She’d run dry immediately. She’d cranked out a few things, but they were obviously bad, flat. Her output ground to a total halt.
Brian had been furious. He was convinced that she was doing it on purpose, to spite him. That was when sex with him started to go from tense and problematic to outright scary. Brian used sex to punish.
The only thing she’d still been able to work on was the jewelry. It was the one thing that Brian had never tried to control, so she’d gone with it. Thrown herself into it, heart and soul. What else could she do?
She cast a covert sideways glance at Jack, walking silently beside her, trying not to think about how he looked soaking wet. How he tasted. The solidity of his shoulders when she sank her nails into him.
Brian might have derailed her artistic career and given her a closetful of stupid sexual complexes. But he had never driven her out of her mind with breath-stealing, toe-curling lust.
The tractor chugged on until the van came into view. Dwayne and Jack attached the chain, and Vivi got in the van and started the engine.
They pulled and pulled. The van shuddered and strained. Dwayne whooped in triumph when it rolled out of the deep ruts.
Vivi felt like cheering herself when she felt those wheels turning, bumping over the ruts. She got out and strode over to the tractor with a huge smile of relief. “Thanks so much, Dwayne. How much do I owe you?”
“Ah, nah,” Dwayne said bashfully. “Just being neighborly.”
He pushed away the banknotes she held out, so she folded them back into her wallet, peeking to make sure he had a wedding ring.
“Well, bring your wife over one of these days to pick out a necklace or a pair of earrings,” she offered. “I’d love to meet her.”
Dwayne agreed to that plan cheerfully, and Vivi and Jack watched the tractor chug up the road and disappear around the bend.
Vivi got into the driver’s seat. Jack climbed in. They sat in silence. “So?” she said finally. “Where do we stand? I’m mobile again. Do I need to get lost? I could be out of here in ten minutes. Just say the word.”
“Please don’t be so defensive,” Jack said.
Vivi put the van in gear. It lurched forward, bumping over ruts, and crawled gamely up the hill. “That’s hard, under the circumstances.”
“I have an understanding with Duncan. You’re welcome to stay for as long as you have this security problem,” he said. “If you can stand it, that is. I doubt you’ll be staying that long anyway.”
“And why is that?”
“Your kind never do,” he said calmly.
The van crested the hill. Vivi stared out the windshield with hot eyes. “My ‘kind’?” she repeated.
“I don’t mean that the way you’re taking it. But I can see from the kind of person you are that you won’t settle in one place for long.”
“Ah.” The van lurched violently over the deep ruts, making her teeth jar painfully in her head. “Indeed.”
“It’s a valid lifestyle choice,” he went on. “I’m not judging you.”
“The hell you’re not.” They crawled slowly up another steep hill. “I’m going in to Pebble River after lunch,” she announced. “I’m going to a furniture store. I’m buying a bed. A table. A bookcase. And I’m going start looking for a place to open my shop.”
“Shop?” He turned to her, frowning. “What’s this about a shop?”
“I mean to open a shop. Pebble River is a perfect place for the kind of business I have in mind—”
“Hold on, here. Wait a fucking minute. I thought you were in hiding. I thought these bastards were trying to kill you. I thought that was the whole point of being here. Now you’re talking about opening a shop? Public records, databases, the Internet? What the fuck are you thinking? You’re out of your mind!”
She blew out a long breath. She’d been going back and forth about this issue into the wee hours every night. “How long can I huddle in a hole and shiver?” she exploded. “I can’t afford this! I have to support myself somehow, and this is the—”
“Are you doing this to prove something to me?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, you self-absorbed jerk!” she yelled at him. “This isn’t about you! I’m just going about my business!”
They arrived at the house. Vivi pulled in next to Jack’s truck, got out, and slapped the door shut. Her eyes glanced over the painting on the side and winced away. Jack was looking at it. And judging her for it, too.
She’d always been ambivalent about that painting, but Rafael would have been so hurt if she’d painted over his masterpiece. And he’d been so sweet and supportive after the Brian debacle, sharing his booth, showing her the crafts fair ropes. The writhing serpent and muscle-bound warrior on her van was a small price to pay.
Jack was following her up the stairs. She glared over her shoulder. “Excuse me? Where do you think you’re going?”
“I just want to see what you’ve done with the place,” he said.
“I haven’t done much of anything. It looks about the same,” she said. “Please excuse me. I want to make myself lunch.”
Jack raised an eyebrow and waited. Vivi sighed, and fitted the key in the lock. “Whatever. Come on in. I imagine you want lunch, too?”
“Lunch would be nice,” he said, blandly.
The first thing he did was check the seedlings. She’d been watering them, afraid to kill them by planting them incorrectly, but even more afraid of asking for help. But he just stroked the little plants with his fingertip. “We should set these out today,” he said.
“Fine.” She got to work making the grilled cheese sandwiches, so she could have an excuse to keep her back to him.
He walked into the living room. She’d been doing inventory, and her current stock was spread across the green velvet drape on the floor: earrings; pendants; brooches; her compartmentalized boxes of beads; her stash of chunks of broken hand-blown glass, coils of silver and gold wire, hooks and clasps; her boxes of fun and colorful collected junk. The walls were decorated with hangings, paintings, drawings.
“Did you do these pictures?” Jack asked.
“No,” Vivi said. “I’ve met lots of artists in the past few years. I collected my favorite pieces. The ones I could afford, anyway. This is the first chance I’ve ever had to hang them up and look at them properly.”
Jack walked slowly around the room. “And your stuff?”
“There’s not a lot of my work here,” Vivi said, feeling defensive. “Just what’s on the floor. My favorite meda are bronze and blown glass, but you can’t do that in a camper van. I got sidetracked by my jewelry sideline, but I’m tired of it. I want to get back to sculpture.”
Jack leaned over the cloth and picked up a fine lacework of antique beads and colored glass. “You sit on the floor to work?”
“I can’t wait to buy a table,” Vivi said.
He frowned. “I could have found you something.” He picked up a green bottle adorned with onyx beads and a filigree of silver foil. “These are beautiful. Unique.”
“Thank you.” She was uncommonly flustered by the compliment.
“You’re tired of making jewelry? That’s too bad. You must get tired of things quickly,” Jack said.
There he went again, poking his stick between the bars of her cage. Vivi suppressed a flare of savage irritation. “No,” she said tightly. “I love designing jewelry. What I’m sick of is mass-producing for the crafts fairs. That’s just assembly-line work.”
“Ah,” he murmured. “I see.”
“I have a good feel for what will sell,” she went on. “I study the colors and styles in the women’s magazines, make pieces to match, and they go like hotcakes. It was fine for a while, but I’m burnt out.”
“Remember, you don’t have to prove anything to me,” he said.
“Then stop jabbing at me!” she flared. “You’re pissing me off!”
He put the bottle down. “Sorry,” he murmured. “So if you’re not a jewelry designer anymore, what exactly are you?”
“I think I’m a sculptor, but ask me again in six months.”