After Hours

He ran a comb through his thick black curls, which instantly went right back to their usual state of disarray. He grinned at himself, feeling somewhat more cheerful. At least his hair refused to do the correct thing. And he’d always hated openings. Hated them with a passion.

He painted to communicate—no doubt about that. He didn’t want his works stashed away in a studio with their faces to a wall. But he couldn’t stand to hear people discussing them, stereotyping them, analyzing all their vitality out of existence with words like “deconstructionism” and “post modern abstractionism”. At least the critics had had to come up with some new labels for this show, he thought, grinning again. Time he shook them up a bit.

Someone would be bound to tell him that his new style was a cop-out in the interests of commercialism. And someone else would be sure to praise his raw honesty. For some reason his kind of honesty was nearly always called raw.

Speaking of which, he’d forgotten to eat anything.

Quentin went to the minibar and pilfered its entire stock of peanuts and pretzels. Chewing absently, he realized how much he was looking forward to seeing Lucy and Troy. He’d turned down their invitation to dinner because he had to be at the gallery early. But, if he had his way, he’d end up the evening at the apartment they’d rented and he’d take off his tie and his shiny leather shoes that were already pinching his feet, and toss back a beer or two. And he’d be sure to admire the new baby. He knew rather more than most people what that baby meant to them.

And as soon as he could he’d get out of Ottawa. Too tidy a city for him. Too prettified. He wanted pine trees and running water and maybe a mountain or two.

Not a hotel room—no matter how luxurious.

He opened the second bag of pretzels. What he really needed to do was take a break from painting and build another house. The bite of saw into lumber, the sweet smell of wood chips, the satisfaction of seeing a roof line cut into the sky—they all anchored him to a reality very different from that of paint on canvas. It was a reality he was beginning to crave.

There was nothing new about this. In his travels around the world Quentin had always alternated periods of intense artistic activity with the more mundane and comforting reality of house construction. What was new was that the house he wanted to build this time was a house for himself. His own walls. His own roof.

He glanced at his watch and gave an exclamation of dismay. Grabbing his raincoat, he ran for the elevator, and in the lobby of the hotel hailed a cab. But as he was driven through the gleaming wet streets, still chewing on the pretzels, his thoughts traveled with him. He wanted to settle down. He’d been a nomad ever since he’d left his parents’ yard at the age of three to follow the milk truck down the road, but now he wanted to have a place that he could call home.

It had been a long time since that little boy had stumbled along the dirt ruts, hollering at the milkman to wait for him. He was thirty-six now. And while he wanted a home, there was more to it than that. He wanted a woman to share that home. To share his home. His bed. His life. But she had to be the right woman.

He gazed vaguely at the beds of tulips that edged the road, neat blocks of solid color that moved him not at all. He’d been considerably older than three—eleven, perhaps—when he’d come to the conclusion that he’d know the woman he was meant to marry from the first moment he saw her. He knew perfectly well where that conviction had come from. His parents had had—he now realized, as an adult—the kind of marriage that happens only rarely. A marriage alive with love, laughter and passion, with fierce conflicts and an honesty that could indeed have been called raw.

He hadn’t been able to verbalize this at age eleven, but he had intuited that there was something very special between the man and woman who were his parents. One of the often-told stories of his childhood had been how they had fallen in love at first sight, recognizing each other instantly as the partner each had been waiting for.

At the age of twenty-five, impatient, he’d ignored that certainty and married Helen. And within six weeks had known that he’d done the wrong thing. He’d hung in to the very best of his ability, and when she’d left him for a bank president twice her age had heaved a sigh of relief and vowed never to repeat that particular mistake.

Quentin was not a vain man, and it never ceased to surprise him that women flocked to him like blue jays to a feeder on a cold winter’s day. Tall women, short women, beautiful women, sexy women. But not one of them so far had touched his soul.

What if he never found this mythical woman? Was he a fool to believe in the romantic dream of an eleven-year-old?

Maybe if he built the house first she’d somehow follow, as naturally as sunrise was bound to follow sunset.

Or maybe he was a fool even to think of settling down. He’d always rather prided himself on being a free spirit, going where he pleased when he pleased and staying as long as he pleased. If he got married, he wouldn’t be able to do that.

The right woman... did she even exist?

He tried to wrench his mind away from thoughts that were, he’d sometimes concluded, both non-productive and infantile. The taxi swished through a puddle and drew up outside the gallery. Pots of scarlet tulips decorated the sidewalk, standing stiff and tall in the rain, like valiant soldiers on watch. I’m lonely, Quentin thought with a flash of insight. Despite my success, despite the incredible freedom of the way I live, I’m lonely.

“Ten seventy-five, sir,” said the cabbie.

