Nadine unlocked the front door of the gallery and went inside. Clint first checked the street, looking left, right and across, before following her in and locking the door behind him.
“I’m going to have electric lights put in,” she told him, as she turned up a gaslight on the wall, “to highlight each painting, but it’s going to be expensive.”
“What about investors?” he asked. “And I mean, other than Emory Bates?”
She led him back to her office, where she turned up another wall light, then faced him.
“You’re very smart for a gunfighter,” she said. “I’m having a party here later this week for just that purpose. I don’t suppose you’d like to invest?” From the tone of her voice he knew she wasn’t serious.
“You don’t think I could?”
Her face fell as she realized she may have insulted him.
“On, no, no, it’s not that,” she said, hastily. “I just didn’t think you’d be interested.”
“Well,” he said, “if I’m invited to your party, I’ll listen to your pitch along with everyone else.”
“But of course,” she said. “Yes, you’re invited. I mean, if you hadn’t saved me tonight, there might not even be a party.”
“Did you think those men would’ve killed you if I hadn’t come along?”
“Not killed,” she said, “but maybe . . . worse.”
He got it. If they’d raped her, she would not have been in the mood to host a party later in the week.
“So where are these paintings you need to uncrate?” he asked.
“In the back. This way.”
She took him to a door in the back wall, and into a storage room. Against the far wall was a door through which she took deliveries. Around the room, leaning against the walls, were slender crates. He’d expected to see large ones, but these looked as if they each contained a single painting.
“These are crates?” he asked, walking to one and putting his hand on it.
“Made especially for shipping paintings,” she said. “They have to be opened carefully.”
“What can I do?”
There was a table in the center of the room.
“If you’ll carry them here one by one and put them on the table, I’ll open them up. Then we can take the paintings out.”
“Okay,” he said. “Start with this one?”
“Yes.”
He picked up a crate, the size of one of the larger portraits he had seen on the lobby wall at the hotel. He set it on the table, which also had hammers and chisels on it.
She used the tools to get the nails out, making the crate literally fell apart, revealing the painting inside.
“Is this valuable?” he asked.
“Only if I can get somebody to pay for it. I took the artist on hoping I could.”
“You have more from him?”
“This entire shipment is from him,” she said.
Clint held the painting up to examine it. It was a landscape, but not a realistic one. Everything looked too angular to him.
“I don’t like it,” he said.
“It’s all in the point of view,” she said. “All art is. Somebody will like it.”
“You hope.”
She took it from him and set it down. “The fact is, I like it. Let’s have another one.”
~*~
He carried eleven more paintings over to the table, and when they were done the pieces were laid out around the room, leaning against the walls again, this time outside the crates, which were piled in a corner.
He watched while Nadine walked around, stopping in front of each painting to examine it.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Working.”
It was warm in the room. They were both sweating, their shirts sticking to their skin. He didn’t think she was aware of it, but as she walked around the room he could see the outline of her nipples against her shirt. They were very large, as were her breasts. She was a tall, stately woman. She had tied her hair back, and he could see perspiration glistening on her neck. He wanted to lick it off. He remembered her peeling the shawl off her shoulders before she got to the top of her stairs. Had it been an invitation?
“I’m making sure I got what I asked for,” she said.
“Don’t you mean what you paid for?”
“No,” she said, looking over her shoulder at him, “I didn’t buy these. I took them on consignment. If I sell one, I take a fee and give the rest to the artist.”
“The artist agrees to that?” he asked. “Giving up twelve of his paintings for nothing, trusting you to pay him?”
“Yes,” she said, “he does. They do. If an artist doesn’t trust me, then we don’t do business.”
She turned to face him.
“Are we done here?” he asked.
“Almost.”
“What else is there to do?”
Instead of answering the question she said, “It’s hot back here.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“I can smell you.”
“I can smell you, too.” He could. He’d been thinking about it for an hour. He could smell her sweat, her natural scent. It was sexy.
“I like it that I can smell you,” she said. “It’s a good scent.”
“You smell like a real woman,” he said.
She laughed.
“What’s a real woman smell like?”
“Like somebody with no underwear on.”
She looked down at herself, at the outline of her nipples.
“Oh,” she said, and peeled off her shirt.