Where Dreams Begin (28 page)

Joyce frowned slightly as she studied her friend’s faint smile. “If everything’s going so well, where’s that sappy grin you usually wear after a date with Luke?”

Catherine shrugged off the surprisingly insightful observation. “I had another great time with him, but I must have eaten a bad strawberry, because I threw up all morning. I’m just not up to full speed yet. That’s all.”

Joyce’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You were sick this morning? I’m the one who wants a family, and I swear if you’ve gotten pregnant without even trying, I’m going to leap off my roof!”

That Joyce had immediately zeroed in on such a dire possibility brought incriminating tears to Catherine’s eyes. She quickly blinked them away. “You live in a one-story house, so you’d probably just break your ankles. Let’s not jump to any other ridiculous conclusions, either.

“Luke is an incredible lover, athletic, graceful, and endlessly inventive in his approach. He simply wears me out, but I refuse to believe that I’m pregnant.”

Joyce sat forward. “Let’s go buy one of those home pregnancy test kits.”

“It’s much too soon for that,” Catherine insisted, too great a coward to chance learning the truth that day. “Now, when are you seeing Shane again?”

Joyce opened her mouth to argue, then apparently thought better of it and sat back. “He has a job in Burbank on Tuesday, and we’re meeting for lunch. I don’t ever want to go back to Oxnard, so it’s a good thing Shane’s down here fairly often.”

“Oxnard’s his home. You’ll have to go there eventually.”

Now it was Joyce’s turn to shift uncomfortably in her chair. “I suppose, but I’m going to put it off just as long as I possibly can.”

Catherine could easily understand that sentiment, but she thought Joyce could probably avoid going to Oxnard longer than she could withhold the truth from Luke.

Sunday night, Catherine was outside savoring the twilight when the telephone rang. Certain it was Luke, she dashed to answer before the machine caught the call.

“I knew it was you,” she greeted him breathlessly.

“Am I that predictable?”

“No, not at all, and after seeing you dance, no one would accuse you of it.”

He chuckled along with her but then added a caution. “Whatever talent I might have as a dancer really does have to be our secret.”

“Well, when no one knows we’re seeing each other, why would they care what we do?” She held her breath. She’d thought he’d missed her and wanted to hear her voice, but perhaps he was simply concerned with maintaining his extremely proper image.

He was quiet a moment too long. “I don’t even want to go there. I just called to say I was thinking of you.”

“Thank you.” She’d been thinking of him too. “You needn’t worry, Luke. All your secrets are safe with me.” As were her own, she didn’t dare add.

Monday morning, Catherine reached over to shut off her alarm, and then sat up slowly. She took a deep breath and released it gradually; then, having suffered no ill effects, she risked swinging her legs off the bed to stand. She waited a moment, but still felt fine and went on into the bathroom.

Despite having gone to bed early, she still looked a little tired, but her skin no longer held a peculiar olive tinge. She leaned closer to the mirror and blinked. “It was a bad strawberry after all,” she concluded, but the words were easier said than believed.

Expecting to spend the day buying paint and working at Toby’s house, she dressed in jeans, an aqua T-shirt with a purple cat across the front, and tennis shoes. She remembered to take a hat, but when she arrived at Lost Angel, the mural project had already progressed further than she could have imagined.

Over the weekend, Toby and Dave had erected a scaffold and begun to trace the outer borders of a grid on the Victorian. She walked across the street to join them. Rafael and a dozen other kids were seated along the porch, eager to begin painting, while Nick did skateboard tricks on the sidewalk.

“You’ll all need clothes to paint in,” Catherine suggested. “Let’s have Pam unlock the clothes lockers so that you can find something to work in while I go and buy the paint.”

Rafael rose and took a step toward her. “It’ll be a real pleasure to get paint on some of the awful rags people donate. In fact, it would only be an improvement.”

“Hey, when we’re finished, maybe we can sell the stuff as Jackson Pollock’s old clothes,” Tina Stassy urged.

“That would be fraud, Tina,” Catherine warned. “Let’s just concentrate on painting the mural.”

“You’re all business, aren’t you?” Toby observed.

Catherine shot him a dark glance rather than reply.

