“I hope you're satisfied, Mattie,” Ariel sniffed. “After all these years I hope you're finally satisfied. You've done it, haven't you? You've gotten your sneaky little claws into the only man I ever really wanted.”
“Ariel, contrary to popular opinion around here, Flynn and I are not having an affair.”
There was a click followed by the hollow sound on the telephone line that indicated someone had picked up the downstairs receiver.
“Oh, God, an affair,” Ariel whispered, apparently unaware of the other presence on the line. “An affair. I knew it. I was praying that it was just a one-night stand. Something done in the heat of the moment like that stupid fling you had with Hugh last year. Something you might have at least had the decency to regret the way you regretted that. But, no. No, you're bragging about it, aren't you?”
“Ariel, you're not listening. I just told you, I am not sleeping with your husband. I have never slept with your husband. I have no desire to sleep with your husband. And he has no desire to sleep with me. He loves you.”
“He went to you last night. He didn't come back home. He went straight to you. Did you comfort him, Mattie, the way you did the others? Offer him herbal tea and sympathy? Tell him you understood all the stress he was under? Damn you.”
“For Christ's sake, give it a break, Ariel,” Hugh ordered brusquely. “Grafton's here, all right. He slept on the couch. I should know. I'm the one who spent the night in Mattie's bed. I would have noticed a third party in the sheets, believe me. I'm fussy that way.”
“Hugh? You're there, too?” Ariel's sobs halted with dramatic swiftness.
“I'm here, all right.”
“You were there all night?”
“Where the hell else would I be? I'm engaged to Mattie, remember?”
“Thank God,” Ariel said, switching instantly from pathetic victim to vengeful shrew. “Put Flynn on the line at once.”
“My pleasure,” Hugh said.
There was a brief, fumbling sound and then Flynn's voice spoke very coolly into the phone. “Ariel?”
“Flynn, how could you do this to me? I was so frightened when I woke up this morning and realized you'd never come home. Do you have any idea of what I've been through? Do you know what it was like having to call my own sister to find you? How dare you do such a thing?”
“You're the one who told me to get out and stay out, remember?” Flynn sounded vaguely preoccupied. He also sounded as if he were munching on something.
Mattie dropped the receiver back into the cradle, got out of bed, and reached for her robe. She went to the edge of the loft and looked down over the waist-high red metal railing.
The first thing she noticed was her modest nightgown. It had been tossed rather negligently, Mattie thought, over the back of the chair Hugh was occupying.
Hugh himself looked arrogantly at ease, quite the master in his own home, as he sprawled in the chair. He had a mug of coffee in his hand, and there was a plate of bran muffins on the low table in front of the couch. He had not bothered to put on anything except a pair of jeans, Mattie realized. His bare feet were propped on the coffee table, and his bare shoulders gleamed in the morning sunlight.
Flynn, rumpled from a night in his clothes, was eating one of the bran muffins as he listened to Ariel's tirade.
“I hear you, Ariel,” he said calmly. “Ease up, honey. You've made your point.”
Flynn took another bite of muffin and wrinkled his nose while he listened to Ariel's response.
“What was I supposed to do after you locked the door? Stand out in the hall and beg?” he finally asked.
More munching while Flynn listened.
“No,” he finally said during a pause. “Nothing's changed. I know you don't like it, but I've done a lot of thinking about this and my mind is made up. I'm going to ask Mattie to hang my more commercial stuff and that's final.” Flynn finished the muffin and picked up his mug of coffee. “Ariel, I may be the greatest undiscovered artist who ever lived, but I'm also your husband. With any luck, one of these days I'll be a father. I've got some pride, okay? I want to carry my own weight in this family. Maybe I'd better talk to you later when you're feeling calmer.”
Flynn hung up the phone quite gently and sat hunched over his coffee. “The lady is very unhappy,” he said to Hugh.
