Petals on the Pillow (3 page)

Kelly sat straight up in her bed, this time for real. Her heart thudded the same thunderous tattoo in her chest as it had in her dream and sweat dewed her upper lip. Shadows flickered gently across her room as the trees outside tossed in the breeze. There was no storm. The storm was over. No wind or rain fell outside to stumble through and there was no overriding urgency to go to the dock.

She wondered what the answer was to the question she sought in the dream. Kelly lay back down on the bed, but the sheets felt sticky and damp. She punched her pillow and pulled the sheet back up over her shoulder, but knew instantly that sleep wouldn’t come again for hours. She lay stiff and uncom
fortable on her back, staring up at the molded plaster ceiling above her, and contemplated her choices. Lie there and memorize the ornate floral pattern of the ceiling or get up and do something.

She slid out of the four-poster and fished her jeans out of the pile of clothes she had thrown on the chair earlier. She pulled them on beneath her nightshirt and dug her sketchpad and charcoals out of her cases and then slipped through the French doors of her room and out onto the veranda that sur
rounded the entire house. The rough wood of its floor scraped her bare feet. The air had that special post-rain cleanliness that comes only after summer storms. A hint of smoke, residue perhaps from their pre-dinner fire, scented the air. Kelly rested her sketchpad against the balcony railing and lifted her chin into the breeze. She breathed in deeply letting its cleansing scent clear the cobwebs from her mind and lift her heavy hair from the back of her neck.

She began to sketch. Her fingers flew, quick and sure, as she drew. First the rough wood of the dock in the moonlight. Then the trees that shadowed the path and the way the moon kissed their leaves and bark with silver there and there and there. Her eyes sent their messages directly to her hands, allowing her tired brain to relax and unkink after the long and confusing day. She flipped the page over and started drawing again.

“Your work is lovely,” a voice murmured over her shoulder.

The sketchpad and charcoals went flying out of her hands as, for what seemed like the umpteenth time that day, Kelly jumped like a cat.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” Harrison St. John backed away to stand uncertainly against the wall of the house. She’d been so intent on her work that she hadn’t heard him come around the corner of the house. Kelly quickly took in his bare feet and the way his plain white T-shirt stretched across his broad chest. Gray sweat pants hung loosely from his narrow hips. His black hair was slicked back and wet and Kelly caught the faint scent of soap on the breeze.

“That’s all right,” Kelly said, her hand still clutched at her thumping heart. “It’s apparently some kind of hobby in your household.”

Kelly received a quizzical tilt of the head in return, but a slight smile softened the rigid lines of Harrison St. John’s face and touched his eyes for the first time since Kelly had arrived. “I suffer from insomnia,” he said haltingly, as if confessing to a penchant for shooting heroin or eating babies for breakfast. “I suppose I’m accustomed to wandering around here during the night without seeing anyone else. I’ll try to remember there’s a fellow insomniac in the household at present so I can avoid surprising you.”

“Don’t worry about it. I usually don’t have much trouble sleeping. I just had a strange dream and thought I’d get some fresh air to clear my head.” She turned back out toward the woods and dock. “It’s beautiful out here.”

St. John leaned against the railing next to her. “Yes, it is.” But his eyes never strayed from Kelly’s face to the view of the dock through the woods below. “As long as I’m making apologies, however, I’d like to add the way you were greeted today to my list of egregious errors. It was,” he paused to search for an appropriate word, “unfortunate.”

“Unfortunate, indeed.” Kelly nodded, mimicking his patri
cian tones.

Harrison drew back from her, wheeling partially around so that his steely gaze confronted hers directly. “Do you always speak to your employers like that? The way you spoke just now and the way you spoke to me this afternoon?” His voice held a trace of sharpness.

A brief, tight smile pulled at Kelly’s lips as she remembered her last conversation with the Institute’s museum director. “It does seem to be getting to be a bit of a habit.”

