The Art of Romance (26 page)

Caylor surveyed the class of eighteen senior-level English majors. When would they learn how to read? “No. As it shows on the daily assignment breakdown, the first Monday Paper is due on the first Monday we actually have class, which is week after next.” And to stave off the next inevitable question, even though she’d been over it already, she added, “It should be a minimum of 250 and no more than 500 words of a personal reaction to one of the literary reading assignments from the week before. If there aren’t any other questions…”

The students shook their heads.

“I’ll see you next Wednesday, then. My office hours are on the front of the syllabus, and I do expect to see every one of you there before February 28 so we can discuss ideas for your thesis project. There’s a sign-up sheet on the bulletin board next to my door. So if you want to make sure you can put it off until the very last minute, you’d better go sign up today to get one of those last spots.” She had to raise her voice to be heard above the students’ scramble to get out of the classroom. Since she was letting them go about fifteen minutes early, they probably hoped they’d beat all the other students to the cafeteria for lunch.

She detached the projector cord from her laptop, unplugged it, and stuck it back in her bag, along with the few extra copies of the syllabus, her record book, and the textbook.

The bottleneck at the door worsened momentarily, until someone pushed his way through the exiting students into the room.

No, not someone. Dylan.

“Dr. Evans, I need your help.” Panic edged his voice.

“What’s wrong?” She swung the strap of her bag up onto her shoulder.

“Sage canceled. I need someone to sit for my class.” Even though his voice betrayed his frantic worry, only a small V between his brows and tightness around his mouth betrayed any distress.

Caylor’s own anxiety rose at the mention of her sister’s name. “Sage canceled…what?”

Dylan took a deep breath. “When I saw your sister at the auditions Monday, I asked her to be the model for my portraiture studio until spring break. She agreed and came by yesterday to fill out the employment paperwork. I got a text from her twenty minutes ago that said something came up and she couldn’t make it today.” He turned and paced the length of the room, running his fingers through his hair.

He returned to the front of the room and dropped his arms to his side. “If I don’t have a model for the class to work with today, I won’t be able to analyze the students’ skill levels to determine what I need to work on with them.”

She knew better than to trust Sage would change. She should have warned Dylan—if she’d known he was thinking of offering her a job. “I’m finished with classes for the day. What time does your studio start, and how long will you need me there?”

The crease between his eyebrows eased as they rose in surprise. “Oh—I didn’t mean for you…I only hoped you could recommend someone.”

“She’s my sister, and I’ve been used to cleaning up her messes my whole life. Why stop now?” She led the way out of the classroom. “What are the times?”

Dylan looked at his watch. “Studio starts at twelve forty-five, but I’ll spend a few minutes going over the syllabus and course expectations. So if you could be there around one o’clock, that would be perfect. It’s 408 Sumner Hall. The class goes until three thirty.”

Caylor took hold of his arm to look at his watch. Not quite twelve fifteen yet. “That gives me plenty of time to go back to my office and put a note on my door that I won’t be there for office hours this afternoon.”

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.” Dylan’s brown eyes locked with hers, and for a moment, the entire world went silent.

Was he leaning toward her, or was she leaning toward him?

“Dr. Evans, I have a question about the thesis project.” A very unobservant student walked into the room, bringing Caylor back to reality.

“Mr. Bradley, I’ll see you in a little while.” Caylor breathed in slowly, trying to ease her pounding heart.

“Thank you, Dr. Evans.” Dylan looked more shaken now than he had when he’d first entered the classroom.

Caylor made the student walk back to her office with her as they discussed the thesis paper all of the Lit Crit students would have to write and present by the end of the semester. Thank goodness it was a project she assigned every year in this course, because her mind wasn’t on literary criticism, resources, citations, or MLA style.

The student parted company with her as soon as she reached the front steps to Davidson Hall. Caylor charged up the stairs and into her office, forcing herself to be pleasant to the two students from the early morning composition class who stood outside her door waiting.

Both students had the same question—about testing out of freshman comp—and she gave them the photocopied directions to the testing center, which got rid of them posthaste. She quickly wrote a note canceling today’s office hours and hung it on her door so it covered her schedule.

Shutting herself into the office, she picked up her cell phone and hit the speed dial for Sage.

Her sister picked up on the second ring. “Hey, Caylor. What’s up?”

The cheerful chirp in Sage’s voice only added fuel to the flames of Caylor’s annoyance. “What’s up? Do you realize what you’ve done? How much Dylan Bradley was depending on you? You always do this—you commit to something, make people believe they can rely on you, and then leave them in the lurch when you flake out on them.”

“I feel totally bad about having to cancel on him today—but it’s the first day of class. He couldn’t have needed me for much anyway. I promised him that I’d be there starting next week, rain or shine.”

“Sage—”

“I
had
to, Caylor. One of the girls from high school I went out with last night works in the registrar’s office at the community college. She said if I could get over there today with all of my transcripts, I could probably get registered. I did some figuring last night. I can go to school full-time there for about a thousand dollars less than what it would cost Sassy to pay for one class at Robertson. I started at seven this morning, calling the high school and MTSU to let them know I’d be coming in to get official copies of my transcripts. But it took a lot longer than I expected. I’m almost out at the community college, and I know this will take a couple of hours.”

Caylor rubbed her forehead against the oncoming headache. “So you’ve decided to go to school full-time?”

“Yes. I’m going to go for my associate’s degree in office management. It’s not as glamorous as being an English professor, sure, but it’ll mean I’ll be qualified for all those jobs I couldn’t apply for before.” Road noise filled the empty space when Sage paused. “Cay, I really need your support on this.”

