Impossible To Resist (BWWM Romance Book 1)(62)

He raised his eyebrows and drew in a breath. “Yeah, that sounds really good. Thank you. I’ll have to send a thank you note to your dad. That was really thoughtful of him to do for us.”

Catalina smiled. “That’s my dad. Always taking care of me and my friends.”

She poured him a hot coffee which he gratefully took, and then settled back into her seat. They’d been driving a short distance with the radio on when she looked out of the side window and smiled.

“Look! It’s a paint pony. I love those. I think they are so pretty with their brown and white splotchy coats,” she said, lifting her camera up and snapping a few photos of the horse in his field as they drove past it.

He laughed to himself and covered his mouth with his forefinger as he shook his head.

“What’s funny?” she asked him curiously, looking over at him and feeling the warmth spread through her once more.

“Oh, those horses always remind me of a prank I pulled when I was in college.” He laughed a little and took a sip of his coffee.

“What happened?” she asked, turning a little in her seat and getting more comfortable as she watched him, ready to hear a story. She curled her legs up beneath her and rested her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand, her blue gray eyes on him as he spoke.

“Well, there was a guy in our group who was kind of egotistical, and he thought he was a little better than everyone else. I guess I should ask you if you know who Bev Doolittle is. Do you?” He turned to glance at her.

She shook her head. “No, I don’t know who she is. Is she a friend of yours?”

Connor laughed again. “No, but she might be, if she knew this story. Bev is an artist. She was really popular a while back. She did watercolor paintings of Native Americans and animals and mountains and prairies, and almost all of her paintings were in different shades of browns and white.

“She would create these camouflage pictures of, for example, the side of a mountain, and at first glance, you would see trees and rocks and snow, a creek or waterfall maybe, sometimes a teepee, but when you looked closer, you would see faces of Native Americans and different animals hidden in the pictures; everything from rabbits to wild horses. It was all American frontier scenery. Sometimes the hidden people or animals were obvious, and sometimes you had to study them and look to find everything she had hidden in the picture.”

Catalina laughed a little. “That sounds fun, but more like a brain game or something for 100kids,” she said lightly, her eyes steady on him, enjoying watching him drive and talk.

“Oh, I’m sure kids enjoyed them, but they hit the art scene and interest in them from adults caught on like wildfire. Everyone loved Bev Doolittle. She did other pieces that were in multiple colors, but for a while, the bulk of it was done in browns and white. Anyway, so Scott had been going on and on about her work for weeks and he finally bought a print of one of her pieces. Now, keep in mind, this is just a print, it’s not an actual original.” He laughed and shook his head as the memories came back to him.

“He got the print matted and framed and he hung it up in the condo he’d bought. He put up track lighting on the ceiling so he could shine the lights down on the print, and he wouldn’t let anyone come over until he had the whole thing set up, and then he threw a big party one Friday night so that everyone could come and bask in the glory of his new Bev Doolittle print.” He laughed again, and she could tell that the story was about to get good.

“We all went, because obnoxious as he was, we were all friends. He stood there in front of that print with a wooden pointer that had a rubber tip on it, and he showed us where each of the hidden people or animals were, and a couple of our friends tried to point some out on their own, but he got so upset and shushed them, telling them not to say anything during his presentation, so we all had to stand there and watch him point out a couple of dozen animals, faces, and people in his print.

“We were all so fed up with it by the end of the night. He wouldn’t let anyone touch the glass over the print, he insisted that anyone who looked at it after he got done showing us each thing, only use the wooden pointer that he had.” He bit his lip and chuckled.

“So what happened?” she asked, watching him and knowing that there was more to the story. She loved the personal insight into his life; especially into his college days, which weren’t that far behind him.

“Well, at the time, he was working as a ski instructor, and he had the party on Friday night, and then he had to leave for the weekend to go to the mountains to teach skiing. Luckily, his girlfriend was just as fed up with his Bev Doolittle obsession as the rest of us were, and she was only too glad to give me the keys to his place when I asked for them.

“I promised her it wouldn’t be bad, but I did tell her I was pretty sure I could cure him of his elitist art snob attitude. So I went to his condo on Saturday after he left, and I took the Bev Doolittle print down and wrapped it up in an old blanket and slid it underneath his bed.

“Then I took a Where’s Waldo card and wrote a simple little note in it. ‘Where’s Bev? Love, Waldo’, and I hung the card up on the wall where the print had been, right there under the track lighting.” He was belly laughing at that point, and Catalina loved it. She was laughing right along with him.

“Oh no! That’s a terrible thing to do! What happened?” she asked in wicked delight.