The Convent Rose (The Roses) (7 page)

“Sorry, that wasn’t intentional. I think Roger pinched me.”

Eve laughed hard into his chest and said, “No problem.” When she caught her breath, she did suggest he pick up his painting and head home. She needed to douse the fireworks Bodey Landrum had kindled in her own nether parts alone.

“I think the wild and wooly world of art is too much for you, cowboy.”

“No way. I need something to do in my retirement. I might as well take up paintin’. What do you charge to teach?”

“I have a group class Monday mornings at my studio, two hours for twenty dollars. But, fair warning, there isn’t a woman in the class under fifty, and they can get kind of raunchy at times. They may ask you to pose for them.”

“I’d be wantin’ private lessons, then.”

“That would be forty dollars, and we’ll have to work out a time if you sincerely want to try and this isn’t some kind of cheap come-on.”

“I wouldn’t say cheap—with the cost of paint and all. Of course, I’d be willin’ to model for you. I’m not as pretty as I used to be. I do have some scars, though I don’t know if you’d say they were interestin’. Broke my nose twice.”

Eve looked closely at his face as they passed under a streetlight. “You must have a good surgeon. I really can’t tell.”

“Let’s just say, it used to be prettier, and I’m told I snore kind of loud.”

“Thanks for the information.”

They turned in at the Café where many of the walkers had chosen to rest with a cup of coffee and a slice of pecan pie or a slab of bread pudding in front of them. Eve found a notepad, sat down, and began writing.

“What’s that?” Bodey asked.

“A basic supply list and the names of several stores in Lafayette likely to carry the items. Are you an early riser?

“I can be.”

“I could take you at eight on Tuesdays before my other private student and my class at the Academy.”

“Darlin’, that’s two days away. Can’t we start tonight?”

“You don’t have your supplies.”

“Between the two of us, I think we’d be well supplied.”

“Go home, Bodey.” Eve folded the list, tucked it in his coat pocket, removed his purchased landscape from the wall, and handed it to him.

Bodey gave her the sack containing the candlesticks. “Consider these a gift.”

“Accepted. I love Stella’s work. I’ll see you Tuesday. Be ready to paint.”

She walked him to the door, so intent on moving him out that they collided with two tall men coming in. One wore a well-cut business suit with a red tie and western accessories. The other dressed entirely in black.

“Just the gal I was looking for.” The businessman with the lizard-skin boots and Stetson gave Eve a great big hug.

Bodey kept an eye on the man’s hands, making sure they weren’t feeling Eve up for underwear. He was fairly sure she wasn’t wearing a bra from the clench at the fireworks, but the large man’s greeting stayed brief. No need to defend Eve’s honor yet.

Evidently someone who knew her well, the guy charged right into the conversation. “Eve is the mastermind of this event, Evan. I especially like the way you put Ulie Boudreaux, the wildlife carver, in front of the bait, tackle, and gun shop. Having the fireworks brought out the families. Nice touch having a place the kids could play with clay.”

“Those last two ideas belong to Stella and June. It was a group effort.”

“Whatever you say, but I know the truth.” He wagged a thick finger covered to the knuckle with a gold nugget ring at Eve. “Let me introduce you to Evan Adams, the artist who is going to do an installment in front of my new office building in Lafayette. It’s called
Progress
. Saw the piece in San Francisco and asked him to bring it out here. Might make it permanent since this sculpture really said ‘Courville Construction Company’ to me.”

The man in artist’s black said, “That’s an installation, Hardy, and Eve and I…”

“Have met,” Eve said faintly.

Evan took the tips of Eve’s slim, white hands and kissed the air just above her short, unpolished fingernails. He rose slowly out of the bow, never taking his dark, liquid eyes off of hers. “I always knew we’d meet again, some time, some place.”

Damn! Now why hadn’t he thought of that line instead of flirting with her like any old waitress? Bodey could have kicked himself. The man had a good four inches on him, a mane of dark hair like an untamed stallion, tight black pants, a black silk turtleneck, and ebony Italian loafers. If Bodey hadn’t known his history, he would have assumed Evan Adams was just another artistic pansy, which in this case would have been good news. Bodey stepped closer to Eve and, shifting his painting to the other arm, embraced her shoulders. She looked like she might faint, and he didn’t want her hitting the floor in front of all these folks, especially in that short skirt.