“I got that feeling,” Hugh replied. “Wish I could help you out with a few tips on handling her, but the truth is, I never did understand Ariel. She and I were like oil and water. Or gasoline on a fire. Whatever.”
“Yeah, I know. It's not that I can't deal with her usual moods. I understand those. They're part of what makes her a great artist. She's very sensitive and she needs to be handled delicately. But last night I just lost it, you know? Told her I was tired of feeling like a kept man. Tired of feeling like I'm standing in her shadow, making no contribution to the relationship. We really got into it. Sorry I turned up here. That was a mistake.”
“I guess one time isn't going to be a problem,” Hugh allowed magnanimously.
“It won't happen again,” Flynn promised.
“Right.” Hugh sounded satisfied.
“It's just that this was the first place I thought of when I found myself locked out. The thing is, Mattie always seems so quiet and calm and levelheaded. So sensible and unemotional. Sort of soothing.”
“She has her moments,” Hugh said dryly. “But she sure is a hell of a lot different than Ariel, I'll give you that. I could never get a handle on Ariel during our engagement. She was either moping around in some tragic state of depression or else she was exploding. It was a real roller-coaster ride, and it didn't help matters any that I had no patience for any of it after a couple of weeks.”
Flynn nodded wisely. “Like I said, Ariel needs to be handled delicately.”
“I'm not the kid-glove type.”
“No. I can see why you two never made it. I take it you don't seem to have the same problem dealing with Mattie?”
“No sweat,” Hugh assured him. “Sure, sometimes she gets a little feisty. You've got to watch out for that streak of pride she has. But I understand pride. I can deal with it. Given a little time I can always find a way to settle Mattie down when she occasionally gets a little temperamental.”
Mattie looked around for something convenient to drop over the loft railing. She considered the tall, heavy black vase but discarded it as overkill. She picked up the glass of water she kept beside the bed instead.
“The thing about women like Mattie,” Hugh was saying down below, “is that you've got to make them understand…”
“For the record, Hugh Abbott,” Mattie called as she leaned out over the railing and tipped the full glass of water, “no lady worth her salt likes to hear first thing in the morning that she is so dreadfully dull a man can handle her with ‘no sweat.’ But, then, I've always said you have a lousy way with compliments. No finesse at all.”
Hugh yelped very nicely and scrambled up out of the chair with amazing speed as the water splashed down over his head and bare shoulders.
Flynn looked on, amused.
“Like I said,” Hugh muttered, using a napkin to wipe water off his shoulder, “she has her moments.”
“I can see that.” Flynn picked up another bran muffin and eyed it critically. “You really like these things?”
“You get used to them,” Hugh said. “It's the herbal tea and the bug juice that are a little hard to swallow.”
Mattie sat in her office chair later that morning, her hands folded on the desk, and watched her sister storm back and forth across the room. Ariel had been alternating between tears of rage and tears of self-pity for the past fifteen minutes. It was getting hard to tell the difference. But in either mood she managed to look her usual exotic self in flowing black trousers and a black blouse with billowing sleeves.
Mattie was again painfully aware of the bland, businesslike look of her coffee-colored suit and beige blouse. Maybe it was the string of pearls that really elevat
ed the outfit to the level of total forgettableness, she decided critically. Or perhaps it was the low-heeled pumps. She really was going to have to go shopping one of these days. The desire for a red business suit was becoming irresistible.
And maybe, if she got very adventurous, she would invest in a pair of three-inch red spike heels, just like the ones Evangeline Dangerfield had loaned her for that wild night on Brimstone.
“I'm sorry I blew up at you on the phone this morning,” Ariel said, sniffing delicately into a tissue. “I can't believe I did that. Lately, it's almost like after all these years our roles have been reversed or something. For the first time I've actually been jealous of you. It's so ludicrous.”
“Simply ludicrous.”
“It's irrational.”
“Right. Totally irrational.”
“Especially when I know there is absolutely no real reason for it,” Ariel concluded.
“True,” Mattie agreed.
