CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Quinn~
The oil sketch was turning into a brilliant painting. He would have to go into Mystic Bay for more canvases. The thought was a happy one. Good canvases were expensive, even though he prepared his own with a coating of gesso. But seeing Moira was always worthwhile. And he couldn’t paint without canvases. And this summer every painting had been a keeper.
He added a smear of Suffolk Green to the shadows of the older trees encircling his bright sapling and stepped back. Time to let things dry and take a break. He remembered making and drinking coffee when he had gotten up, but the shadows were long now, and he didn’t think he had eaten today.
At this rate, he was going to become the flaky artist his father had predicted. Was still predicting. Anthony had Mom call him twice a week to see if he was ready to give up art for finance. She had promised to bring Dad to West Haven for the Fourth.
He cleaned up his work station and put his brushes to soak in turpentine before dealing with his hands. One of the worst parts of his disguise was making his fingers grubby. Like all dragons he was used to being well-groomed and well-dressed. At least here at the cottage he did not have to make a pretense of being filthy. Being off-islanders, his neighbors knew nothing about the Drakes.
He was making another pot of coffee when he heard the sound of a car. Like him, most of the cottagers had vehicles, but no one except him drove over to Willow Cottage. Not when it was faster to walk through the grounds. The vehicle pulled up outside his place and the engine stopped. Not a mistake then. He pressed the start button on the coffee maker and went to the window.
His own personal fairy was dismounting from a big fire-engine-red SUV. It looked big enough to haul a lot of goods from Seattle. Far too large and high for this delicate woman. He opened his back door and greeted her with a big smile.
“Well, hello,” he called happily.
Moira was wearing black jeans and some sort of flowy top that matched her eyes and accented her breasts. She glared at him and marched around to the back of her SUV where the hatch was opening itself. He hustled to help her.
“What’s up?” he asked. “Shouldn’t you be selling art supplies right now?”
“It’s Wednesday,” she snapped. “I close early on Wednesdays, to make my out-of-town deliveries.”
What had her panties in a twist? He recalled that for a small fee Moira would deliver canvases. He never took that option because he liked going into Mystic Bay and seeing her. “I didn’t order anything,” he said mildly as she struggled to remove two large canvases from the back of her sporty red vehicle.
She turned her head and shot him an even dirtier look. “Shut up,” she hissed. “You asked for two four-by-six unprepared canvases,” she said in a slightly louder voice. Loud enough for the neighbors to hear.
He hadn’t ordered them, although he could certainly use two more. “I’ll take those,” he offered.
The large canvases came free of the restraints. Moira wobbled. He reached to support her and she vanished. She reappeared almost at once on his path holding the wood and canvas rectangles like a shield. She marched towards his kitchen door in her little green sneakers. Quinn sprinted to open it for her.
His pint-sized shield-maiden swept into the cottage without a backward glance.
“I’ll shut the hatch,” he said.
Moira leaned the canvases against the kitchen table. “Don’t bother.” She hit a button on her remote and the SUV’s back door lowered and all the doors locked. The horn beeped once.
“Where do you want these?” she asked.
“In my studio. I can carry them.” He reached around her and grabbed them before she could. He led the way to his studio, relieved that she was following him. “We both know I didn’t order anything. Although, I was planning on coming into town to pick up a couple more of these large canvases. So I’m grateful that you’re here.”
“I needed to talk to you, and you didn’t come to town today,” she groused. He wasn’t used to such an edge in Moira’s normally soothing voice.
“I worked all night,” he tried to explain. “Slept in, and then I had to work on my new piece.”
Moira was turning in a slow circle taking in his studio. Robin had built her artists’ colony from scratch. His cottage was just a simple rectangle with one bedroom, a big eat-in kitchen, and a small sitting room.
In many ways the living quarters were incidental. The studio ran the full length of the back wall of the cottage and was as deep and half again as high. Robin had taken advantage of every scrap of light by constructing the roof and walls entirely of glass.
The back wall had a single door that led into the cottage, and a small counter with a deep sink. The remainder was shelves and cupboards for supplies and racks for finished canvases. Quinn had almost filled the racks. He had set up three easels in front of the windows. Because he worked in oils, he found it easier to work on multiple paintings at once. That way he always had a dry surface ready. It was a cloudy day, so he had opened the blinds completely. Late afternoon gloom barely illuminated the room.
