“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.”
“If anyone can do it, it’s you,” Julia said before she thanked Claire for all of her efforts and hung up.
She dropped the phone on the wooden bench with a bang and stared in front of her at the wall hung with antique farm implements. The surface part of her brain traced the curves and lines of the metal and wood shapes, but her focus was on the impending collision of her two worlds.
As long as Carlos was several hundred miles away in North Carolina, her courage burned bright and strong. The minute he threatened to come here, all that shiny new bravado shriveled up and blew away like ashes. Dread swelled into a lump in her stomach. What would her new and treasured friends think of her when they saw her in relation to her overpowering uncle? Would they think more or less of her for standing up to someone she owed so much to?
What if he informed them she couldn’t handle all this publicity and pressure because of her epilepsy? They would all agree with him and tiptoe around her as though she were a bomb that could explode at any time.
She pictured Claire’s brown eyes going soft with pity and Tim treating her with all the medical kindness her doctors always showed.
And Paul. He would believe he had endangered her by taking her on his motorcycle and making love to her in a river. He would be angry with her for not warning him about the possible consequences, and she couldn’t blame him.
Even worse, he would refuse to do any of those things with her again. He would treat her like a china doll, not like a living, breathing woman. He would treat her like Carlos did.
She clamped her hands on either side of her head. She could barely draw a breath into her lungs and her vision began to blur. Oh dear God, she wasn’t going to have a seizure here in the lobby of the inn. That would be the ultimate humiliation.
It wasn’t a seizure.
It was the pain of loss, a gut-punching, oxygen-depriving, throat-closing agony she’d never felt with such intensity before. When she was a teenager and her mother and stepfather moved to Spain, she’d been sad and lonely, but the relationship between her and her parents had not altered in any profound way, so she hadn’t felt this wrenching grief.
This would be a game changer for Paul.
Her phone trilled, its vibrate function making it clatter and dance like a live thing on the wooden bench.
She picked it up to check the caller ID. Paul. She couldn’t talk to him right now, not with her emotions roiling so close to the surface. He would know she was upset and keep asking his lawyer questions until he found out why.
What she needed right now was the comfort of a paintbrush in her hand. She stood and waited for Paul’s call to go to voice mail before she turned off the phone and tucked it into her jeans pocket. She knew he had a busy day at work, so he wouldn’t have time to pester her until lunchtime. By then she should have regained enough control to hide things from him again.
Julia stuck her brush behind her ear and stepped back from the canvas as she considered her work.
She’d walked into the makeshift studio, taken one look at the start of her painting of Darkside, and removed it from the easel. She wasn’t in the mood for fine, detailed work.
Hoisting a blank canvas onto the easel, she began squeezing paints onto her palette, not bothering to do a rough sketch first. She could already see what she wanted on the clean surface.
She’d worked for two hours in a white heat, spilling her vision onto the canvas, turning the morning’s emotions into fuel for her creativity.
It was done. Well, maybe except for a few dabs of titanium white or cobalt blue here and there.
She’d painted Paul straddling his motorcycle, his helmet in the crook of one arm. He looked out of the picture, right at the observer, his face alight with an invitation to join him on an adventure, his smile flashing with warmth and intimacy, his silver-gray eyes holding just a trace of sexual heat.
She nodded and lifted the painting off the easel, turning its back outward before she leaned it carefully against one of the empty bookcases to dry. This creation was meant for her eyes only.