After Hours

So much for the aristocratic British accent, thought Marcia. Not to mention the British good manners. “How can you possibly have any idea what suits me—I could be a professor of Victorian literature for all you know. Are you always so rude to potential customers?”

But Quentin was frowning, struggling to anchor a memory. “I’ve seen you somewhere. I’m sure I have.”

“That’s one of the oldest lines in the book.”

“You cheapen both of us by that kind of remark.”

“Oh, pardon me,” she said. “In my experience, men—”

“I have seen you before.”

“You’re quite wrong—I’ve never met you.” Because I would have remembered you, thought Marcia, trying to calm down. For the blue of your eyes, if nothing else. The deepest blue I’ve ever seen. Deep enough to lose myself.

“What’s your name?”

She took a deep breath. Her imaginary portrait of Quentin Ramsey couldn’t have been more inaccurate. This was definitely no tweed-jacketed Englishman who painted pretty landscapes under the influence of a great master. This man was a rugged individualist if ever she’d met one. Rugged, indeed; he looked as though he’d be more at home with a chainsaw than a paintbrush. She said coolly, “Dr. Marcia Barnes.”

“What? You’re Lucy’s sister?”

He looked as shocked as though she’d just thrown a glass of wine in his face. She said, wondering why she should feel so angry, “We’re very different, Lucy and I.”

“No kidding. But that’s why I thought I’d met you—Lucy has a photo of you in her living room.” Fighting down a tumble of emotions that had an acute disappointment chief among them, Quentin said, ‘You’re the immunologist.’

“Yes.”

Glaring at her, he demanded, “Why haven’t you bothered visiting them since the baby was born?”

“I did! Last November.”

“Sure—you managed to stay for two whole hours on your way to a medical conference. I said visit.”

“It’s really none of your—”

“When a conference is more important to you than your own family, you’re in a bad way. Lucy’s told me about you. ‘Workaholic’ is one way to describe you.”

With studied charm Emily Harrington-Smythe said, “Quentin, may I borrow you for a few minutes? Mr. Brace has. a couple of questions for you before he purchases the largest of the acrylics” She directed a polite smile at Marcia. “If you’ll excuse us, please?”

“With pleasure,” Marcia said crisply.

Determined to have the last word, Quentin announced, “Your sister and brother-in-law are in the other room. If you can spare the time, that is.”

Seething, Marcia watched him cross the room and plunge into the crowd. His black hair was too long, curling at his nape, but at least those penetrating blue eyes were no longer pinning her to the wall. Just who did he think he was, daring to criticize her within moments of meeting her?

Deftly she secured a glass of wine at the bar. Lucy must have complained to him about that visit. It had been short, no question. But she’d just attended a conference on AIDS and had been on her way to another on immunodeficiency syndrome, and an afternoon had been all she could spare.

Even less anxious to meet her sister now, Marcia began to circle the room, turning her attention to the paintings. Within moments any thoughts of Lucy were banished from her mind. The works on this wall were all abstracts—some monochromatic, some boldly hued—and their emotional intensity tapped instantly into all the emptiness and confusion that she was beginning to realize she had been carrying around for quite a long time. The threat of losing her job had made them worse. But it hadn’t given birth to them.

Eventually she found herself in front of a work titled Composition Number 8, whose vibrant spirals of color pulled her into their very depths. Her throat closed with pain. She’d never experienced what the immediacy of those colors symbolized: the joy, the passion, the fervent commitment—moment by moment—to the business of being alive. Never. And now maybe it was too late. Panic-stricken, she thought, I can’t cry here. Not in a roomful of strangers.

I never cry.

“Are you all right?”

She would have known the voice anywhere. Trying to swallow the lump that was lodged tight against her voice box, Marcia muttered, “Go away.”

A tear was hanging on her lashes. The sight of it piercing him to the heart, Quentin said flatly, “I’m sorry I was so rude to you. You’re right. What’s between you and Lucy is none of my business.”

Orange, yellow, a flare of scarlet; the colors shimmered in Marcia’s gaze, swirling together like the glowing heart of a fire that would burn her to a crisp were she to approach it. With an incoherent exclamation Quentin seized her by the arm, urged her toward a door near the corner of the room and opened it, pushing her inside. He snapped the door shut and said, “Now you can cry your eyes out—no one will see you here.”

You will, she thought, and tugged her arm free. “I’m not crying. I never cry!”

“Then you must be allergic to paint. Your eyes are watering and your nose is running. Here.”

He was holding out an immaculate white handkerchief. Marcia said the first thing that came into her head. “You don’t look like the kind of man who’d go in for white handkerchiefs.”

If she’d been looking at him rather than at the handkerchief, she would have seen his eyes narrow. “What kind of man do I look like?”

Blinking back tears that she still didn’t want to acknowledge, Marcia glanced up. “When I was a little girl I used to play with paper dolls. You know the kind I mean? Cardboard cutouts that you put different outfits on with little paper tabs. Your suit looks like that—as though it’s been stuck on you. With no regard for the kind of man you are. You should be wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. Not a pure wool suit and a Gucci tie.”

“I’ll have you know I spent a small fortune on this suit.”

She said recklessly, “And begrudged every cent of it.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “How true!”

Marcia’s jaw dropped. His throat was strongly muscled and his teeth were perfect. Even his hair seemed to crackle with energy. This was the man who had created that painting—all those vivid colors suffused with a life force beyond her imagining. She took a step backward, suddenly more frightened than she’d been when the director had announced the cutbacks. More frightened than she could ever remember being. “The suit fits you perfectly,” she said lamely. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

It did fit him perfectly. But it still gave the impression of shoulder muscles straining at the seams, of a physique all the more impressive for being so impeccably garbed. She took another step back. “You’re not at all what I expected.”

“Nor were the paintings,” Quentin said shrewdly.

She didn’t want to talk about the paintings. She took a tissue and a mirror from her purse, dabbed her nose, checked her mascara and said, “We should go back—you’ll be missed.”

He wasn’t going to let her go that easily. “Why did that particular painting make you cry?”

Because it’s what I’ve been missing all my life. Because it filled me with a bitter regret. Because it was as though you knew me better than I know myself. She said aloud, fighting for composure, “If you and Lucy have talked about me, you know I’m a very private person. My reaction is my own affair. Not yours.”

Certainly Lucy had talked about Marcia. Not a lot, but enough for Quentin to realize that although Lucy loved her sister, she didn’t feel close to her. He had gained a picture of a woman utterly absorbed in her work to the exclusion of her family and of intimacy. A cold woman who would do the right thing out of principle, not out of love, refusing to involve herself in all the joys and tragedies of everyday life.

And this was the woman he’d been waiting to meet for the last ten years? Or—more accurately—the last twenty-five? His intuition was giving him that message. Loud and clear. But maybe it was wrong.

He’d made a mistake when he’d ignored his intuition to marry Helen. Could he be making another—if different—mistake now? Had he willed Marcia into existence just because of his own needs? Because he was lonely?

“Why are you staring at me like that?” Marcia said fretfully.

Quentin made an effort to pull himself together. “The woman Lucy described to me wasn’t the kind of woman who’d start to cry because some guy streaked paint on a piece of canvas.”

Marcia wasn’t sure what made her angrier—that Lucy had talked about her to Quentin or that his words were so accurate. “Oh, wasn’t she? What—?”