Framed and Burning (Dreamslippers Book 2) (25 page)

“I’d have traded that for built-in friends any day,” Cat admitted.

“So it was lonely?”

Cat thought about how solitary she felt, especially as a teen, struggling with her gift for dreamslipping. She would have loved being able to talk to a sister or brother about it. If it weren’t for Granny Grace, she wouldn’t have had a soul who understood.

But she didn’t tell any of this to Jacob, of course. “It could be, at times,” she said instead. “But I grew up in one place, St. Louis. A nice, mid-sized city. I’m from the South Side, which was clean, safe, and working class—at least most of the time I lived there.”

“And white, I bet.”

“True,” said Cat.
 

“I’ve never been to St. Louis.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. Most New Yorkers avoid the vast middle section of the country. You’ve probably been to L.A., though.”

He flashed her a wide grin. “That I have.”

“Would you ever live anywhere besides New York?” she asked. “L.A.?”

“Los Angeles is a place where people go to chase their dreams, not knowing that a dream is just a dream,” he said.

“Do you really believe that?”

“Believe what?”

“That a ‘dream is just a dream’.”

“Yes, I suppose. A lot of people in L.A.—they’re basically playing the lottery with their life. The odds of making it big are so slim—”

“—So don’t even try?”

“That’s not what I mean. Of course you should try. But you need to be capable of a realistic assessment of yourself. Take my brother, for example. He knows he’s got an eye for special-occasion wear, you know, wedding gowns, ball gowns, tuxedoes, that kind of thing. But he’s not so good at casual wear. He knows this and is trying to both maximize what he’s good at and get better where he’s weak. But I don’t see a lot of rock star and actress wannabes in L.A. doing that. In fact, some of them are utterly unaware that they simply lack the talent.”

“Don’t you think most people just need to get out of their own way?” said Cat. “I mean, look at Clive Smith. There he was, quietly making those brilliant pieces for his granddaughter. It was pure joy for him, no pressure to be great art. And that’s why it succeeds where his super-serious art failed.”

“You aren’t kidding, Cat. Did you see the blog article? It went viral. It put Clive Smith on the proverbial map.”

“Really? What happened?”

“It was one of my most popular posts. Social media blew up over it, and now Smith’s getting calls from galleries all over the city.”

“Well good for him,” Cat said. She picked up her bottle of beer. “Let’s toast to his success.”

When she brought Jacob back to his hotel, he paused in the car, taking her hand and stroking it with his thumb. “I’m really enjoying getting to know you, Cat.”

A panic shot through her, and she realized what a mistake the date had been.

“I lost someone,” she blurted.

He let go of her hand. “A boyfriend?”

“Sort of. Yes. Someone I knew when I was a kid, and then again recently. It’s complicated.”

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “Truly.”

She was quiet.

“That must have been very difficult.”

“It was.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Do you want a drink?”

“I had a beer with dinner.”
“I’d noticed that. But I mean a real drink.” He added: “In the hotel bar.
Not
my room.” He emphasized the “not,” but the specter of his room and what it represented made her feel more panicked.

“I think I better go,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

With that, Jacob squeezed her hand, said, “Good night,” and got out of her car.

She went home and fell into bed but couldn’t sleep no matter how hard she tried.

The next day, she felt terrible. She cursed herself for listening to the voice in her head and for thinking it was God instead of a sign that she was losing it.

She must really be losing it.

Cat immersed herself in the investigation and did not hear from Jacob the whole next day.
 

Granny Grace, who was busy with some strange “project,” as she called it, involving Chester Canon, was not too preoccupied to notice something bothering Cat.
 

“How was your date?” she asked.

“It wasn’t a date.”
 

“This is the man you met in New York? Who happens to be in Miami all of a sudden?”
 

Cat had tried to downplay the situation, but nothing got past her grandmother.

“We’re just friends.” Cat continued to stare at her laptop screen.

Grace sat down next to Cat on the chaise lounge she’d claimed as her command center. Cat’s papers fluttered around her.

“You know you can go at your own pace,” Grace said. “If it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it. Nobody’s rushing you. This guy, if he’s meant to be a good connection for you, it’ll keep. Till you’re ready.”

Cat slowly closed her laptop. “I kind of ditched him. I couldn’t help it. I panicked.”

“That’s understandable. But it’s been more than a year, Cat. You can’t cloister yourself forever.”

“I—” Cat stopped. It was hard to put into words what she was feeling. “I feel guilty, because I’m really attracted to him. I want…him. And I need to let go of something bound up inside me. But that’s it.”

“Not very Catholic of you, I’m afraid,” joked Granny Grace.

“I know. Mercy would not approve.”

“But your mother’s not here. The only thing to worry about is dear Jacob’s feelings. I suspect, however, that a guy who lives in New York and came down to Miami to see a girl who lives in Seattle but is from St. Louis isn’t looking to get married to her, at least not anytime soon.”

“Granny Grace,” Cat said. “God forgive me, but I don’t even want to, um, fall asleep with him. No dreams.”

“You’ll get no judgment from me,” said her grandmother. “And as for Jacob, I mean, hmm… I don’t know of any man who’d say no to that.”

The following day, Cat got up the nerve to call him.

“I want to see you,” she said. Before he could answer, she rushed headlong into the speech she had prepared. “In your hotel room. I think we have great chemistry, and I want to explore that. But that’s it. I can’t do more right now. You’re here for another week or so, we have a great time, and you go back to New York. Maybe we keep in touch; maybe we don’t. It doesn’t matter. But right now, we have this. If you’re interested. If not, it’s okay.”

There was a long pause, and then Jacob let out a breath. “Wow.”

