White Lace and Promises (10 page)

Of course the kitchen was huge, she thought, irritated. She hadn’t paid an exorbitant price for this place for three drawers and a double sink. “Yes,” she returned, somewhat defensively. “I like it this way.”

“Do you mind if I take a look outside?” he asked, and opened the sliding glass doors that led to a balcony overlooking the ocean.

“Sure. Go ahead.”

A breeze ruffled the drapes as he opened and closed the glass French door. Maggie watched him move to the railing and look out over the beach below. If she paused and strained her ears, she could hear the ocean as the wild waves crashed on the sandy shore. A crescent moon was barely visible behind a thick layer of clouds.

Leaning a hip against the counter, Maggie studied his profile. It seemed incomprehensible that the man who was standing only a few feet from her was her husband. She felt awkward and shy, even afraid. If he did head back to Charleston without her, their marriage would become increasingly unreal. Before Glenn turned to find her studying him, Maggie took
out a head of lettuce from the refrigerator and dumped it into a strainer, and then placed it under the faucet.

Rubbing the chill from his arms, Glenn returned a few minutes later.

“Go ahead and pour yourself a drink,” Maggie offered, tearing the lettuce leaves into a bowl. When he hesitated, she pointed to the liquor cabinet.

“I’m more interested in coffee, if you have it.”

“I’ll make it.”

“I’ll do it.”

Simultaneously, they moved, and somehow Maggie’s face came sharply into contact with the solid mass of muscle and man. Amazingly, in the huge kitchen, they’d somehow managed to collide. Glenn’s hand snaked out to steady Maggie at the shoulders. “You okay?”

“I think so.” She moved her nose back and forth a couple of times before looking up at him. “I should have known this kitchen wasn’t big enough for the two of us.”

Something warm and ardent shone from his eyes as his gaze dropped to her mouth. The air in the room crackled with electricity. The hands that were gripping her shoulders moved down her upper arms and tightened. Every ticking second seemed to stretch out of proportion. Then, very slowly, he half lifted her from the floor, his mouth descending to hers a fraction of an inch at a time. Maggie’s heart skipped a beat, then began to hammer wildly. He deliberately, slowly, left his mouth a hair’s space above hers so that their breaths mingled and merged. Holding her close, he seemed to want her to take the initiative. But the memory of that morning remained vivid in her mind. And now it seemed he intended to leave her behind in San Francisco as well. No, there were too many questions left unanswered for her to give in to the physical attraction between them. Still, his mouth hovered over hers, his eyes holding hers. At the sound of the timer dinging, Glenn released her. Disoriented, Maggie stood completely still until she realized Glenn had moved away. Embarrassed, she turned, making busywork at the microwave.

“That smells like lasagna,” Glenn commented.

“It is.” Maggie’s gaze widened as she set out the dishes. What an idiot she’d been. The bell she heard hadn’t been her heart’s song from wanting Glenn’s kisses. It had been the signal from her microwave that their dinner was ready. The time had come to remove the stars from her eyes regarding their marriage.

Maggie noted that Glenn’s look was thoughtful when they ate, as if something was
bothering him. For that matter, she was unusually quiet herself. After the meal, Glenn silently helped her stack the dinner plates into the dishwasher. “Would you like the grand tour?” Maggie inquired, more in an effort to ease the tension than from any desire to show off her home.

“You did promise to show me some more of your work.”

“My art?” Maggie hedged, suddenly unsure. “I’m more into the abstract things now.” She dried her hands on a terry-cloth towel and avoided looking at him. “A couple of years ago I discovered Helen Frankenthaler. Oh, I’d seen her work, but I hadn’t appreciated her genius.”

“Helen who?”

“Frankenthaler.” Maggie enunciated the name slowly. “She’s probably the most historically important artist in the last few decades, and people with a lot more talent than me have said so.”

Glenn looped an arm around her shoulders and slowly shook his head. “Maggie, you’re going to have to remember your husband knows absolutely nothing about art.”

“But you know what you like,” she teased, leading him by the hand to the fully glassed-in upstairs studio.

“That I do,” he admitted in a husky whisper.