He had his hair pulled back in a ponytail, but he was clad in jeans and a T-shirt which left his colorfully tattooed arms on full display. “Let’s take my truck,” he said. “We’ll need tarps, scrapers, sandpaper, brushes, rollers, masking tape, gloves, buckets to mix the paint in. It won’t all fit in your Volvo.”

“What makes you think I drive a Volvo?” Catherine asked.

“You just drove into the center parking lot,” Toby pointed out. “I’m an artist and observant. Now you take that convertible cruising by now. Someone’s spent a lot of time and money to restore that ’50’s Ford. I noticed them driving by several times over the weekend, and they’re up to no good.”

Catherine turned to watch the dark green car roll by. It had been lowered to suit the owner’s definition of cool. The cream-colored top was up and obscured her view of the occupants, but she thought Toby was probably right about their motives.

“Dave, what kind of car does Ford Dolan drive?” she asked.

Dave had been trimming the scraggly bushes at the front of the house to clear the way to paint. “He has a battered old truck. What made you think of him?”

“Just the mention of a Ford, I guess.”

While she was relieved Ford Dolan didn’t own the convertible, Toby’s slow, sexy smile convinced her she didn’t want to ride anywhere with him, either. Her own shopping list was tucked in her pocket, but his sounded more complete than hers.

She cleared her throat nervously. “We’ll be buying a lot. Maybe we should take two cars.”

Toby looked surprised but finally nodded. “Okay, if that’s what you want. Let me get you the address of the place where I’ve been buying my paint. I talked to the manager on Saturday, and he’s giving us a good price in exchange for allowing him to post a sign advertising his store.”

“Really? And just how large is this sign?” Catherine inquired.

Toby gestured. “Not big. It’s about the size of a realtor’s for sale sign. Let’s just call the paint store our first corporate sponsor and hope to attract others.”

“Sounds good to me.” Dave looked up from his work and winked. “Lost Angel sure needs the money.”

“I know it does,” Catherine answered, “but that doesn’t mean we ought to have product endorsements all over Toby’s lawn. They’ll only distract from the beauty of the mural.”

“You are so damn cute,” Toby said. “Do you ever stop worrying long enough to have fun?”

“I saw her first!” Dave shouted. “When she’s ready for fun, I’m her man.”

The kids found that exchange hilarious, but Catherine certainly didn’t. She’d been sure Pam would have told Dave that she and Luke were dating, but apparently, Dave hadn’t a clue. It was even more disappointing that Luke hadn’t confided in Dave. She looked down at the patchy lawn to focus her thoughts and then up at the ornately decorated Victorian home.

“I expect painting the mural to be lots of fun,” she interjected, “but we need to buy the supplies. Now where’s that store, Toby?”

“Hang on, sweetheart, it’s only a couple of blocks away. I’ll give you the address.”

She wasn’t his sweetheart and never would be, but she bit her tongue rather than provide another belly laugh for the teens.

Luke forced himself to concentrate on the center’s budget until well past eleven o’clock, but he couldn’t put off seeing Catherine a minute longer. He crossed the street to Toby’s house, then had to mask his disappointment when Dave reported that she’d gone shopping with Toby.

“They should be back any minute,” Dave explained. He wiped his forehead on his sleeve and then gestured with his clippers. “I hope you don’t mind if I split my time between here and the center. I’m sure I can get everything done, and we really ought to dress up the yard here to frame our mural.”

Luke jammed his hands in his hip pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Go ahead and help out all you can here. If you’re needed at the center, we’ll know where to find you. Besides, Mrs. Brooks will probably appreciate your help with supervision.”

The kids were back at Lost Angel searching the clothes lockers, so Dave and Luke had the front yard to themselves, but Dave still took the precaution of lowering his voice. “I’ll do all I can to help Cathy, and I’m sure you know how I’d like to be repaid.”

Luke instantly grasped Dave’s meaning, and he had to swallow hard to find his voice. “It would be better to keep your relationship strictly professional,” he advised.

Dave responded with a derisive snort. “That will be a challenge with Toby drooling all over Cathy.”

Luke had already known he’d have to keep an eye on Toby. “I’ll have the contract ready for his signature this afternoon, and I’ll speak to him then. I don’t want anyone spoiling the mural project for Mrs. Brooks, least of all him.”