With a jerk Quentin came back to the present. He fumbled for the fare, added a tip, and ran for the gallery door. He wasn’t all that free. Because he’d rather be walking the wet streets tonight than going to his own opening.

The owner of the gallery was a woman in her fifties, wife of a senior government official and dauntingly efficient; Quentin always wanted to call her Mrs. Harrington-Smythe rather than Emily—a name that did not suit her in the slightest. As he hung up his raincoat she gave his suit a quick appraisal and nodded her approval.

Wishing he’d left the price tag pinned to the cuff, Quentin allowed himself to be whisked on a tour of the gallery. Her placement of the paintings was all he could have asked; he only wished that they didn’t make him feel as though he was about to undress in public. Emily gave him a copy of the catalog and ran through a list of the most prominent ministers, several deputy ministers and a sprinkling of diplomats.

Not bad for a kid from a little village in New Brunswick, thought Quentin, and did his best to memorize the names. Then the doorbell rang and he steeled himself to get through the next hours without abandoning the good manners his mother had worked very hard to instill in him.

Three-quarters of an hour later the place was humming. Eleven paintings had sold, the bartenders had been run off their feet and Quentin had been extremely civil to the first of the cabinet ministers—who didn’t approve of anything painted after 1900 and wasn’t backward in expressing his views. Then, from behind him, Quentin heard a woman call his name. He turned, gathered Lucy into his arms and hugged her hard. “Wonderful to see you!”

She said softly, “I can’t believe you were being so polite—is this the Quentin I know?”

“I’m on my best behavior. You look gorgeous, Lucy—that’s quite a dress.”

Its purple folds made her mahogany curls glisten, and its décolletage verged on the indiscreet. “I thought you’d like it,” she said complacently. “Troy picked it out for me.”

Troy clapped Quentin on the shoulder. “Good to see you. When this affair is over, we want you to come back to the apartment so we can catch up on all the news.”

“Done,” said Quentin. “As long as you’ve got some beer.”

“Bought a twelve-pack this afternoon.”

Troy was two or three inches taller than Quentin’s five-feet eleven, blond where Quentin was dark, and a medical doctor rather than an artist; but from the time they had met on Shag Island off the coast of Nova Scotia the two men had liked one another. And when Quentin pictured the home he was going to build for himself it was always situated somewhere on the west coast within reach of Vancouver.

Emily was fast approaching, with a man in tow who looked like cabinet minister number two. Quentin raised his brow at Lucy. “Duty calls. Talk to you later.”

“We’ll give you our address before we leave.’ Tucking her arm into Troy’s, she headed for the works in acrylic that were such a break from the abstracts he had been doing on the island.

The second cabinet minister asked several penetrating questions and listened with genuine interest to Quentin’s replies. Then Quentin suffered through a very rich widow with fake eyelashes who simply didn’t understand the first thing about art, and an importer of foreign cars who understood only too well and insisted on inflicting his theories on the artist. Quentin finally got rid of him and headed for the bar. The pretzels had made him thirsty.

He had just taken a gulp of what was a quite decent Cabernet, hoping it would inspire him to plunge back into the mêlée, when the door was pushed open once again. Idly he watched as a woman walked into the foyer.

She closed her umbrella, shook water from it and straightened, the light falling on her face and the smooth swing of her hair. Dark hair that shone like polished wood.

Oh, Lord, thought Quentin. It’s happened. At a gallery opening, of all places. That’s her. The woman I’ve been waiting for.

He plunked his glass on the counter and pushed past several people who all wanted to speak to him, deaf to their remarks. The woman was hanging her dark green raincoat on the rack by the door, all her movements economical and precise. She’s not my type, he thought blankly. Look at that suit. And those godawful glasses. What in heaven’s name’s going on here?

He was still ten feet away from her. She turned, taking the glasses from her nose and rubbing the rain from them with a tissue from her pocket, her face composed as she surveyed the crowded room. She might not be his type, but she was utterly, beguilingly beautiful.

His heart was banging in his chest like the ring of a hammer on boards. Feeling as clumsy as an adolescent, Quentin closed the distance between them and croaked, “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

She was no more than five feet five and delicately made, so that he felt large and clumsy. Her irises were the deep velvety purple of pansies and her lashes dark and thick; her bone structure was exquisite and her male-up flawless. Last of all, he saw how very soft and kissable was her mouth, and he felt his heart give another uncomfortable thud in his chest. She said in faint puzzlement, “Are you the gallery owner? I thought—”

“I’m the artist.”

Her lashes flickered over unmistakable hostility. “Quentin Ramsey?”

He nodded. “And you?”

“Surely you don’t meet everyone at the door?”

“You’re the first.”

“And to what,” Marcia said silkily, “do I owe that honor?”

“Stop talking like a nineteenth-century novel. It doesn’t suit you.”