Then another pause and another breath. “Jesus,” he finally said. “Yes. I mean, wow. You’re gorgeous, I’m totally into you, and if we have a mind-blowing experience and I never see you again, I might be totally heartbroken, but I will still have had this. Are you kidding? Yes. Get over here right now. Before I drive up there.”

Cat was laughing. “Considering I’m rooming with my grandmother, that’s not such a good idea.”

“I’m waiting for you, Cat.”

She hung up, packed a small bag, and drove down to South Beach.

He opened the room to his hotel and presented her with a single red rose.
 

“I wanted to get one for you at the restaurant the other night, but I sensed that would freak you out. Now I know why. But here, red is for passion as much as it’s for love.”

She thanked him, took the rose, and inhaled its scent, dragging the soft petals across her lips.
 

He’d ordered Champagne through room service. But Cat didn’t need or want a drink. She offered him her hand, and he took it, stroking her skin with his thumb as he had that night. This time, she didn’t panic. She let the feeling sizzle there, burning her with desire. She liked the way his lips parted and his breath quickened as he touched her. His hand traveled up her bare arm. She put her hands around the back of his neck, bringing his face to hers, and kissed him hard. He responded, enfolding her in his arms. Her hand went for where he was hard and made it harder.
 

“I’m not wearing anything under this,” she whispered, and he moaned, reached down for the hem of her dress, and bringing it up over her head. Then Cat turned around and took him in, pushing back against him as her hands gripped the dresser in his hotel room.

They stayed in his room all day, ordering room service when they were hungry. When it was time for them to sleep, Cat left.

Chapter Eighteen

Mick understood Cat’s need to keep working other angles in the case, but taking her around to see his best patrons was not something he relished doing.

Two lived on Star Island, an entirely private island accessible off the causeway but gated to all but residents and their guests. It was a place he’d been to several times before, but he never felt as if he belonged there. On the contrary, it was a game he played, in order to sell his art. But Cat wanted to talk to Serena Jones and the Langholms, and Mick was her only way in.

The drive out on the causeway was lovely, though. The gorgeous water would appear to be the shade of a green glass bottle if there was sea grass beneath the shallow waves or run bright turquoise if there was not.
 

You couldn’t even drive onto the island unless a resident called you in, which is what Jones did for them when they stopped at the guard booth. They parked in a large circle drive, and Mick explained to Cat that the mansion next door, which dwarfed this one considerably, belonged to the Langholms.

Jones’s house was faux Mediterranean style, like a lot of houses in Miami, probably built when the island was first constructed in 1922. But it had apparently been gutted and rebuilt inside, as it was now a large open-concept white palace filled with art. Mick was flattered to see she’d hung his paintings in a prominent place, in the dining room above a fireplace that must be completely unnecessary there in the tropics. Jones’s housekeeper, a stout Hispanic woman wearing a cap and apron, a sight that always struck Mick as an Old World gesture there in Miami, led them to where Serena Jones was exercising with a trainer. They worked out in a bright, sunny room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the water and South Beach beyond. Serena wore boxing gloves and hit her trainer’s focus mitts at his urging: “Jab left. Right hook. Uppercut.”

Mick and Cat waited for them to finish the sequence. Serena was firmly out of her twenties and into her thirties but appeared to be maintaining pretty good ground, Mick thought. With the time to work out in the middle of the afternoon, a personal trainer at her disposal, and possibly a personal chef as well, the only thing she had to fight was the aging process itself.

Her trainer threw her a towel and politely exited out a back door as Serena guzzled a bottle of Perrier and walked toward them.

“Hola, Mick,” she gushed, allowing him to kiss both cheeks, Miami-style.

“And this is your grand-niece, I understand,” Serena held out her hand to Cat as if meeting her for the first time, but Mick distinctly remembered introducing them at Donnie’s wake. Ah, well. It wasn’t like Serena to remember the little people.
 

As was customary in Miami, Serena asked Cat, “Prefiére hablar Español o Inglés?”

“Inglés, por favor,” Cat replied. “Y gracias.”

“De nada,” Serena said and then slipped into English. “You wanted to see Mick’s art?”

“Yes,” said Cat, sounding to Mick as if she weren’t sure where to start, or perhaps Serena’s wealth was making her nervous.
 

“Come this way,” Serena said, and they followed her back into the dining room, where he’d seen a glimpse of the pieces on the way in.

Meanwhile, Cat found her footing. “How did you come across his work, initially?”

“Let me see… it was at a party, here on Star Island.” Serena glanced at Mick. “You remember, right?” He nodded. To Cat, she explained, “My neighbor has a very boring life in large-scale commercial real estate, you know, development projects? So when he plays, he likes to surround himself with creatives. He throws these big parties and invites artists, writers, film people—all sorts, really—to stay the weekend.”

“The guests stay overnight?”

“Yes, it is safer that way, with the drinking that goes on.” Serena laughed.

Cat nodded.

“Anyway, so I was admiring this really great piece that Kristoff had—”

“Kristoff?”

“My neighbor, the one throwing the party.”

“Got it.” Cat remembered Carrie and Kristoff Langholm from the wake and was hoping to get to see them as well but wanted to play it cool around Serena.

“So I was admiring this painting that was like nothing I’d ever seen before. I mean, your uncle! His work, it grabs you, you know? It nearly knocked me off my heels. And I was wearing like four-inch heels that night, you know what I’m saying? And then Kristoff says, ‘Well, if you want to meet the man who painted it, he’s right here.’ And there you were, Mick.” She squeezed his arm. “Such a funny guy!” She turned back to Cat. “Your uncle said, ‘Hello, ma’am. I’ll be your artist for the evening.’ Like he was part of the hired entertainment or something. So meta!” Serena nearly choked on her Perrier, she was laughing so hard. Mick felt his face grow red from embarrassment.