Chapter Nineteen

 

 

 

It had been a lively show in which everything about Valentine and Blake was called into question, from their sexual persuasions to their terrorist affiliations. Granted that last was a real stretch, and the man who’d called it in was a bit of a nut case anyway, but he was always a good conversation starter. Quite pleased with her efforts, Gale Ann Spaulding left the station with her computer bag slung over one shoulder and the ruined dress from last night’s fiasco at the gallery in its garment bag over the other. There was a cleaner near Eddie’s Supermarket that was supposedly the best at getting out wine stains. She’d give it a try. No biggie one way or another. The dress was a part of her substantial wardrobe allowance. A white dress covered in red wine was pretty much a write-off. But the dress had cost a bomb, and she really liked it.

She figured she’d pop into Eddie’s Supermarket and kill two birds with one stone. There was no coffee in the house and no food either. The lack of food bothered her less as she seldom ate at home anyway and never cooked. She pulled the car into the shared parking lot at Eddie’s and dropped off the dress. She had left the cleaners, pleased that the woman behind the counter felt certain they could get the stains out. In the supermarket, she grabbed a basket, pausing to check her phone to see what the media was saying about the happy couple. Definitely not what she was saying, and there was no news from Carl out at Mountain View. She would grab something to eat, go home and have a shower, then head out to Mountain View and switch him out. It was her story and she had the wine-stained dress to prove it. She was not about to let some amateur take the credit when Valentine and Blake did decide to show themselves. She’d just slipped the phone back in her bag when she looked up a split second before running into Andy Matthews, who was wearing a bright red Eddie’s smock.

“Ms. Spaulding,” he said, blushing ear to ear. “I didn’t know you shopped here.”

She offered him her brightest smile. “Mr. Matthews, I didn’t know you worked here.” She extended her hand and, when he shook it, he blushed even harder.

“I just stock shelves. Paying for university,” he said. “Studying chemistry,” he added, shuffling from foot to foot.

“Well, good for you.” She leaned over to fondle a tomato she had no intention of buying just to make sure he saw her most excellent cleavage. “So you work two jobs, do you? I swear it gets harder and harder for anyone to get an education these days.”

“I know, but I don’t want a loan. I don’t want to graduate already in debt.”

“A very wise man,” she said. “It’s people like you who make this country great, never expecting a handout, never expecting privilege, and it’s nice of Ms. Blake and her secretary to help you in your efforts.”

“They’re good folks, and they pay well.”

“They pay well, do they? Both her and her secretary?” She leaned over to fondle a cucumber. “So Ms. Blake is quite successful as a novelist, then, is she? Not an easy business to make it in, writing fiction.”

The resulting blush was way out of proportion to a simple question about an employer, and Gale Ann’s news sense tingled.

“I…” The kid squirmed. “Well, she’s really good at it. Writing novels, I mean. She writes lots and they’re good.” God, the kid was so transparent.

She stepped closer. The guy was easily tall enough to look down her blouse and she was happy to let him if it would keep him off balance enough that something might just slip. “What? Does our Ms. Blake moonlight too? Is that how she and Alexander Valentine met?”

The blush was swallowed up by panic. The kid glanced at his watch and looked around him, as if he were expecting wild beasts to come out from behind the produce counters and devour him any minute. “Look, it was lovely talking to you, Ms. Spaulding, but my boss will kill me if she catches me standing around.” With that, he bolted like his jeans were on fire.

As he disappeared through the swinging double doors at the back, she pulled her phone out of her bag again and texted her researcher.

 

Madeline, check to see if Kelly Blake supplements her income by moonlighting and, if so, doing what?

 

She returned the phone and picked up her coffee, delighted when two women in the frozen foods aisle recognized her. Before she left with her groceries, she decided that she would treat herself to one of Eddie’s famous Gourmet Box Lunches for the stakeout, and a very expensive Cabernet… That was for later, of course. She picked up several bottles of Diet Pepsi to go with her meal and made her way to the checkout. My, my, my, but things are getting interesting. She was really looking forward to her first views of what was clearly the palatial residence of the elusive and apparently very phobic Alexander Valentine. She was still kicking herself for not putting two and two together with the phobia thing—haphephobia, that was what the psychologist had called it. A phobia was just a short walk away from the nut house in Talk About Town’s book, and she was already getting good mileage out of that one. Some of the Tweets practically had her wetting herself.

How are they going to do it when they can’t touch?

Is foreplay a game of scrabble—she is a writer.

