Secrets in the Stone (17 page)

“This is where you do all your work?” Adrian chanced a glance and was only halfway disappointed that Rooke appeared to be engrossed in something on the ceiling. At least one of them had some control. Work ought to be a safe subject, and Rooke was clearly an expert in the subject she was currently absorbed in.

“Yes,” Rooke said.

“How do you carve the names if…”

Rooke met Adrian’s gaze. “If I can’t read them?”

“Yes.” Adrian kept her voice carefully neutral, as if they were discussing an everyday occurrence. She never wanted to see that defeated look in Rooke’s eyes again.

Rooke’s stomach became leaden. No one had ever asked her to explain how she worked before. Everyone seemed to assume what she was capable of, or what she wasn’t. She had learned not to care what others thought of her, but she desperately wanted Adrian to understand. Crossing to the counter, she picked up several sheets of paper and offered them to Adrian.

Wordlessly, Adrian took them and leafed through them. They were all drawings of gravestones. The designs were all different—some were completely plain, others ornate. Above each marker, a name was hand printed in simple letters. On the stones, the same name appeared several times in different styles, from block lettering to ornate script. Adrian frowned.

“You need to interpret for me,” Adrian said.

“When I carve a symbol, like a bird, on a marker, I don’t carve the same one every time,” Rooke said.

“Okay. That makes sense.”

“The letters are symbols, like the bird or a tree or a lantern. I can carve symbols, I just can’t…” Rooke sighed and she rubbed her forehead as if it hurt.

Rooke’s hand was shaking and Adrian heard the frustration in her voice. God, she wanted to understand, and she was making it worse. “That’s okay. You don’t have to…”

“I want to,” Rooke said fiercely. She paced a few steps, her back to Adrian, then spun around. Her body was taut, her hands clenched. “I want to tell you.”

“Okay,” Adrian said softly. “Can I ask you a question?”

Rooke nodded.

“Why can’t you read?”

Rooke’s head jerked as if she were startled. Then some of the tension went out of her body. “I was in an accident when I was a baby. Something happened to my brain. I can see the letters but my brain can’t make them into words.”

“No words at all?”

“No. Not numbers, either.”

“My God,” Adrian said quietly. “That must be so hard.”

Rooke smiled. “I don’t think about it all that much. It’s just the way it is for me.”

Adrian wanted to ask a thousand questions, starting with,
Was that your mother who was killed in the accident in the Hudson?
but she wanted to focus on Rooke, and what Rooke needed to tell her.

“Your grandfather prints the names for you?”

“Yes. When he takes the order. Then I work up the samples and let the family choose. Sometimes they have specific things they want, and I work those in.”

“It all sounds highly personal.”

“Shouldn’t it be?”

Adrian smiled. “Yes. It should.” She put her cup aside and stood. “Can you show me one you’re working on?”

“You want to see a gravestone?”

Rooke looked so surprised, and so immune to her own charm that Adrian had a hard time not touching her. But she was afraid if she did, with her feelings for Rooke so very close to the surface right now, she’d fall into her again, and she didn’t want this moment to be about her. “Yes, please. I’d like you to show me.”

“All right.” Rooke held out her hand.

Adrian hesitated, then willed herself to close everything down. Tentatively, she slid her hand into Rooke’s and Rooke squeezed gently. Warmth flowed into her, the connection reestablished, and she breathed a sigh. They were holding hands, nothing more complicated than that. “You have beautiful hands.”

Rooke stared down at their joined hands, then into Adrian’s eyes. “They’re pretty rough and banged up. Your skin is so soft I’m not sure I should be touching you.”

“It’s fine,” Adrian said, her throat threatening to close. “Perfect.”

Then Rooke smiled as if she’d been given a gift, and Adrian felt herself falling and had no desire to stop. She wasn’t dizzy, she wasn’t disoriented. She knew exactly where she was and with whom. What terrified her was that she knew exactly
how
she was falling, and that wasn’t at all what she had planned.

