He watched as she stepped softly and slowly around his studio to study his work, propped against the walls, placed on tables or windowsills, hung by wire from hooks buried in the wood picture rail.
Oh, she was pretty. Cat hadn’t told him anything he wasn’t acutely aware of the moment he’d seen her lift her slender frame from MacKenna’s Mercedes. Even now, with her face clean of makeup, slightly flushed from her exertion and the cool morning air, her torso wrapped in his shirt, the solid ridges and curves of her bare legs impossible not to look at as she moved. Especially now.
His stomach flipped at the sight of the thick, white, puckered scar that ran the length of her left tibia and pulled at the skin of her knee. She leaned in for a closer look at the watercolor sketches he’d taped to the wall, favoring her uninjured leg, her hand massaging the scar tissue.
Daniel handed her a steaming mug of tea, and she smiled with gratitude, wrapping her hands around the warm ceramic. The shirt cuffs covered all but the tips of her fingers. She turned away from him, again not meeting his eyes. Annie tilted her head. He imagined closing the distance between them in three strides, taking her fine-boned face in his hands and covering her mouth, drawing the breath from her. No, not her breath. Her pain. Her sadness. Whatever sent her out the door and into the night, alone. He wanted to crush her against his chest, feel her warm, damp limbs wrap around his own. So close to this troubled, beautiful soul, yet he felt more alone than he’d allowed himself to feel in ten years.
“Your work is beautiful. I don’t know anything about metal art, but the colors you achieve on the copper and chrome … it’s like they’ve absorbed a sunset or the ocean. How do you do that?”
Sensing she’d rather he keep his distance, he moved to the other side of the long worktable. “I make up different patinas—that’s what I was doing when you came in.” He motioned to a covered steel bucket in the industrial sink. “It’s a lot like working with watercolors, actually. I combine various chemicals to make different colors of patina. Then I paint or etch the patina onto the metal, where it creates shades and nuances of tones. These sculptures”—he pointed to a cluster of pieces perched on risers—“I patinized before I cut and hammered or soldered them together.”
She wound slowly around the room. “The watercolors—they’re so delicate, such a contrast to the solidity of the metal. Do you sell these, too?”
“Mostly they’re just studies for what I want to etch into the copper sheets. Like this one.” He motioned to the tilted artist’s desk that sat adjacent to the worktable.
Annie turned to peer at the sketchpad. “A Red-billed Chough,” she said softly.
“Yes, it is. I’m working through a series of studies for this panel.” He came to stand beside her and lifted his chin to indicate the large rectangle of copper lying flat on the table. “Most of these sketches came from time I spent in the Channel Islands, working at an animal sanctuary where the choughs were being rehabilitated.” Daniel told her of the Durrell Wildlife Park on Jersey and the success it had in bringing the Red-billed Chough back from the brink of extinction on the island.
“I went to the cove this morning,” she said. “Just to watch them. It’s like a little city. The birds are amazing. So busy, noisy, smart. It’s hard to think of them as just crows.”
“Crows are remarkable creatures,” he said. “They get short shrift because they’re scavengers. But they know how to work any system to get what they need. The Red-billed Chough isn’t as robust as our Corvus corax or your North American Corvus brachyrhynchos,” he said, naming two common species of black crow, “but they have been a part of southwest Ireland since time’s memory. They’re wrapped up in my memories of childhood. Choughs in the pastures, along the coast.”
“I know,” she whispered. She pressed a palm to her cheek. “I’ve stepped into something bigger than me, haven’t I?” She spoke softly to his sketch of the chough, not to him. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
He took the open door in hand and walked through. “Mise Éire,” he said, watching her face carefully. Her reaction was immediate.
“What did you say?”
“Mise Éire: Uaigní mé ná an Chailleach Bhéarra.”
Annie backed away, one foot trailing the other. She seemed to shrink in the oversized shirt.
“You’ve been hearing it, too, haven’t you?” he said. She shook her head as her face flushed pink then drained to white.
The ring and buzz of a cell phone echoed through the space. It was the ringtone he’d assigned to Liam; not a chance he’d put off answering his nephew’s call. The phone sounded inches away and Daniel shuffled through papers next to the sink, but the acoustics of his studio were tricky. Then he remembered flipping through his e-mail while he drank coffee in bed.
“Hang on, let me grab that.” He strode to the back of the studio and edged around the screen. When he returned moments later, phone to his ear, his flannel shirt was hanging on its peg. Annie had gone.