Chapter Ten
On Monday morning, Jillian set the canvas with the peacock on the easel and picked up the titanium-white tube of paint.
She held it in her hand for a solid minute before putting it back down and going to the window.
From the third-floor apartment, she could see cars and trucks crawling along the four-lane street and hear the daily dose of sirens.
The persistent sound of horns added to the melee and made her miss the quiet solitude of the cabins.
But more than that, she missed Wyatt beside her when she woke up the past two mornings.
Someone rapped on her door, and for a split second she thought it might be Wyatt, but when she looked down at the curb, she saw the panel truck that would take her finished paintings to the gallery.
No knight in shining armor riding up the elevator on a white horse to whisk her away to a cabin somewhere far away.
“Good morning,” she said as she opened the door and led the way back to her office.
“Mornin’ to you, Jillian,” Eli, the one she was familiar with, said. “Have a good vacation?”
“Got a lot done,” she answered, and watched the men wrap and crate her works, put them on a special dolly, and roll them out into the hallway. “And yes, I’m ready to go back to that cabin in the woods where it was so quiet you could hear a leaf falling from a tree.”
“Not me,” Eli said. “I’d be lost without the city’s hustle and bustle. How far were you from a good ice cream store?”
“Maybe five or ten miles.”
“Lord have mercy!”
Jillian had only met Paul once, but she would recognize his big old handlebar mustache anywhere. “Is that too far?”
“Damn straight,” Paul answered. “I like to have one no more than a quick walk to the corner from my house in the middle of the block.”
“Is this all of them?” Eli asked.
“That’s it. You took the first round before I left a few weeks ago.”
“Okay then, we’ll go on and let you work on some more. You’ve got a good four weeks before the showing.”
“We’ll expect to see you before then. The bigger selection you got, the more money you’ll make. Maybe you can even buy that cabin and use it for a summer place,” Paul told her as they rolled the cart out into the hallway.
“Y’all have a nice day,” Jillian told them as she closed the door.
Molly peeked around the edge of the bedroom door. That she took to Wyatt the way she did was a surprise since she really did not like strangers. Not even if there was a possibility that they might become friends someday.
“Just me and you now,” Jillian assured her. “You can reclaim the whole apartment.”
Molly came all the way out into the living area and hopped up on the windowsill. She purred loudly and didn’t even stop when a couple of police cars went by with sirens blasting.
Jillian headed back to her office. “I’m glad you are so happy, because I’m sure not.”
A thump on the hardwood floor made her turn to be sure Molly hadn’t fallen off her perch, but the cat was meandering around the sectional and the small dining room table toward the door.
“Sorry, sweetie,” Jillian said. “There’s no playdates with Rascal this day. I wish I could tell you something different, but your friend is almost five hours from here. I miss him, too, and I’d go back in a heartbeat if it was possible. Come on over here and I’ll brush you for a few minutes.”
Molly turned her head slightly but sat stoically in front of the door.
“You don’t even like company,” Jillian scolded.
“And besides all that, who would be dropping by unannounced? Mrs. Hammond from down the hall? You really hate her. Maybe it’s the perfume she wears or that thing she calls a dog that she sticks in her purse.
Whatever, you hiss every time she even walks down the hallway. ”
Molly backed up a few feet and stood at attention. Tail straight up. Head raised high.
“You are not a show cat.” Jillian laughed for the first time since she got home on Friday afternoon.
She heard the soft whisper of the elevator doors opening again, and footfalls out in the hallway.
A quick glance out the window and down at the street let her know the guys in the panel truck had already gone.
She sighed when the doorbell rang. Hoping that Mrs. Hammond didn’t want to visit for an hour, she slowly made her way across the floor.
Molly had not moved a single inch, so it couldn’t be her neighbor coming by to fill her in on all the apartment gossip.
When Jillian left three weeks ago, Debbie Jones in 303 was having an affair with the musician in 305.
According to Mrs. Hammond, Debbie’s husband, Big Mike, was part of a mafia family and the poor musician could get his fingers cut off.
This was always said in a whisper, as if the walls had ears.
“Oh well, might as well get it over with,” she muttered as she eased the door open.
She was stunned into utter silence when Rascal ran inside her apartment, stuck his nose against Molly’s, and wagged his tail. She slapped a big paw on his back and licked his face a couple of times. Then they both ran through the apartment like they used to do in her cabin.
“Rascal was pining for his playmate. Are you going to invite me in?” Wyatt asked.
“Is it really you?” Jillian reached out to touch his cheek. Since he was a real person and not a figment of her imagination, she grabbed him by the hand and pulled him inside.
He kicked the door shut with the heel of his shoe and wrapped her up in his arms. “I hated being away from you.” He cupped her face in his hands and their lips met in a hungry kiss.
One couldn’t satisfy their desires, neither could two or three.
When they finally broke apart, he looked into her eyes with so much passion that her knees went weak.
“I’ve fallen in love with you, Jillian. Two days without you seemed like eternity plus three days.”
“Only three? I was thinking more like eternity plus three years. I hate being apart, and I love you, too. Let’s buy those two cabins and run away forever.
We can live anywhere and do what we do. I was so happy there.
That doesn’t sound right. I’m sorry. I should just say that I love you, not go on and on.
But I’ve never said those words to anyone, and I talk too much when I’m nervous … ”
He hugged her even tighter. “Do you trust me?”
“I do,” she answered.
“Will you go on an overnight trip with me? I’ve got something I want to show you, but it’s a little over a hundred miles north of here.”
She didn’t hesitate for a single second. “Give me twenty minutes to get a bag packed. What is it?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“Overnight? Whoa! Wait a minute. What do we do with Rascal and Molly? I take her …”
“We’ll take them with us, of course. I’ve got a hotel rented for the night that allows pets,” he told her. “Leaving them behind would be downright cruel.”
The niggling doubts flooded her mind the moment she walked away from him and made her turn around in the bedroom doorway.
“Wyatt, I’m putting my faith in you when I’ve never fully trusted anyone in my whole life.
How can we be sure this is for real love?
Could it just be lust or one of those flashes in the pans that will die in its sleep? ”
He crossed the room and took her in his arms. “Nothing that feels like this can be anything but the real thing.”