 

Perhaps she just writes their sex scenes.

 

People could be so snarky, and Gale Ann Spaulding could snark with the best. That’s why they paid her the big bucks.

 

* * * *

 

After her talk with Myrna, Kelly went looking for Lex. When he wasn’t in his studio, she asked Cookie, who knelt in the enormous vegetable patch, filling a basket with succulent young carrots. The woman wiped her hands on her apron and pointed toward the woods that bordered Mountain View in the back. “He’s probably in his private sculpture garden,” she said. “He goes there when he needs to think. It’s off limits to everyone but him, though.” Even as the woman warned her of the no-go zone, she jerked her head spastically toward the path leading that way. Then she turned back to her work, as though she’d seen nothing, said nothing.

Fucking hell! Was everyone at Mountain View secretly complicit with Dillon’s scheming? For a moment she stood unmoving, tempted to go back to the house and wait for Lex’s return, but how could she not want to see Alexander Valentine’s private, off-limits sculpture garden? What was in it? His favorite works? Works he couldn’t bear to part with? Perhaps it was more to do with the space he’d chosen to set the sculptures. The grounds and natural surroundings of Mountain View were exquisite, after all. A perfect place to be inspired and lost in one’s thoughts.

As she moved into the shade of the woodland, the path all but disappeared in the thicket, and she was beginning to wonder if she’d missed a turn somewhere when the trees gave way to a small meadow, barely more than a grassy spot nestled beneath the evergreens, but the space was filled with sculptures so lifelike that in the play of light and shadow through the branches, Kelly could have almost believed that there was a secret garden party going on in this secluded place. As she stepped into the sunlight, however, she realized instantly that the tableau before her was no garden party. It was nothing less than a wild orgy sculpted in stone. The work was quintessential Valentine, detailed down to the trailing of goosebumps, the press of fingertips against breasts, the purse of lips against flesh and, in that detail, the stone itself seemed to live and breathe and have its own inner warmth. It was especially true in the heat of midday. The sun had warmed the curve of the muscular male shoulder that she slid her finger cautiously over, almost as though she feared she’d startle him with her touch. His partner in stone lay sprawled in front of him on the rumpled folds of a blanket mussed by their romp. Her legs were parted wide in invitation, and the details of her readiness were as obvious as his own as she reached out to guide him home, her face an anxious study in desire that could no longer be denied, a look that he returned. Every muscle of the two lovers was stretched tight, bulging and ready, desperate for the act of joining. So perfect was their connection, so intense their intimacy that Kelly found it hard not to look away with that sense of embarrassment one feels when someone else’s private moment has been inadvertently invaded. But the act sculpted in stone welcomed the voyeur, and the fact that the sculptures were life size meant they also welcomed the touch and caress of an outsider drawn into their intimacy.

With her heart hammering, she traced the shape of the man’s shoulder and down the curve of his back to the wonderfully straight angles of muscle and bone at the hip, the joining point to the pelvic girdle, the point so uniquely and deliciously masculine that a woman couldn’t keep her hands from wandering there when she caressed a lover. That the marble was warm to the touch made the caress startling, like skin against skin, and her stomach clenched as she thought of Lex caressing that warmth, of him thinking exactly the same thing, of him creating these works of intimacy and putting them here for that very reason, so he could feel the warmth of skin on skin.

The creation of such a work was extended foreplay, was a relationship based entirely on touch and caress and teasing out from the stone the intimate acts hidden within. Was it any wonder that the man was a sculptor? Was it any wonder that he was brilliant? She knew too well the connectedness artists feel to their work. She felt it with her writing at times when the story flowed, at times when the bottom fell out of what she had created and she found herself in a whole new place, deeper, more personal, a place that allowed her far more intimacy with her characters than she would have been bold enough to expect. But her work was not her only intimacy. It was not the only touch she could have if she craved it. Work in isolation, even work one loved as much as she loved hers, would have to be raised to a completely different level to make up, even a little bit, for the loss of intimacy. The whole glade was full of the man’s efforts to make up for that loss.

“What are you doing here?” The voice behind her made her yelp and jump. She fell back against the sculpture’s bare buttocks and her hand slipped in her efforts to regain balance, ending up on the man’s aroused goodies.

She turned to find Lex in a ratty T-shirt and shorts, standing in front of her with his arms folded across his chest. His efforts not to smile belied the harsh reprimand in his voice.

“Looking for you,” she managed.

