The Art of Romance (24 page)

Dylan stopped in the aisle and turned to take in the panorama of the auditorium. He vaguely remembered coming to see plays and musicals here back before Perty retired. But with the exception of the rows and rows of ornate wooden pews, the venue bore little resemblance to the churchlike setting he’d come to. Though not nearly as state-of-the-art as a professional performing arts center, Rutherford Auditorium did the small, liberal-arts college proud.

He pulled his sketchbook out of his bag and tucked a pencil behind his ear, ready to get started helping the students work on designing backdrops.

“Dylan, so glad you could make it out today.” Bridget came down to the edge of the stage. “Come on up, and I’ll give you the grand tour.”

He skirted the orchestra pit and mounted the stairs on the side of the broad stage. Bridget held out her hands and turned in a slow circle. “What do you think? Everything’s state of the art—or as state of the art as we could get in an old building like this.”

“It’s great.”

She motioned him to follow her to the back of the stage area. “We are a full-fly theater”—she looked down from the area that opened up what seemed hundreds of feet above them and must have seen his confusion—”that means that we can raise the backdrops up fully so that they can’t be seen from anywhere in the auditorium. We also use scenery wagons, lifts, and stagehands to move smaller pieces in and out.”

He followed her backstage, through the bowels of the theater, and finally out into a long corridor. She entered the third door on the left. He stepped into a large workshop where at least a dozen people were working.

“As you can see, we’ve been working on our set pieces and backdrops for a while. We do four major productions each year, along with the interdepartment Christmas show and a revue at the end of the spring semester, so that all of the undergraduate and MFA students can get the experience they need. You’ll be working mainly with the MFA students—and the graduate student who’s the scenic designer for this production—on the flying backdrops.”

Looking around at the smaller set pieces that were in various phases of completion, images started forming in Dylan’s head—images inspired by the masterworks of the Venetian period and his own work inspired by those artists.

“I can see from the look in your eyes that you’re already coming up with ideas.” Bridget grinned at him. “Come on back and meet the team.”

Within half an hour, Dylan realized he would most definitely be in the learner role, not the instructor role, in this project. First, there was the vastness of the scale—what Dylan could imagine on a smaller scale wouldn’t necessarily translate to what people sitting at the back of the balcony would be able to see.

“Let’s go out front,” Malique, the scenic designer, said, grabbing his sketchpad. “I find I can sometimes visualize these things better looking at it from the audience’s perspective—and sometimes hearing the actors reading the lines helps, too, even if it is the same passages over and over and over again in auditions.”

The two graduate students serving as Malique’s assistants came with them. He took Dylan down a series of hallways and into the auditorium through one of the main entrances instead of back through the labyrinth behind the stage.

Before they could enter, though, a student rushed in from outside. “I’m so sorry I’m late. My relief didn’t show up on time for her shift, so I was late leaving the restaurant.”

Malique stopped to give the student directions on her project. Dylan stepped into the auditorium—but turned when someone tugged on his sleeve.

He turned. “Sage? Hey. What are you doing here?”

She smiled and lowered her chin in a flirtatious gesture. “Just came up to see my sister. What are you doing here?”

Dylan stiffened. He’d seen her in action with both Pax and Spencer. He wasn’t about to let her do the same to him. “I’m going to try to help with the scenery design.”

“Sage—what are you doing here?”

Dylan relaxed a bit at the sound of Caylor’s voice. He tried to step back, but Sage kept hold of his sleeve.

“I tried to come up for lunch, but they told me I couldn’t get anything to eat.” Sage’s lips puckered into a pout.

Zarah looked at her watch. “It’s almost two thirty. They stop serving lunch at two o’clock. What time did you get there?”

“Just now. So, since they’re closed, I came to find you to get some money so I can go get lunch.” Sage’s pout turned to girlish innocence when she looked at Dylan again. Like Caylor, she was only a few inches shorter than he, which made the little-girl act even more bizarre and uncomfortable. “Our house is being remodeled, so we have no kitchen.”

Caylor looked like she was about ready to give physical egress to the frustration building behind her turquoise eyes. “No, but there is a toaster oven and a microwave and plenty of stuff in the fridge and freezer that can you can eat.”

Sage heaved a dramatic sigh. “Do you know how bad all that processed, chemical-laden food is for you? And it’s full of sodium and fat.” She looked her sister up and down with a smirk.

Dylan prayed the floor would come alive and eat him. He wouldn’t have blamed Caylor if she’d slapped her sister. If one of his brothers had insulted him like that in front of someone—But his brothers would never do that.

Caylor, amazingly, kept her cool. She gave her sister a benign shrug. “If you don’t have money to go buy your own food or go out to eat, I guess you’ll either have to risk the stuff that’s already there, or you’ll just have to go hungry.”

“But I’ve been looking for jobs all morning, Caylor. I can’t find anything I’m qualified for.”

Bridget called Caylor’s name from the front of the auditorium.

“I’ve got to go. Sage, just go home, get something to eat there, and remember tomorrow to get here before two o’clock so you can get lunch on the lunch card I gave you.”

With an apologetic glance at Dylan, Caylor escaped to the front of the auditorium.

Sage adopted her flirty expression again. “You don’t happen to know of any positions open here at the school you could recommend me for, do you?”

“I’m not…I’m new here, and I’ll only be teaching part-time. What are your qualifications?”

She shrugged. “I have about a year of college. I did some clerical work and some modeling.”

Modeling? Dylan still hadn’t figured out how he’d find a live model for his portraiture studio. “I may actually have a job to offer you. It would only be six hours a week at minimum wage—well, only three hours for the first two weeks—but it would be better than nothing.”

