Lost & Found Love. Laura Browning

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СКАЧАТЬ as a bead of sweat ran down the outside of the glass. “You didn’t have to. Some people are very effective at getting a point across without saying anything at all. It’s there in your voice and your body language. Do you think I haven’t encountered reactions like yours before?”

      She didn’t want to be lumped in with other people. More than that, she didn’t want him to see how much he scared her. Tabby stuck her chin out. “Why would I have any reaction? I hardly know you.”

      He smiled, but beneath it, she glimpsed weariness and disillusionment. “Yet you do. Have a reaction, that is. Is it me personally or the fact that I’m a minister?”

      Tabby set her glass aside. She met his steady gaze squarely, though inside her stomach fluttered with nerves. “You’re very direct.”

      “Sometimes you have to be, and while I’m being direct, I’ll tell you that I’m attracted to you, Tabby, and I don’t think that attraction’s all one-sided.”

      Tabby shook her head, trying to convince herself with the same words she said to him. “No. But not in the way you mean. I’m an artist. I’d like to paint you. You—you have an air about you I would like to capture on canvas.”

      “It’s my halo.”

      Tabby gaped a moment, then burst out laughing. “I can’t believe you said that. Won’t you get struck by lightning or something?”

      “No more so than you for saying your only interest was in painting me.” He lifted one brow and grinned.

      She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times then said, “I don’t date ministers. I don’t do the whole church thing.”

      Joe gazed at her with his impossibly patient blue eyes. He tilted his head a little, and one dimple appeared when he lifted the corner of his mouth. “I’m not asking you to marry me, nor am I even asking you to ‘do the whole church thing’—though I wouldn’t kick you out if you showed up. Could we try neighbors, maybe even friends first?” When Tabby hesitated, he arched one thick golden brow. “I’ll let you paint me.”

      “Really?” Her eyes lit up. “Are you bribing me, Pastor?”

      His smile expanded. “Whatever works, and call me Joe or Joseph. You’ll have to add the bribery to my list of sins.”

      Tabby stood up. “Now?”

      “You want to get started right now?”

      “Yes. I’d like to get my sketchpad. It’s upstairs in my studio.”

      Tabby didn’t realize he’d followed until she turned from picking up the heavy sketchbook and the zippered bag that held her pencils. Joe’s eyes were riveted on the painting still sitting on the easel, a violent flaring of dark colors intermixed with flashes of vivid fiery lights and glimpses of tortured souls. Tabby pivoted and covered the painting with an oilcloth. When she faced him again, her chin jutted and her shoulders were stiff.

      Without looking at her, he said quietly, “It’s what you were painting the night I heard you….”

      If anything, her body stiffened even more. “Heard me what?”

      He looked at her. “Crying.”

      She turned away with a shrug of her shoulders. “It’s just a painting.”

      “It’s like being inside Dante’s Inferno.”

      She turned back and smiled at him challengingly. “Then let me paint an angel instead, and I have one more request.”

      “What’s that?”

      “I want to sketch you while you sing.”

      He blew his breath out with an embarrassed laugh. “Seriously? You slammed your window the last time.”

      “I want to hear you. We can do it here or at your house. You pick.”

      He looked around the cluttered room with its high ceiling and the gentle whirr of a ceiling fan. “Here’s fine. Where do you want me?”

      For an instant the words naked and in my bed came to mind. Heat flashed through her in what felt like an entire body blush. She needed some control.

      “Near the window. I want to see the light on your face. That way I can capture the cascade of sparkles from your halo.”

      Joe laughed and relaxed. He half sat on a stool near the window, while she perched at the far side of it on the window seat, her sketchbook open. She had drawn plenty of models in her life drawing classes, but this was different. What she was trying to do was different, and Tabby had no idea at all how, or if, it would work.

      As she watched, he closed his eyes for a moment and began in the clear tenor she remembered so well, and she found it was as enthralling as it had been the first time she heard it. Only now, watching him as well as hearing him, she felt warmed inside. He glowed, almost as if he did indeed have a halo. Somehow, Tabby knew that would make him laugh if she told him, but it was true. He was light and warmth, and he fascinated her.

      She sketched quickly, catching his face from different angles, and when she finished, she simply listened to the breathtaking pull of his voice. She knew the song he sang now, a song that never failed to touch her heart—”Thankful.”

      * * * *

      Joe finished the last note and focused on Tabby. She sat with her sketchbook closed and her face angled toward the window. “Tabby?” he questioned softly. “What is it?”

      “That was beautiful, Joseph,” she whispered. “You have no idea. And… And I can’t tell you.” She blinked as if trying to clear her head.

      With a sudden burst of energy, she stood up, took the dark painting from the easel, set it facing the wall with other canvases that had been similarly stacked so all that was visible were the backs of them, and replaced it with a fresh canvas. Joe watched, knowing that for the moment at least she had forgotten him. He kept quiet, curious as to what he would see, feeling somewhat like an eavesdropper. She began what looked like another sketch, only this time using a brush and thinned paint to lay out the basic composition.

      He looked at his watch, vaguely remembering Tabby mentioning dinner with Evan and Jenny Richardson, but she was so intent on what she did he hated to interrupt her. As she finished outlining her composition and sat back for a moment, he finally spoke, “Tabby, it’s a little after five. Aren’t you going to the Richardson’s house?”

      She started. He smiled at a concentration so intense she could forget he was there. If he were a more egotistical man, he might be offended, but strangely enough he understood her absorption. He experienced it in his singing and often in writing a sermon, and he was flattered she allowed him to share hers. She stared at him, and the intensity of those golden eyes changed to panic as she glanced down at the paint smearing her hands.

      “I—I have to get ready. I don’t even know where I’m going or how long it will take to get there.”

      “It’s okay. It’s a couple of streets over. No more than a five or ten minute walk. I can show you the way.”

      “Would you really?”

      “It СКАЧАТЬ