Country Roads(75)

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?





Chapter 21




AS JULIA’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.”