Chapter 21      

While Caroline worked with artistic types, she did not have the cliché temperament. There wasn’t a spontaneous bone in her body. Ask any of her siblings.

She’d been stewing about her schedule. How in the world was she supposed to give over three hundred paintings her complete attention in one long weekend? J.T. was insane.

Staring at the legal pad she’d used to create a mini-list of important considerations, she traced the line about her vacation hours. Thirty-three and a half hours, meaning not quite eight days. She usually took a week off in the spring to go somewhere fun, even if it meant doing something simple like heading south to a house in Taos or Santa Fe. Such great art there, and the food…

Could she take three days off and head to Rome? It simply wouldn’t be enough time to review the collection, and she couldn’t possibly stay with J.T. She barely knew the man.

But she wanted to get to know him better, and not in a completely professional way. That was the rub. If she was going to look over his art and listen to his ideas for this museum he was planning, she needed to get a grip on herself. Needed to control her reaction to him.

But he was so hot. There was no denying that.

She picked up her cell phone and called Uncle Arthur. He knew how to cut to the chase. 

“Arthur Hale,” he answered in his normal gravely voice.

“Hi, it’s Caroline,” she said.

“Caroline who? Give me your last name, girl. What am I, a rolodex?”

He sounded so put out, she smiled. “It’s your niece.”

“I know who it is,” he said, laughing. “I was yanking your chain. J.T. tells me you haven’t accepted his offer to go to Rome yet.”

He was speaking with J.T. about her again? She wasn’t sure she liked that. “Hence my call to you. Do you really think I can give this collection in Rome a professional look in a long weekend?”

“I think you can do whatever the hell you want to,” Uncle Arthur said. “Why are you dithering? You young people make everything harder than it needs to be. I don’t know what you’ll do when I’m not around to kick you in the pants.”

“Don’t talk like that.” The thought of not having her crotchety old uncle around to give her a hard time—to inspire and push her—made her sad.

“It’s life, child,” he said. “We all die. You want my opinion? Call J.T. back. Go to Rome. See the art collection Emmits began before I was born. And have a good time. J.T. is a nice boy. You might hit it off.”

She frowned. “Are you matchmaking, Uncle Arthur?”

“Never,” he spat out as if the very thought was repulsive. “Have I ever tried to set any of my kin up? No. Do you know why? Because your heart knows its mate. Maybe not at first. But it knows. Never doubt that. But you know art, and so does J.T. This art museum is important, Caroline, and it will bring even more attention on Dare Valley. I have faith the attention will be favorable.”

She looked down at the pad in front of her. “I’m not sure about my vacation time—”

“Great balls of fire, Caroline, what is there to consider? You take your vacation and ride first class to Rome. So, you’ll be tired when you get back. Who cares? You’re not even thirty yet. What the hell are you worried about? Losing beauty sleep?”

“I’m turning thirty this year,” she said, and to her, it was a big event.

“Well, take it from an old man with less time left than you, live! Not just a little. But a whole heck of a lot. Soak the world in. Time goes by so fast, Caroline. You blink, and you’re my age, picking out cemetery plots.”

Her face creased into a frown. How morbid he’d been lately. “Are you sure you’re okay, Uncle Arthur?”

“I’m fine, but I’m hanging up. This call is wasting precious seconds of the time I have left. You decide what you want to do and do it.”

Sure enough, he clicked off. “Live a little” was a phrase she was good with. But “a lot” seemed scarier.

She looked at the thirty-one paintings they had in the gallery. They had a reasonable collection, but it wasn’t even close to the size of J.T.’s. What would it be like to see a collection of that size and scope? To help guide him in such a colossal undertaking?

Okay, she was going to see them. She would keep it professional. No drooling over his Italian sense of fashion or the charming dimple in his cheek. Correction. She’d never even noticed his dimple. Caroline Hale, the art expert, didn’t notice things like dimples on business associates.