Something akin to real interest flickered in Sage’s hazel eyes. “Really? What is it?”

He explained the need for a live model to sit for his class. “So really, there are no qualifications necessary except just sitting there. But it would only be for eight weeks, starting day after tomorrow.”

“Dylan, that would be wonderful—it will get Caylor off my back and give me time to figure out what I’m going to do for a real job.” She threw her arms around him and kissed his cheek then skipped toward the door.

Malique and his assistants had to step out of the way as she twirled on her way through the double doors. All three of them turned to watch her walk away.

Dylan turned the opposite direction—and caught Caylor looking away from him, the corners of her mouth and eyes tight.

Great. The job might get Caylor off Sage’s back, but the weight of Caylor’s ire fell heavily on Dylan.

A
fter a morning filled with advising late-registering students and an English department lunch meeting that lasted all afternoon, Caylor entered the construction zone at home, wanting nothing more than to go up to her loft and curl up in her chair for an hour and veg out. She still had a lot of work to do on finalizing her first few lectures for the composition class dumped in her lap today because the adjunct who’d taught the freshman course the last ten years suddenly moved out of state, but that could wait until after she’d let her brain rest for an hour.

The crew seemed to have made good progress with the breakfast room addition. The new little room that connected the kitchen to the laundry room looked finished outside, with white siding and trim to match the rest of the house. Inside, a couple of guys troweled mud over the seams of the drywall they’d installed. It would be so nice to be able to go to and from the laundry room and stay nice and warm—or cool during the summer—instead of having to exit the house to get there.

Sassy, who had returned from Maine that morning, stood with the site foreman in the kitchen, which was stripped down to the shells of the cabinets with all of the appliances now gone.

“Oh good, Caylor.” Sassy motioned her over. “Jerry was telling me that they plan to install the island and refinish the cabinets tomorrow. Then on Thursday, they’re going to start on the floors, so that’s the night we won’t be able to stay at home.”

“Okay. I’ll call Zarah and let her know. You and Sage are still staying with the Bradleys?” Caylor shifted the load of books and paperwork from one arm to the other.

“Yes. I talked to Perty this afternoon. She’d love for you to come stay also. They’ve got six extra bedrooms, you know.”

“I know. But Zarah and Flannery and I have talked about ordering in Chinese food and working on wedding stuff whatever night I get kicked out of the house. It may be the only chance we have before spring break.” Caylor covered a yawn with the back of her hand. “I’m going to go upstairs and get some work done.” After resting for a while.

“You can’t—I have a new class starting at church at five thirty. Sage is out with some high school friends, so I’ll need you to take me.”

Though working in the comfort of her big chair upstairs would be preferable, she’d save time by staying at the church and working there instead of driving up to the church twice. “Okay. Let me change clothes, and I’ll be ready to go.”

Upstairs, Caylor set her books and laptop case on the desk and resisted the urge to drop into the desk chair and groan out her frustration.

Instead, she stepped into the walk-in closet and changed from her trousers, jacket, and blouse into jeans and a comfy, slightly oversized turtleneck sweater—which, naturally, snagged on her watch, creating a pull across the front.

She yanked the sweater off and tossed it in the to-be-mended pile, grabbed a long-sleeved brown T-shirt off a shelf, and topped that with an old, oatmeal-colored, duster-style bulky cardigan—the sweater she usually wore around the house during the winter when she knew she wouldn’t be seeing anyone but Sassy.

She needed chocolate. She needed the Box. But where…? Caylor closed her eyes and tried to remember where they’d put the bin filled with candy.

Grabbing her laptop bag and digging the composition textbook and grammar handbook out of the pile on her desk, she went back downstairs, through the now empty kitchen and breakfast room, and into the laundry room.

There, in the cabinet in the corner beyond the utility sink—almost out of reach due to the position of the washer—was the Box. She’d been careful to ration the twelve chocolate-covered peanut butter Christmas trees, and tonight was the night for the last one. She set the box atop the washer and popped the lid off.

It seemed emptier than last time she’d been into it. She shifted it from side to side to move the mostly red-and green-and gold-wrapped candy around, but she didn’t see the last Christmas tree.

Her frustration increased. Someone—and she had a pretty good idea who—had been in the Box and had taken her last Christmas tree. She picked out five miniature peanut butter cups, snapped the lid on, and stuck the container back in the cabinet.

Sassy came out of the kitchen door carrying a plastic bin filled with what looked like school supplies. Caylor dropped the candy into the outside pocket of her bag and joined Sassy at the new door to the porch.

“What’s in there?” Caylor went out first and held the door open for Sassy.

“Supplies for class.”

Caylor used her remote to unlock the SUV then returned to the kitchen to turn off the lights—a couple of naked bulbs hanging from the wiring pulled down after the old fixtures were removed.

Sassy chattered about her flight back from Maine and how she’d been excited to come home and see how much work had been accomplished on the remodel. Caylor listened with half an ear as her mind whirled with everything she needed to get done tonight to be prepared to face a classroom full of freshmen at eight o’clock tomorrow morning in a class most of them didn’t want to take.

Several cars already sat in the parking lot behind Acklen Avenue Fellowship. Caylor looked up at the three-story redbrick exterior with a sigh. She’d visited this church off and on over the years, but even with Flannery and Zarah urging her to come with them all those years they’d lived together, she’d never felt called to leave the church she grew up in. Sure, it was small, but she couldn’t imagine being just another face in the crowd of the thousand people who squeezed into Acklen Ave.’s three different worship services. She much preferred knowing—and being known by—almost everyone at her church of fewer than two hundred.