“Yeah, I understand what you mean, but I really like Cathy, and I think she likes me too. I’m getting myself together, and I’ll go back out into the real world soon. The economy may have changed, but I can still be a success, and Cathy provides a hell of an incentive. I just don’t need any competition from a guy who looks like a rock star.”

Luke couldn’t encourage Dave in what he sincerely hoped was a losing proposition. Neither could he admit how close he and Catherine had become when Dave would angrily demand to know what his intentions were.

Unfortunately, intentions required a belief in the future, and Luke had lost all hope for anything more than what he could see or touch in a single day. That meant he had no intentions other than to make love to Catherine as often as he possibly could. That dark realization forced him into a bitter silence, and all he could offer Dave was a perfunctory nod.

Chapter Fourteen

Luke was seated on the Victorian’s porch when Catherine drove up and parked on the adjacent side street. As he and Dave approached her Volvo, Dave was grinning happily, but Luke wore a preoccupied frown. By the time she’d left her car to open the rear door, however, his expression had cleared.

Her initial glimpse of him had signaled something was amiss, but she hoped it had absolutely nothing to do with her and greeted both men with a smile. “Toby had already calculated how much paint we needed. I was very careful about what we bought. Rather than have custom colors mixed, we’re going to do it ourselves. That way we can return any unopened cans of paint.”

“You needn’t worry so much about the cost,” Luke assured her. “The mural itself will generate new donations.”

Catherine leaned close to whisper, “If not the expense, then what is worrying you?”

With a quick warning frown, Luke shook off her question before Dave took note of their exchange.

Dave had already pulled the canvas tarps out of the Volvo and hefted them over his shoulder. “You want these on the porch?”

“Toby wants to store everything in his garage for the time being,” Catherine directed.

Before the three of them had rounded the house, Toby drove his Chevy truck into the driveway. He jumped out of the cab and swung open the garage doors. He had been working on a giant cat sculpted from scrap metal and the head loomed eight feet above them.

“I love it!” Catherine cried. “Do you find many buyers for such heroic cats?”

“You’d be surprised by how many people want them. Let’s stack the paint cans and supplies along the wall, and the kids can tote them out front when they’re needed.”

When they’d finished unloading the Chevy, Toby yanked over a battered wooden stool and sat down to speak with Luke. “Do you have any objection to Rafael mixing the colors? He has the best eye for subtle shadings I’ve ever seen.”

“He’s the artist,” Luke replied, “but I doubt he knows much about mixing paint.”

“Fortunately, I do. Once Rafael sketches in the figures, I’ll block out the whole mural as though it were a paint-by-numbers kit.”

As Luke listened to Toby describe the steps he intended to take, his gaze followed Catherine as she circled the whimsical feline. Her whole expression glowed with delight, but that she might also admire the cat’s flamboyant creator increased Luke’s dislike for the artist tenfold.

“It sounds as though you have a good game plan,” Luke said, eagerly edging toward the door, “but I want your name on our contract before the work begins. I’ll bring it over as soon as it arrives by messenger.”

After Luke returned to Lost Angel, Catherine was left to contend with Toby and Dave, who were eyeing her much too appreciatively. She made a mental note to wear a less formfitting T-shirt the next day. The men helped her organize the painting supplies in the order they would be used, but if there were a chance to slide a hand across her shoulder, or brush close with their whole bodies, each made the most of it. At another time, she might have thought their antics amusing, but she was far too tense to be more than deeply irritated that day.

She was relieved when she checked her watch. “It’s time for lunch, and I want to make certain the kids have the clothes they’ll need. I’ll see you later, Toby.”

“I doubt there will be much to do today,” the sculptor complained, then his expression softened. “You come on back anyway, and I promise to keep you entertained.”

Dave laughed at Toby’s suggestive invitation. “She’ll never be that desperate for entertainment. Come on, Cathy, I’ll walk you back to Lost Angel.”

She debated a quick moment, then left her car parked beside the Victorian. “It’s another beautiful day,” she exclaimed as she and Dave crossed the street with the light. She hoped if she always kept their conversation focused on the mural or Lost Angel, he would eventually perceive her lack of interest.