Twin Expectations. Kara Lennox
said. “Being an aunt is cool, too.” She enveloped Bridget in a bear hug, and they both cried.
SIX WEEKS LATER, at about 7:00 a.m., Bridget envied her unpregnant sister. She lay in bed, her eyes closed and reached blindly for the saltines on the nightstand. This was her mother’s surefire cure for morning sickness—nibble a few saltines before opening your eyes.
After making sure her bed was good and full of crumbs, Bridget opened one eye experimentally. So far, so good. She opened the other eye. No nausea.
This was amazing! She really did feel okay. She sat up slowly, then stood and put on her robe. Maybe she could even eat some cereal. She padded to the kitchen to put the kettle on for tea. September sun streamed cheerfully in through the window.
Bridget opened the back door to get a little breeze. She inhaled deeply taking in the fresh morning air, then got a whiff of whatever her neighbors were cooking for breakfast. Bacon, she realized just as her stomach revolted. She made a mad dash for the bathroom, barely making it.
Great. In a short time she had an appointment with the man who’d bought her portrait donation from the Oilman’s Ball charity auction. He’d paid an unheard of fifty-two hundred dollars for the painting. Bridget’s usual price would have been something closer to half that amount.
She’d already rescheduled the appointment once. Since the man had paid so much, she didn’t feel right about canceling again. She would just have to get through it somehow.
Her stomach settled as she headed for the address she’d been given, a few miles south of town. Once she had her bearings, she gave some thought to the portrait she was to paint. Usually her subjects had an idea of what they wanted, but if this man didn’t, she had to be prepared with some suggestions. It would help if she knew what he looked like, or at least what age he was.
His name was Quinn, or something like that. She’d received only a card with the name scribbled in barely legible writing, and a phone number to contact. She’d never even spoken to him—only to his secretary.
She made several false turns before she located the correct address, and then she wondered if she’d misread it. She found herself in a cluster of ramshackle buildings sorely in need of paint. A faded sign announced that this was “Peachy’s Air Freight Co.” The slogan underneath assured wary customers, “We fly anything, anywhere.”
The nose of one rickety airplane, a World War II relic, was visible in a falling-down hangar.
Egad, how could someone who worked here—or even someone who owned the place—afford over five thousand dollars for a portrait?
She pulled in front of the most prominent building, hoping it was the main entrance, and got out of her car. Her low-heeled pumps crunched against sand and gravel as she made her way to the door.
The office was a nightmare of shag carpeting and stale cigarette stench, calendar landscapes hung crookedly in plastic frames, and a fake plant so encrusted with dust it was gray instead of green.
The young woman at the front desk, however, appeared pleasant. She offered a smile. “Are you the artist?”
Bridget smiled back and handed the receptionist a card. “Yes. Bridget Van Zandt.”
“Then you’ll be looking for my boss. He’s out working on the plane. I’d take you out there, but he’d kill me if I left the phone unmanned.”
“I’ll find him,” Bridget said, anxious to escape the stale cigarette smell before it set her stomach off. “I saw where the hangar is.” She started to leave.
“Don’t let him scare you,” the receptionist offered. “He’s not crazy about this portrait thing, but he’ll go through with it if you pester him enough.”
“Uh-huh. Thanks for the advice.” Bridget successfully escaped the office this time, thinking there was no way she would “pester” Mr. Quinn. If he didn’t want his portrait painted, that was fine with her. She had plenty of other work to get done. Not that she minded doing a charity painting now and then, but now that she had the baby to think about, she took her income a little more seriously.
She rounded the corner into the hangar and stopped. There before her was the most gorgeous set of male buns she’d ever seen. They were encased in snug, faded denim. The man they were attached to stood on a ladder, his head and shoulders buried in the engine of the beat-up twin-engine plane.
“Mr. Quinn?” she called out once she caught her breath. Maybe she would change her mind about pestering him. Painting this man—his body, anyway—would be a pleasure.
“Be with you in a minute,” he called back to her. His deep voice sounded distracted—and familiar. Where had she heard it, and why did it send a pleasurable shiver down her spine?
Her memory snapped the lost piece into place just about the time he pulled out of the airplane and looked down at her.
Oh, God, not him. But it was. Nick Raines, who looked every bit as rugged and dashing as he had the night of the Oilman’s Ball, despite the smudge of grease on his face and the two days’ growth of beard shadowing his cheek.
“I’m looking for Mr. Quinn,” she said, trying to brazen it out. Maybe he wouldn’t remember her.
“You’re that woman from the charity thing,” he said, his expression a mixture of fascination and horror. “The one who tried to rip off my brother.”
“I did no such—” Bridget stopped herself as a wave of nausea washed over her. She would not get angry. Surely such a strongly negative emotion wouldn’t be good for the baby. “I’m looking for a Mr. Quinn,” she said primly, then peered at him hopefully through her lashes.
“There’s no Mr. Quinn here.” Nick came down from the ladder. “Don’t tell me…you’re the portrait artist?”
“Yes. It says right here on this card the auction people sent, M. Quinn.” She yanked the card from her purse and stared hard at it. Raines. If she squinted her eyes just right, the badly formed letters shaped themselves into “N. Raines.”
“Then there must be a mistake,” he said brusquely, rummaging through a tool box. The tools, unlike everything else at Peachy Air Freight, were shiny and well cared for.
“I’m afraid the mistake was mine,” she said miserably, then asked him point-blank, “Did you buy an oil portrait at that auction?”
“Yeah, but…” He looked up, seeming to really see her for the first time. “You’re the artist, you said? You’re Moving Pictures, Inc.?”
“Yes. And I understand completely if you’d like to forget the whole thing, given the rather unusual circumstances. Please believe me, I had no idea it was you who bought the portrait. I misread the name.”
“I’d like nothing better than to forget it,” he said, pulling a rag from his back pocket and scrubbing his face, removing the oil mark. “But there’s the matter of five thousand and something dollars—”
“Maybe you could sell it to someone else,” she suggested rather desperately.
“Now who in their right mind is going to pay that kind of money for a picture?”
She couldn’t help but take offense. “You did.”
“And I’ve been regretting it ever since. Anyway, no one ever accused me of being in my right mind. You’re probably thinking no one in their right mind would buy this dump. Right?”
Bridget had no reply to that, but she couldn’t help but wonder how the former CEO of Lone Star Airlines had landed here. Liz had told her something about Eric Statler bailing his half brother out of trouble with the airline, then squeezing him out of power.
“Peachy’s looks better on paper,” he said, probably seeing the skepticism on her face. “Cash flow’s not so hot, but Old Man Peachy put his profits into planes—old ones that he always intended to fix and never did. Some