No one else had ever seen the studio, where she spent the vast majority of her time. It hadn’t been a conscious oversight. There just had never been anyone she’d wanted to show it to. Not even Denny, who, she realized, gave only lip service to her work. She led Glenn proudly into her domain. She had talent and knew it. So much of her self-esteem was centered on her work. In recent years it had become the visible outpouring of her frustrations and loneliness. Her ego, her identity, her vanity were all tied up in her work.

Glenn noted that her studio was a huge room twice the size of the kitchen. Row upon row of canvases were propped against the walls. From the shine in her eyes, Glenn realized that Maggie took her painting seriously. She loved it. As far as he could see, it was the only thing in this world that she had for herself.

He hadn’t been pleased by what he’d overheard in her telephone conversation with Denny. He had wanted to ask Maggie about it over dinner, but hesitated. He felt that it was too soon to pry into her relationship with her brother. As he recalled, Denny was a decent guy, four or five years older than Maggie. From the sounds of it, though, Denny was sponging off his sister—which was unusual, since Glenn had heard that Denny was wealthy in his own right. It
was none of his affair, Glenn decided, and it was best that he keep his nose out of it.

Proudly, Maggie walked around the studio, which was used more than any other room in the house. Most of the canvases were fresh and white, waiting for the bold strokes of color that would bring them to life. Several of the others contained her early experiments in cubism and expressionism. She watched Glenn as he strolled about the room, studying several of her pictures. Pride shone in his eyes, and Maggie basked in his approval. She wanted to hug him and thank him for simply appreciating what she did.

He paused to study a large ten-foot canvas propped at an angle against the floor. Large slashes of blue paint were smeared across the center and had been left to dry, creating their own geometric pattern. Maggie was especially pleased with this piece. It was the painting she had been working on the afternoon she was late meeting Glenn at the airport.

“What’s this?” Glenn asked, his voice tight. He cocked his head sideways, his brow pleated in concentration.

“Glenn,” she chided, “that’s my painting.”

He was utterly stupefied that Maggie would waste her obvious talent on an abstract mess. The canvas looked as though paint had been carelessly splattered across the top. Glenn could see no rhyme or pattern to the design. “Your painting,” he mused aloud. “It’s quite a deviation from your other work, isn’t it?”

Maggie shrugged off his lack of appreciation and enthusiasm. “This isn’t a portrait,” she explained, somewhat defensively. This particular painting was a departure from the norm, a bold experiment with a new balance of unexpected harmony of different hues of blues with tension between shapes and shades. Glenn had admitted he knew nothing about art, she thought. He wouldn’t understand what she was trying to say with this piece, and she didn’t try to explain.

Squatting, Glenn examined the large canvas, his fingertips testing the texture. “What is this material? It’s not like a regular canvas, is it?”

“No, it’s unprimed cotton duck—the same fabric that’s used for making sails.” This type of porous material allowed her to toss the paint across the canvas; then, point by point, she poured, dripped, and even used squeegees to spread the great veils of tone. She spent long, tedious hours contemplating each aspect of the work, striving for the effortless, spontaneous appeal she admired so much in Helen Frankenthaler’s work.

“You’re not into the abstract stuff, are you?” she asked with a faint smile. She tried to
make it sound as if it didn’t matter. The pride she’d seen in Glenn’s eyes when he saw her beachscape and her other work had thrilled her. Now she could see him trying to disguise his puzzlement. “Don’t feel bad—abstracts aren’t for everyone.”

A frown marred his smooth brow as he straightened and brushed the grit from his hands. “I’d like to see some more of the work like the painting downstairs.”

“There are a couple of those over here.” She pulled a painting out from behind a stack of her later efforts in cubism.

Glenn held out the painting, and his frown disappeared. “Now, this is good. The other looks like an accident.”

An accident!
Maggie nearly choked on her laughter. She’d like to see him try it. “I believe the time has come for me to propose another rule for this marriage.”

Glenn’s look was wary. “What?”

“From now on, everything I paint is beautiful and wonderful and the work of an unrecognized genius. Understand?”

“Certainly,” he murmured. “Anything you say.” He paused to examine the huge canvas a second time. “I don’t know what you’re saying with this, but this is obviously the work of an unrecognized and unappreciated genius.”

Maggie smiled at him boldly. “You did that well.”