Even though there was a powerful extractor fan, he always worked with at least one window open to air out the fumes from his paints and turpentine. Moira marched across and closed the window. Then she shut and locked the door into the studio. Maybe the fairy princess had come to ravish him? Although she looked incensed rather than passionate.
“I’ll put these canvases away,” he told her. “Let me know what I owe you, and I’ll settle up before you leave.”
“It’s cleaner than I thought it would be.” She scowled at the tiled floor. It was blotched with old paint stains, but Quinn kept it swept and mopped. Dust stuck to wet paint and clogged brushes. Besides he was dragon enough to prefer order and comfort to squalor and dirt.
“Why are you angry?” he asked. “What did I do?” He thought. “Or not do?”
“You didn’t tell me you were engaged.”
Oops. “You didn’t tell me about your previous relationships either,” he pointed out. “Cynthia and I are no longer engaged.”
“She told a reporter yesterday that your marriage will take place next year,” she snapped.
“Then she lied. She gave me back my ring. I told her I was sorry she felt that way, but I accepted it. As far as I am concerned, our relationship was over from that instant.”
“Clearly, Ms. Fitzhugh didn’t get the memo.” Moira didn’t look as if she believed him.
“She may have decided a Drake in the hand is better than a fiancé in the bush. But since we haven’t been in touch, I wouldn’t know about that.” He moved a little closer. “I consider myself a free man.” He grazed one flushed cheek with the back of his fingers. “I am a free man.”
Moira looked uncertain. The stormy look in her eyes intensified.
“Look,” he said. “I was about to have breakfast. I just made coffee. Would you like some?”
“Breakfast?” she sneered. It wasn’t a very good sneer – her face wasn’t designed for sneering. But it told him that his fairy was still plenty pissed.
“I told you, I got up late,” he explained with a patience he was far from feeling. Damn Cynthia. He didn’t need this kind of aggravation while he was courting such an elusive female.
Moira didn’t respond. She was examining his latest painting. “This is good,” she said. “Maybe the best one yet. You could be a modern Richard Dadd.”
Richard Dadd was a Victorian painter who had specialized in fairies and the supernatural. “Hopefully without Dadd’s mental health issues.” Dadd had spent years in an asylum before killing himself.
Her eyes narrowed. “Nothing wrong with your mental health. I think the general public is going to go for these trees in a big way.” She seemed less vexed. Which was a good sign. Wasn’t it?
She stepped one pace to the right. “Yup. If you look at those trees long enough they turn into people. Spirits anyway.”
“That’s the idea.”
“It’s good.”
“It’s not finished.”
“Yes, it is.”
“The sapling has no spirit,” he argued. “It still needs to be infused with consciousness.”
“Maybe it doesn’t have a soul yet?” she suggested. “What are you going to call this piece?”
“I don’t know.” Naming his paintings was always hard. “The Tree Nursery?”
“Nah. Sounds like a plant store. You need something like, Soul Emergent - Number One.”
“That is better. More modern. More New Age. Thank you. Coffee?”
But Moira had moved to the left-hand canvas that was angled away from the middle one. Too late he remembered he had been working on her portrait.
“You – you Peeping Tom,” she accused. Her face was red and her eyes were slate-colored.
“It’s not what you think,” he protested.
“Is this, or is it not, a nude picture of me?” She was practically vibrating with rage.
“I painted you as I imagine you look with no clothes,” he told her. “Not from life.” Although he was pretty sure that was what she looked like.
“You had no right!”
“No right. Just inspiration. I could no more have not painted that portrait than I could have stopped breathing.”
“Pretty words. But I will not have a nude portrait of me on public display.”
“Never. This is just for my private collection,” he swore.
“Collection!” Her voice could have shattered glass. She dashed to the other easel. Fortunately that was another tree portrait.
Unfortunately, she moved to the racks of completed paintings. She found her portraits almost immediately. She began pulling them out until she was surrounded by a damning circle of them. He thought they were getting better and better. But since he could no more have scraped down a portrait of Moira and painted over it, than he could have gouged out his own eyes, there were a great many of them. Some on artist’s panels, some on canvas.
At least in the first ones she was clothed.
“They’re good,” she conceded after a long time. “Very good. But you still can’t show them.”
Expose his mate to public view? Never. He shook his head. “I have no intention of letting anyone else see them,” he vowed. He stood directly behind her, looking over her shoulders. Should he risk touching her?
“I’m still refining my technique, and I haven’t gotten the color of your hair or eyes right yet.”
And she was never going to be his mate.