Harrison nodded
. He took a moment before he spoke, although his gaze never left her face. “You may want to reconsider it as a business strategy. I imagine it could be detrimental to any plans for long-term employment.” A trace of sarcasm now colored his words and he smiled with a little less warmth than he had before.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Kelly took a deep breath and turned to face him. She wasn’t used to doing this and it twist
ed in her gut to do it now, but she needed this job so desperately. “I guess it’s my turn to apologize. It was just—”

Harrison stopped her abruptly with a gesture. His hand hovered millimeters from her mouth. She could feel its heat as he shook his head and a little warmth crept back into his smile. “Don’t. It’s been a while since anyone has spoken to me like that. Until this afternoon, I had thought that was a good thing. I may have been mistaken.” The same small smile traced his lips again. “Although I don’t think your former employer at the museum would agree with that.”

“What do you know about old Danny Boy?” Kelly turned her face back into the breeze, letting it flow over her, hoping it would cool the flush that had come to her face.

“Enough to know that the two of you crossed swords. I’m not sure who won the duel, but you apparently lost your job.”

Kelly snorted. “I think that sums up who lost the duel, don’t you? He’s the one still drawing a paycheck, isn’t he?”

“There’s more to life than paychecks.” Harrison leaned against the railing, back to the dock.

“Spoken like a true rich man.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s true.” Harrison inspected his finger
nails. “And as a rich man, I often have the luxury of speaking my mind without consequence.”

“You don’t have to remind me that I don’t have that luxury. Along with a lot of others.” She looked back at Hawk Manor, soaring to the starlit sky behind her.

Harrison’s smile was wry. “You may not be able to afford that luxury, but you seem to enjoy it quite often anyway.”

Kelly’s eyes met his and she grinned. “I suppose I do.”

“And why is that?” Harrison shifted.

Suddenly he seemed
to be much closer. Kelly felt the heat of his gaze trail down her. She swallowed hard. “Why is what?”

“Why do you mouth off when it does nothing but get you in trouble?” His gaze remained steady on her.

“You realize I’ve been asked that question about a thousand times or so, don’t you?” Echoes of her father’s voice rang through her mind. The many times he’d urged her to think before she spoke, to consider what was about to come out of her mouth before she could no longer take it back. She remembered all too well the hurt expression on his rumpled old face when he was the target of the darts of her sarcasm. Kelly ducked her head, letting her hair hide her face. “I’ve even asked myself a few times.”

“And?” Harrison reached out and tucked a handful of Kelly’s hair behind her ear. “What do you answer yourself?”

“That life is short. Too short to waste on lies and deception and prevarication,” she answered, defiance stiffening her shoulders. “Or to live anyone else’s version of the truth.”

“So you feel compelled to speak the truth?”

Kelly shook her head slightly. “Not just any truth. My truth. In my words.”

“On your terms?”

Kelly sighed and turned back to the dock. “As much as possible.”

“Is that what happened between you and Assistant Curator Daniel Hoffner?”

“Let’s just say that my truth wasn’t exactly what he wanted to hear.”

“What exactly was that truth?” Harrison asked, doing a fair job of mimicking Kelly’s tone back at her and wringing a grin from her despite herself.

“That he’s a third-rate painter and a second-rate academic. That he should feel lucky to have a job at all and that, therefore, he has no right to pass judgment over the students’ work.”

“Surely that’s his job.” Harrison arched a brow at Kelly.

“No.” She shook her head emphatically. “His job is to hang the stuff, not judge it. It’s up to the professors and other students to critique it.”

“I take it he critiqued your work rather harshly.”

Kelly shook her head again. “Not mine. I learned how to play the game. I know how to paint something that’ll get hung prominently enough in the end of the year show without feeling like too much of a sell-out.”

“And that’s so important?” Harrison tilted his head.

Kelly nodded. “Incredibly important. It makes a big difference when they’re handing out scholarship money for the next year and a huge difference in whether or not your stuff just might sell.”

“So if this wasn’t for your own work, then whose?”

