should be looking at brushstrokes and composition, color and value—things the students had learned from her over the course of the workshop.

But instead she saw the other things they'd learned—less tangible things. She saw that Ed had painted Emma and Emma had painted Ed. Their figures didn't take up the whole canvas, but somehow they became the focal points of their landscapes. She saw that Dora had painted a loose, impressionistic view of the prairie meeting the sky—a painting that was full of open space and possibility. She saw that Viv had worked much more tightly, preserving a view of the canyon as if she wanted to hold it still forever, put it in a frame so it would never change.

Abby had turned a wall of rock into a bold abstract piece, and Charles had done the same with a tumble of river rocks. Their paintings were so similar they could have been done by the same hand. Hmm. Interesting.

She stood by the window, looking out at the scrubby ground surrounding the house. Little birds were hopping from branch to branch in the spent lilac bushes by the front door, chattering like a roomful of gossips. She remembered how bleak the ranch had seemed when she got there. Now it seemed uniquely alive, not just with the birds but with the breezes, the sunshine, the sweet scent of sage.

She thought of Modigliani as she had when she'd first arrived. Picasso, burning his drawings. Van Gogh, freezing in that stark, simple room. No matter what their circumstances, they'd been able to find the beauty in their world, to see it and show it by putting their hearts into their paintings. They'd made the world their own.

But this world would never be hers. She was going back to Chicago. If Art Treks kept her on, she'd keep spending her vacations as a teacher, always in a new location. Italy. Scotland. France.

Those places had glittered for her when she'd started this journey. That had been her goal—to travel, to see new places.

But now she didn't even want to leave the ranch. She wasn't done, she realized. There was more here to paint. More to see, every day. The sun always came up on something new here, every day a bright new promise.

She'd thought the place held nothing for her. She'd expected to miss all the excitement of the city, but the truth was, there was nothing for her to miss. She wasn't sociable enough to enjoy the parties and gallery openings. She wasn't rich enough to take advantage of the restaurants and shows.

And the truth was, she dreaded going back to the concrete and brick, the square city blocks and angular buildings. She'd fallen in love with the winding roads of the West, the curves of the landscape, the way the clouds drifted aimlessly in the endless sky.

She looked up as the students filed into the room. Tonight was her last chance to make sure their Art Treks experience stuck with them. She'd been determined from the start to give these people their money's worth. Everything had gone wrong, but she knew they'd learned a lot. They'd made connections with each other, and every person you loved helped you see the world in a new light.

Wasn't that what really mattered?

She knew she needed a plan, but her mind had gone blank. She'd asked the students to come prepared, so at least she knew how to start. They'd been told to explain why they chose the subject they did, and how their painting evolved from their experiences on the trip.

She watched them arrange themselves as they always did—Emma and Ed on the sofa, Abby sitting stiffly in an overstuffed armchair. The two girls were behind the sofa, resting their elbows on the leather cushions.

She didn't know where Mack was. Maybe his office. He'd said something about needing to use the computer, so he was probably working on the ranch's financial issues again.

She wished he was here, but life had to go on. Even when you wanted it to stop. Even when you found a perfect moment with the perfect man, the real world kept on spinning.

Charles came in and perched on the arm of the sofa near Abby, and Cat could swear the air in the room changed. Maybe somebody had gotten something out of this trip. And judging from Abby's shy smile, it was a very good thing.

She'd let the students start, and she'd take it from there. She'd learned as much from these people as they had from her.

“Ed, would you like to start?”

The old man cleared his throat. “Well, I didn't know quite what to do today. You didn't give us much direction.”

Cat felt a tug of fear in her gut. Why was she still hoping this would work out? She'd failed these people. Nobody came on this trip to learn how to see inside themselves. They just wanted to learn to paint, and she'd taught them so little.

“So I didn't quite know what to paint. I mean, usually there was a lake, or a tree, or something, you know? Emma saw some flowers she liked, so we stopped, and then I tried to think about composition, like you showed us. And I asked myself what was the focal point of this scene, like you said.”

Well, at least someone had learned something. She'd talked about focal points the first day.

