Love Starts with Elle(49)
“You don’t like it, do you?” She lowered the music.
“Insecure, are we?”
Elle showed him the two feathers she’d arranged on blue silk and set in a stream of sunlight. “These . . . just appeared.”
“Appeared? Out of nowhere?” Heath reached for one. “May I?”
“Yeah, I had another one but gave it to Candace.” Elle recounted the feather story while mixing burnt umber, cobalt blue, and the white with her pallet knife. “Weird, isn’t it?”
“Why not feathers? Isn’t there a Bible verse about the shadow of His wing?”
Elle brushed a bit of the blue on the canvas. Too light. “Read that verse yesterday.”
Heath returned the feather to Elle’s arrangement. “I’m sorry about my attitude the day we brought TL home.”
She flicked the tip of the brush at him. “Forget it, I understand. I’m sure my attitude would’ve been worse.”
“Don’t excuse me. It was wrong.” He walked over to the paintings leaning against the wall. “These yours?”
“Yeah, from college and my year in Florence. A few from studying at the student’s Art League.”
He pulled the unfinished Girls in the Grass from the pile. “This is incredible, Elle.”
“Heath, it’s not even finished.”
“Yet I feel like kicking off my shoes and running in the grass.”
Elle dropped her chin to her chest, curling her shoulders forward. “Don’t patronize me, McCord.”
She’d started Girls in the Grass during a hard summer between graduating college and growing up, during her term at the Student’s Art League when all her doubts solidified.
Heath leaned the painting against the wall and picked up the one next to it. “Would you go to dinner with me?”
She looked around at him. He studied her painting of Coffin Creek under fog. “Dinner?” Like on a date?
“Dinner. I want to make it up to you for the other night.” He glanced at her, raising the painting. “Can I buy this?”
“Buy it? You can have it. And you don’t have to make up anything to me, Heath. You’d have done the same for me.”
“I know, but I want to . . . please. Can I give you a hundred for it?”
“What? No, take it, please.”
He came over to her, leaning so close her eyes could only see his. His scent filled her senses. Her skin rippled. “A hundred dollars. An artist is worth her hire. And you wouldn’t have chewed me out for a dead phone battery. Dinner?”
Swallow. “F-fine.”
“Tomorrow night at six?”
“Tomorrow at six.”
Chet McCord propelled the Hawk P-36 into the blustery headwind.The aircraft shimmied with each frigid blast and his arms already ached from holding her steady. A picture of Kelly lodged in the instrument panel fell beneath his feet.
Nothing but soup up here today. What’s the use of dawn patrol when there ain’t no dawn? For a moment, Chet fought a slight panic, the grip of claustrophobia. If he lost his instrument panel . . .
The radio crackled. “Chet. Do you read me? Over.”
A voice. Pike from Signal Corp calling to wish him good morning and remind Chet he wasn’t alone in the world. He picked up the radio mike. “Did you figure out you owed me more money?” Chet had taken him in poker last night and Pike was none too happy about it.
“The opposite—you owe me money. There was a miscalculation.” His laugh crackled over the radio. “What are you doing taking off on a morning like this?”
“Knitting Grandma a sweater. What do you think I’m doing?”
“Get down, McCord. You’re flying right into a big squall with fifty-mile-an-hour gusts. Don’t fool around with this. The boys at the weather station say it’s a humdinger.”
That explained all the turbulence. “Am I ordered down?”
“Why do you flyboys insist you can outfly the weather? Bring ’er home.”
“If I waited for ideal conditions, I’d never take off. Short patrol, under the soup, then I’ll be down.”
Chet struggled to pilot against the icy winds. But at fifty feet, an unexpected cloud break revealed disturbed white-capped waters below. Seeing an opening like this in the dense fog was the equivalent of seeing the wide-open plains of Oklahoma.
Descending for a closer look at the water, Chet scouted for enemy subs or a wayward destroyer, then rolled the Hawk toward the northeast coast line and home.
At first, the greenish gray sub tottering on the surface escaped his eye. It blended with the fog and dreariness. But once he had a visual, he knew it was a Jap I-class sub. His heart thundered as he banked around for a strafing run.
When Heath’s cell went off, it knocked him out of his growing manuscript. For a moment, he was Chet McCord, heart racing, about to fire at an enemy sub.
“Yeah,” he answered.
“Blue Cooper here. Heath, how are you?”
He shifted his laptop toward the coffee table. “Blue, long time.”
“You’re a hard man to track down. Calloway & Gardner doesn’t release information easily. I’ve had better luck with the Pentagon. Did you get my e-mails?”