Look to the Rainbow (24 page)

    “What’s this?” he asked.

    “You know how they say a chef never cooks in his own kitchen? I guess an artist never does enough artwork for herself or her own home. This is for us.”

     He tore open the wrapping and stared at the photo. “It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful. Not fair making yourself look so good.” he leaned over to kiss her.

    “It’s pretty beautiful of you too. If you don’t believe me, ask Casey.”

     “You’re both biased. Thank you for this. One of your best.”

     “And you aren’t biased at all.” She kissed him again.

     He reached over to the bedside table and handed her a narrow flat box. Not surprising, but pleasant. He often gave her jewelry to mark milestones. She opened it and found a Pandora bracelet and extracted it from the box with a cry. She’d been wanting one and had thought he might get her one for Christmas, but here it was. She examined each charm. An artist’s palette, a camera, a sailboat, a heart, among others. Beautiful murano glass filler beads and crystal beads. She put it on.

    “Thank you. I love it.”

     He pulled her into his arms. “So. We’ve had dinner and a movie and exchanged gifts. We’ve had champagne.”

     She looked into his eyes and said, “I guess that just leaves ‘who knows’.”

     “You’re the only one who knows, Mary Katherine. The ball’s in your court. Your rules.”

     The look of love on his face was almost painful to look at, because she felt so unworthy of being loved that much. She still wasn’t certain that she could give him what he deserved, but she was certain that tonight she was going to try.

Later, she propped herself up on her elbow and watched Evan sleeping. True, mountains hadn’t moved and at least for her it hadn’t been the most exciting physical moment of her life, but for the first time she felt that she had been an active participant. She had wanted to be there in the moment and it had hinted that there might be more nights like this, without the memory of someone else crowding in. She moved closer to him and he turned and put his arms around her and they both fell asleep and stayed there together until the sun came through the window the next morning.

Chapter Twenty

    
“This is exactly what I thought would happen,” Michael McCaffrey said. “He led you on and then dropped you without a reason.”

     Tara stepped off the step ladder she had been standing on to hang curtains and said, “He did not lead me on and he did not drop me.
I
left.”

     Julia put an arm around Tara. “But you never said why. And I just don’t believe the tabloids. I don’t think when he was with you that he was pining away for his wife who has been dead for fifteen years.”

    Tara sat on the chair in front of the living room windows, which were now flanked with long silk panels in a yellow, red and black plaid hanging from heavy decorative iron rods. Two comfortable chairs with ottomans in a textured yellow fabric and a deep red sofa with accent pillows that matched the curtains and the chair fabric were anchored by an oriental rug in the same colors and distressed black coffee and end tables. She and Casey and Mary Katherine had gone on a whirlwind shopping spree and they had all three gravitated to the same colors.  The room was coming together. She still needed artwork, which Mary Katherine promised to provide.

     “I had argued with him because a photographer had followed me a little too closely and everyone else was trying to get his attention and he just blew up at everyone and said he couldn’t  handle the relationship right now. He left the house and I panicked and quit my job and packed up and left. I should have waited for him to come back, but then it was done, and he didn’t call, and I didn’t, and well, here we are.”

     “But he sent you those flowers,” Julia said.

      “Julia, don’t encourage her into thinking this is going anywhere,” Michael said, taking the step ladder and going into the bedroom to hang another curtain rod.

      “I guess I’ll see what he thinks about all this. They’ve assigned me to cover the campaign for the station here.” Tara moved to adjust the curtains a little.

     “So you’ll be seeing him?”

      “I will, but I don’t know how much access I’ll have to him. Don’t get your hopes up. The timing was all wrong, I think.”

     “If he’s the right one, it will work out.” Julia gave her daughter a hug.

     “Why does Daddy hate him so much?”

     “He’ll have to tell you. He doesn’t hate him, exactly. But certainly he doesn’t want to like him.”

     They went into the bedroom which Casey had dressed in black and white toile and a sunny yellow accent fabric. The curtains her father was hanging were a combination of the two fabrics and Julia exclaimed over how pretty they were. Tara thought that Casey definitely had a gift for interior design and when she completed her degree was destined to be quite successful, if her beautiful bedroom was any example of what she could do. She could hardly wait to see what kind of artwork Mary Katherine would bring over.

    “If you must live in Washington,” Michael said, “at least you seem to have a comfortable and relatively safe place.” He put the step ladder away in a hall closet. “But I do wish they had given you something else to cover.”