“Over here,” Rooke said, leading Adrian into the far end of the room where several mounds were covered with tarps. A big exhaust fan occupied the space there the windows had been. “This one is actually part of a much bigger marker. This figure will be inset near the top.”

When Rooke pulled the tarp away, Adrian stared at the head of a lion emerging from the stone. It was so lifelike, the eyes so hypnotic, she would have sworn it was alive. “It’s incredible.”

“Thanks.”

Adrian thought of the picture in the newspaper of the mausoleum and the gargoyles. She remembered Melinda saying how lifelike they were. With a sinking sensation, she said, “I met someone coming up here who’s trying to find a sculptor. She saw a picture of a mausoleum in the newspaper with gargoyles at the four corners. You did that, didn’t you?”

Rooke stiffened and dropped Adrian’s hand. “Yes.”

“She was hoping you might know the sculptor she’s looking for.”

“Why is she looking for the sculptor?”

“She has a picture of a sculpture that’s being sold at an estate sale here. She was impressed.” Adrian began to worry as Rooke’s face lost all expression. “Is something wrong?”

“I want to see the picture.”

“I’m sure she’d be happy to show it to you. I was going to bring her out here later to talk to you. She’s staying at the Heritage House.”

Rooke shook her head. “Call her and tell her I’ll come there.”

“All right.” Adrian told herself there was absolutely no reason why Rooke shouldn’t meet with Melinda, but her stomach was instantly queasy. “When?”

“As soon as possible.”

“Melinda said she’d meet us at the hotel in an hour,” Adrian said, watching Rooke pace in the small space between the stove and the chair. “She wants me to come along.”

“I knew the moment I saw you that we’d make good partners, darling,” Melinda said. “You’re bringing her to me here?”

“You don’t really need me along,” Adrian said reluctantly, even though an irrational part of her did not want Rooke to meet with Melinda alone. “I don’t have anything to lend to the discussions—”

“You two already know each other. She’ll probably be more comfortable with you making the introductions. Besides,” Melinda said, her tone susurrus, “I want to see you.”

“
Well, I suppose since I’m already with her—”

“Wonderful. I look forward to seeing you both.”

Rooke stopped pacing. “You’d do that? Come with me? You don’t mind?”

“No, of course I don’t mind.” Adrian couldn’t tell if Rooke was angry or anxious, or a little bit of both, but as soon as they’d started talking about Melinda and the sculpture, she’d become progressively more agitated. “What’s upsetting you?”

“She’s from New York, you said?”

“Yes. She’s an art dealer with a gallery in Manhattan.”

Rooke shook her head, frowning. “I don’t understand why she would come all the way up here just because she saw a picture of something.”

“That’s what art dealers do,” Adrian said, although she did think it was odd that Melinda would come personally rather than sending a representative. “The successful ones are able to identify talent before an artist becomes popular. That’s often how they make their greatest profits. And of course, young artists are always hoping that someone will see something unique in their work and promote them.”

“What does it matter what anyone else sees? The story is already in the stone.”

Adrian perched on the arm of the chair and studied Rooke. “You know who did the work, don’t you.”

“Not for sure.” Rooke walked to the door and looked out onto the cemetery and the rear of the main house. With her back to Adrian, she said quietly, “But what does it matter who did it? Isn’t something like that supposed to exist independently? Free of the artist?”

“Well, that’s an age-old question.” Adrian chuckled. “I think you’d find some pretty opinionated people on both sides of that argument. Is that what you think? That the artist doesn’t inject some part of themselves in the work—that it’s a case of art for art’s sake and nothing else?”

Rooke glanced at Adrian over her shoulder. “I think the artist is just a tool. The stone is everything.”

