A Wanted Man by Susan Kay Law

dropped her gaze to the brush she still held in her lap. The yellow paint was drying on the sable, graphic evidence of just how long she’d been spilling her soul to the man. Was it some quality of his that drew it from her, his calm, patient encouragement, hiswell-timed comments? Or was she simply so unused to the attention of an attractive man that her mouth kept spilling out words in an attempt to keep him around?
    More than attractive, she realized as she looked up again, no more able to resist studying him than she’d been able to forget a single word of the reviews about the New York panorama. She understood she had little to compare him with. The handsome men in her life tended to reside between the covers of art books. And yet she doubted that he’d have any less effect on her if she’d met every man on the eastern seaboard.
    His face was not perfect. Far from it; there was a break in his right eyebrow where a half-inch scar bisected it. His nose had a definite bump and veered to the left. His hair was badly cut, longer on one side. And, of course, there was that fading bruise, the remnants of violence.
    But absolute visual perfection was boring. One of the first things her painting instructor taught her was that the eye craved some tension. Beauty always showed to best advantage when contrasted with the ugly.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “Going on about that. I know that, as problems go, placing a building, even a church, on the wrong side of the street in a painting is hardly life-shattering.”
    “You have pride in your work. I admire that.”
    Warmth bloomed, as if the sun had just stoked up the fire.
    “How about you? I—”
    “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Mrs. Bossidy clipped across the square, her skirts snapping with each determined stride, her voice carrying clearly on the spring breeze. “Did I not tell you to stay beneath the umbrella? You areunused to so much sun so early in the year, and it is much stronger here.”
    Laura jerked, then squared her shoulders. She had nothing to feel guilty about, she reminded herself. Not about getting perhaps a bit too much sun, which felt wonderful on her head, her shoulders. Nor about spending a few moments conversing with an interesting man, something Laura had no doubt Mrs. Bossidy would be addressing as soon as the “sun” issue was settled.
    One wouldn’t have thought Mrs. Bossidy could cover so much ground so quickly without breaking into a run. As soon as she gained Laura’s side, arriving in a cloud of rosewater perfume and a rustle of stiff petticoats, she twisted the pole of the large umbrella out of the ground, moved it forward until its protective shadow covered Laura completely, and jammed it back into the pebbly earth. “You must promise to stay beneath it, dear, or I won’t have you out here at midday again.”
    “It ruins the light,” Laura complained.
    Mrs. Bossidy fisted her hands at her hips. “Fine, then. See how well you hold a paintbrush when you’ve blistered the back of your hands.” Her expression softened. “I’m not just protecting your pearly complexion, you know. You’ve spent so little time in the sun, Laura, it’s more dangerous to you than most.”
    But it seemed like everything wonderful was more dangerous to her than most. Parties, travel. Life . She’d been healthy for a long time, something that Mrs. Bossidy and her parents and everyone else she knew often failed properly to consider.
    She opened her mouth to respond. And then saw the fine lines of worry that furrowed Mrs. Bossidy’s brow, the icing of silver that threaded her dark hair.
    The days when her illness was the worst—the weeks,the months, she admitted to herself—were mostly a blur to her, a murky drift of memories, spikes of pain softened by the numbing medicines they gave her, all blending into a feverish fog. Those who’d sat by her bedside had likely experienced it far more sharply than she had. And so that memory lived in their minds more