The other man in western wear greeted Bodey. “Hardy Courville. My friends call me Red. Rainbow is one of my development projects. I fixed up these old cypress shacks, replaced all the rotting gingerbread, and gave them some landscaping thinking people would love to move out of the city to a quaint town like this. Besides, one of my sisters renovated the old family place down the road for a bed and breakfast and reception center, and who wants to drive by a depressing row of shanties on their way to a wedding? Couldn’t sell a one until Eve suggested I could rent or sell them to artists for a modest profit. Hell, it was better than no profit at all. And you are?”

Red held out his beefy hand, then dropped it. He tipped his business Stetson back on his head, rocked in his lizard-skin boots, and said, “Why damn, you’re Bodey Landrum, five times World Champion Bull Rider and four times All-around Cowboy. Pleasure to meet you!”

Bodey had to release Eve to meet Red’s firm and enthusiastic shake. “You follow rodeo, Mr. Courville?”

“I do. Love it almost as much as the LSU Tigers. When a rodeo comes to town, there is always a Courville Construction Company banner hanging on the railings.”

“The Rodeo Association appreciates that, sir.”

“Evan and I were just about to get some coffee or a drink. You and Eve come join us.”

Hardy Courville swept them on a giant wave of hospitality toward an unoccupied table with Ja’nae Plato being drawn along behind bearing menus. Making it clear he was paying for everyone, Hardy ordered a scotch on the rocks and a large order of onion rings. Bodey settled on a beer. Eve requested herbal tea. The sculptor of
Progress
asked if espresso was available and sighed when one of the Rainbow’s older waitresses brought two pots of Community Coffee and asked if he wanted “Leaded or unleaded.”

Evan did accept one of the giant onion rings fried in a batter so light and flaky it tasted heavenly to anyone not on cholesterol-lowering drugs, but only because Hardy urged it on him. Bodey thought the artist ate the appetizer as if it were a giant slug, but then he had Evan figured as a snail eater. Eve passed entirely on the onions, letting Red and Bodey finish them off.

While Red monopolized his attention with rodeo and home renovation talk, Bodey tried to keep an ear out for Evan and Eve’s low-toned conversation. The good news was that Evan had come in Red’s car and stayed at the Courville house in Lafayette. They had to leave together. When that moment came, Bodey shook the artist’s soft hand a little harder than necessary and insincerely told the man what a pleasure it had been to meet him. He had no choice but to watch as Evan clasped Eve’s hand with both of his and promised they would “get together soon.”

No way in hell would Bodey let that happen.

Chapter Three

Sunday afternoon, Eve turned down an invitation to go riding with Bodey. She said she had to work on a large landscape for the lobby of Red Courville’s new building. Bodey guessed he believed her. He drove past her place both Sunday and Monday nights late and saw only Eve’s old white Toyota parked out front. The rest of his time, he spent getting some of the ranch’s furniture out of storage and setting up a new computer on Big Ben’s mahogany desk. He researched the bloodlines of some cows he wanted to purchase and breed to the meanest fuckers that ever threw him.

Monday afternoon, he made a special trip to Hobby Lobby to get his art supplies. Looking as out of place as a cowboy in a luxury spa, he wandered among the stretched canvases and a hundred of varieties of paints and brushes, clutching his list and completely lost. Two cute college girls a little too young for him and a grandmother, who said he had the most beautiful blue eyes, helped him with the search. All three gave him phone numbers in case he needed more advice.

Tuesday morning, Bodey got up early, shaved, and put on old jeans and a T-shirt with holes in it because he imagined painting as a messy business, and he would decline to wear a smock and a beret. On the way to Eve’s studio, he stopped at the café for a dozen hot biscuits, then walked over to Unc Knobby’s store for a quart of fresh honey sealed in a mason jar.

Unc Knobby, thin, stooped, his yellow skin spotted with age, bent Bodey’s ear about the hideous art his grandnephew Altimus Plato had shown in his shop—pictures of pimps and prostitutes and people shooting up.

The proprietor of the small grocery ran a hand over his bald pate and shook his head. “I says to him, dis is a holy town. What you showin’ dat trash fo’, and he says to me white folk like to buy from po’ boys who grew up in da projects. I says, ‘Altimus, you grew up here on Main Street,’ and he says back, ‘Whatever sells, Unc Knobby.’ Disgustin’. You want to take a pound of butter wit’ dat honey?”

