Easy Loving

A grin tugged Catherine’s lips. “I forgot. You’re a cynic. Never mind.”

“Does this have to do with that car salesman you’re dating?”

“He’s a real-estate broker, and yes.” She fixed her gaze on the ring box and sighed. “He asked me to marry him.”

“Cars, real estate, it’s all the same. Forget it.”

“He gave me a ring. You ought to see it, it’s beautiful. A sapphire.”

“Keep the jewelry, dump the man. I need your full attention right now, sweetie.”

“Lots of artists are married. In fact, all the ones I know are. So are the writers and the editors and the art directors.” Catherine laughed. “Considering that my work is for children, don’t you think having a few of my own would be a plus?”

Margaret groaned loudly. “Babies and diapers and nannies and preschools—don’t do this to me! You are about to become very, very hot. Tabor Publishing is now talking a twenty-book series.”

Catherine sobered; her hand tightened on the telephone. Her stomach suddenly felt very heavy. “Twenty?” The word emerged in a squeak. “I thought they wanted three?”

“Doc Halladay loves your work. He’s renegotiating the book series. He’s convinced it’ll be as big, maybe bigger than his television show. He’s full of crap, of course, nothing is bigger than TV, but these books are going to sell millions.”

Catherine didn’t doubt it. Doc Halladay, the Science Brain, had taken the media world by storm. With a winning smile, a magician’s shtick and a gift for making the complicated sound easy, he’d won a bigger preadolescent audience than Barney the dinosaur and Sesame Street combined.

“If we put this together, this could make your career and set you up for life. You could end up being the hottest children’s book illustrator of the century. Of two centuries! You’ll win a Caldecott.”

“Twenty books?”

“After Doc Halladay saw those mock-ups you did using photographs of him along with paintings, he flipped. As far as he’s concerned, you’re the second coming of Michelangelo.”

“How much money are they talking?”

“A cool million. Of course, that’s a five-year commitment, and we’re still squabbling about royalties, but it’s a very nice package.”

Catherine had to take several deep breaths to calm her fluttering belly.

“The contract proposal needs a Rosetta stone to decipher it. I’m overnighting you an outline of the terms and payouts. It looks complicated because it is complicated, but try not to be intimidated. I’ll have the whole thing vetted by an attorney before anything gets signed.”

Catherine loved her work, which combined her two great passions—art and science. In college, believing there was no future in fine art, she’d earned a biology degree with the goal of going to veterinary school. Then a friend had asked her to illustrate a children’s story she was trying to sell. The publisher had rejected the story, but asked Catherine if she’d submit more illustrations. Her career had been born.

After dozens of projects, she still loathed contract negotiations. She didn’t understand the fine print. The money terms were convoluted with the publisher paying out in bits and pieces based upon schedules apparently created by a necromancer scrying moon signs in springwater.

“They’re asking impossible deadlines, too,” Margaret said.

“I can do impossible. I live for impossible.”

“I know, sweetie. So don’t do something stupid like get married and run off to Tahiti to paint flowers on black velvet.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Margaret ended the conversation with details about the contract. Catherine tried very hard to keep her excitement under control. Contract negotiations could fall apart at any stage, and nothing was certain until everyone signed the paperwork.

After she hung up, she clasped her hands and danced around the studio. “Doc Halladay loves my work,” she sang. “I’ll be famous—”

Oscar and Bent lifted their narrow heads and looked toward the front of the house. Greyhounds, Catherine had discovered, were the perfect house pets. They were tidy, quiet, dignified and loved to lounge around on the furniture. They rarely barked. She’d set up an old sofa for them in her studio where they spent their days with their long legs sprawled, luxuriating in comfort.

“Is somebody coming?” she asked. “Normal dogs bark, you know.”

She heard an engine, throaty, powerful, unmistakable—a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. The noise increased, approaching the house up the long, curved driveway through the pine trees. Wondering who in the world she knew who owned a Harley, she stepped out onto the deck. She blinked in the bright sunshine. Oscar and Bent joined her. They stretched their long bodies and yawned mightily.

The motorcycle appeared, a modern-day destrier of sleek black shine and glittering chrome. The rider wore a black, full-face helmet. He guided the motorcycle around potholes and ruts in the wide, but ill-maintained driveway. The bike’s rear tire dropped and bounced in a pothole, and Catherine winced. Having the driveway graded and paved was her next home-improvement project.

The rider wheeled the bike around the circular drive to park before the deck. He was a big man, his suntanned arms roped with muscle. She glanced at the dogs, now flanking her feet. They weighed eighty pounds apiece and could run down a rabbit without breathing hard, but protect her?

The rider cut off the engine. The sudden silence heightened her awareness about her seclusion, with the pine forest shielding her from the road and neighbors. She watched the man dismount. With his back to her he worked off the helmet. His hair, thick and sooty black, gleamed with bluish lights. Despite her nervousness, her artist’s eye delighted in his powerful shoulders and the sinewy curves of his back.

He turned around.

He smiled and his dark eyes glittered like obsidian.

“Hello, Tink,” he said. “Long time, no see.”

Her brain froze. All sensations centered square in her chest where emotions long buried burst from their shell. For years she’d wondered what she would say to Easy Martel if she ever ran into him. She’d wondered what she would do, how she would act, what she might feel.

He was bigger than she remembered, his youthful slenderness grown into lean, broad-shouldered maturity. Once smooth olive cheeks now sported a definite beard shadow. He wore his black hair short rather than letting it hang shaggily down his neck. The smile remained the same, however, wry yet warm, completely focused, while those dark, dark eyes melded into hers.

Heart melting. Soul searing.

“Don’t you remember me?” he asked. “It’s me, Easy—”

She whipped about, raced into the house, slammed and locked the door.

Chapter Two (#ulink_365fb28c-18b7-51de-ade4-c33d35627f76)

Easy Martel slid a hand around the back of his neck. He frowned at the half-glass door where curtains swayed gently. He stood chest level to the deck flooring, eye to eye with a pair of dogs who poked their narrow heads between the railing. They watched him with quiet curiosity. Despite the dogs’ whip-thinness, they were large animals.

“Nice doggies.” He sidled to the steps. Alert for a growl or other threat, he climbed the steps slowly. “Good doggies.” He offered a hand for their inspection.

As one, the dogs turned and walked around the corner of the house. The clicking of their toenails on the decking faded in the distance.

Wary that this might be some canine trick, Easy hesitated. Maybe Catherine had trained her dogs in ninja tactics. He waited a few moments to see if the animals returned. When they didn’t, he knocked on the door. “I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s me, Easy Martel. Wasson High School?”

He considered she may have forgotten him, but she’d been as madly in love with him as he’d been with her. She’d never forget him. More likely she still had that weird habit of running off when flustered. Smiling in fond remembrance, he knocked again.

The door opened an inch. He glimpsed a hostile eye glaring back at him. Memories rushed in with tidal-wave force, sweeping him back twelve years. Catherine’s eyes had always fascinated him with their jewel-rich color and expressiveness. In high school she’d walked hunched over with her eyes downcast, her messy hair falling over her face. Despite her being awkward, pudgy and painfully shy, he’d looked into those sapphire depths and known she was beautiful. Cursing his own cowardice, he regretted every second they’d missed in the past twelve years.

“What are you doing here?” Her icy words startled him.

“Don’t you remember—”

“I know exactly who you are. Now go away.”