Flannery’s admonition to give Sage a chance rang through Caylor’s mind. “I think it’s wonderful that you’ve decided to go back to school. And I’ll help you in whatever way I can.”

“Great—because if I can get in, I’ll be taking Composition and Business English this semester, which means lots of papers to write, and I’ll need someone to look over them for me before I turn them in.”

Caylor had to laugh. “We’ll see.”

“Beg Dylan’s forgiveness for me, and tell him I will definitely be there next Wednesday and every day after that. Gotta go. I just pulled into the parking lot. Bye.”

Caylor dropped her head down onto the desk. Give her one more chance, everyone always said. But how many chances could a person burn through until there wasn’t one more?

“So when we come back from spring break, you should have decided on the live model or form you want to use for your final project of the semester and bring in plenty of photos so we can decide how best to proceed.” Dylan looked up from the printed syllabus page in front of him—just in time to see Caylor slip into the back of the classroom.

His chest tightened. He still couldn’t believe how close he’d come to giving into his whim and kissing her earlier. His counselor would definitely be hearing about that.

Caylor took a seat in the back while he answered questions from the eight students, all in their last semester for their bachelor of fine arts, their final project in here one of the several they’d be creating in their different studio courses for the art show in April. Only too keenly aware of how one piece could ruin a collection—as had happened to one of his undergrad roommates, who’d tried to phone in his sculpture piece and hadn’t graduated with the rest of them—Dylan determined to help each student as much as he could to work to the best of his or her ability to paint portraits that would earn high-pass marks.

And that started today. “If there are no other questions, get your sketch pads and pencils ready.”

Over the scraping of stools against the old, scarred, paint-splattered wood floors, Dylan motioned Caylor to the front of the soaring studio space. Students secured their sketch pads on the large metal easels—though the three guys in the room had trouble doing this and watching Caylor walk past at the same time.

“Thanks so much for coming.” He indicated the stool on the dais.

Caylor had removed the dark purple blazer she’d been wearing earlier and looked unbelievably sensuous in a tailored white button-down shirt and gray tweed trousers that looked like they’d come straight off a 1940s Katharine Hepburn, with the high waist and wide legs. “I talked to Sage. She asked me to beg your forgiveness and assure you she’ll be here every day from now on. I’ll explain later why she couldn’t make it today.”

Dylan’s hand shook as he reached out to straighten her collar. He really would prefer Caylor sit here in his classroom six hours a week for the next two months, but he couldn’t ask that of her. “Tell her she owes you one.”

“Oh, don’t worry. She’ll find that out.” Caylor perched on the stool. “Where do you want me?”

“You’re going to want to sit—you’ll be here for more than two hours.” It felt strange looking down at her—he was so accustomed to looking her almost directly in the eye, something he’d come to appreciate. He took her hands in his, ignoring the tingle at the back of his neck. She’d crossed her legs, so he arranged her hands on her knee, left over right. “Relax your shoulders and hold your head at a comfortable angle. Don’t smile. Relax your face, but don’t let it go slack.”

A smile forced its way through his concentrated effort to remain neutral with her. “Think happy thoughts. Like the ones from last night that led you to paint fluorescent daisies with smiley faces in the middle.”

Caylor grinned that lopsided grin that twisted his insides, but then flexed her jaw, opening and closing her mouth to erase the amusement. “Do I have to hold completely still?”

“As still as you can manage. We’ll take a break every so often so you can get up and stretch.” He stepped over to adjust the lights to flatter Caylor’s bone structure—not hard to do—and eliminate unnecessary shadows. “Ready?”

“Ready.” She smiled, pressed her lips together, smiled again, then wiped her expression clear, though her eyes continued to dance with amusement.

He turned to the class, his back fully to her before he let his own smile show again. “Since our regular model couldn’t be here today, we have a substitute—Dr. Evans from the English department was kind enough to volunteer to sit for us. Remember, today we’re concentrating on studies. By the end of the period, I want from each of you at least five studies—one must be the face, one must be the eyes, and one must be the hands. The other two are up to you. Concentrate on underlying structure, but don’t neglect shading and toning. If you can’t do it in pencil, it’ll be that much harder to do in oils.”

Dylan set up shop at one of the long, high worktables just behind the students where he could see all eight easels—and Caylor. He opened his sketchbook to the middle and turned through the few pages he’d filled the last few days. All images of Caylor—though they’d been done from memory, not from life.

Looking up, he caught Caylor’s gaze. A slight lift of her left eyebrow was the only change in her expression. There, that intensity—that was what he hadn’t been able to capture before. He immediately put graphite to paper and began his own study of her eyes—which started to turn into a full sketch of her face.

But he couldn’t just concentrate on his own drawing. Much as he hated to walk away from it—just when he thought he might finally capture the exact shape of her mouth—he got up and went from student to student, watching technique, praising what was well done, making suggestions on what needed improvement.

With a quick break every thirty minutes for Caylor to move and stretch, and between his own drawing and working with each of the students, the time went by far too fast.

At three twenty, Dylan went around to each student and checked the five studies, pleased with the skill level of each of them—especially considering they were undergraduates rather than the grad students he’d worked with at Watts-Maxwell. He dismissed them and went back to the worktable to clean up his own supplies.

“I notice you kept your shoes on today.” After touching several colorful spots on the table to make sure they were dry, Caylor leaned her elbows on it across from him.