Ed held up a painting of his wife standing at her easel in a sea of wildflowers. The painting was promising, but not quite finished. “And I decided it was Emma. She's been my focal point for fifty years. I guess she still is, even with all this pretty land to look at.”

Emma turned her own painting around. She'd painted flowers, but in her painting they had been plucked out of the meadow and bunched in an old, gnarled hand.

“I'd have gotten more done if she hadn't made me hold the flowers,” Ed groused.

“I wanted you in the picture too. I was remembering that time we went camping.”

He snorted. “I took her up to the Adirondacks, made her sleep in a tent and eat Vienna sausage out of the can. And all she remembers is that I gave her a bunch of weeds I picked along the trail.”

“These are perfect,” Cat said. “You couldn't have done the lesson better.”

“But they're not finished,” Ed said.

“But you caught what matters, and you can finish up the details later. It's not what's in front of you that matters. It's how it makes you feel. These are wonderful.”

Ed and Emma beamed as she turned to Abby. “Abby? What did you paint?”

The woman started blushing even before she spoke. Her voice shook a little as she stood up and showed an abstract painting done in warm shades of brown and blue with touches of red. It was the colors and composition that mattered, but Cat recognized the wall of the canyon, with its layered streaks of rock.

“I liked what you said the other day about form versus representation,” she said. “I know most everybody picked something pretty to paint, like the flowers, but I wanted to do something different. I saw the rocks, and, I don't know.” She ducked her head. “They were so ordinary they were beautiful.”

“I did the same thing.” Charles turned his painting around to show an abstract depiction of some round river rocks. He, too, had concentrated more on color and texture than form, and his painting was surprisingly successful. “I don't think something has to be pretty to make a beautiful painting. You just have to look a little closer.”

Cat looked from one painting to the other. “Did you two work together?”

“Nope.” Abby looked uncomfortable, as if she'd been accused of cheating. “We were on opposite sides of the canyon. I was near the top, and it looks like he went down to the river.”

“We just think alike.” Charles moved over to sit on the arm of Abby's chair. The two of them put their heads together and it was clear they'd found their own focal points.

“Viv?” Cat gave the girl a smile of encouragement. “Our most improved student, by the way. I can't believe how good you've gotten. You have real talent.”

Viv glowed as she shyly turned her painting around. She'd climbed down to the river and done a study of rocks and trees and flowing water. It was meticulously detailed, with every blade of grass defined.

“Lots of detail,” Cat said.

“I wanted to save it.” Vivian blushed. “Hold onto it, just exactly as it is now. Dad says things are going to be okay, but I was thinking about losing this place, and I—don't want to. That's what I like about painting. You can hold onto things.”

She glanced at Dora, who turned her own painting over. It was similar to the one she'd torn up the first day—a long view of the canyon, with the river glowing at the bottom.

“That's beautiful,” Ed said. Emma nodded.

“I like the way it fades out,” Viv said. “Just turns into a blur, so you can't really see the horizon. It's like the river goes on forever.”

“I guess I wanted to say that we don't know what the future holds,” Dora said. “But we keep going—like the river.”

“What about your future?” Ed asked. “Are you staying with Cat? That father of yours isn't looking after you too well.”

Cat sucked in a quick breath. She hadn't asked Dora yet if she wanted to stay with her. That was a personal conversation, one she'd been trying to get the nerve to start. Now Ed had laid it out in front of everyone, and he'd insulted Dora's dad. She waited for the fireworks to start, but Dora only shrugged.

“Not right away,” she said. “I think I need to look after my dad for a while. I'll visit Cat a lot, though. If she'll let me.”

“Of course I will, hon. I was going to ask you to—well, we'll talk about it later.”

“I'd come visit a lot more often if you lived here.”

Cat felt like every eye in the room was watching her, and she glanced around for an escape route. “Um, I don't know—I…”

“You know how you always say my mom didn't fulfill her purpose?” Dora said.

“I was wrong about that, hon.”

“I know.” Dora flailed a careless hand, waving away the issue. “But you know, you aren't fulfilling yours. You ought to be a mom. You're always taking care of people. You should marry Mack and live here and raise a bunch of kids and paint.”

