Sophie used to say, “When it’s ultraboring. Not just a lull in the day, but so boring you want to shoot yourself in the foot just to liven things up.” Her Texas sense of humor always made them laugh, but what she was saying made sense. After that, with each new boyfriend, the girls would work to set up a day so they could try out the “boringness test.”
Tristan always passed. If Jecca wanted to be quiet and sketch, Tris was happy to do so. In return, she liked to pull an old wicker chair into the little conservatory while Tris puttered about.
“Now you see the real me,” he said as he held up one of his purple orchids. “No hot-air balloons, no six-course meals. Just me and a bunch of plants that need a lot of care.”
“You deserve a break from saving lives all week.”
“My job isn’t quite that dramatic. Today I had two sore throats, a—and I quote—‘a funny-looking mole,’ and two splinters. However, one was in a rather delicate area of a newlywed man. I suggested he either sand his dad’s workbench or use the bed. He and his new wife can’t afford a house, so they’re still living at home and sneaking around.”
Jecca had laughed. There was nothing at all boring about Tristan Aldredge, nothing she didn’t like—except the town where he lived. But actually, that wasn’t true. A couple of times, Tris had said Jecca “fit in” with Edilean—and she had to admit that she did.
Since the fashion show, Jecca had become part of the little town. She was now considered the champion of the girls who weren’t cheerleaders, girls who were shy or misfits in some way. She could hardly walk down the street without a mother stopping her and asking about the Achievers’ Club.
One day when they were having lunch, Kim started laughing.
“What’s that for?” Jecca asked.
“Do you realize that you’ve drawn three outfits for girls while wegirn. I sug’ve been sitting here?”
Jecca was startled. The girls had seen her through the window, come inside, and she knew what they wanted before they asked. She looked at each girl and instantly knew what she should wear. She also gave advice about hair. “Talk to the hairdresser about downlights and dye your eyebrows and eyelashes,” she told a fourteen-year-old girl with white-blonde hair.
At Kim’s words, Jecca realized how she was being taken over by the needs of Edilean, and she frowned. The thought had made her concentrate on the paintings she needed to do for Kim.
They were finished now and she knew it was time to talk to Tristan about some very serious matters. She wished he hadn’t come up with this surprise, but she couldn’t help that. She’d just have to wait until afterward to talk with him.
He got out of the shower, then she took hers and got dressed. After a quick breakfast, they got in his car, and he drove them to the road leading into Williamsburg. He pulled into a parking lot that was weed infested. Jecca looked out the windshield at the big old brick building in front of them and had no idea what was going on.
“What do you think?” he asked, his voice full of expectation.
The place was little more than a shell, spreading out across the end of the parking lot. “Roof, wall, foundation,” she said. “Needs them all.” She was looking at him curiously. What was in his mind and what did this place have to do with her?
She watched him get out of the car and come across to open her door.
“I bought this place from Roan,” he said.
“You’re expanding your practice? Opening a big clinic?”
“Not quite,” he said, smiling as he extended his hand to help her out. “Come inside and look at it. Tell me what needs to be done to make it usable.”
She followed him, but she was frowning. She had an ominous feeling that this building was important—and that it was going to change things.
She followed him inside, holding his hand and stepping over rubble. He explained that many years before it had been a factory to make bricks, but the McTern family had dwindled in size, and the industry was taken over by big manufacturers. Little businesses like the McTern Brickworks went out of business. “So the building has sat empty for a long time,” Tristan concluded.
He was looking at her as though he were presenting her with the greatest gift imaginable—except that she had no idea what it was.
They passed through a big room with tall ceilings, then through a door to see a series of three smaller rooms.
“I thought these could be offices,” he said.
“If I ask ‘offices for what?’ will I get an answer?”
Tristan just smiled as he tugged on her hand and led her back out to the front. There was a hallway with a couple of old doors barely hanging on by their hinges.
“Restrooms,” he said, then quickened his step.
They hurried through a long, narrow room that had only a partial roof. Birds flew about overhead. They passed through an open doorway and came out into a large, airy room. The old walls were tall and there were broken windows all along the back, with a door to the outside. Against the far wall was a long piece of canvas covering something.
Jecca stopped in the middle of the room and looked at Tristan.
“What do you think?” he asked again, his beautiful eyes alive with what could only be described as hope.
“About what, Tristan?” she asked, her voice showing her frustration.
“For an art studio,” he said. “I don’t know much about it, but those windows face north. That’s the best light for artists, isn’t it?”
“You bought this building so I’d have a place to paint?” she asked softly.
“Well,” he said, “actually, no.”
Jecca breathed a sigh of relief.
“When I sent your dad the floor plan, he suggested that this room be yours.”
“My father?” Jecca said, and she had a truly horrible feeling that just maybe—possibly—she was beginning to understand. “You and my father worked together? Without my knowledge?”
“Jecca,” Tris said, “you’re making it sound like I conspired with your father. It was just something that happened.”
“Something that happened that planned my future? Where I am to paint?” she asked quietly.
“No,” he said. “At least it wasn’t like that. Remember when we were in Williamsburg buying the material for Nell’s clothes?”
