“I have been working on something, but I haven't wanted to tell you until it was a sure thing. I had an artist scheduled to be part of a exhibit at the Sheffield next Saturday night. He decided he wanted to renegotiate his contract, and ended up renegotiating himself right out the door. It just so happens that I think your work will gel nicely with the entire exhibit. In fact, I think your work will stand out. I've been holding back 'Bird Woman' and a few other pieces, simply because they demand a certain kind of audience. I think we will be able to sell 'Bird Woman' for $5,000 at the exhibit, where it might sit for months in the gallery.”
I gulped and swore under my breath. Tiffa just winked at me. “That's a bargain, luv. Someday your work will sell for far more, I guarantee it. 'Bird Woman,' 'Rubicon,' 'Witch,' and the one you named 'Armor' are the only pieces I have left. All of those will be stunning, but I need more. What do you have completed?”
I had carved one called 'The Saint.' It was St. Patrick immortalized in wood, though the stooped man with a shepherd's staff walking in the curling flames that appeared to dance around him could easily be mistaken for something entirely different. The one Wilson had named 'Loss' was in the basement too, covered by a sheet beside my workbench so I wouldn't have to see it. It might be my best work yet, but it hurt to look at it. And there were several others, including the intertwined branches that I had frenetically lost myself in a month ago.
“I can come up with ten.”
“Then it's set. Get me the pieces, and I will make it happen. And Blue? Don't tell Darcy. It will be our little surprise.”
I finished my shift at the cafe late Thursday night and headed for home, my mind on Saturday's exhibit, on the carvings I had assembled, and on the call to Reno I hadn't yet made. They must think I was nuts. Detective Moody had left two messages on my voicemail and I'd received another from Heidi Morgan at the lab. I told myself after the showcase I would call them.
A big part of my indecision was Wilson. I had shared this journey with him, and in the last month I had hardly seen him. He'd become my best friend, and I missed him desperately, and was angry with him for pulling away. I'd decided “space” was just another one of those, “it's not you, it's me” slogans people use when they want to end a relationship. But friendships weren't supposed to end. I wished we'd never shared that damned kiss. Wilson hadn't been the same since.
I was standing in front of my apartment door, perusing my mail, when I heard Wilson's door open and shut above me. I tensed, listening to his footsteps near the top of the stairs, and then grimaced as I heard Pamela's voice asking him about the exhibit at The Sheffield on Saturday.
“I saw the tickets. Were you going to surprise me? Is it my Valentine's Day surprise?” Pamela teased, and her flirtatious tone made me want to run up the stairs and hurl her over the banister. She must not have sensed my murderous intent, because she kept right on talking.
“We can have dinner with my parents before. They'll be staying at the hotel through next week.” I had forgotten about Pamela's connection to the hotel. Tiffa said the Sheffield family wasn't the sole owner of the hotel any longer, but money talked, and the hotel still bore the Sheffield name.
Pamela and Wilson reached the bottom of the stairs and I slunk back, hoping they wouldn't see me. I should have gone into my apartment and closed the door. Now it was too late to do so without alerting them of my presence. So I stood, frozen, watching Pamela loop her arms around Wilson's neck and stand up on her toes to place a quick kiss on his lips. I looked away. I should have watched, should have made myself acknowledge that she was the girl in his life. And I was the neighbor. The project. The whim? I had no idea what I was to Wilson anymore.
“See you Saturday?” Pamela asked.
I didn't hear Wilson's answer, I was too busy unlocking my door. I decided I didn't care if they knew I was there. I shut the door behind me. When I heard a soft knock several minutes later, I considered ignoring it. It could only be Wilson, and he would only make me feel worse. But I was just a girl. And the guy I liked stood on the other side of the door. So I opened it.
“Hi,” I said cheerfully, as if I was completely unaffected by what I had just seen. Wilson didn't look like a man who had just enjoyed a goodnight kiss. He looked a little upset. And a little stressed. I tried not to read anything into it.
“Hi,” he replied softly. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Sure. Mi casa es su casa . . . literally.” I turned and walked into my home, feeling him at my back. “Did Camilla just leave?” I asked pointedly. When Wilson didn't answer I looked up at him in question.
“Camilla?” he smirked, folding his arms. “You asked me if Camilla just left.”
“Is that what I said?” I frowned.
“Yes. You called Pamela Camilla.”
“Hmmm. Freudian slip,” I mumbled, a little embarrassed. It wasn't my fault. I had been thinking of kisses, and lately kisses made me think of Camilla . . . and The Golden Girls.
The carving I had been working on the last time we talked sat on my kitchen table, and Wilson halted beside it abruptly. He studied it intently, turning it this way and that, but I was distracted, knowing that any mention of Camilla had to remind him of what had transpired between us more than a month ago.
“Tell me what you see when you look at this sculpture,” Wilson asked after a while, his eyes roving down the sensual lines of the stained mahogany. His hand traced the contours reverently.
I had whittled away the heaviness from the branches, creating hollows and sinews and shaping the suggestion of lovers wrapped around each other while still maintaining the natural innocence and simplicity of the merging branches. The branches were mountain mahogany, the wood a natural reddish brown. I had rubbed several applications of black stain into one branch, and it gleamed like a black jungle cat, the golden red tones melding with the dark stain so the black looked like it was silhouetted in sunlight. I applied no stain to the other branch but had simply buffed and glossed the golden red wood until it glowed like amber. The effect was that the two limbs in the sculpture appeared to be different wood, branches from two different kinds of trees. The result was a statement all its own.