Ariel swung around and looked at her with eyes that brimmed with sincerity. “I want you to know that I really do realize there is no basis for my irrational jealousy, Mattie. I don't understand it, but I just don't seem to be completely sane on the subject of Flynn. I've never felt this way before about any man.”
“Maybe that's because you've never been afraid of losing any of your previous men. After all, none of the others have been terribly important to you.”
Ariel nodded. “I guess that must be it. I really do love Flynn. What I feel for him is so different than what I felt for any of the others. He's the only one who's ever understood me. Well, that's not entirely true. Emery understood me, but it was sort of the way a mentor understands his protégée, you know? Toward the end of our relationship, he just could not handle my success at all.”
“Did you understand him? What he was going through as he saw himself slipping slowly into obscurity?”
“It was hardly my fault he couldn't write anymore,” Ariel retorted.
“I know, I know. Forget I said that.”
Ariel nodded willingly enough. “Hugh, of course, never did understand me. Not at all. He was really just a sort of wild fling for me. I don't know how on earth I managed to get myself engaged to him.”
“Probably the same way I did,” Mattie observed. “By fiat. Hugh has a way of taking command.”
“Yes, I know. It's very annoying, isn't it? However do you tolerate it, Mattie?”
“Sometimes I don't,” Mattie said, thinking with a sense of pride of how she had won the battle over Flynn's sleeping arrangements last night. And she had won it, by God. She had actually made Hugh Abbott back down. Even better, she had dumped cold water on him this morning. She was definitely showing signs of genuine spirit, Mattie decided.
“Well, you're certainly welcome to him, although I still think you're making a big mistake.”
“Thank you,” Mattie murmured.
“Damn. I've gone and offended you again, haven't I? And the truth is, I came here to apologize, Mattie. I made an absolute fool out of myself this morning on the phone, and I want to tell you how sorry I am for screaming at you.”
Mattie felt her brows climb. Apologies for an outburst from Ariel or any other member of the family were rarer than hen's teeth. In the Sharpe clan temperamental explosions were considered normal. Nobody except Mattie ever got upset over one.
“Don't worry about it, Ariel,” she said gently. “It was perfectly understandable. I'd have made the same kind of fool out of myself if I'd quarreled with Hugh and then discovered he'd spent the night at your place.”
“Thank you, Mattie. That's very generous of you.”
“All right, you've apologized and I've told you to forget it. You knew I would. So what do you really want from me this morning, Ariel?”
Ariel sniffed into the tissue again. “You think you know me so well, don't you?”
“Well, I have known you all my life,” Mattie reminded her, smiling.
“You've really had to put up with a lot from me over the years, haven't you?”
“It wasn't that bad,” Mattie said, feeling a little wary now.
“Sometimes when we were growing up I'd feel guilty about it, even though I knew I had no reason to feel that way, of course. I mean, it wasn't my fault I inherited talent and you didn't was it?”
“Of course not.”
“I used to wish you'd find something you could really excel at so I wouldn't have to feel so damned sorry for you. You worked so hard trying to prove yourself at so many things, and they were all disasters. Remember the year you determined to become a ballerina like Grandmother?”
“Don't remind me. I limped around for weeks from all that work at the barre.”
Ariel smiled. “And then there was the time you were so sure you could become a great artist like Mother. You used to sit up until three in the morning practicing your drawing. You never could do a proper nude, could you?”
“Never got much past fruit,” Mattie admitted. “And then there was that year in college when I was certain I was going to write, just like Dad. You don't have to remind me of that, either. Ariel, what's the point of all this?”
Ariel heaved a dramatic sigh. “It's hard to put into words. It's just that, maybe because you tried so many things and failed before you started this gallery, you learned something the rest of us never had to learn.”
Mattie studied her, remembering all the depressing years of failure. “Just what is it you think I learned?”
