The Stroke of Winter(40)

“What’s that?”

“They wanted you to notice the story told by that series of paintings.”

Tess nodded. He was exactly right. It was the only thing that made sense out of all this.

But who? And why?

Wyatt took another sip of his beer. “Do you feel safe staying here by yourself?” he asked.

Tess didn’t quite know how to answer that. If she was honest with herself, and with Wyatt, that answer would be no. But what was the alternative?

“I don’t know,” she finally said. “I guess if I had to put it into words, I’d be more afraid of a real-life threat than a ghostly one. And I just don’t think there’s any sort of real-life threat here.”

Wyatt nodded. He was eyeing her as though sizing her up, judging the truth of her statement. “I’d have to agree with you,” he said. “Give me a ghost over a live person any day.”

As Tess sipped on her wine, she thought about that. “How about neither?” she said, grinning at him. “Neither would be good.”

“Listen, I should be getting home to feed the dogs,” Wyatt said. His witching hour, Tess was noticing. “But I just want to make sure one more time. I’m not crazy about leaving you here by yourself, but I don’t quite know how to convey that. I’d ask if I could stay, but you’d think I was terribly forward, and plus we don’t really know each other very well. You could be just as nervous having me in a room down the hall as having a ghost in the studio.”

Tess chuckled. But he was right. She really wouldn’t feel comfortable being alone with Wyatt all night under her roof. Yes, she was going to be an innkeeper, so strangers would be sleeping under this roof regularly. That was the point. But it was also the point of making the owner’s suite.

“And I’d ask you to come back to my house, but you’d think that was even creepier,” Wyatt went on.

“I’ll be okay,” she said, his concern warming her from the inside out. “I have my bodyguard, remember?”

She reached down and gave Storm’s head a pat.

Wyatt pushed himself out of his chair and set his beer glass in the sink. As he was pulling on his coat, he turned to her. “Thanks for coming out to lunch today. I hope I didn’t yammer on too long about my family.”

“Not a bit.” Tess smiled. “I hung on every word.”

He pulled her into a hug, his arms around her waist. As she slipped hers around his shoulders, their cheeks touched. A sizzle of electricity shot through Tess, and she closed her eyes for a moment, remembering what it was like to feel that way. It had been such a long time. Opening her eyes, she pulled back slightly and put a hand on his cheek. And then she raised up onto her toes and put her lips on his, pulling him into a kiss that was, at first, hesitant, and then deepened into something real and tangible and important. Tess felt as though she should remember this kiss. It was a beginning.

“Tess,” Wyatt said, his voice rough and low.

They stood there for a moment, their faces close together, gazing into each other’s eyes. It was as though they were both recognizing and marking the same moment in time.

Wyatt cleared his throat. “Why do I have my coat on again?”

Tess smiled. “You were leaving. Something about the dogs and food.”

“That’s right,” Wyatt said. “I’m going to call you later. You have been warned.”

“First the unauthorized stop-by and now this,” she said.

After she closed the door behind him, she turned to Storm. He was standing by his food dish. A not-so-subtle hint. She scooped some food into it, poured herself a second glass of wine, and settled back down into the armchair by the fire.

Just another day in Wharton, indeed.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN



Later that night, after she had lit a fire in her bedroom fireplace and switched off the light, Storm curled up at the foot of her bed, and Tess lay back thinking about the events of the day.

Her familiar routine with Eli, their “so what?” exercise, ran through her mind. The wisdom gleaned from simply asking “so what?” had guided her through many hard times in her life, opened up ideas, and showed her the way when she thought she was at a dead end. She’d lean on it now to unsnarl the thoughts that were knotting up in her head.

She had found a treasure trove of unknown paintings by one of the world’s most celebrated modern artists. So what?

The art world would be overwhelmed with delight. So what?

The paintings would sell at auction. Her family would come into multiple millions of dollars from the sale. So what?

So what, indeed. They already had everything they needed. Her father and Eli were running a foundation with the bulk of Sebastian Bell’s estate. More money could be funneled into that, Tess supposed. They could pay for arts education for children who couldn’t afford it. More scholarships. They could even build an artists’ retreat in Wharton. Or endow a magnet school dedicated to the arts. The sale of those paintings would be a good thing. A wonderful thing. A positive thing.

But then, Tess’s thoughts went down a different path. The paintings were disturbing. Would people think they were somehow a reflection on her grandfather? These paintings depicted someone—in all likelihood, her grandfather—stalking the streets of Wharton. She let that thought percolate for a moment. So what if it showed that? What would happen when the world realized it? When her family realized it?