Damn. All that in a simple sketch. It was worse than he had thought. She was good. Very, very good.
“One thing’s for sure,” he said finally. “You were wasting your time in the matchmaking business. You’re an artist, all right. This is your calling.”
“Doesn’t mean my work will sell,” she said.
“No.” He handed the sketchpad back to her. “It also doesn’t change the fact that this is what you were born to do. Can I ask you a question?”
“What is it?”
“Could you stop doing your art?”
“Stop? You mean, just call it quits?”
“Say someone came along and said he’d give you a million bucks if you agreed to never draw or paint again. Could you take the money and keep your promise?”
“No.” She looked down at the sketch. “Sooner or later, I’d have to go back to it. It’s a compulsion, not a choice.”
“That’s what I figured.” He exhaled deeply. “So you’ll keep doing it, even if you have to get another day job.”
“Yes.”
“You’re an artist.”
“Yes,” she said again. “I guess so.”
She sounded a little startled. Thoughtful. As if he had surprised her.
He listened to the seawater tumble in the cove. The tide was returning. Soon only the tips of the fingers would be visible.
“Madison Commercial must have been like that for you all these years,” Lillian said slowly. “A compulsion. Something you had to do.”
“Maybe.”
“Why?”
“Who knows?” He picked up a small stone and sent it spinning out into the foaming water. “Maybe I just wanted to prove that a Madison could do what you Hartes seemed to do so well.”
“What’s that?”
“Not screw up.”
She looked toward the point where the stone had disappeared into the water. “Are you telling me that everything you’ve accomplished, all your success, happened just because you felt a sense of competition with my family?”
He shrugged. “That was part of it. At least at first. I grew up knowing that you Hartes were smart enough not to make the mistakes we Madisons have always been so good at. Your businesses prosper. Your families are solid. Hell, your parents were actually married. What a concept.”
She did not respond to that. There was no need. They both knew each other’s family histories as well as they knew their own. His father, Sinclair, had been a sculptor with a passion for his art and his model, Natalie. Gabe and Rafe had been the result of that union.
The relationship between his parents had lived up to the expectations of everyone familiar with the Madison clan. The long-running affair had been fiery and tempestuous. Sinclair had never seen any reason to burden himself with the petty strings of marriage. Gabe was pretty sure his parents had loved each other in their own stormy fashion, but family life had not been what anyone could call stable, let alone normal.
He and Rafe had each learned to cope in their own ways with their erratic, eccentric, larger-than-life father and their beautiful, temperamental mother. Rafe had chosen to pretend to himself and everyone else that he did not give a damn about his own future. “Live for the moment” had been his motto, at least until he’d come within a hair’s breadth of getting himself arrested for murder.
Gabe knew that he, on the other hand, had probably gone to the other extreme. Control and a sense of order had been his bulwarks against the shifting tides of fortune and emotion that had roiled his childhood. In putting together Madison Commercial he had done everything he could to carve his own future out of granite.
“What’s the rest?” Lillian asked.
“The rest?”
“I don’t believe you could have accomplished so much just because you were inspired by a sense of competition with my family.”
He shook off the brooding sensation that had settled around him like an old, well-worn coat. “I’m not the introspective type.”
“Oh, yes that’s right. How could I forget? You made that fact very clear on the questionnaire that you filled out for Private Arrangements.”
“Probably.”
“As I recall,” she continued, “on the portion of the form reserved for ‘Other Comments,’ you wrote that you considered yourself pragmatic and realistic by nature. You instructed me not to waste your valuable time with any elitist academics or fuzzy-brained New Age thinkers.”
“Uh-huh.”
Lillian closed the sketchpad with a snap. “You also noted that you did not want to be matched with what you calledarty types.”
Well, hell.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Lillian said, “but I got the impression that the ‘other comments’ section of the questionnaire was one of the few places on the form where you were actually more or less truthful in your responses. Or did you shade those answers, too?”
Definitely time to change the subject.
“You got anything to eat back in your cottage?” he asked.
She blinked and refocused. “You’re hungry?”
“Starving. I woke up this morning and realized I didn’t have any coffee in the house. Nothing to eat, either. Forgot to stop at a grocery store last night.”
“You expect me to feed you breakfast?”
“Why not? Be the neighborly thing to do. If I had coffee and toast and maybe some peanut butter, I’d invite you to my place.”
“Peanut butter?”
“Be amazed at what you can do with peanut butter.”
“I see. Well, sorry to disappoint you, but I didn’t pick up anything yesterday, either. I’m planning to drive into town in a few minutes to get something from that bakery Rafe raved about last night.”
“Incandescent Body?” He got to his feet. “Good idea. My brother knows food.”
She was not sure why she had allowed herself to get talked into accompanying Gabe into town. Something to do with the odd mood she was in, no doubt. But when she walked through the doors of the bakery a short time later, the heavenly fragrance of freshly baked bread quickly resolved any doubts about her decision. She suddenly realized that she was ravenous.
No one knew much about the group of New Age types who had moved into town a year ago and opened Incandescent Body near the pier. They dressed in long, colorful robes, wore a lot of jewelry that appeared to have been inspired by ancient Egyptian and Roman artifacts, and seemed a little too serene to be real. They called themselves Heralds of Future History.
The initial reaction of the town folk had been one of acute disgust and, in some quarters, outright alarm, according to Rafe and Hannah. The town council had expressed deep concerns about the possibility that Eclipse Bay had a genuine wacko cult in its midst. TheEclipse Bay Journal had run an editorial that had advised the authorities to keep a close watch on the new crowd.
But in a town in which the only bakery had been closed for nearly three years, the Heralds of Future History soon proved to possess one major redeeming feature. They baked like angels.
It was going on ten o’clock when Lillian and Gabe arrived. A number of people were sprinkled around the handful of tables. The customers were primarily a mix of local residents, a couple of rare winter tourists, and some young people in denim and khaki who looked like students from Chamberlain College.
The heads of the locals swiveled immediately toward the door when Lillian walked in with Gabe on her heels. Lillian could guess their thoughts. Hannah and Rafe’s marriage a few months ago had thrilled and fascinated the entire town. And now here was another Harte woman with a Madison male. Would wonders never cease?