The Convent Rose (The Roses) (11 page)

He slung a heavy arm across her shoulder, and its weight popped the two closed buttons open. Hardy had a good view down her front now, and that couldn’t be accidental. He’d never come on to her before that art walk a couple of weeks ago. Maybe, the sloe-eyed, somber saints she painted—or the fact she taught at the Academy and hung out with nuns—warded him off in the past. Darn Ja’nae Plato for loaning her that skimpy black dress and the great Bodey Landrum for drooling all over her like a Top Ten bull. Hardy Courville was a man who loved to compete for a contract or a woman someone else wanted. Eve felt fairly sure he’d felt her up to determine if she wore any underwear that evening and probably bragged to his cronies about her being braless. And what if Evan Adam told tales about their times together at art school when she’d been young, naïve, and willing to try most anything with him.

“Eve, you live in the moment like no other woman I’ve ever met,” Adam used to tell her as they lay naked on his futon. “Come to San Francisco with me, be with me.”

He hadn’t mentioned marriage beforehand though, and her mother became too ill to do without her only child. If Evan did the kiss and tell with Hardy, the contractor would only go after her harder. She knew his type. He’d glory in defeating both an artist and a bull rider for her attentions, but he was her art patron and she must handle him carefully. Now, Hardy let his hand dangle down her chest.

Renee Hayes had babbled about giving Hardy the “marriage or nothing” speech not too long ago at one of her private lessons, so Hardy remained in the market for another mistress. He probably assumed that Eve as an artist was a Bohemian, sort of a hippie, and didn’t have the word “marriage” in her vocabulary. All these years alone and supposedly living like a nun, she might have been practicing free love unbeknownst to him, and he’d just gotten a whiff of it when Bodey and Evan came on the scene. Hardy Courville never missed an opportunity, any opportunity.

“Eve, baby, you are wasted out here in the country. I just finished up a nice row of townhouses in the city. You could live in the suite downstairs and have your studio upstairs close to that good northern light you artists are so fond of. Wouldn’t cost you nothing. We could work out an arrangement. You could paint all day. No more teaching and waitressing. I’d come over evenings, join you for the lunch hour sometimes.”

Eve went still under his arm. She wanted to shrug Hardy off and tell him to go to hell, but the commission check hadn’t changed hands yet. She could pay off a nice chunk of her mother’s bills with that. It didn’t say much for her morals that she stayed quiet. Yesterday’s actions with Bodey didn’t say much for her morals either. All night long, she’d wanted to call and tell him she was lonely and wanting him, but her mother’s sour voice had come back to haunt her. “Chase men and they’ll never chase you.”

Finally, she’d gotten up and put the finishing touches on the commission. “I—” she managed to get out, but the sound of a big-engined truck coming up the drive cut off her reply.

Hardy waited for an answer as booted feet clomped across the stepping stones. The door began to open. “Think about it, baby, your own place free and clear, and nothing to do but paint and take care of ole Red.” He took the commission check from his shirt pocket and transferred it to hers, giving her breast a squeeze along the way. “See you Friday.”

Bodey Landrum stood framed in the doorway. His expression said, Unhappy To See You, but he didn’t say the actual words.

“Bodey, my man, great to see you again!” Red Courville strode over to the door and shook hands. “Looks like you brought breakfast for two starving people. Give me one of them chocolate donuts with sprinkles. Eve told me earlier you were taking lessons from her. This one yours? I can see the bull in that slash of gray, and the cowboy hanging on for dear life in the blue and brown diagonals. This is my kind of abstract, lots of energy. Frankly, I don’t get Evan’s stuff, all those vertical lines and little dots.”

“It’s my first one,” Bodey said numbly. He cocked his head and still saw only a really bad painting.

“I’d give you five hundred for it, but you might get a better offer at the art walk in the city. Eve, you be sure Bodey shows this picture in my lobby along with your things.”

A car with an engine that purred, thanks to the generosity of Gerald Hayes, came up the drive and slid easily into a space between the two oversized trucks. The sound of high heels ticked across the paving stones. Renee Hayes burst through the doorway.

“Am I too early? I couldn’t wait to continue my painting!”

Bodey checked his watch. Seven-fifteen. He held out the donut box in Renee’s direction. She plucked out a plain glazed, ate it in four sharp bites, then licked each fingertip as she gazed at Bodey.

