Page 15 of Brooke
“A new dress?” she said thoughtfully, her green eyes glimmering. He could practically see the fashion plates going through her mind as she conjured up the possibilities—like she did when she looked for Thea’s wedding dress. “I wouldn’t ask that of you, Sawyer. But maybe I can come up to your studio and look at that painting of me and Thea and Madison for inspiration.”
Because Axel’s praise was stuck in her head now too. What a pair they were. “You can visit anytime, Brooke.”
She kissed him on the cheek again before wandering toward the stairs. “Two giant compliments in one day,” she said, still holding Axel’s handkerchief. “Maybe my luck is changing.”
Brooke’s father and Nanine had both had heart attacks in the past year. Her long-term squeeze had up and left her. While she didn’t talk about floundering, she’d admitted to being unhappy in Manhattan and with her current job. She’d even laughed when he’d joked about it being easier to buy a flat-screen TV than find one’s soulmate. She didn’t talk about struggling often, but she was, no doubt. They were in those trenches together.
“I hope it is changing, Brooke,” he said softly to himself. “Because you deserve it.”
He was going to do everything he could to help her find what she was looking for, because sometimes the quest for one’s true purpose and happiness was hard, and friends made it easier. He would be that friend, and if Axel was part of the answer to her quest, Sawyer would encourage her connection with him as well.
God, the quest…
Sometimes he thought life was an ongoing string of quests. Or one long quest punctuated by many trials. His current trial was discovering if he could be a great artist. Axelseemed to think he had it in him, but he’d only seen a few of his paintings. What about the ones Sawyer had painted months ago? Or the ones he would paint in three months?
Would they hold genius?
He wasn’t sure, and it was that lack of faith in himself and his work, with roots going back to his critical ever-pushing parents, that held him back. But he still pressed on… Because he loved to paint, needed it with his very soul—and he could not give up on it.
He’d buried his dreams before, after he failed to hit it big in Paris ten years ago. His parents had only allowed him to make the trip that summer in exchange for his promise to shift his focus if he didn’t make it as a painter with major gallery openings and enough sales to at least equal the salary for their intended career choice for him. He’d gone on to become a professor after failing. His sentence: to quit making art and start teaching about it. A more painful hell couldn’t have been conjured but at least as an art professor he was surrounded by his eternal love.
Nanine’s heart attack had given him another chance, one he’d felt in his soul that he needed to take, even though technically he was here on sabbatical. That he was pursuing his art again was something his parents did not know. Certainly, he didn’t plan on telling them. Because they would be back in Paris in a flash. On his case. Criticizing his every paint stroke. Telling him this time he was throwing away a perfectly respectable tenure-track career.
His worst fear in the darkness of his studio, when the light was gone but he still was compelled to paint, was thus: he didn’t think he could go back to a life of quiet agony only teaching about great works of art.
He’d rather throw himself in the Seine and be done with it.
Not that he wanted it to end that way. That kind oftortured artist move didn’t appeal to him, but he understood it all the same.
As he walked back to the studio, he stared at the door. When he’d first discovered Axel and Brooke in his studio, he’d decided to buy a padlock to keep them out. Now he wasn’t so sure. If he did that, Axel couldn’t return to see his work.
And Sawyer realized he could not bring himself to bar the man from his paintings when he’d said the very words Sawyer had always wished to hear, the ones that made him believe his quest might yet end in victory.
CHAPTER
FOUR
By Friday Brooke had convinced herself that dinner with Axel was nothing more than a pleasantget to know you betterkind of thing.
She hadn’t gone out with anyone since Adam had dumped her six months ago. So she told herself she’d made the right call about keeping things private. Announcing this dinner—even more complicated since it was with their new interior decorator—would have been silly. It would have made it adeal.
Her father would have asked questions about Axel, and Nanine likely would have done the same. Neither of them needed anything else to worry them with their heart issues and major life transitions. Not that she’d seen them much this week beyond grabbing a café with her father and having a brief chat with Nanine when she showed up at yoga. Her dad kept saying he was having fun, getting his feet wet in his new neighborhood, and since his spirits seemed great, she hadn’t pressed about him staying at a nearby hotel instead of the guest bedroom at their house. He’d been firm on wanting to carve out his own life while she continued to do the same.Now she was a little grateful for the room her father was giving them both.
As for her roommates…she’d told them that she and Axel were having a working dinner tonight. No outright lying—the guilt would crush her.
But to dress as she’d wanted, she’d had to create a late-afternoon interview with an up-and-coming fashion designer who’d created the little apricot number she’d set her mind to wearing tonight. Yes, apricot! Because Axel had said she should wear the color more…and she’d wanted to feel beautiful.
At theatelier,she’d fawned over the dress and insisted she had to have it. Nothing would do except for her try it on that very minute. Which had led to an impromptu tailoring of the dress to suit her precise measurements. Voila!
The fashion designer had been delighted with her last-minute purchase, knowing she loved his collection and would be writing about it. All true. She only wished the white tulle dress he’d created would work as Thea’s wedding dress, but it was missing that special, elusive something that would make it Thea’s.
God, she really needed to find that dress! Of course she knew she was putting pressure on herself, but she wasn’t about to stop. The dress had to be the kind of sheer perfection of Grace Kelly’s silk faille dress with antique Brussels lace embellished with pearls by Helen Rose or Princess Diana’s ivory silk taffeta and antique lace gown by David and Elizabeth Emanuel.
Nothing less would do for Thea.
She breezed into the house at seven thirty since traffic had been a bear. Also something she’d planned for, thankfully, noting the expected time in her day planner almost down to the minute.
Sawyer was the first to glance over as she walked in withher perfectly matched Manolo Blahnik heels clicking on the marble in the foyer.
