When Adam Came to Town. Kate Kelly

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СКАЧАТЬ pad from the desk where she’d flung it the day before and ripped out the first page without looking at it, tore it in half again and again. She tore out another useless sketch, scrunched it into a ball and jammed it into the wastepaper basket. Sentimental drivel. The lines in the drawings weren’t bold enough, they left too much room for interpretation. She wanted to excite people, stir them up—not give them something to snivel over.

      The miserable preliminary sketches she’d ripped to shreds were all she had to show for six months of anguish. She’d actually thought she was an artist...with a future. Hah! What she was—three more pages came loose in one pull—was a talentless nobody. A waitress in her family’s café.

      She tossed the pad on the desk and stared sightlessly out the window until a movement next door caught her eye. Adam Hunter strode into his backyard and started his tai chi routine. Yesterday, watching him go through his routine for the first time, she’d sat riveted for an entire half hour. She’d seen people do tai chi in the city parks, but the difference was like looking at a reproduction of a masterpiece and looking at the original. Adam was the real thing.

      Her fingers itched for a pencil as he slowly glided through a complicated set of movements, his body moving with the sinuous elegance of a dancer. Romeo sat only three feet away from him, but didn’t move. Interesting that a man, whose less-than-perfect nose suggested he’d been in a few fights, would choose to practice tai chi, not one of the more aggressive disciplines.

      Not able to stop herself, she grabbed her book and started sketching. She’d thought she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him the past two days because of what she had remembered of her father’s relationship with his grandmother, but maybe it was because she needed to draw him. Heaven knows he had an interesting face, but drawing his body in motion, the combination of the brute strength of his huge, well-muscled body tempered with grace...

      She chucked the book on the table and paced the large, open room. She needed to sculpt him in clay, a medium she’d been playing with before The Great Demise. She’d make a small sculpture, no bigger than twelve inches—any larger, and it would be overwhelming. And it would be best if she could get him to pose in the nude. She stopped, laughed out loud. Like that would happen. Her father and brothers would probably take him for a long boat ride and not bring him back.

      Still. She took another turn around the attic room. She’d start slow, ask him if he’d sit for her. Then maybe work her way up to no shirt, get him down to his boxers or whatever he wore for underwear. Her breath hitched in her throat. She felt almost giddy, ramped up like...

      What was she doing? Sylvie looked at the sketch where it lay on the desk. Hideous. A three-year-old could do a better job. Adam didn’t look graceful or sensual in the sketch. The proportions were all there, but the excitement he incited was missing. The magic. She’d lost her touch, and she didn’t need Adonis next door reminding her of that fact.

      Sylvie ripped the sketch out of the book and crammed it into the wastebasket. Disgusted with herself, she pulled the window shade down and stalked out of the room. It was time to admit her life had completely crapped out. Sooner or later, she would have to tell her family that she wasn’t moving back to Toronto until...well, she didn’t know. Until her father was better, and they could finally talk about her mother. Until whatever had blocked her was dislodged. Until Sylvie Carson finally knew who she wanted to be when she grew up.

      * * *

      ADAM STOOD LOOSE, but alert, as he transitioned from his meditative state back to the world around him. He’d grown addicted to seeing the world in bright detail while feeling a deep sense of peace inside. Never in a million years would he have imagined he’d end up getting into meditation and tai chi. As always, he gave thanks to Jake McCoy, the man who’d given him the tools to manage his anger. He took a final deep breath and turned to track Sylvie over the four-foot cedar-slab fence that separated their yards.

      He knew she’d watched him the past two mornings, and he was curious to hear what she thought about his morning practice. He’d have done his exercises inside if there was room, but his little house was divided into three small rooms downstairs and three upstairs. None were big enough for him to perform his daily exercise routine.

      Not that he was ashamed of practicing tai chi, but he suspected the male stereotype still reigned supreme in a village like Collina, where most of the men made a hard living at sea. He wanted to fit in, not alienate people.

      Wearing clingy, black pants that came to just below her knees, and a formfitting, long-sleeved T-shirt the color of a plum, Sylvie sauntered into the back corner of her yard. When she crouched down and cooed, a white cat materialized out of the shrubs. Adam put his hand down by his side and rotated it, signing Romeo to his side. Sylvie alone was trouble, but put her together with a cat, and he and Rom could both be in trouble.

      Against his better judgment, he drifted closer to the fence. He knew he should leave well enough alone. On the other hand, people would start asking questions if he holed up in his house and didn’t talk to anyone.

      He cleared his throat when she didn’t look in his direction. “It feels like rain,” he said. Brilliant, yet original. Hard to top that.

      Sylvie obviously thought otherwise. He heard her sigh as she scooped the cat into her arms and turned to face him. The smile she offered looked like the leftovers that usually resided at the back of his refrigerator. Bland, wilted and dried up around the edges. Guess she wasn’t thrilled about acquiring a new neighbor. Or maybe it was having him as a neighbor. He was aware he looked like he belonged in a dark alley on the wrong side of town rather than in a quaint coastal village.

      She glanced at the sky as if just noticing the day. “Probably. This is Moonbeam.” She held the cat up in front of her. The white puffball’s eyes were as blue as her mistress’s. “I kept her in yesterday so Romeo could get used to his surroundings, but she was getting twitchy, so I let her out earlier. She’s used to coming and going as she pleases. Is he okay with cats?” She nodded at Romeo, who was straining to sniff the cat through the slats of the fence.

      Adam leaned against the fence, catching a whiff of peaches. “I don’t know. This is a first for us. What do you think, Rom? Are you going to be nice to Moonbeam?”

      Romeo lay down on his belly, which, according to the books Adam had read, was a supplicant position. Yes, sir, that was his dog, ready to let a little kitty-cat walk all over him. The cat sprang out of Sylvie’s arms and onto the top of the fence. With a graceful leap, she landed on the ground in front of Romeo and swiped at his nose. Having delivered her message, she sat back, looking pleased with herself as she started to lick her paw.

      “Moonbeam!” Sylvie glared at her cat. “I had no idea she was going to attack him. Sorry, Romeo.”

      Romeo cringed away from them, whimpering, his nose buried under his paws. The old boy was going to have to toughen up if he was going to survive in this neighborhood. Adam patted the dog and stood. “I’m going to reinforce the fence so Rom can spend most of the day out here. I can’t keep him inside with all the dust from the renos. They’ll have to work things out for themselves, I guess.”

      Adam studied Sylvie’s face as she stepped back from the fence. She had dark circles under her eyes and her beautiful mouth was turned down at the corners. When he’d first arrived she’d been so full of herself, she’d practically glowed. But this morning she looked preoccupied and kind of sad.

      “For now, I’ll try to keep Moonbeam inside during the day as much as I can and let her out at night to roam. Will that work?” she asked.

      “Sure, but sooner or later they’re going to have to make some kind of peace.” СКАЧАТЬ