Darknight(75)

“I did, once. But….”

He let the words trail off, but I had a good idea what he meant. Yes, when he was surrounded by people who encouraged him, he felt good about his art. When he came back to Flagstaff, though, he was stomped on by Damon, who had some weird notion that being an artist wasn’t good enough for a Wilcox. Whatever. Damon seemed to be out of the picture for now, so I certainly didn’t care what he thought…and neither should Connor.

“Then this should be a real confidence booster. And if they don’t sell, if they sit neglected in a corner for more than a week, then I swear I’ll never bring it up again. Deal?”

For a minute he didn’t say anything, just stared at the painting, brows lowered. His fingers tightened around the brush he held. Then, slowly, “Deal. I’ll pick two or three and get them installed tomorrow. I needed to do some rearranging anyway, since one artist who was supposed to get me several pieces just emailed this morning and said she was running behind schedule. This can fill in the gap.”

“Good,” was all I said, but inwardly I was rejoicing. Maybe once he got some outside confirmation of how good he really was, he’d stop this nonsense about only painting for himself. Not that I wanted him to do anything that didn’t make him happy, but he was going to paint no matter what. It was a compulsion. He could go a few days without picking up a brush if he had to. However, he’d get moody if too much time passed without working on something. The gallery wasn’t so busy that he had to spend all day there, especially now the holidays were past, so most of the time he could paint four or five hours a day. We were going to end up drowning in canvases if he didn’t start selling some of them.

The next morning he took three of his paintings down to the gallery with him — one of a windswept tree on the Grand Canyon’s rim, one a rather brooding winter scene with a dark pine forest, patches of snow gleaming on the ground, and another that looked like it might be someplace in Sedona, maybe in Oak Creek Canyon, with autumn-hued trees hanging over a narrow stream and red rock canyons looming above.

“Don’t expect too much,” he told me. “Even pieces from in-demand artists can take a while to move. It’s not like buying a postcard or something.”

“I know that,” I replied. “I dropped about ten grand a few months ago on work for the Jerome house.”

His eyes widened a little. “So who’s the rich one around here?”

“We both are, I guess, which makes things nice and even. Just promise that you’re going to put a fair market price on these.”

“Oh, I was thinking maybe fifty bucks for the big one,” he began, and I swatted him on the arm.

“Don’t you dare!”

A flashing grin, and he bent down to kiss me before tucking the two smaller paintings under his left arm and picking up the remaining one, of Oak Creek Canyon, with his free hand.

“Can you get the door for me?” he asked.

I hurried over and opened it for him, then watched him go, smiling as I shut the door. Once I was alone, though, the smile faded. What if I was wrong? What if people didn’t respond to his paintings the same way I did? Being good was no guarantee of success.

Since it was a fairly quiet time of year, his assistant Joelle more or less ran the gallery, so he didn’t stay down there after he’d gotten the paintings installed. He came back up and started working on a new one, now that the aspen picture was drying. It was fascinating to watch his process at this stage, the way he arranged a bunch of photos of the scene he wanted to paint on a tack board to one side, then started sketching in the outlines of the projected painting on the canvas. More trees, these ones like flaming torches in a high alpine meadow.

I lingered to one side, watching him, wondering if he was going to tell me to leave, but he didn’t. Maybe he’d forgotten I was there. In a way I didn’t mind, because it gave me a chance to really study him, watch the fine profile outlined by the light pouring in through the big windows off to one side, the way his heavy dark hair kept falling forward as he worked and how he kept shoving it out of the way with an impatient hand. His hands were beautiful, too, lean and strong, the fingers long and sensitive. I recalled how those fingers felt, touching me, and a little sigh escaped my throat.

He turned then and looked at me. “This must be sort of dull for you.”

“No, I like watching you work, if it doesn’t bother you.”

“It doesn’t bother me at all. I’m just surprised you’re not working on your own stuff.”

“I will. My fingers are a little sore.” Which was true. Setting stones and bending wire for six or seven hours a day took far more of a toll than doing the same thing for two or three hours a couple of times a week.