“Sure.” Bodey managed to escape Rainbow Liquor and Food while his biscuits were still warm.

With his art supplies in their big Hobby Lobby bag along with the sales receipt on one arm and the box of biscuits and grocery sack of honey and butter on the other, Bodey arrived at Eve’s place and elbowed himself into the studio. Eve looked up from her position on the floor where she executed stretches on an exercise mat. His heart beat a little harder as she arched over long legs clad in slim yoga pants and her cropped top rode up showing a bare midriff. She posed in front of a huge canvas showing an enormous live oak thrusting up from the soil. Between its branches, a landscape full of small figures faded away toward infinity.

“Right on time,” she told him. “I’ve been up since dawn working on the commission. After a few hours, I get knotted up and take a break to stretch.”

“Another thing we have in common. I used to do stretches before I rode. Saved me from a lot of pulls and sprains, I think. Didn’t do diddly for broken bones though. You have breakfast? We can eat these while they’re hot, then stretch out on the floor together if you want.”

“I’m all finished stretching for the morning. I think I had a glass of orange juice around seven. Yummm, Rainbow Café biscuits and fresh honey. This isn’t going to keep the over-thirty flab away.” She took two. “There’s coffee in the carafe on the counter by the sink.”

Bodey filled a mug and watched Eve neatly break her biscuits and slather them with butter and honey using a clean, plastic palette knife. She bit in with her eyes closed and licked a dribble of honey off her chin as if she wanted to savor every lard-laden crumb. Ethereal, my ass, thought Bodey. He figured Eve had wells of untapped sensuality. As part owner in an oil enterprise, he knew where he wanted to drill.

He left his coffee and crossed the room to place his hands on the naked flesh between the cropped top and the drawstring pants. Bodey licked the crumbs off her lips and tasted the honey in her mouth. He ran his hands under a soft sports bra and felt her nipples harden. Though her hands came up, she didn’t push him away. This was going so well, they could be doing it on that exercise mat in the next few minutes. He’d release her hair from that tight braid, part it with his fingers, and…”

“Eve, you in there? I need to take my lesson early today. I have an appointment with my hairdresser at ten.” Renee Niles, or whatever she called herself now, pushed into the studio. Bodey didn’t recall her hair being quite so red, or her eyes that strong bright green, or her boobs swelling that large, but she looked even better than old memories recollected.

“Sorry I interrupted,” Renee said with a smile showing all her teeth between bronzed lips.

Eve burrowed into an oversized T-shirt splotched with paint. The back of her neck turned red. “No problem. Bodey is here to paint, too,” Eve mumbled as her head emerged.

“I can see that. Remember me, Bodey?”

“You are unforgettable, Renee.”

“I’d like to think so. Where can I set up, Eve?”

“Ah, over there. Bodey, do you have your canvas board? Set it over here.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I’ve also got a hard-on stiff as a board, Bodey thought as he rummaged in the Hobby Lobby bag and laid out his paints and brushes.

“Good. Did you bring a picture you want to paint? Let’s clip it up here in the corner. Why don’t you sketch it on your board while I check Renee’s project.”

Renee’s project, Bodey could see, was an anatomical study of a well-built black man’s back and buttocks. Lots of deep purple lines denoting hollows in the muscles dominated the dark brown study done on a real canvas, not this board thing he figured beginners used. She worked with oils like the Old Masters. That defined Renee—experienced at everything.

Eve suggested Renee pop out the purple with some cad yellow contrasts. Bodey watched almost embarrassed as the women ogled the black dude’s picture, though Eve’s interest appeared solely professional. He scratched his pencil across the canvas board in an attempt to draw a bucking bull with the rider on its back using perfect form. He used one of his championship photos and hoped Eve would notice.

“Okay, Bodey. Put a good-sized dab of each color on your palette arranged like this color wheel and a big gob of white. Now try to rough in the background. If you go over your sketch a little, it doesn’t matter. Acrylics dry fast. You can paint it in again. I’m going to work on my painting while you do that. Holler if you need help.”

“Aren’t you going to show me how to hold the brush?”

“Whatever works for you, Bodey.”