Tall, Dark And Difficult. Patricia Coughlin

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      The transaction complete, Rose handed him the bag, resisting the urge to tell him to take good care of it.

      “I’ll be in touch,” she said. “About your party,” she added when he gave her a puzzled look.

      “Oh. Well, we’ll talk about that. In the meantime, there is something else I’d like to ask you.”

      A date? Rose braced herself, not sure how she felt about that. It was one thing to be neighborly, another thing entirely to risk thinking of him as anything other than Devora’s nephew.

      “Shoot,” she invited.

      “Devora collected some kind of birds. Glass birds, I think, but I’m not quite—”

      He broke off, his expression visibly relieved, when she started to nod.

      So he wasn’t going to ask her out, thought Rose, telling herself she wasn’t disappointed.

      “Devora collected works by Boris Aureolis, specifically his first nature series. They’re not glass, though I can see how you might think so. They have such a wonderful clarity. They’re actually hard-paste porcelain from the mid-eighteenth century. Aureolis started out as a colorist for Meissen, but ended up a major creative force. He worked with an alchemist to develop the special glaze that distinguishes his work.”

      “That’s fascinating,” he said, looking anything but fascinated. “Do you happen to have any in stock?”

      He scowled when she laughed and shook her head.

      “Heavens, no. Aureolis is too rich for my blood.”

      He gave a small grunt. “Really? Just how rich are we talking?”

      She nibbled her bottom lip thoughtfully. “I’m no authority, you understand, but they do turn up at auction once in a while, and I was always keeping an eye open for Devora. If I remember correctly, she was missing only four of the series of twenty-five.”

      “Three.”

      “Three?” She nodded. “That’s right. She snagged the falcon from The Snooty Fox in Burlington.”

      “Did she mention what she paid?”

      “Probably, but my head is always so full of prices, it’s hard to remember exactly.” She fiddled absently with the sliver of a gold moon that hung on a slender chain around her neck, stopping when she noticed his attention lingering there. Again. “It seems to me it was in the neighborhood of four…maybe high threes.”

      “Hundred?”

      “Thousand.”

      “Figures,” he muttered, then added, “Devora always did have expensive taste.”

      “Are you thinking of selling the collection?”

      “Actually, I’m looking to complete it.”

      Rose’s heart melted a little around the edges. “What a sweet, thoughtful thing to do. Oh, Devora would be so pleased.”

      “Trust me, it’s not thoughtful. It’s not even my idea,” he insisted, looking uncomfortable with the approval she was beaming his way. “It’s what Devora wanted. Her last request, you might say. She wants the completed collection donated to the Audubon Society.”

      “She always talked about doing that someday. It was her dream. And it’s also something a lot of people wouldn’t understand, or else would simply write off as the crazy whim of an old lady. No wonder she adored you.”

      He looked horrified by her praise. “You’ve got it all wrong. I don’t understand anything. I certainly don’t understand why anyone would spend their time and money chasing after some old glass…excuse me, porcelain birds, just to give them away. I think it’s the single wackiest, most senseless thing I ever heard of.”

      “Maybe so,” she allowed with an easy smile. “And yet you’re willing to do it, anyway. Sorry, Griffin, that makes you some kind of hero in my book.”

      “I am not willing,” he snapped.

      “Then why are you here?”

      “Because…” He stopped and clenched his teeth. “Because I have no damn choice.”

      “I understand…really. And believe me, that kind of devotion is rare.” Her smile gentled as she reached out and patted the hand with which he was gripping the cane. “Sometimes it takes a personal setback to make us more sensitive to the hearts of others.”

      “Sensitive?” His tone was edgy, and a flush darkened his lean face. She could feel the tension in his hand and drew hers back.

      “Is that what you think I am?” he demanded, growling now. “Sensitive?”

      Oh, yes, most definitely a growl. You’d have thought she’d called him a sissy. Of course, in his testosterone-pickled view of reality, she just may have. It was silly, really, when all she had been trying to do was build on the one thing they had in common—a love for Devora. And why? To ease his damn loneliness, that’s why. After all, it wasn’t as if she was the one out hunting for friends. Well, she’d done her part…and after he’d had the gall to refer to her garland as this thing.

      Standing in the pinpoint of his fierce glare, her initial impression of him returned. Conventional wisdom was wrong, she thought. Sometimes you really could judge a book by its cover. She’d have let loose and told him what she really thought of him—but why go out of her way to cheer him up?

      She shrugged. “Look, Griffin, I didn’t mean—”

      He cut her off. “Good. Because if there is one thing I am not, and never will be, it’s sensitive. Got it?”

      “With a vengeance,” she shot back.

      “Good.”

      That said, he clamped the bag containing her fragile masterpiece under his arm and stalked out.

      Chapter Three

      Two hundred and sixty-seven dollars. And fifty cents.

      Griff couldn’t decide who was crazier, Rose Davenport for thinking anyone would pay that kind of money for a string of dead flowers, or him for paying it.

      Him, he realized with disgust. No doubt about it. She, on the other hand, deserved the P. T. Barnum award for taking him.

      He made his way down Main Street, oblivious to the tourists and the historic houses built shoulder to shoulder along brick sidewalks made uneven by time and weather and gnarled tree roots. He was preoccupied with trying to figure out how it had happened. He’d walked into the shop prepared to deal with a sweet and slightly sappy little old lady, and had emerged with his pocket picked. Not to mention his dented pride and the exasperating fact that he was not one damn step closer to doing what he had gone there to do.

      Hell, if he’d felt compelled to buy something, why couldn’t he have grabbed that beat-up watering can, СКАЧАТЬ