“Thanks,” she said, as husky-voiced as if they had just gotten out of bed together. “This is exactly what I needed to start my day.”

“Well then, everyone is very early for class this morning. Do you want to paint or pose first?” Eve asked, twisting the tails of her shirt between her hands.

Bodey plopped the box beside the coffeemaker without offering Eve a selection. He peeled off his shirt, hung it on the side of Renee’s easel, took a lemon-filled donut in one hand and an apple crumb in the other, and assumed his pose on the stool. “I’m totally at your service, ladies,” he announced, giving Renee a cheesy smile.

“Mind if I stay a while and watch the creative process?” Hardy pulled a chair next to Eve as if to claim his turf. He hunkered down there with another chocolate donut and one topped with coconut and a cup of coffee.

“Eve, I think my front view of Bodey is finished. I’ll scoot my easel around and do him from the back this morning.”

Bodey paused with the last bite of the apple crumb donut half way to his mouth. “So long as you keep my pants on, Renee. If you plan on displayin’ this at the art walk, I don’t want my rear hangin’ out for all to see. Got a scar back there I ain’t too proud of.”

“I haven’t seen your rear in a good long time Bodey Landrum, but I recall it as prime,” Renee said. “Besides, I have no place to show my paintings unless Hardy offers me space.” She shot an enticing smile at the contractor.

“By all means, use my new lobby, Renee. You and Eve and Bodey are all welcome. Evan will have some paintings on display, too. I like to patronize the arts all I can. Courville Construction will have the best exhibit in town.”

Bodey sank his teeth into the second donut, and lemon filling squirted out on to his naked chest. He scooped the blob on to a finger and sucked the jelly into his mouth, his eyes on Eve. Already deep into painting, she didn’t appear to notice, but Renee sucked in a breath. Hardy Courville stretched out his legs as if he meant to stay a while.

After half an hour, Bodey called for a break. He stretched his ripped body, hands over head. He was no six-footer like Courville over there hoovering up another donut like a vacuum cleaner and slurping more coffee, but he didn’t have a rich man’s gut on him either.

“Mornin’ coffee has about passed through me. Could you point me to the facilities, Eve?”

“Second door on the right,” she answered without taking her eyes from her work.

Bodey exited into the little courtyard and entered Eve’s home. The bathroom was a small box of a place with one little window where Eve had hung a panel of stained glass in a wisteria pattern for privacy. A big, claw-footed tub, looking heavy enough to sink through the old floorboards, occupied most of the space. Large enough to hold two, he figured. Held up on an old-fashioned ring and pole clamped to the tub’s edge, a blue shower curtain with a pattern of silvery fish shielded it. A half-dozen fat pillar candles of various sizes and shades of purple, blue, and green sat on the tank top of the plain white porcelain commode. The mirrored medicine cabinet had been set into a frame of old cypress boards.

Bodey took care of business, then flicked open the cabinet while he washed his hands with the speckled ball of handmade soap taken from its place in a large scallop shell. No sign of a man showed in its contents. It held a little pink ladies’ razor, some sort of feminine deodorant, the usual aspirins and bandages anyone would stock. He flicked aside the shower curtain, saw a light ring around the tub, but no dark hairs or red ones either. No beard hairs in the sink, and Courville was freshly shaved. He went back to posing, relaxed and sure Courville hadn’t spent the night. Even better, Hardy had left in his absence.

Bodey posed another half hour, then said he wanted to paint. He set the painting of the bull aside and got out another canvas board from the supplies he had abandoned at the studio the previous week. Eve frowned.

“Don’t you want to work on your rodeo picture some more, Bodey?”

“Hell no, not if Courville will pay five-hundred for it as is. Why mess with perfection? I have a new idea.” He started smearing in a background of lavender, white, and deep purple, consulting Eve on how to get a flesh tone.

“White, yellow ochre, and a touch of crimson. You can lighten or darken it depending on the age and sex of the person.”

At the end of an hour, anyone clearly observing knew that Bodey Landrum was painting a nude. The figure emerged, naked and pale, from his background. Her long blonde hair covered what were obviously breasts and both hands folded primly over her pubic area. Renee, bored now that Bodey no longer modeled, wandered over and asked rather acidly, “Who would that be?”

“I call her Eve—the one from the Bible, of course.”

“Well, if you ever want a real model, you just call me, Bodey Landrum.”