And that’s what J.T. Merriam was.

She took his card out of the top drawer in her desk. The international number looked complicated, which almost made her chicken out. But she looked up how to call someone in Rome. She dialed in the 011+39+06 and the rest of his number, and it rang. Whew!

Tapping her foot, she listened to the unusual ring tone.

“Hi Caroline!” he said after she identified herself. He sounded pleased to hear from her. “I’ve been waiting patiently for you to call. My brother, Trev, says hi, by the way. He tried to wrestle the phone away from me. I think he wanted to apologize for the childhood mud incident too.”

Did he have to be so charming and personable? “Tell him a bottle of wine is an acceptable way of apologizing for getting a girl covered in mud.”

“I wasn’t the one—”

“Shut it, Trev,” J.T. said. “Sorry, he was trying to listen. We were watching a soccer game on the couch. I’m heading out onto the balcony to get away from him.”

The sound of honking cars and people cheering carried over the line. “What’s going on?”

“Roma just won,” he said, giving a few whoops himself. “In a tie breaker.”

“Soccer,” she said, picking up her pen and fiddling with the end. “So I—”

“Decided to come, right? If not, I’m going to have to fly back over there right now so I can make another effort to convince you in person.”

“That sounds a little extreme,” she said. Her heart was racing in her chest, but she wasn’t sure if it was because of his offer, which did make her nervous, or him. “But it makes me wonder, why me? I mean, you could hire anyone to look over the collection. I’m small potatoes when it comes to the international art scene.”

He laughed. “Well, let me tell you. I have had the big potatoes look at the art. Shut up, Trev, I swear to God, she came up with the potato metaphor. Go back inside. Sorry. My brother lives to torture me. Back to your question. I know on good authority that our collection is excellent. What I want is to make it special to Dare Valley.”

His impassioned tone told her he meant every word.

“My great-great grandfather loved that town. And so did the rest of the family. I did too, until we stopped going there. When I talked to Uncle Arthur again, the…shit…how should I say this? The nostalgia of the place came flooding back to me. The Merriams and the Hales put Dare Valley on the map. I thought…working with you might bring that full circle.”

Every art lover was a romantic in some essential way, and she understood what he meant. “It’s why I love art really,” she told him. “It makes me nostalgic for other times. Whenever I look at a portrait, I wish I could meet the subject. It’s like artists capture a moment so other people can long for it for eternity.”

“Exactly! That’s how I feel.”

She could feel the chill bumps rising up on her skin. “I need to speak with my boss about time off, but you can count me in.”

“Good,” he said. “I’m glad. I was afraid I was going to have to unleash Trevor on you.”

Huh? “I don’t know what that means.”

“People who know us both say that he’s the more suave and dynamic one,” J.T. said. “They’re mostly correct. Look, I have to go. Said charming twin is opening my Armand de Brignac Brut Rose Champagne. Trev, that’s a ten thousand-dollar bottle of champagne! I know Roma won, but seriously… Sorry, he’s a nutcase. Wants to take a bottle out into the streets with the other crazies tonight and burn cars and shit. Save me.”

She couldn’t help but laugh. “A ten thousand-dollar bottle, huh? I can’t imagine.”

“I’ll make sure we have one when you come,” J.T. said. “Talk to your boss and let me know what makes the most sense for your schedule.”

“Don’t you need to check your schedule?” she asked.

“No, I resigned from my position a couple of days ago,” he said. “It was time for a new adventure. I’m focusing all my energy on this museum.”

Well…that certainly meant he was serious. “Oh…should I say congratulations?”

“Sure. That’s how I’m looking at it. Otherwise, I’ll stay depressed.”

She couldn’t imagine him depressed. “Have fun with your brother. I’ll call you when I know more.”

“Great,” he said. “Good night, Caroline.”

Something in the way he said that made her wish she could go into the streets with him and his brother and drink champagne to celebrate something as silly to her as a soccer game.