“Someone who hasn’t learned how to stand up for herself yet.” Kelly thought of Lisa’s anxious brown eyes, her quivering lip, and the absolutely exquisitely rendered colored pencil drawings that she produced.

“All, so now you’re speaking others’ truth for them. Standing up for the down-trodden.”

Kelly shook her head again. “Don’t attribute all sorts of altruistic motives to me. I might not have been so quick to stand up for her if I hadn’t known I had a good spot already.”

“And your little outburst of truth only lost you your job, not your place in the exhibition?”

“He couldn’t very well take the damn thing down and move it at that point.” Kelly grinned wickedly. “At least not without looking like an even bigger ass than usual.”

Harrison smiled back down at Kelly and shifted his weight back onto the balustrade. The smile was so quick, so trans
forming and—Lord, help her—so sexy that Kelly found herself suddenly trying to catch her breath. As his muscles rippled under the thin material of his T-shirt, she suddenly felt herself overwhelmingly aware of how the clean, soapy masculine scent of him mingled provocatively with the biting fragrance of pine needles. All at once, she could see in detail each of the black hairs on his chest as it curled into the open vee of his T-shirt. He was very near and very warm. Too near and too warm. Kelly felt her breasts tighten and swell beneath the insubstantial fabric of her own nightshirt. Her breath quickened slightly and her tongue swept along her lower lip of its own accord.

Whoa, Nelly,
she thought to herself,
rein in those raging hormones and remember to whom you ’re speaking. This is Harrison St. John, owner of more patents than you can shake a maulstick at. And you. You are just a poor little girl from Chicago with a fast paintbrush, trying to get a break.

The words echoed ineffectually in her head as Harrison took a step toward her. He cupped her chin in his hand. His thumb grazed along her skin. At her sharp intake of breath, he smiled again. “You’ve a smudge on your cheek. Charcoal,
I guess.” But he didn’t remove his hand. He tilted her chin upward and the world spun.

It’s just the fatigue,
Kelly told herself.
The heavy dinner. The strange dream of the woman in yellow. It can’t possibly be anything else. Because anything else would truly be impossible in this lifetime with this man.
She wished he wasn’t so near and so very, very male and that all those feminine yearnings she kept so carefully under control would stop screaming their need at her.

His eyes glowed emerald and warm in the moonlight. His lips seemed just inches away. Kelly leaned toward him, drawn inexorably by the strange magnetism of his eyes and his warmth. Her brain still screamed at her to stop, to retreat, to run, but her body just kept leaning toward him, mutely ignor
ing her brain’s entreaties in favor of its own present and powerful desires. And then...

.. .her stomach growled.

Not just an ordinary little rumble, but one of those huge, earth-moving stomach gurgles that can be heard across rooms. It stretched on for what seemed like hours.

“Hungry?” Harrison asked, a barely suppressed grin twist
ing his lips. He let his hand drop as Kelly ducked her head in embarrassment. “Dinner was not to your liking, I take it. I noticed you didn’t eat much.”

“The food was fine,” Kelly assured him. “I’m just not used to dining so formally.”

He nodded thoughtfully, brow furrowed. “I’ll see what I can do about that.”

“That’s all right. I don’t want to disrupt your routine. I’ll eat in the kitchen or just take a tray to my room,” Kelly rushed.

Once again he held up his hand to silence her. “No, you’re absolutely right. I’m not really sure why we’re still doing it anyway. I suppose because Kendra likes it. It’s actually just a charade anymore. It’s just a leftover routine from before ”

Harrison’s words trailed off and Kelly watched the green eyes cloud over as quickly as a storm whipping up at sea. He turned away, offering Kelly his Caesar’s profile while he looked down on the dock. The smile that had softened his strict fea
tures faded. In fact, it was as if a cloth had passed over his face, washing away all expression, leaving him as approachable as a marble statue. When he spoke again, it was with a voice kept carefully without inflection. “It’s simply an old habit that none of us have thought to break. Perhaps it’s time to break it now. I don’t think any of us enjoy it except Kendra. She won’t mind. It’s probably just habit for her, too.”