Ignoring Cat's red-faced embarrassment, she turned to the rest of the students. “Don't you all think that's what she should do? She has this sucky job back in Chicago, and a shitty little apartment. And they're crazy about each other. It's okay with you, right, Viv?”

Viv shrugged. “Sure. Whatever makes him happy. She's better than Emilio, that's for sure.”

At least Mack wasn't in the room to hear Dora's crazy ideas. Much as she wanted her time on the ranch to last forever, Cat knew it was a ridiculous idea. She and Mack had known each other for all of two weeks, and however powerful her feelings had become, it just wasn't realistic to think his were the same.

She cleared her throat, as if that could erase the awkwardness of the moment, and shifted into teacher mode. “I'm glad you all had such a good time,” she said. “Now tomorrow…”

“Hey, wait,” said a deep voice from the doorway. “You forgot something.”

Mack strode into the room carrying her painting, and she felt herself color as brightly as any dawn sky. She couldn't explain why her own painting made her uneasy, but she'd left it behind on purpose. Every time she looked at it, she felt like she was the little tree she'd painted, clinging to a shelf of rock for dear life, resisting the pull of the shadowy depths of the canyon. She hadn't wanted to dissect the feeling behind the painting with all these people watching. Heck, she hadn't even wanted to think about it herself. That's why she'd left it back in the Heifer House.

As Mack held it up for everyone to see, she felt naked and off-balance. She certainly couldn't present an intelligent analysis of her technique. Oddly, she couldn't really remember painting it.

She looked at the group—Ed and Emma holding hands on the sofa, their daughter beside them, talking to Charles. These people were her friends. So why did she feel so exposed?

Charles looked at the painting and shook his head. “That's fantastic,” he said.

Emma nodded. “Beautiful. The way you caught the light. The way the tree looks so fragile.”

Cat glanced at their faces. The admiration was real.

“It's about being on the edge,” she said. The feeling she'd had when she painted it came back to her—a sort of trance, where the whorls and currents inside her mattered as much as the breeze rattling the sagebrush and the sun warming the rocks. “The tree's clinging to the edge of the rock, trying to reach for the sun. I suppose the canyon is the unknown, with all those shadows.” She glanced at Mack. “It's dawn, a new day, and everything is about to change.”

As she looked at the painting, it drew her in. It was good that it disturbed her. Good that it made her uneasy. She'd told everyone they should paint what was in their hearts, and she'd done just that.

It was the best thing she'd ever painted.

“
I'm
about to change,” she said.

A long silence followed. Everyone was looking at the painting, and she shifted nervously.

“Well, that's about it,” she said. “The shuttle will be here at 9:00, so we'll have our usual seven a.m. breakfast. I hope you all enjoyed your Art Trek and you'll tell your friends about your time here.” She cringed internally, but the speech was scripted, a requirement of the job. “You'll be receiving an evaluation form in the mail, and the company would like you to give them your honest opinion of what we do right and what we could do better.”

She felt like she'd just walked over that cliff, sealing her fate. Even if the students tried to be kind, they were likely to reveal some of the disasters that had plagued the Art Trek. She really hadn't been in control—not from day one.

She jerked her head up as Ed began clapping his hands. Emma joined in, then Abby and Charles. As she stood there blinking in surprise, the ovation continued.

“Well,” she said when the applause faded. “You're—you're very kind. I'm sorry that things didn't go smoother. We missed a couple days, and…” She blinked back tears.

“Smooth is boring,” Ed said. “I like the bumpy parts of the ride.”

“Me too,” Abby said. “This was the best vacation we ever took. Usually Dad takes us to these stuffy hotels, with everybody bowing and scraping. It's awful. Nobody really talks to you, but you know they go home and talk
about
you. Here we felt like part of the family.”

“And we learned a lot,” Emma said.

“That's great,” Cat said. “Thank you. I guess everyone got something out of the workshop, then.”

“Even me,” Mack said. “I got something out of it too.”

Cat hoped he'd gotten something out of it. She hoped he and Maddie would get that contract. Maybe they would, since the students were so pleased.

“I got you,” he said. “At least, I hope I did.”