She didn’t answer, just stood there looking at him.
“You asked me to send a photo to your dad and I did, and I introduced myself to him.” Tris looked away. He thought it would be better if he didn’t reveal exactly what he’d written to Joe Layton, or his reply. He looked back at her. “Jecca, baby, it all just sort of happened, that’s all.”
“What happened?” she asked through clenched teeth.
“Buying the building and making plans with your father,” Tris said as he went to the big canvas. “I waited until this came before telling you about it. This is the surprise.” With a flourish, he pulled the canvas away.
Leaning against the wall was a big sign of painted metal. It was dark green with yellow lettering, and it was a new version of the one Jecca had seen all her life. It said LAYTON HARDWARE in the same solid block letters that her great-grandfather had chosen back in 1918.
Jecca kept her face straight as she looked at Tristan.
“Your dad is going to turn the store in New Jersey over to his son and open a place in Edilean. He knows it won’t make the money the other store did, but he has a lot saved. Your dad is a good money manager. And besides, all he really wants to do is be near youis y. He th. He misses you a lot, Jec, and as you said, you’re all he really has. What’s that old saying? ‘A son is a son until he takes a wife, but a daughter is a daughter all her life.’ That doesn’t say much for us men, does it? Jecca, please say something.”
She took a breath. “While I was making clothes for the show, you and my father did this, didn’t you? That’s what you were so secretive about, what you were doing with your cousin Rams, the lawyer. That’s short for Ramsey. Isn’t that what you
told me when I asked what you were doing?”
“Jecca,” Tristan said as he walked toward her. “I thought things had changed between us. I thought you were growing to like Edilean. Your dad—”
“Is as manipulative and controlling as you are,” she said as calmly as she could manage, then she turned and went back the way they came in.
Tristan caught up with her in the long hallway. “Jecca, you don’t have to do this. It was your dad’s idea to give you the room on the end of the hardware store. He said you’ve always wanted your own studio.”
She turned to him. “You don’t listen any better than he does.” She didn’t raise her voice. She was too angry for that.
“We’ll forget this,” he said. “No studio on the side of a store. We’ll—”
“No,” she said softly, “we aren’t going to do anything at all.”
“Jecca . . .” he began and put his hand on her arm, but she jerked away from him.
“Do you think that because of your prestige in this little town, because you’re a doctor, all of it, do you think you have the right to cajole me into doing what you want? That you can buy my father and me a building and I’ll do whatever you plan for my life?” She took a deep breath. “I told you that there isn’t work here for me, but it seems that you didn’t listen.”
Tristan stepped closer to her. “Jecca, my only defense is that I love you, love you, the woman you are. I love that you’re fun and creative, that you can put a chainsaw together. I love that you found out that Nell was being tortured by a bunch of jealous little brats and you fixed it. You didn’t just talk about the problem but you saw a solution and you did it. All for a little girl you hardly knew. I’ve never met anyone like you. I don’t think there is anyone else like you on the earth. I love you and I want you to stay here with me. Is that so bad?”
“That you did everything behind my back, yes it is,” she said, but then she relented. “Tristan, I love you too. I know it. I feel it, but there’s more to life than romantic love. What happens after I throw my arms around you and declare my love?”
She didn’t wait for his answer. “For weeks, maybe months, a year even, I’ll float around in a dreamy cloud. We’ll have a big wedding and invite your hundreds of relatives. We’ll go on a glorious honeymoon. And then what? I pop out a couple of kids? I take a cooking course so I can have dinner on the table every night when you get home?”
She slowed d">San stepown. “Don’t you understand that soon I wouldn’t be me any longer? What you like about me would starve to death.”
“That’s what Kim told me,” he said. “Staying here with nothing to do would kill your soul.”
“It’s like you said. You told me that sometimes a career chooses the person. Nell is creative. She loves making things, but you said she’s going to be a doctor, that it chose her. You shrugged it off, as though it were a given.”
Jecca took a few breaths, then calmed herself. “What if after you spent your childhood teething on a stethoscope a woman said to you, ‘I love you. Give up being a doctor and live for me?’”
Tristan took a step back, and she felt that for the first time he really and truly heard her. He wasn’t just listening to the words then dismissing them as though they meant nothing.
“Could you give up being a doctor?” she whispered. “Take another job doing something else?”
“No,” he said, and she could see that he at last understood.
What Jecca was realizing was that this was the end, that after today she and Tristan would no longer be a couple. No more snuggling in the evenings, making love in the moonlight. No more seeing Nell and Lucy and Mrs. Wingate. Never again seeing Kim’s jewelry shop because she’d not be able to return to Edilean and see Tristan again.
“I have to leave,” she said. Her heart was pounding in her throat. “I have to go now. Alone. I must get away.” Her voice was urgent, showing how close she was to panic.
She held out her hand to Tris and he said nothing as he put his car keys in her hand, and she quickly walked to the car. She was glad it was a short distance to Mrs. Wingate’s house—and she was glad no one was home when she got there.