“Got a little sidetracked en route, did we?” He nodded to her hand on the sculpture’s cock, and she jerked it away and blushed heartily. “This garden is not open to the public.”

She folded her arms across her chest, mirroring his stance. “I’m not the public, and frankly, if you want me to tutor you, well, this is a great place to get on with it, because clearly it’s therapy for you.”

He raised an eyebrow and shifted, and she noticed that he was barefoot and covered in fine dust. In one hand, he held a chisel. “Clearly, it’s porn for me.” He came to her side and defiantly stroked the woman’s breast, not taking his eyes off her. “Interactive porn.”

“It’s just as well then, because I quite often assign my clients to watch porn.” Just as defiantly, she curled her fingers around the man’s erection, and Lex’s gaze followed her hand, his breath catching in his chest. “This will make my job a whole lot easier, and way more interesting than film porn.”

“So you’re willing?” He blushed hard and dragged his gaze back to her face. “To be my tutor, I mean.”

“I’m willing, yes. It seems I’m stuck here for the time being, so we might as well make the best of it.” She turned away from his overpowering gaze and moved on to the next sculpture, in which the couple was in the act, the woman seated on the man’s lap, his lips lowered to her nipple with her fingers curled in his hair, holding him to her breast. Lex followed her as she strolled among the erotic statuary. “It’s pretty clear to me that I can’t…that we can’t interact the way I normally would with my clients. I don’t know how I feel about that, Lex.” She turned suddenly to face him, and he nearly ran into her, stepping back as though he’d narrowly escaped falling off a cliff. His breath accelerated, as though he’d just done something physical, his pulse beating a rapid staccato in his temples. In response, she scrambled to put a safe space between them, noting to herself that she had to be careful not to put him in such a dangerous position if they were to work together. She’d never worked with a haphephobic before, and even though her policy was strictly hands-off with her clients, she never thought about the number of times there was a handshake at the door or a hug of thanks or just a touch of encouragement. She would have to rethink her client interaction entirely where Lex was concerned. “I’m sorry,” she said, as he leaned against the plinth to gather himself.

“It’s all right.” He straightened to meet her gaze. “I take some getting used to, and the truth is, I feel comfortable being a little closer to you. It’s no big deal.”

“Well, actually, it is a big deal,” she said, feeling her own pulse accelerate at his comment. “It’s a huge deal for you to be able to move beyond your comfort zone, and when those boundaries change, it’s natural that there’ll be times when you’ll overstep them and that won’t be comfortable.”

He smiled at her and nodded her on to the next sculpture. “You’re talking like a tutor now.”

“But we both know I haven’t been behaving like a tutor.” This time she was careful to keep him always in her peripheral vision.

He moved ahead of her on light feet and turned to face her. “You’re behaving like the tutor I need you to be. That’s the important thing.”

She could see the excitement in his eyes and, for a second, he looked around as though searching for something. Then he motioned her to a series of female nudes all without partners, all in differing poses. He came to one that stood much as Kelly had been standing, legs slightly spread, feet firmly planted on the ground and arms relaxed at her side. He moved in close to her and took her gently by the shoulders, and Kelly felt her heart bounce as he stroked the statue’s bare arms.

“Don’t you see, Kelly, how exciting it is for me to suddenly have a connection? And how confusing it is, how disappointing to have that connection yanked away?” He ran an open palm up the woman’s shoulder and neck, and Kelly felt the trail of goosebumps rising along her nape as he cupped the sculpture’s cheek. “I’m not a stalker. Surely you can see that. I couldn’t just let go. I need to know, Kelly, I need to know where this will lead. You have to understand that. And I’ll admit”—he skimmed the hairline with an index finger—“your response intrigues me almost as much as my own. It must intrigue you too.” He turned back to her, and her knees nearly gave with the intensity of the connection he could elicit through simply touching a piece of stone. “Don’t you want to know what will happen?”

“Of course I do,” she said, looking around until she found a male sculpture curled next to a sleeping woman in a spoon position. She sat on the plinth beside him and gently stroked his arm, and the sudden catch in Lex’s breath was almost a gasp. “That’s why I’m still here.” She ran her hand down to rest on the statue’s flank, and Lex sighed. “I just don’t like being lied to, and I don’t like being manipulated.” She turned back to him. “But you’re not responsible for Dillon and Myrna’s bad behavior. That being the case, like it or not, I’m here now as your fiancée until the interest blows over and the press finds something else to titillate. So let’s make the best of it.”

The smile he offered her made it very clear how he felt about that arrangement.