     “It makes sense Daddy. I was already covering the campaign. I have inside knowledge.”

     “What does
he
think about that?”

     “I don’t know that he does know.”

     “Sweetheart, you just need to do your job, professionally, and when the election is over, move on.”

     Kel listened as Janet fielded questions from reporters. She was completely at ease in her new role as spokesperson for her father’s campaign and ever since she and Jim had come on board  they had risen in the polls. It was helping his image to been seen with his family, it deflected his single status. At this particular town meeting, the wives of the other two candidates and Janet were speaking first and answering questions, and then the candidates would have their turn.

     As she passed him on her way off the stage, Janet gave him a hug and whispered in his ear, “Heads up, Tara’s here.”

    And so she was, looking as beautiful as ever, maybe more so because he hadn’t seen her in so long. He wished at that moment he could postpone the town meeting and go somewhere where they could talk. But that would have to wait and he didn’t need to be distracted. It was too close to the end to lose potential voters now. The race was still closer than he would have liked.       

    Each candidate spoke, and Tara wondered how anyone could consider voting for the others; she had a strong dislike for the governor who had been criticizing Kel so rabidly and the third man still in the race had run three campaigns for the Presidency and never won the nomination. She knew she was biased, but Kel was more polished, more sure of what he stood for and what he wanted to do. When he answered the audience’s questions, he seemed to be sincerely concerned with what they wanted to talk about. She was reminded of the reasons for which she had fallen for him.

    After it was over, she made her way to the front of the auditorium. He stopped talking mid-sentence, excused himself from the conversation he had been engaged in and met her halfway. Somewhere in her peripheral vision she registered flashes popping from many cameras. He didn’t kiss her, but he stood close and smiled down at her.

    “How did we do?”

    “Janet was amazing and you, well. The others don’t really stand a chance.”

    “And wouldn’t your opinion be an unbiased one?” He asked the question in a very authentic sounding Irish accent. She had never heard him speak that way and he knew that she was surprised by it and waiting for an answer.

    “My grandfather immigrated from Ireland, he never quite lost his accent and Dad used to quote him all the time. But then my mother was also Irish and she never lost her accent either. We can all drop into it anytime we choose, even our children.”

    She laughed. Of course he could, didn’t he speak five other languages fluently? “It suits you. How have you been?”

    “Tired, lonely. Sad, even. But not sick.”

    “And Skip and John and Kim?”

     “All well. Skip does a little better every day. Coming on the road with us was the best thing for him.”

     She didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay with him forever. Neither of them seemed able to start the conversation they should be having, so she would leave it for another day. “I’ll see you soon. It seems I’m still following your campaign, just in a different job.” She looked down, to avoid having him see the tears welling up in her eyes.

     “Tara.”

     She looked up at him.

     “Good night.” He hesitated, and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.

     “Good night, Kel,” And  she willed herself to walk away without looking back.

     There were flowers again the next morning. She knew he’d called either Evan or Casey for her address and she was flattered that he had. They were beautiful, an array of wildflowers with a few white roses mixed in. The flowers James and Fiona O’Brien shared. Lily had spoken of a great love story between Kel’s parents.

     Mary Katherine arrived soon after the flowers with several framed art pieces. They were a representation of several years of her work and different styles. An impressionistic landscape for the living room, traditional black and white photographs from a trip to Paris for the dining room, and for the yellow and black bedroom, a picture in the Newport series style, a black and white photo of Tara dancing with Kel with yellow tints.

     “Evan said you might not want this one, but I loved it.” Mary Katherine said.

      “It’s beautiful. It reminds me of Renoir’s Dancing In The City.” Tara liked it the best, although each one was perfect for the space for which it had been chosen. They hung the artwork and Mary Katherine admired the whole apartment and promised to have her over for dinner soon as she left.

     Tara looked over the notes she was preparing for her evening report and sat at the desk tucked neatly into an alcove and turned on her computer. She went to check her email and saw that she and Kel were the trending story on the search engine. She clicked on the link, and there was a report pondering whether or not they were back together and a photograph from the night before. She wondered if the paparazzi would start following her again. Sadly, she thought that she almost wouldn’t mind. At least when they had been hounding her she and Kel had been together. Together even when they weren’t in the same place. It could have been so wonderful. She got up and walked into the bedroom and gazed at the framed photograph. That moment, which Mary Katherine had captured with a click of her camera, was what she wanted forever. To be able to be held in his arms, to laugh with him, to be able to look into his sapphire blue eyes, that was what she wanted.