Cat froze, and everything around her seemed to freeze with her. How long had the birds been silent? A moment ago they'd been chattering in the bushes. Now the hush was eerie. The room was suddenly a tableaux in a painting, a character study of a drawing room soiree. Everyone was smiling expectantly; everyone was watching her. She felt like they expected her to reveal a hat and whip out a rabbit, or produce scarves from her sleeves.

She wasn't ready for this. She was still sorting out her life, trying to figure out where she was going.

“Let me show you something.” He fished a folded sheaf of papers from his back pocket and handed them to her. She flipped through them. They were printouts from the Internet.

“Equine Excursions in Provence” read the first one. The second showed reproductions of Van Gogh paintings alongside photographs of their subjects: the Chateau d'Auvers, the hospital at St. Remy, the Langlois Bridge. Another showed riders threading in single file through the breathtaking landscape of southern France.

She looked up at Mack and blinked.

“I found a guest house we could rent by the week,” he said. “It's got room for us and eight students, plus a stable for horses. I've found two outfits we could rent riding horses from. They don't have packhorses, but the country's not that rough. We could take the supplies in a wagon.”

“In France?”

“They have openings in December. I don't have much to do around here that time of year.” He grinned at Maddie, who had come to stand in the doorway. “Hank and Mom could take care of the place.”

“So you're saying…”

“I'm saying we could set up our own Art Trek,” he said. “I'll take care of transportation and logistics. You take care of the art side of things.”

“I'd go,” Ed said. “You just let me know. You need a deposit?”

Cat stared at him, openmouthed.

“I'd go too.” Charles glanced at the woman beside him. “If Abby went.”

“I talked to a lawyer in town about a contract,” Mack said. “For a partnership. We could host classes at the ranch in the summer and fall, travel in the winter.”

“A lawyer? A partnership?”

“Or a minister and a marriage. Your choice.” Smiling, he knelt at her feet. “I'm asking you to stay, Cat. I'm asking you to marry me.”

She knew she had her mouth hanging open like an idiot, but she couldn't wrap her head around what he was proposing.

Proposing.

She felt like the tree again, poised on the edge of a precipice. But this time, she wanted to let go. There was no fear in falling when you had a safe place to land.

But was it really safe? Or was that wishful thinking? Anything could happen. She'd known Mack all of two weeks. How could she leave behind the life she'd worked so hard to build—leave it for a man? Edie had done that, and she'd barely painted anything since.

But she'd changed for a man who didn't care about her work—a man who thought only of himself. Mack had just proven that he cared about Cat's interests as well as his own. They'd be partners. She'd help with ranching, and he'd help with workshops.

And what was she leaving behind? A city of glass and concrete. It wouldn't be much of a sacrifice to trade the hard-edged world of Chicago for the open spaces and big skies of the Boyd Ranch.

Mack was still kneeling at her feet. “Step off the edge, Cat. Take a chance.”

“I—I don't know,” she said. “I don't know what I should do.”

“What do you want to do?” he asked.

In a heartbeat, she realized that was the one question she could answer. She wanted to go back up to the cabin and sink into bed with him, bury herself in the sight and scent of him, and forget everything. When they were together, she had everything she'd ever wanted.

She knew where she belonged.

“I want to stay,” she whispered. “I want to stay, and in December I want to go to France.”

“Good.” He swung her around, grinning, and swept her into his arms. “You can find that starry night for real.”

“I think I already did.”

He stood. “Is that a yes?”

“Yes.” It came out in a whisper, but she'd never meant anything so sincerely in her life.

He bent to kiss her. For a second she looked sideways at the students, but they were suddenly all captivated by Emma's painting, exclaiming over some detail in the flowers she'd painted.

Nobody was watching. She tipped up onto her toes and met his lips, and suddenly the birds were singing again. She could feel the still air starting to move, the breezes clearing the room and bringing in sunshine and sage scent and warmth. She was in the center of her universe, the place where she belonged, and for once the future looked like a smooth road rather than a struggle.

She put her arms around Mack's neck and deepened the kiss. She'd forgotten there was anyone else in the room until the clapping began again.

When the kiss broke, she turned to see the group standing by the sofa, grinning and clapping. Dora and Viv had joined them, and Maddie and Hank stood in the doorway.

“Hey, look,” Mack said. “We got a standing ovation.”

And he kissed her again.