looked around now and again, scanning for a tall man with dark hair and green eyes, no one else knew.
At Cassie's insistence, she dropped both boys at Connor's late Saturday afternoon. Home alone, she paced the house, fidgeted in the quiet, and finally went back to work.
The queen was finished, but she still had the prince to sketch. No wimpy, soft-eyed dreamer for her Snow White, Savannah mused as she began running the pencil over the thick white pad. Her Snow White deserved some fire, some passion, some promise of a happy-ever-after with heat.
It was hardly a wonder that her first rough sketch resembled a MacKade. Dragonslayers, she thought with a grim smile. Troublemakers. Who said a prince had to be polite? Hadn't most of them won their thrones in battle first?
Yes, she could see Jared as a fairy tale prince. Her kind of fairy tale. The kind of story that had inspired the legends that had been passed down through the ages, before they became softened and misted to lull children rather than frighten them.
Warrior, avenger, adventurer. Yes, that was the prince she wanted to create.
She began to enjoy herself. The familiar process of bringing something to life through her heart and mind and hand was always fascinating, if not always soothing.
If things had been different, she wouldn't have made her living from assignments, but from that heart and mind. Painting what she saw, what she felt, what she wanted—for the joy of it.
She was lucky, she reminded herself, to have this much. There had been no art classes in her life, only stolen moments with a pad and colored pencils. Dreams no one had ever understood.
Yes, she was lucky, because her work and the payment for it allowed her to take time for painting, to justify it as a harmless, not terribly expensive hobby.
Quickly, fueled by instinct, she began to add details to the sketch—the diamond-bright dimple at the corner of that sensual mouth, the arrogant arch of an eyebrow, a hint of muscle beneath the cloak, more than a hint of danger in the eyes she would certainly have to paint a grass green.
Hell, she reflected, if nothing else, her brush with Jared MacKade had given her the perfect model for her assignment. The illustration would be a good one. She couldn't have asked for more.
She should never had let herself get caught up in the idea of painting for Jared, or selling him work that she had done for herself.
The sound of a car had her bracing and fighting to squash a little flutter of hope.
But when she went to the door, she saw Regan MacKade. The two women studied each other coolly. After a long moment, Savannah opened the door and stepped back.
'I don't know what's between you and Jared,' Regan said without preamble. 'And if you think it's none of my business, you're wrong. He's family. But I'd like to know why you've decided you can't stand me to the point where you won't even take a potentially lucrative job just because we'd rub elbows occasionally.'
'I don't want the job.'
'That's a lie.'
Savannah's eyes went molten. 'Now look, sister—'
'No, you look.' Revved, Regan jabbed a finger at Savannah's chest. 'We don't have to be friends. I've got friends. Though I'm baffled at how we could both manage to be friends with someone as sweet as Cassie Dolin. She finds you admirable, and it's not my place to tell her you're just plain rude. You were interested in the job when Jared suggested it. Interested enough to come to the house. And according to Rafe, everything was just dandy until I walked in. Now what's your problem? Sister.'
Savannah found her temper warring with amusement, and reluctant admiration. Didn't the woman realize Savannah was big enough to break her in half? 'I guess you told me.'
'So why don't you tell me?' Regan shot back.
'I don't like the way you look.'
'You—I beg your pardon?'
'Or the way you talk.' Pleased with herself, Savannah smiled. 'Let me guess—private education, dances at the country club, debutante ball.'
'I was never a debutante.' If she hadn't been so baffled, Regan would have been insulted. 'And what's that got to do with anything?'
'You look like you just stepped out of one of those classy women's magazines.'
Regan threw up her hands. 'That's it?'
'Yeah, that's it.'
'Well, you look like one of those statues men sacrificed virgins to. I don't hold it against you. Exactly.'
They frowned at each other for a minute. Then Savannah sighed, shrugged. 'I've got some ice tea.'
'I'd love some.'
By the time she was sipping her second glass, Regan was up and wandering the front room. She stopped by a landscape, all rocky hills and trees gone violent with autumn.
'This one,' she decided. 'He needs this one where that horrible white-orchid still life is hanging.'
'I'd have thought you'd go for the orchids.' When Regan turned, her eyes narrowed blandly, Savannah smiled fully for the first time. 'Yeah, I can see I'd have been wrong.'
'Greens and mauves,' Regan announced. 'Deep greens. And those chairs in the outer office have got to go. I've got a couple of library chairs in mind. Deep-cushioned, high-backed. Leather. And I figure hardwood with area rugs, instead of that gray sea of wall-to-wall.'
Yes, of course. Savannah could already see it. Regan MacKade was obviously a woman who knew what she wanted. 'Look, I'm not a humble person, but can you actually see my paintings jibing with your taste... or Jared's?'
'Yes. And I think, all things considered, that you and I will work together very well.' Regan held out a hand, waited. 'Well, are we going to give Jared a break and get him out of that tomb?'
'Yeah.' Savannah took the pretty hand, with its glittering rings, in hers. 'Why the hell not?'
Later, Savannah walked toward the woods. She had to admit she'd done something she detested in others. She had looked at the surface and made a decision. All she had seen—maybe all she'd wanted to see when she looked at Regan MacKade—was elegance, privilege and class.
But who could have guessed there'd be such grit under all that polish?
She should have, Savannah realized.
And when she saw Jared sitting on a rock smoking quietly, she realized she had known she'd find him here.
He said nothing when she sat down beside him and took the cigar. The silence was lovely, filled with birdsong and breezes.
'I owe you an apology.' It didn't quite stick in her throat, but she handed him back the cigar. 'I was... You caught me at a bad time the other day.'
'Did I?'
'Don't make it easy, MacKade.'
'I won't.'
With a quick, bad-tempered shrug, she swung her legs up, crossed them under her. 'I wasn't completely truthful with you. There are a lot of things I don't mind doing, but lies don't sit well with me. I wanted the job. I can use it. But I felt...intimidated,' she muttered as the word sat distastefully on her tongue.
'Intimidated?' It was the last reason or excuse he'd have expected to hear out of her. 'By what?'
'Your sister-in-law, to start.'
'Regan?' Sheer astonishment ran up hard against the foul mood he'd been mired in for twenty-four hours. 'Give me a break.'
It was his quick, dismissive laugh that snapped it. Temper soaring, Savannah bolted up from the rock and whirled on him. 'I've got a right to be intimidated by whatever I please. I've got a right to feel exactly how I chose to feel. Don't you laugh at me.'
'Sorry.' Wisely Jared cleared his throat, then looked up at her. 'Why would Regan intimidate you?'
'Because she's...she's classy and lovely and smart and successful. She's everything I'm not. I'm comfortable with who I am, what I am, but when you come up against someone like that, it's a kick-in-the-butt reminder of what you're never going to be, never going to have. I don't like feeling inadequate or stupid.'
