And the burning started to blur her vision. She blinked away the moisture, trying to see last night’s insomniac binge work through someone else’s eyes. A figure, a man in exercise shorts sprinting down a mountain path. His body was tense, his pace rapid. A storm festered in the background, even the trees in the distance succumbed to its power, but the runner’s grief outmatched the ferocity of the weather.
She’d tossed and turned before Zane’s late-night call. After they’d hung up, she couldn’t have slept if her life depended on it. She hadn’t been able to shake the vision, the emotions he’d stirred.
Tammy turned back and wrapped her arms around Freya, tugging her close until Freya hugged her mom. “You’re a gifted artist,” she said softly as Freya slumped into her. “Your landscapes, your flowers and your grapevines are breathtaking. This… this is raw emotion I’ve never seen you project into your work.”
Ignoring her coffee, the savory pastries rapidly cooling in the bag, Tammy walked around to see the other drying. The one she’d told Zane about and… well, part of her felt guilty he didn’t get to see it first. Tammy immediately smiled. “Tell me about this one,” she said.
Freya stepped closer. “That was…” Nope, not telling her mother that had been inspired by their stolen moment in the laundry room.
“I love it. It’s like your other landscapes, except bolder, like the…” Tammy blushed, then continued, “Okay, I’m not good at this stuff, and saying it out loud makes me blush, but you know me. It’s like the sun is making love to the mountains. If that makes any sense? Not in a dirty way, I mean, there’s nothing overtly sexual about it, it’s more of a feeling. Like there’s a passion to it, and it’s not just serenity.”
“It does make sense. If it helps, I was absolutely thinking about sex and all the good feelings that go with it.”
Her mother blushed and dove into the bag and pulled out a croissant.
She continued, “I hadn’t realized the intimacy between the setting sun and the mountains before, but it struck me as the brush stroked the canvas.”
“Intimacy, that’s it. Anyway, I like it.”
“The auction went well.” Freya lifted Tammy’s coffee from the machine, delivering it to the island before retrieving her own.
Tammy eased onto a stool and took a bite of her breakfast. “The big one in Rome?”
Freya nodded. Her breath leached from her chest as she told her mother about the fat paycheck on the way, the bidding battle that had ensued, still lightheaded at the shock of it.
“That’s fantastic. I’m so proud of you.”
As much as she wanted to jump and cheer, her legs were floppy as unset jam. “They want me to send five more pieces now, with the hope of forming a long-term relationship if those sell well.”
“I can’t believe how things are coming together. You’ve worked so hard for this.”
“It’s so much pressure. The gallery in Florence is great, but there are so many and I’m one more tourist-pleaser. The galleries in London and New York are great, but they’re so big, I’ll be lucky if my paintings don’t collect dust. But this… this gallery is one of the most renowned and selective. But I don’t have five more like it. I have a few that I’m pleased with that I could send, but they’re not of the same caliber.”
Tammy looked back to the runner again. “I know these aren’t what they’re expecting, but send them anyway. Show them your range.”
“They’re expecting crowd-pleaser landscapes.”
“What’s the deadline?”
“Two months for all five, but they’re hoping I’ll send one now to hold my place.” Freya grabbed her coffee from the brewer and dropped onto her stool. She grabbed a croissant from the bag and ripped into it. “I’ve been home a month. I’ve painted two things, neither of which are even remotely like what I have done before. I have a website, a newsletter, a group of friends I adore… and a husband I don’t get to keep.”
Tammy set down her cinnamon roll. “So it’s true.”
Pinching her lips together, Freya managed a nod.
“You two seem really good together. Are you sure you don’t get to keep him?”
She shook her head. “In the last month, I’ve completed a handful of charcoals, one I gave as a gift to an undeserving cousin, two are of Zane–I couldn’t help it–and one of my foot. Seriously.” Her toes wiggled beneath her. “I gave him my best landscape as a gift, which I meant and I’m not taking back; he needed the serenity of that painting in his life. I have a few decent pieces in the closet of one of the spare bedrooms. And these two.” She nodded behind her.
“And?”
“And? The only things I have produced worth mentioning are inspired by my inebriated mistake of a husband. I can’t get him out of my head.”
Tammy sipped her coffee, pondering over the steam of it, then set it down again. She took a measured bite of cinnamon roll, chewed twice as long as she needed, then swallowed. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but that’s called falling in–”
“Nope. Don’t say it,” Freya cut her off, jumping to her feet and crumpling the breakfast packaging into a tiny ball. “That’s called blinding lust that kills your useful creativity, then when you think you’ve finally found a good rhythm, you discover he’s not who you thought he was. While he was all sweet and sexy and insatiable at first, when the urgency of falling in lust fades, where you thought there was love, there’s nothing but a few meaningless words passed with someone who doesn’t like your famous lasagna after all, he no longer finds your smile so irresistible, and wonders why you folded his underwear but didn’t match up his socks.”
Tammy sighed heavily, holding back the lecture Freya would refuse to hear anyway. “When is the divorce final?”
