Country Roads(84)
“I’ll pretend the next time, I promise.”
Paul laughed as he escorted his nephew to the car, slinging the boy’s backpack into the rear seat before Eric scrambled into the front. “Would you like to meet a friend of mine who’s an artist?”
“Like Pa?”
“Kind of like that.” Paul smiled at the comparison.
“Sounds cool.”
Eric made him cruise by the school at five miles an hour while he lorded it over his friends in their mothers’ minivans. As they passed the last clot of children, Eric pulled his head and arm back inside the car and said, “That was cool.”
“New favorite word?”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” Paul punched the in-car telephone on. “You want to say it?”
“Yes, please!”
“The name is Julia.”
“Ju-li-a!” Eric shouted. “Dialing Julia,” he recited along with the car’s electronic voice.
The phone rang repeatedly before a distracted voice said, “Hello? Paul?”
“Eric and I are in the neighborhood and thought we’d come see you. Are you in your studio?”
“Um, yes. Come on over. I’d love to see Eric…and you too, of course.”
Paul hit the disconnect button. “No stealing my girlfriend, okay?”
“I can’t help it if girls like me. They just do.”
“It’s the curse of the Taggart men.”
Eric sighed. “Yeah, it’s kind of a pain, especially when two of ’em like you at the same time. They can get mean.”
“A life lesson you’re lucky you’ve learned young, my boy.”
He pulled up in front of Julia’s temporary studio and turned off the engine. “Take it easy on her. She might get overwhelmed by all this Taggart charm in one room.”
Paul raced Eric to the front door, catching him before he barged through the unlatched screen door. Paul peered into the interior. “Julia?”
She appeared from the dimness, her flaming red hair piled into a messy bun with two paintbrushes speared through it, a huge man’s shirt splattered with paint hanging off her shoulders. She looked good enough to eat. He managed to restrain himself sufficiently to give her a chaste kiss on the lips and an only mildly lascivious squeeze of her nicely rounded behind. She smirked up at him and stepped in close to give his groin a return squeeze under cover of her billowing shirt.
“Nice way to say hello,” he said, as every nerve in his body surged on a spike of lust.
“I’d do better if we didn’t have a chaperone,” she said, cutting her gaze over to the counter where they’d made love before.
He cleared his throat and introduced his nephew. “So Eric wants to see an artist like his father at work.”
“Your dad’s an artist?”
“He painted really cool pictures on my bedroom walls with stencils. Do you use stencils?” Eric wandered toward the easel in the glass room.
“No, I’m more of a freestyle type myself,” Julia said without a tremor in her voice.
“Yeah, me too,” Eric said. He stopped in front of the partially finished painting of Darkside. “It’s the big mean horse from Ms. Sydenstricker’s.”
Paul strolled up to look more closely at the painting. He draped his arm around Julia’s shoulders, just because he couldn’t stop himself from touching her. He gave Eric credit for recognizing the horse; he wasn’t sure he would have, given how close the perspective was and how little was painted. In fact, he didn’t notice a whole lot of progress since the last time he’d seen the picture. Maybe Julia had artist’s block again.
“Is the work going all right?” he asked.
Her green eyes went wide as she looked up at him. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, I know you were struggling a couple of days ago.”
He felt her shoulders relax. “I seem to be past that now, thank God. This just requires a lot of small, careful brushstrokes, so it doesn’t go so quickly. Which is a problem since the auction’s in three days.”
“You could always offer it as it is and promise to finish it later. That might intrigue prospective bidders, sort of like buying a surprise package.”
“I like surprises,” Eric said, his voice coming from the front room. “Hey, Miss Julia, could you draw a picture of me too? Except I want to be driving the ’Vette, not a motorcycle.”
Julia’s shoulders went rigid under his arm. “Oh no,” she said under her breath.
“What is it?” he asked, lowering his head in an effort to read her expression.
She averted her face. “Um, just a quick painting I did for myself. Not for anyone to see.” She raised her voice for Eric’s benefit. “Sure, I can draw you. Come over here in the light, and I’ll grab a fresh sheet of paper.”