She looked shaken by that, so he pressed on. “Now’s the time to speak up, if you’re going to keep the door locked tight against anything more happening between us. I don’t intend to be hanging out here on this limb all alone.”
“I don’t know,” she admitted shakily. “I don’t know if I can open that door again or not.”
“Because your ex-husband hurt you so badly?”
“He never hurt me,” she said just a little too fiercely. “Not like that.”
Ben stared at her, stunned. He doubted she realized that her reaction suggested exactly the opposite of her words.
“Kathleen?” he said gently, feeling an impotent rage stirring inside him. “Did he abuse you?”
Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “Not the way you mean,” she said eventually. “He never hit me.”
“But he did abuse you?”
“With words,” she said as if that were somehow less demeaning, less hurtful. “He had this nasty temper and when it got out of hand, he could be cruel.”
“Is he the one who told you your art was worthless?” Ben asked.
She hesitated for so long that Ben knew he was right. The son of a bitch had destroyed her confidence in her own talent, probably because his own ego was incapable of handling the competition. Only an artist would know how easy it would be to shatter another artist’s confidence, would know precisely how a cutting criticism could destroy any enjoyment.
“He did, didn’t he? He’s the one who told you that you weren’t any good, and you gave up painting because of that.”
“No,” she said miserably. “I gave it up because I was no good.”
He studied her with compassion. “Maybe instead of you pestering me to see my work, I should be insisting on seeing yours.”
She laughed, the sound tinged with bitterness. “No chance of that. I destroyed it all.”
“Oh, sweetheart, why would you do that?”
“I told you,” she said impatiently. “I recognize talent when I see it. I had none.”
“But you enjoyed painting?”
“Yes.”
“Then isn’t that alone reason enough to do it?” he asked. “Isn’t the pleasure of putting paint on canvas all that really matters?”
“You would say that, wouldn’t you?”
He laughed at her. “Okay, it’s a convenient response from my point of view, but it’s true. Not everything has to be about making money or doing shows or garnering critical acclaim.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re rich. You can afford to indulge in something that might not be profitable. I can’t.”
“And you don’t regret for one single second that you no longer paint?” he challenged. “There’s not a part of you that gets a little crazy at the sight of a blank canvas and a tube of paint? Some secret part of you that looks at another artist’s canvas and thinks that you could have done it better?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, not denying that she had regrets.
“Of course it does.”
She brushed impatiently at the tears on her cheeks. “How on earth did we get off on this tangent?” she demanded, standing up. “I want to see those panels downstairs and then I need to be going.”
Ben knew that anything he said now would be a waste of breath, but his determination to give Kathleen back her love of painting grew. He would find some way to accomplish that, no matter what else happened—or didn’t happen—between them.
9
The wall panels in the basement were remarkable. Kathleen stood staring at them, astonished by the brilliance of the colors and the extraordinary detail. As the painting in Ben’s dining room had done, these drew the viewer right into the scene, an especially astonishing feat given that the artist was so young at the time he’d painted them.
Oh, sure, the work wasn’t as expert as that which had come later, but the signs of promise were unmistakable. In the kind of retrospective Destiny had envisioned when she’d saved them, they would be a treasure.
“Tell me again,” Kathleen said. “How old were you when you painted these?”
“Twelve, I guess,” he said with an embarrassed shrug. “Maybe thirteen. I did them when it became evident that I wasn’t going to be the athletic superstar that Mack was. That made all the sports equipment Destiny had painted on the walls seem somewhat misplaced. Besides I loved the zoo and all the animal shows on TV. I wanted nothing more than to go on a safari.”
“Have you ever gone?”
He nodded. “Destiny took me when I got straight A’s in eighth grade.”
“Was it everything you’d imagined?”
“Even better,” he said at once. “But I like the tamer setting where I live now even more. One is exciting and vibrant, the colors vivid, but I like the pastel serenity of the world around me. It’s more soothing to the soul. No fear of getting gobbled up by a lion where I live.”
Kathleen gazed into his eyes and detected the hint of humor. “It shows in your work, you know. These are quite amazing, especially given the age you were when you painted them, but your more recent work has soul. There’s an obvious connection between artist and subject.”
“You know that from seeing one painting?”
She laughed at his skepticism. “I am an expert, remember?”
“How could I forget?”
He surveyed her intently, warming her. A part of her wanted desperately to respond to that heat, to the promise of the kind of intimacy she’d never really known, not even in her marriage, but fear held her back. Ben had already cut through so many of her defenses. She intended to cling ferociously to those that were left. She finally blinked and looked away from that penetrating gaze.
“I should go now,” she said, unhappy with the way her voice shook when she said it.
“Seen what you came to see, so now you’re ready to run?” he taunted. “Or are you running scared?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she insisted. “It’s time to go.”
For an instant she thought he might argue, but he finally nodded. “I’ll take you, then.”
Kathleen was silent
