After dozens of projects, she still loathed contract negotiations. She didn’t understand the fine print. The money terms were convoluted with the publisher paying out in bits and pieces based upon schedules apparently created by a necromancer scrying moon signs in springwater.
“They’re asking impossible deadlines, too,” Margaret said.
“I can do impossible. I live for impossible.”
“I know, sweetie. So don’t do something stupid like get married and run off to Tahiti to paint flowers on black velvet.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Margaret ended the conversation with details about the contract. Catherine tried very hard to keep her excitement under control. Contract negotiations could fall apart at any stage, and nothing was certain until everyone signed the paperwork.
After she hung up, she clasped her hands and danced around the studio. “Doc Halladay loves my work,” she sang. “I’ll be famous—”
Oscar and Bent lifted their narrow heads and looked toward the front of the house. Greyhounds, Catherine had discovered, were the perfect house pets. They were tidy, quiet, dignified and loved to lounge around on the furniture. They rarely barked. She’d set up an old sofa for them in her studio where they spent their days with their long legs sprawled, luxuriating in comfort.
“Is somebody coming?” she asked. “Normal dogs bark, you know.”
She heard an engine, throaty, powerful, unmistakable—a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. The noise increased, approaching the house up the long, curved driveway through the pine trees. Wondering who in the world she knew who owned a Harley, she stepped out onto the deck. She blinked in the bright sunshine. Oscar and Bent joined her. They stretched their long bodies and yawned mightily.
The motorcycle appeared, a modern-day destrier of sleek black shine and glittering chrome. The rider wore a black, full-face helmet. He guided the motorcycle around potholes and ruts in the wide, but ill-maintained driveway. The bike’s rear tire dropped and bounced in a pothole, and Catherine winced. Having the driveway graded and paved was her next home-improvement project.
The rider wheeled the bike around the circular drive to park before the deck. He was a big man, his suntanned arms roped with muscle. She glanced at the dogs, now flanking her feet. They weighed eighty pounds apiece and could run down a rabbit without breathing hard, but protect her?
The rider cut off the engine. The sudden silence heightened her awareness about her seclusion, with the pine forest shielding her from the road and neighbors. She watched the man dismount. With his back to her he worked off the helmet. His hair, thick and sooty black, gleamed with bluish lights. Despite her nervousness, her artist’s eye delighted in his powerful shoulders and the sinewy curves of his back.
He turned around.
He smiled and his dark eyes glittered like obsidian.
“Hello, Tink,” he said. “Long time, no see.”
Her brain froze. All sensations centered square in her chest where emotions long buried burst from their shell. For years she’d wondered what she would say to Easy Martel if she ever ran into him. She’d wondered what she would do, how she would act, what she might feel.
He was bigger than she remembered, his youthful slenderness grown into lean, broad-shouldered maturity. Once smooth olive cheeks now sported a definite beard shadow. He wore his black hair short rather than letting it hang shaggily down his neck. The smile remained the same, however, wry yet warm, completely focused, while those dark, dark eyes melded into hers.
Heart melting. Soul searing.
“Don’t you remember me?” he asked. “It’s me, Easy—”
She whipped about, raced into the house, slammed and locked the door.
Easy Martel slid a hand around the back of his neck. He frowned at the half-glass door where curtains swayed gently. He stood chest level to the deck flooring, eye to eye with a pair of dogs who poked their narrow heads between the railing. They watched him with quiet curiosity. Despite the dogs’ whip-thinness, they were large animals.
“Nice doggies.” He sidled to the steps. Alert for a growl or other threat, he climbed the steps slowly. “Good doggies.” He offered a hand for their inspection.
As one, the dogs turned and walked around the corner of the house. The clicking of their toenails on the decking faded in the distance.
Wary that this might be some canine trick, Easy hesitated. Maybe Catherine had trained her dogs in ninja tactics. He waited a few moments to see if the animals returned. When they didn’t, he knocked on the door. “I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s me, Easy Martel. Wasson High School?”
He considered she may have forgotten him, but she’d been as madly in love with him as he’d been with her. She’d never forget him. More likely she still had that weird habit of running off when flustered. Smiling in fond remembrance, he knocked again.
The door opened an inch. He glimpsed a hostile eye glaring back at him. Memories rushed in with tidal-wave force, sweeping him back twelve years. Catherine’s eyes had always fascinated him with their jewel-rich color and expressiveness. In high school she’d walked hunched over with her eyes downcast, her messy hair falling over her face. Despite her being awkward, pudgy and painfully shy, he’d looked into those sapphire depths and known she was beautiful. Cursing his own cowardice, he regretted every second they’d missed in the past twelve years.
“What are you doing here?” Her icy words startled him.
“Don’t you remember—”
“I know exactly who you are. Now go away.”
He retreated a step and rubbed his chin, thinking. Their breakup had been messy and acrimonious. That, however, had been when they were only kids. If he remembered correctly, she’d dumped him. “It’s been a long time, Tink. Are you still mad at me?”
She threw the door wide. Chin up, feet spread, shoulders back, she faced him squarely. She wore a cropped T-shirt that clung to the rounded rise of her breasts and revealed an alluring inch of flat belly. Denim shorts showed off a pair of shapely legs. Barefoot, she sported a thin gold chain around one slim ankle. He leaned forward for a better look. Gone were the baggy black clothes and self-conscious posture.
The guys in high school who used to call her a dog ought to see her now. Their eyeballs would pop out of their skulls.
“You’ve got some nerve. How did you find me?”
Suspicion prickled up and down his spine. Her attitude transcended hostility—she hated his guts. “I looked you up.”
“How? I’m not listed in the phone book.”
He accepted that insurance cheats, disability frauds, embezzlers and adulterers took exception to his snooping around. But an old girlfriend?
“I looked you up
