In fact, during the entire two years they’d been a couple, she had thought about breaking up with him on more than one occasion. But when she tried to talk about it with her girlfriends or her family, or even Oliver, they looked at her like she was crazy. Small wonder. Her sole reason was that her handsome, considerate boyfriend annoyed her to no end. She always felt she had to be on her best behavior around him. And if she ever did let her guard down, act snotty and throw a fit, he’d say it was her artistic temperament and would she like a back rub? She didn’t want a back rub, and she didn’t want him to be so damned nice. She wanted...well, that was the problem. She had no idea what it was she wanted, but it wasn’t Oliver.
This morning she’d taken the coward’s way out and ended the relationship over the phone. The gesture had been mostly a formality. She’d only seen him twice since she’d moved back home and had assumed he’d gotten on with his life.
To her surprise, he’d done his best to change her mind, just as he had every time she’d told him she needed a break from their relationship. Yet this time she’d sensed something different. He hadn’t sounded upset as much as annoyed—probably because he was far too self-contained to blow up. Too bad. She’d have welcomed a shouting match. Something that she could rip into. Something...real. The only thing she felt was relief.
Their lives had dovetailed together perfectly in the beginning. He owned a respected art gallery, and took a chance on her as an unknown artist—a chance that had paid off for both of them. Her career had taken off under his guidance and had been capped off when a corporation commissioned her to paint six seascapes. She’d managed to paint four before she returned home to help take care of Pops.
How could she have guessed that here, at the edge of the ocean, her muse would desert her, and she wouldn’t be able to complete the last two seascapes? This was where it had all begun. Where she’d won her first drawing contest. Where she’d spent endless hours learning and perfecting her craft.
And now Oliver was hinting that she’d run out of time. The buyers wanted their paintings, and if she couldn’t come up with them, the damage to her reputation, not to mention his reputation, would be irreparable. Bottom line, either she pulled it together and started painting again, or she’d better start shopping around for another career. Which was a slight exaggeration, and beside the point, because if she couldn’t paint, she couldn’t paint. But damn, she wished she could get it all back. Well, not Oliver necessarily. But she truly loved painting.
A burning sensation shot through her chest, a sure sign of an oncoming panic attack. She plopped into the chair by her desk, stuck her head between her legs and started counting. Life was difficult enough with her father still not completely recovered and her being blocked, she didn’t need this. The panic attacks had to stop. Maybe she should forget about her career for now. Forget about everything, except resolving her issues with her family.
Except she hadn’t even told them what she’d remembered about the night her mother died. She was waiting for Pops to get stronger. And then she’d ask her questions, and maybe somehow magically, she’d get her life back. Problem was, the longer she stayed in limbo, the more she wondered if she wanted to go back to her old life.
When her equilibrium returned and she could breathe again, she grabbed her sketch pad from the desk where she’d flung it the day before and ripped out the first page without looking at it, tore it in half again and again. She tore out another useless sketch, scrunched it into a ball and jammed it into the wastepaper basket. Sentimental drivel. The lines in the drawings weren’t bold enough, they left too much room for interpretation. She wanted to excite people, stir them up—not give them something to snivel over.
The miserable preliminary sketches she’d ripped to shreds were all she had to show for six months of anguish. She’d actually thought she was an artist...with a future. Hah! What she was—three more pages came loose in one pull—was a talentless nobody. A waitress in her family’s café.
She tossed the pad on the desk and stared sightlessly out the window until a movement next door caught her eye. Adam Hunter strode into his backyard and started his tai chi routine. Yesterday, watching him go through his routine for the first time, she’d sat riveted for an entire half hour. She’d seen people do tai chi in the city parks, but the difference was like looking at a reproduction of a masterpiece and looking at the original. Adam was the real thing.
Her fingers itched for a pencil as he slowly glided through a complicated set of movements, his body moving with the sinuous elegance of a dancer. Romeo sat only three feet away from him, but didn’t move. Interesting that a man, whose less-than-perfect nose suggested he’d been in a few fights, would choose to practice tai chi, not one of the more aggressive disciplines.
Not able to stop herself, she grabbed her book and started sketching. She’d thought she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him the past two days because of what she had remembered of her father’s relationship with his grandmother, but maybe it was because she needed to draw him. Heaven knows he had an interesting face, but drawing his body in motion, the combination of the brute strength of his huge, well-muscled body tempered with grace...
She chucked the book on the table and paced the large, open room. She needed to sculpt him in clay, a medium she’d been playing with before The Great Demise. She’d make a small sculpture, no bigger than twelve inches—any larger, and it would be overwhelming. And it would be best if she could get him to pose in the nude. She stopped, laughed out loud. Like that would happen. Her father and brothers would probably take him for a long boat ride and not bring him back.
Still. She took another turn around the attic room. She’d start slow, ask him if he’d sit for her. Then maybe work her way up to no shirt, get him down to his boxers or whatever he wore for underwear. Her breath hitched in her throat. She felt almost giddy, ramped up like...
What was she doing? Sylvie looked at the sketch where it lay on the desk. Hideous. A three-year-old could do a better job. Adam didn’t look graceful or sensual in the sketch. The proportions were all there, but the excitement he incited was missing. The magic. She’d lost her touch, and she didn’t need Adonis next door reminding her of that fact.
Sylvie ripped the sketch out of the book and crammed it into the wastebasket. Disgusted with herself, she pulled the window shade down and stalked out of the room. It was time to admit her life had completely crapped out. Sooner or later, she would have to tell her family that she wasn’t moving back to Toronto until...well, she didn’t know. Until her father was better, and they could finally talk about her mother. Until whatever had blocked her was dislodged. Until Sylvie Carson finally knew who she wanted to be when she grew up.
* * *
ADAM STOOD LOOSE, but alert, as he transitioned from his meditative state back to the world around him. He’d grown addicted to seeing the world in bright detail while feeling a deep sense of peace inside. Never in a million years would he have imagined he’d end up getting into meditation and tai chi. As always, he gave thanks to Jake McCoy, the man who’d given him the tools to manage his anger. He took a final deep breath and turned to track Sylvie over the four-foot cedar-slab fence that separated their yards.
He knew she’d watched him the past two mornings, and he was curious to hear what she thought about his morning practice. He’d have done his exercises inside if there was room, but his little house was divided into three small rooms downstairs and three upstairs. None were big enough for him to perform his daily exercise routine.
Not that he was ashamed of practicing tai chi, but he suspected the male stereotype still reigned supreme in a village like Collina, where most of the men made a hard living at sea. He wanted to fit in, not alienate people.
Wearing clingy, black pants that came to just below her knees, and a formfitting, long-sleeved T-shirt the color of a plum, Sylvie sauntered into the back corner of her yard. When she crouched down and cooed, a white cat materialized out of the shrubs. Adam put his hand down by his side and rotated it, signing Romeo to his side.