She didn’t think about what she did but just shoved clothing and toiletries into a bag. It took her just minutes to gather all her watercolors, put them in the box her father had made (she didn’t waste time thinking that he too had betrayed her), grabbed her keys, got into her car, and started driving north. She knew that if she hesitated, she’d go running back to Tristan and throw herself on him. How could she leave a man she loved so very much?
But she knew the answer. It was because she did love him that she was leaving. Everything she’d said was true. If she married him now—which she knew was what he wanted—she’d make him the unhappiest man on earth. Their love would be torn apart by her desire—her need—to create.
By the time Jecca hit I-95 she was fighting the urge to go back. But she didn’t. Tristan deserved better than a wife who wasn’t happy within herself.
It was late when she reached New York City, and she went directly to Andrea’s gallery. Her apartment was still sublet to Sheila’s cousin, so she couldn’t go there. She could have gone to a hotel but she didn’t want to.
She was so exhausted she could hardly remember the alarm code, but she managed to turn it off, then back on. She unzipped her suitcase enough to take out a jacket, wrapped it around her, then stretche thhe cod out on the hard bench in the middle of the gallery. She wadded up a blouse to use for a pillow.
Tomorrow, she thought as she started to fall asleep. Tomorrow she’d figure out what to do. And maybe tomorrow Tristan would . . . No, she couldn’t think of that.
She fell into an uneasy sleep and didn’t awaken until the burglar alarm went off, then was quickly shut off.
“Jecca!” said a quiet, solemn voice. “I was hoping it was you. The alarm company said there was activity last night.”
It was difficult to wake out of her deep sleep, but the voice was of a person one didn’t ignore. She looked up to see Garrick Preston—Andrea’s father—staring down at her. Since he was six foot four, that was a long way down. Behind him was his secretary, a tall, beautiful young woman who changed every year, and his bodyguard, a young man trained in several forms of combat.
“Sorry,” Jecca said as she struggled to stand up. The long drive and the hard bench, combined with emotional trauma, had taken a toll on her body.
Mr. Preston was staring at her. Andrea said that as far as she knew her father had never smiled in his life. He’d recently divorced his fourth wife, and Andrea said he was now looking for a younger one.
“Red eyes. Sleeping on a bench,” Mr. Preston said. “Boyfriend breakup?”
“Yes,” Jecca said and felt tears welling in her eyes. She hadn’t yet fully realized what had happened in her life, couldn’t believe Tristan wasn’t going to walk through the door.
Mr. Preston saw the unshed tears and turned away. “How about some work to take your mind off your troubles?”
“I’d like that,” she said.
“My daughter has decided she wants me to buy her a house in—” He glanced at his secretary.
“Tuscany,” she said.
“Right,” Mr. Preston said. “Andrea saw a movie, read a book, something. So she and that guy she married are going to stay there. I can sell this gallery, or Jecca, you can run it. Which do you want to do?”
“Run it,” Jecca said, but there wasn’t much conviction in her voice.
He turned back to look at her. “You do any painting while you were in . . . wherever you were?” He nodded toward the art box she’d brought in last night.
“Some, not a lot,” she said. “I worked on other things.” She didn’t elaborate, as she didn’t want to bore him, but she thought of Kim’s ad campaign and all the children’s clothes she’d designed.
“Hang your pictures up,” he said as he headed toward the door. He turned to his secretary. “Call Boswell and tell him
to work out the contracts.”
The bodyguard opened the door for Mr. Preston, who paused. “Welcome back, Jecca,” he said, then left, his entourage behind him.
Jecca sat down hard on the bench. “One door closes, another one openotht,Rs,” she mumbled. Her first impulse was to fall down on the bench and start crying.
But she couldn’t allow herself to give in to that. She’d leaped into Tristan’s arms with her eyes open. From the beginning she’d told him—told herself—that it couldn’t work between them. She’d warned him that at the end of the summer she would leave. He’d said he could take the pain. In her naïveté, Jecca hadn’t thought about her own pain.
She dug into her bag for her phone. How many messages had Tristan left her? What about her father? Would he call to apologize for conspiring with Tristan behind her back?
When she saw that there were no messages from either of them, she was shocked. No voice mail, no e-mail, no text messages. She checked the phone listing. No calls with hang-ups from either of them.
She was sitting there blinking, unable to decide what this meant when the gallery phone rang. It was Mr. Boswell, the lawyer who handled anything to do with Andrea, and he wanted to come by with new contracts. “And there’s an apartment you can use until you get your own back.”
“All right,” Jecca said.
He hesitated. “Forget your old apartment. I think we should get you something in a Preston building. There’ll be a substantial pay raise for you.”
“Good,” she said, but without feeling.
Mr. Boswell paused. “I hear you had a bad breakup.”
Jecca couldn’t say anything. If she did, she’d start crying. She could not believe that Tris hadn’t at least called.
“How about if I give you so much to do you don’t have time to think?” Mr. Boswell said.
“I need that.”
“All right,” he said, “I’ll have someone call the artists and tell them you’re reopening. They’ll bombard you with sob stories of how miserable their lives have been because you closed the gallery.”