“Aren’t you tired?” he asked, as she tried and failed to settle.
“Not really.” She was warm in the after sex glow, sure, but her thoughts were cold, like the millstone around her neck.
“Are you thinking about your work?”
“Yes,” she answered at length, because there was no way she could tell him what she was really thinking.
“What is it you’re working on?” he asked.
“A still life for the exhibition.” She shook her head against his shoulder, breathing deep of his underarm scent in the process. Relishing it. There was something about the scent of a strong, clean man. Something honest and raw, and adding another texture to whatever made a man whole. She sighed. “But it’s not cooperating.”
He kissed her hair. “How so?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged her shoulders against him. “There’s something unbalanced about it. I worked for hours today, but I just can’t see what’s wrong with it.”
He stroked her arm with his hand. “Is that what’s bugging you?”
She looked up at him warily. “Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know. It’s just this feeling – like something’s out of whack. I was worried that—”
“Worried that what?”
“God,” he sighed, rubbing his forehead with his free hand. “Nothing. I didn’t have a good day. I’m not reading anything particularly well at the moment.”
She exhaled then, and pushed herself higher to kiss his stubbled jaw. “Yes, it’s the painting. I hate it when it’s not working.” And that wasn’t entirely a lie, because the painting was lodged there too, in that place in her head where she could find questions but no answers.
They lay quietly nestled together, her leg wound over his, his strong arms surrounding her, while her mind continued to tick over. How could she feel so safe, lying here next to Caleb, while at the same time, she felt like she was teetering on the brink of something dangerous? Was the fact it was now getting on for twelve months of shared nights and shared bodies the reason for thinking it must end?
Twelve months of casual hookups, that started in mutual lust and ended in mutual pleasure that sent fireworks spinning through her body and mind.
She couldn’t give that up on a whim.
But twelve months – that was beginning to sound permanent...
She sensed the change in him, the slowing of his breathing, the muscles of the arms around her suddenly relaxing. Heavier in sleep. She rested her hand on his chest, felt its even rise and fall, his wiry chest hair tickling her palm, an unfamiliar forest around fingers grown up with hairless Asian skin.
Texture.
The man was a walking canvas.
Her mind drifted to her troubling painting of the blue and white jug and the lemons and the glossy backdrop, the colours reflected in the snowy white yet still not working, and in her mind her random thoughts merged and coalesced and like a bolt the answer hit her.
Of course! Carefully, she eased out from under his arms. He stirred but didn’t waken as she slipped from the bed and into her artist shirt and padded barefoot to her studio. She snapped on the lights and night turned into day. In the centre of the room stood her easel bearing her problematic canvas while adjacent sat an old leather chesterfield where she flopped when she was too tired to make it to bed. Canvases lined the two walls, mostly finished in readiness for her upcoming exhibition, the wall of windows overlooking the valley made up the third and the fourth comprised shelving filled with paints and art books and boxes and boxes of stuff that she’d kept because it might be useful some day – and in one of them...
It was in an old vintage cardboard suitcase that she found it, folded into a square and tucked away because one day she might need it. She’d found it in a fabric shop in a box of remnants and, while it had been the shifting colour of the piece that had caught her eye, it was the compulsion to reach out and touch the piece of fabric that had sealed the deal.
Reverently she unfolded it, feeling a frisson of excitement as the midnight blue fabric sprang to life in the light. How had she forgotten it until now? She palmed her hand against the short dense pile, put it to her cheek and felt its velvet touch and felt that same excitement she’d had the day she’d found it.
Texture.
She looked at the canvas she’d been struggling with, of her favourite jug filled with a posy of plump yellow lemons from a neighbour’s garden and it was so blindingly obvious now why it was never going to work against a stark white background.
It took the best part of half an hour reworking the still life, positioning the fabric just right, so just like the hills and valleys around her, the light shone or was swallowed up in the shadowy depths. Until finally she was happy and she picked up her paintbrush and got to work.
Chapter Three
Caleb’s phone woke him in the predawn grey. He blinked into wakefulness as he groped for it, suddenly aware of the cool of the sheets beside him and the absence of Ava. Painting, he figured she’d be, up with the dawn no doubt, as she often seemed to be on the occasional nights he stayed over.
He rubbed his eyes as he checked the screen, saw it was his station officer calling, and picked up. “Mike? What’s happening?”
“The baby,” he said, and Caleb’s stomach clenched because straight away he knew what baby he was calling about. “We’ve just got word from the hospital, it’s a boy and he’s doing well.”
Caleb put a hand to his head as he let go a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. “That’s good.” At least they’d managed to salvage something from the tragedy that had been yesterday. “Real good.”
“And mate, get this. The father wants to meet you.”
“What?”
“He heard what happened. He reckons if you hadn’t been there wrangling