G
lenn muttered under his breath as he followed Maggie out of her studio. Her dainty back was stiff as she walked down the stairs. She might have made light of his comments, but he wasn’t fooled. Once again he had hurt her. Twice in one day. The problem was that he was trying too hard. They both were. “I apologize, Maggie. I didn’t mean to offend you. You’re right. I don’t know a thing about art.”

“I’m not offended,” she lied. “I keep forgetting how opinionated you are.” With deliberate calm she moved into the living room and sat at the baby grand piano, running her fingers over the ivory keys. She wanted to be angry with him but couldn’t be, realizing that any irritation was a symptom of her own insecurity. She had exposed a deeply personal part of herself. It had been a measure of her trust, and Glenn hadn’t known or understood. She couldn’t blame him for that.

“I don’t remember that you played the piano.” He stood beside her, resting his hand on her shoulder.

His touch was oddly soothing. “I started taking lessons a couple years ago.”

“You’re good.”

Maggie stopped playing; her fingers froze above the keys. Slowly, she placed her hands in her lap. “Glenn, listen, the new rule to our marriage applies only to my painting. You can be honest with my piano playing. I’m rotten. I have as much innate rhythm as lint.”

Glenn recognized that in his effort to make up for one faux pas he had only dug himself in deeper. He didn’t know anything about music. “I thought you played the clarinet.”

“I wasn’t much better at that, if you recall.”

“I don’t.”

“Obviously,” she muttered under her breath, rising to her feet. She rubbed her hands together in a nervous gesture. “It’s been a long day.”

Glenn’s spirits sank. It had been quite a day and nothing like he’d expected. Yet he couldn’t blame Maggie—he had brought everything on himself. His hand reached for hers.
“Let’s go to bed.”

Involuntarily, Maggie tensed. Everything had been perfect for the wedding night, but now she felt unsure and equally uneasy. Glenn was her husband, and she couldn’t give him the guest bedroom. But things were different from what they had been. Her eyes were opened this time, and white lace and promises weren’t filling her mind with fanciful illusions.

“Is something wrong?” Glenn’s question was more of a challenge.

“No,” she murmured, abruptly shaking her head. “Nothing’s wrong.” But then, not everything was right, either. She led the way down the long hallway to the master bedroom, feeling shaky.

The room was huge, dominated by a brick fireplace, with two pale-blue chairs angled in front of it. The windows were adorned with shirred draperies of a delicate floral design that had been especially created to give a peaceful, easy-living appeal. The polished mahogany four-poster bed had a down comforter tossed over the top that was made from the same lavender floral material as the drapes. This room was Maggie’s favorite. She could sit in it for hours and feel content.

If Glenn was impressed with the simple elegance or felt the warmth of her bedroom, he said nothing. Maggie would have been surprised if he had.

His suitcase rested on the thick carpet, and Glenn sighed, turning toward her. “We have a lot to do tomorrow.” Frustrated anger filled Glenn at his own stupidity. Everything he had done that day had been wrong. From the moment he had opened his eyes to the time he’d mentioned going to bed. He couldn’t have been more insensitive had he tried. He didn’t want to argue with Maggie, and yet, it seemed, he had gone out of his way to do exactly that. There would be a lot of adjustments to make with their marriage, and he had gotten off on the wrong foot almost from the moment they’d started. Maggie was uncomfortable; Glenn could sense that. He could also feel her hesitancy. But he was her husband, and by heaven he’d sleep with her this and every night for the remainder of their lives.

The mention of the coming day served to remind Maggie that Glenn was planning on returning to Charleston alone. That rankled. Sometime during the evening, she had thought to casually bring up the return trip. But with what had happened in her studio and afterward, the timing hadn’t been right. Crossing her arms over her breasts, she met his gaze.

“Oh. What are we doing tomorrow?” She couldn’t think of anything they needed to do
that couldn’t be handled later.

“First we’ll see a lawyer, then—”

“Why?” she asked, her voice unnaturally throaty. Alarm filled her. Glenn had changed his mind. He didn’t want to stay married. And little wonder. She kept making up these rules, and—

“I want to make sure none of your inheritance money is ever put in my name.” With all the other problems they were facing, Glenn needed to assure Maggie that he hadn’t married her for her wealth. If anything, he regretted the fact she had it. Her great-aunt Margaret’s money had been a curse as far as he was concerned. And judging by the insecure, frightened woman Maggie had become, she might even have realized that herself.