“If I ever paint you, darlin’, I’ll call the picture
Hellfire and Damnation
or maybe
A Wild Red Rose.
”

Pleased, Renee went back to her work. Eve continued to concentrate on her own painting, but her cheeks turned red. At nine-thirty, she declared the session at an end since they had started so early. As Bodey and Renee cleaned their brushes, Eve stretched from side to side glancing out the window at another lovely spring day. A black SUV, the sort of vehicle a soccer mom might drive, turned into her lane.

“Probably another bored housewife in search of a hobby,” Eve speculated.

Evan Adams parked and climbed out of the SUV. He took a rattan picnic basket from the passenger seat and carried it over Eve’s stepping stones, his soft loafers making no noise at all. He noticed Eve at the window, gave a cavalier sort of wave in her direction, and entered the studio without knocking. He kissed Eve on the cheek, no air between lips and flesh this time, Bodey noticed.

“Eve, dearest, I brought breakfast. Croissants from that marvelous French bakery on Pinhook Road, imported ham shaved so thinly you can see through it, a selection of cheeses, and—fresh strawberries, your favorite. If I’ve caught you between classes, perhaps we could dine alfresco on your charming patio.”

“I’m starving. How did you know, Evan?” Eve joined her students at the sink to wash her hands.

Bodey counted the donuts in the box. Six left. So jealous of Courville, he hadn’t offered her one, and she hadn’t taken any for herself. All the time he kept an eye on Red, this snake in the grass was sneaking up on Eve with croissants and strawberries in a basket. Maybe the Bible had gotten the fruit of temptation all wrong.

“Where’d you get the ride, Adams?” Bodey sneered. “Borrow it from the convent?”

“My gracious and generous hostess, Amanda Courville, loaned me her vehicle for the morning.”

“Does Hardy know you’re out here bothering Eve when she needs to finish her commission for him?”

“I find Red Courville knows very little but has the money to make up for that deficiency.”

While Eve cleaned up for the alfresco breakfast, Evan strolled around the studio, peering at the works in progress and studying Eve’s big canvas. “Nice work, Eve. Not my style, but nice. Looks finished to me.”

He came to Bodey’s nude. “Obviousy the Bibical Eve done with sort of a Rousseau-like primitivism, but much more crude. This is yours, Bodey?”

“Yeah, it is. I haven’t painted the snake in yet. He’ll be long and dark like the cottonmouths I shoot over in the coulee.”

“Indeed.” Evan raised his eyebrows.

“Trade you some donuts for a ham and cheese croissant. We could warm ’em up in the microwave. Paintin’ does give a man an appetite. Renee, you stayin’ for second breakfast?”

“I shouldn’t after that donut. Well, just a nibble, a few strawberries.”

The four of them crowded around Eve’s tiny porch table, Bodey knocking elbows with the left-handed Evan more than necessary. He made sandwiches out of the elegant repast and jumped up to warm them in the microwave. Eve seemed more amused than angry. Evan was peeved, definitely peeved. Bodey managed to draw out the time it took to eat the simple meal until Eve had to leave for the Academy.

“Now wasn’t this fun?” he said giving Evan’s hand a hearty shake.

“Delightful,” Evan answered, his face pinched like he was getting a shot in the rear.

“How come you always talk like some kind of continental dandy, Ev?”

“Evan’s father is in the diplomatic corps. He’s lived all over the world, Bodey,” Eve answered for her former lover. “How are your parents, Evan?”

“Dad passed away two years ago, heart attack. Mum remembers you well and would like to see you again if I can persuade you to come to San Francisco with me. Have you finished thinking about it?”

“A move like that requires much more thought than I’ve had time to give it,” Eve said evasively. “We’ll talk after the art walk. So sorry about your father.”

Let’s see, Bodey calculated. The married Hardy Courville wanted Eve as his mistress if he hadn’t mistaken what he observed upon arrival, or she could go to San Francisco with Evan and lead a glamorous life that probably did not include marriage or children either. He’d planned to do more courting, but now it seemed he needed to get a lick in sooner, put his own offer on the table before the art walk. That gave him five days to convince Eve to marry him. He could do it. Bodey walked with Evan to the SUV and gave the sculptor a friendly slap on the back. “I’ll be at the art walk, too, Evan, old man. I’ll be there with Eve.”