“In a minute,” he said. “As soon as you tell me why you don’t like to talk about your marriage.”
“I don’t talk about it because it’s over and it no longer matters.”
The words were smooth enough, but the turmoil in her eyes was unmistakable.
“You don’t want it to matter,” he corrected. “But it obviously shapes the way you live your life.”
“Just the way your past shapes yours?” she replied heatedly.
“I’ll admit that,” he said at once. “Losing my parents and then Graciela had an impact on me, no question about it. I don’t want to go through that kind of pain again, so I don’t let anyone get too close.” He looked deep into her eyes. “Until you. You’re sneaking past all my defenses, Kathleen. I’m not sure yet what the hell to do about that.”
She looked shaken by that, so he pressed on. “Now’s the time to speak up, if you’re going to keep the door locked tight against anything more happening between us. I don’t intend to be hanging out here on this limb all alone.”
“I don’t know,” she admitted shakily. “I don’t know if I can open that door again or not.”
“Because your ex-husband hurt you so badly?”
“He never hurt me,” she said just a little too fiercely. “Not like that.”
Ben stared at her, stunned. He doubted she realized that her reaction suggested exactly the opposite of her words.
“Kathleen?” he said gently, feeling an impotent rage stirring inside him. “Did he abuse you?”
Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “Not the way you mean,” she said eventually. “He never hit me.”
“But he did abuse you?”
“With words,” she said as if that were somehow less demeaning, less hurtful. “He had this nasty temper and when it got out of hand, he could be cruel.”
“Is he the one who told you your art was worthless?” Ben asked.
She hesitated for so long that Ben knew he was right. The son of a bitch had destroyed her confidence in her own talent, probably because his own ego was incapable of handling the competition. Only an artist would know how easy it would be to shatter another artist’s confidence, would know precisely how a cutting criticism could destroy any enjoyment.
“He did, didn’t he? He’s the one who told you that you weren’t any good, and you gave up painting because of that.”
“No,” she said miserably. “I gave it up because I was no good.”
He studied her with compassion. “Maybe instead of you pestering me to see my work, I should be insisting on seeing yours.”
She laughed, the sound tinged with bitterness. “No chance of that. I destroyed it all.”
“Oh, sweetheart, why would you do that?”
“I told you,” she said impatiently. “I recognize talent when I see it. I had none.”
“But you enjoyed painting?”
“Yes.”
“Then isn’t that alone reason enough to do it?” he asked. “Isn’t the pleasure of putting paint on canvas all that really matters?”
“You would say that, wouldn’t you?”
He laughed at her. “Okay, it’s a convenient response from my point of view, but it’s true. Not everything has to be about making money or doing shows or garnering critical acclaim.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re rich. You can afford to indulge in something that might not be profitable. I can’t.”
“And you don’t regret for one single second that you no longer paint?” he challenged. “There’s not a part of you that gets a little crazy at the sight of a blank canvas and a tube of paint? Some secret part of you that looks at another artist’s canvas and thinks that you could have done it better?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, not denying that she had regrets.
“Of course it does.”
She brushed impatiently at the tears on her cheeks. “How on earth did we get off on this tangent?” she demanded, standing up. “I want to see those panels downstairs and then I need to be going.”
Ben knew that anything he said now would be a waste of breath, but his determination to give Kathleen back her love of painting grew. He would find some way to accomplish that, no matter what else happened—or didn’t happen—between them.
Chapter Nine
The wall panels in the basement were remarkable. Kathleen stood staring at them, astonished by the brilliance of the colors and the extraordinary detail. As the painting in Ben’s dining room had done, these drew the viewer right into the scene, an especially astonishing feat given that the artist was so young at the time he’d painted them.