Adrian pictured the grainy photograph of the mausoleum and the gargoyles that so enchanted Melinda. She glanced to the far corner of the room where the lion’s head emerged half formed from the stone, eyes gleaming with life. Then her mind skipped to the figure Melinda had shown her in the catalog, a woman who seemed so alive, even in the small, faint photo, that Adrian had expected her to breathe and move. Dominic, saying there was no one anywhere around who could do what Rooke could do with stone. Already certain of the answer, Adrian asked, “You sculpt, don’t you? More than just what you do with the gravestones.”

As the silence stretched, Adrian tried to tell herself there was no reason for her growing sense of foreboding. Melinda was a businesswoman, and her interest in the sculpture and the artist who created it was perfectly reasonable.

“Rooke?”

“Yes. I sculpt other things.”

“Anyone else around here do that?” Adrian asked lightly.

“Not that I know of.”

“Well, then I guess you really do need to talk to Melinda.”

Rooke turned and leaned her back against the door. “I don’t see how she has a picture of anything I did. I don’t sell them.”

“What do you do with them?”

“I just make them.” Rooke shrugged and glanced toward a door in the far wall that Adrian assumed led to another room. “My grandfather has a couple.”

“How many are there?”

“A dozen.”

Adrian tried to sort out her conflicting emotions. If Rooke was the artist Melinda sought, and her work was as extraordinary as Melinda seemed to believe, Melinda could make a huge difference in Rooke’s life—financially, of course, but also in every other way. Melinda could introduce Rooke to an entirely new world—an exciting and seductive new world of celebrity and adventure. A world with Melinda at its center. Adrian tried to mentally shrug off the surge of jealousy. Rooke was an intelligent woman. She could handle herself. She could handle Melinda.

“Adrian?” Rooke asked.

“I’m sorry.” Adrian hadn’t realized she’d drifted off until Rooke touched her arm. Rooke looked worried, probably because she was telegraphing her own misgivings, and that wasn’t fair. She wanted to be happy for Rooke. She
was
happy for Rooke. “Do you have photographs of your other work?”

Rooke shook her head.

Adrian plucked her cell phone from the waistband of her jeans and thumbed through to the camera setting. Then she held it out to Rooke. “Why don’t you take a few shots of some of them. Just point and press here.”

“Why?”

“Because if you sculpted the figure Melinda is interested in, she’s going to want to know what else you’ve done.”

“Even if I did, I don’t think I want her to see the rest.”

“Why not?” Adrian asked gently.

“I don’t know her.”

Adrian heard the protectiveness in Rooke’s voice and thought of the warrior in her visions. Perhaps this was what she’d sensed all along—Rooke’s fierce desire to guard her sculptures from those who might not understand or respect the stories they revealed. She wanted to see them very much herself, but she wouldn’t ask. She would see them when Rooke offered, when Rooke trusted her enough.

“There’s no rush.” Adrian was secretly glad that Rooke appeared to have reservations about Melinda and making her work public. She told herself she was being selfish, wanting to keep Rooke all to herself. Rooke wasn’t hers, and she deserved the chance to decide what direction her life would take. Even if her choice led her to Melinda Singer.

*

A clock somewhere in the lobby chimed noon as Melinda settled onto a love seat in the corner of the parlor with a glass of Pinot noir. She crossed her legs beneath her burgundy cashmere pencil skirt, enjoying the slide of the soft wool upward over her bare thighs, almost as exciting as a woman’s caress. She’d left the top three buttons of the matching jacket open, exposing a hint of the black lace cupping her breasts. Her nipples had been tense and tingling since Adrian had called. She regretted she had not relented and allowed Becky to stay when the girl had pleaded to do so earlier. The excitement of Adrian’s unexpected announcement that she might have found Melinda’s elusive artist aroused her so much her sex ached and hunger clawed at her depths again. She sipped the wine and pressed her thighs together until pleasure speared through her clitoris. The shaft distended rapidly and pulsed harder as Adrian, looking as beautiful as ever in a plain black sweater and slacks, stepped into the parlor. Melinda smiled, her attention immediately captured by the woman in a plain navy button-down shirt and jeans by Adrian’s side.