Chapter 5
Charlie went for an early morning run on the beach, to pass the time before he felt he could call Devon.
He didn’t want to call her too early and wake her, since he didn’t know her habits.
He came back after running several miles along the beach, took a shower, poured himself a cup of coffee, and reached for his cellphone.
He called her on her cell since it was the only number he had, and assumed she would use it in the Hamptons too. He hoped he was right.
The phone rang three times, and then he heard the sensual silk of her voice.
“Devon? It’s Charlie Taylor,” he began, feeling awkward and nervous, not sure how she would feel about his calling.
He was afraid that she would guess his fascination with her.
It never occurred to him that she might be equally intrigued and taken with him.
She had seemed happy to see him the day before.
“It was nice to see you yesterday. Your son is such a handsome young man.” Liam looked just like Charlie, except he was blond like his mother, instead of dark-haired like his father. Other than that they nearly looked like twins. They even had the same height, shape, and broad shoulders.
“Thank you. He’s a great kid. He broke his ankle in France, so I rescued him and brought him here,” he explained. “He just left a few hours ago. I was happy to run into you too.”
“This is my refuge from work. I spend my summers here, in my barn, painting anything I want. There was a deer in my garden yesterday, a doe. She let me photograph her. I’m painting her today.
It’s a nice change from my serious commissions ten months a year.
” Charlie realized that the portraits must take intense concentration, getting to know each subject, and trying to learn enough about them to paint them with the depth and insight that she did.
It was arduous work, combining discipline, psychology, and art.
He decided to take a bold leap with the next question, and held his breath after he did. “You very generously invited me to come and see you at your barn sometime. I’d love to do that, or have you come to my place for a drink.” He tried to sound casual about it, though he was anything but.
“I’d like that very much,” Devon said, sounding sincere. “Why don’t you come by the barn this afternoon. I was planning to do some gardening, after I work on the painting of the doe this morning. I try to paint a few hours every day.”
“I’d love that,” he said enthusiastically, making every effort not to sound too excited so she didn’t think he was weird or a stalker of some kind.
He had been so persistent the first time he met her that she might have gotten that impression, and it was her job to read people well.
He actually did feel a little like a stalker, wanting to see her again.
It had been less than two months since their last encounter, and the meeting outside the bookshop had been providential.
“Come around four,” Devon suggested. Charlie spent the afternoon reading and trying not to obsess about her.
He put on clean white jeans and a blue shirt to see her, and loafers without socks, which was standard Hamptons attire, and stopped at a bakery to buy some cookies and a box of chocolates to bring her as a gift. He didn’t want to arrive empty-handed.
She didn’t live far from him, he noticed when he put her address into his GPS.
He had rented a station wagon for the time he was in East Hampton.
He didn’t need or want a fancy car in the Hamptons, although there were plenty of them there.
He had enough at home in California, and had no desire to show off or make his presence known during his peaceful summer retreat.
There was a pristine white gate at the entrance to Devon’s property, a short winding driveway that obscured the house from the road, and her barn came into view a moment later.
It was a beautiful old Victorian barn with white-painted gingerbread trim.
It looked like a barn in a fairy tale, like “Hansel and Gretel.” The barn was painted a pale dove gray, and there were neat flowerbeds of big white hydrangeas she had planted herself.
The land around it looked neat and well maintained.
Charlie could sense that it was a place she loved.
The driveway was gravel and she came out of the barn as soon as she heard him arrive.
She was wearing cutoff denim shorts with a pink shirt, her red hair piled on top of her head, to keep it out of her way, and she smiled as soon as she saw him.
She looked happy to see him, which warmed his heart.
She looked young and fresh and casual, in sandals she had bought in Italy that laced up her legs.
She still had a European look to her, as he handed her the cookies and chocolates, and she thanked him warmly.
He noticed that she was wearing no makeup.
She didn’t need it. Her all-seeing green eyes were enough.
She invited him into the barn, which seemed enormous once he walked inside.
It was all one space but she had divided it into a sleeping area, with a big four-poster bed draped in mosquito netting, and an inviting sitting area with a comfortable couch and chairs around a coffee table made of an antique door.
There was a modern-looking open kitchen, and most of the space was a studio with several easels, canvases leaning against the walls, and her paintings all over the walls.
Paintings of animals and children and dogs, still lifes of flowers, and portraits of people.
Her distinctive style was visible in each of them, but the subjects were atypical for her, which was what she loved about doing them—a lamp, a goat, a cocker spaniel with a woeful expression, a child on a swing, a lobster, a brightly colored bird, and the painting of the doe on the easel in its earliest stages.
Each painting was done in her remarkable technique, with infinite precision and expertise, with the soul of the subject leaping from the canvas.
She had an incredible talent, which he already knew.
“This is my happy place,” she said with a smile, as she set the cookies and chocolates down in the kitchen.
“I love it here.” She beamed at him as she said it, and exuded an aura of pure joy.
She looked much happier than she had in the city, but there he had caught her on a workday, in the midst of a commission, and wanting one himself.
Here, he wanted nothing from her, and she didn’t have to please anyone but herself.
She painted the subjects she wanted to, and had fun with them.
Some of the paintings were more playful than the subjects he’d seen at her show.
But he would have fallen in love with these too.
She was an incomparable artist, and her training and technique were flawless on each canvas he saw.
“I love the paintings you do here,” he said, looking at them with pleasure. They made him happy too. He studied the beginnings of the doe. It had a graceful elegance to it, with green leafy trees all around.
“I was really angry at her.” Devon laughed about the doe.
“She ate two of my flowerbeds and trampled a third, but she was so beautiful I couldn’t stay mad at her.
I got some great photos of her before she ran away.
She leaped over my back fence, and now I’m painting her.
The dog belongs to my neighbor,” she said as he studied the cocker spaniel.
“The paintings I do here are just for fun. Sometimes I give them away.” He thought the recipients would be very lucky, as he would be when he sat for a portrait by her.
But what she did here had a sense of freedom to it.
Looking at her paintings was like listening to music—it had a magic and a melody all its own.
She offered him a choice of iced tea or lemonade, and he declined both. They sat down in the sitting area, which was comfortable and easy, with the antique door that served as a coffee table.
“I made the table myself. I found the door at the dump. I find treasures there sometimes,” she said, looking relaxed as she smiled at him.
“I made the dining table too.” It sat in the kitchen area, and could seat eight people.
“I don’t entertain here, so it’s really just for me.
My apartment in the city has to look respectable since I paint my subjects there.
But I can do whatever I want here, without worrying about what it looks like.
” It was extremely neat and well curated.
She had beautiful taste, with delicate vases on tables, others filled with flowers.
The fabrics on her furniture were beautiful.
And she had several antique French rugs in the various areas.
She had kept the original wooden barn floor, which had charm too. Charlie loved being there with her.
They chatted for an hour about nothing in particular.
He didn’t want to overstay. He was sure she had things to do, and the painting she was working on, if nothing else.
He got up to go, and she walked him back outside to his car.
There was a rabbit poised near it, and it ran away as they approached.
“Another subject?” he teased her.
“I think the first year I was here, I must have painted thirty of them. I’ve sworn off rabbits.
I can’t keep up with them. I have a weakness for lambs and goats.
They have so much charm,” she said, and he smiled.
She had a light touch that he liked, although he could sense that she had a very serious side. He liked the combination of both.
“Could I take you to dinner tomorrow night?” he asked her cautiously, not sure how she’d respond, and afraid of a rejection. He wasn’t sure how to approach her, and didn’t want to blow it. She smiled up at him when he asked her.