“I don't know.” Ariel waved the hand with the damp tissue in it. “How to cope with normal life or something. How to take risks, maybe. How to try and fail and then be able to accept the failure and go on to something else. None of the rest of us ever had to do that, you see. We always knew we had talent. It might have made us a bit neurotic at times; we might have had to struggle to master it or sell it, but we always knew deep down we had it. You've never had that kind of inner certainty.”
“Well, I definitely floundered around for years getting my act together, I'll admit that much.”
Ariel blew into the tissue. “But all that floundering made you more adaptable or something. More understanding of other people. More accepting of their little foibles and weaknesses. More approachable.”
“So I'm an easy touch. What do you want from me now?”
Ariel raised her head, her eyes tragic. “I want some advice, damn it.”
“Advice? You're asking me for advice?”
“Please, Mattie. Don't make me grovel. Help me. I don't know where else to turn. You seem to understand men so much better than I do. They feel comfortable around you. I've never worried about making a man feel comfortable. I've never needed to worry about it. But now I want you to give me some pointers on handling Flynn. I don't want to lose him, Mattie. I'm scared. And I'm pregnant.”
CHAPTER
Fourteen
“You're pregnant?” For a long moment Mattie could think of nothing else to say. “Does Flynn know?” she finally asked.
Ariel shook her head. “No. I've only just realized it myself. I haven't told him yet.”
Mattie considered the matter. “Is there a problem here? Do you want a baby?”
“Yes, but Mattie, I'm scared. I told you, I'm not like you. I can't take things in my stride the way you do. I don't cope well. I stopped taking precautions because Flynn kept talking about having children and how my biological clock was running out. But now that the inevitable has happened, I don't know what to do next. I'm starting to do stupid things like fight with Flynn and accuse you of sleeping with him. I can't paint. I feel like I'm floundering. It's just awful.”
“When are you going to tell Flynn?”
“Don't you understand? I'm scared to tell him. I'm scared to death that when he finds out he's going to be a father, he'll be more determined than ever to get into the commercial mainstream with his painting. I don't want him giving up his art for me, Mattie. I can't let him make that kind of sacrifice.”
“Because you
know deep down inside that if the situation were reversed, you wouldn't do it for him?” Mattie suggested quietly.
Ariel froze, an expression of shock on her face. “Oh, Lord, you're right of course. You're absolutely right.”
Mattie examined her fingernails for a long moment. They were blunt, neatly curved nails with no polish on them. “You want advice? I'll give it to you for what it's worth. From what I know about Flynn, I would say that underneath that trendy facade, he's really a decent, old-fashioned guy who needs to feel he's doing the right thing as a man. So let him do it. Tell him about the baby. Encourage him to go ahead with his more commercial style of painting. Let him know you respect him as a man, not just as an artist, and that you need him. Let him feel he's holding up his end of the marriage.”
“I'm afraid he'll be seduced by success,” Ariel whispered.
“What's wrong with that? What's wrong with finding out he can do stuff that will sell like hotcakes? I think it's what he really wants, Ariel, so stop trying to force him into a different mold.”
“But, Mattie—”
“These days a lot of artists are beginning to be a lot more personally ambitious again. They want success in their lifetimes, not posthumously. It hasn't been fashionable to be artistically ambitious for the past hundred years or so, but things are changing. Very soon it's going to be just like the old days, the way it was before somebody got the notion that the only good art was art nobody understood.”
A sound in the doorway made Mattie glance up. Shock Value Frederickson stood there, her hair tinted silver and black. She was holding a large metal object in her arms that was very nearly as large as she was.
Mattie smiled slowly. “Speaking of great art. Lord love us, Shock Value, what have you got there?”
Shock Value glanced diffidently at Ariel. “Am I interrupting anything? Suzanne out front said you weren't busy in here.”
Mattie was already out of her chair, circling the desk for a better look at the metal sculpture Shock Value was holding. “You can interrupt me anytime as long as you've got something like this in your hot little hands. This is fantastic, Shock. Absolutely fantastic.”