Scandal. Julie Kistler
mouth dropped open. “I don’t have any spiral notebooks.”
“I’m not stupid, Jordan. Or blind.”
She sat down in her chair with a thump, edging her laptop back to face her, then rolling the trackball so the screensaver would disappear. Too little, too late.
“I thought we were on the same page,” Daniel argued. “I thought we were so much alike. Both mature, responsible adults, crossing our t’s, dotting our i’s, getting the job done, making each other proud. But ever since you started this whole scandalous women kick…” He shook his head in disgust. “I just don’t understand why you ever got into it in the first place. You could’ve studied Lincoln’s boyhood or George Washington’s teeth like everybody else. You just don’t fit this scandalous women thing. You are the least scandalous person I’ve ever met.”
She didn’t know how to respond to that. Somehow, it didn’t seem like a compliment. Stubbornly, she avoided the whole subject, insisting, “I’m not giving up now. I just can’t. I need to know what happened to Isabella before I write the end.”
“And if you never find out? What then?” Reaching once more into the briefcase, Daniel pulled out a glossy trifold brochure, slapping it down on her desk, next to her hand. “This was stuck to your door. It looks right up your alley. Maybe you can even take your class to it. Looks like a real magnet for ridiculous, sex-crazed women.” And then he smacked his case closed and made a move for the door.
“You’re leaving?” She couldn’t believe he was pushing some silly ad for a campus film fest or rock concert into the middle of their first argument and then just walking out.
“I have things to do. Plans to make.” Daniel sent her one last quick look. “Push has come to shove, Jordan. I’m moving to New Jersey. You’re going to have to decide what you want.”
“I know what I want. And it’s not moving to New Jersey!”
But he was already out the door and stomping down the hall. Damn him, anyway. Was it so wrong to want to finish up her beloved project before deciding what to do with the rest of her life?
“I am not dragging my heels!” she announced to the empty room. “I’m just linear, that’s all. I want to finish this before thinking about that .”
Liar, liar, pants on fire, mocked a little voice inside. She ignored it.
“I am furious with you, Daniel,” she shouted, even though he was long gone. “You’re trying to make me sound like some irresponsible, juvenile, swooning nutcase, and I totally reject that. And I reject you! ”
Jordan Albright, irresponsible or juvenile? Not likely. She’d been valedictorian of her high school class. Her undergraduate degree came summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Everybody knew she was someone who could be counted on, who came through, who sweated the details and produced great work on time every time. Well, she saw through Daniel’s transparent attempt to bulldoze her into planning a wedding and leaving Chicago. So unfair. It was all because he was jealous of the attention she paid to Isabella and the arch. And Nick.
Okay, so probably the fact that he was jealous of Nick wasn’t so unreasonable, considering the steam factor of those dreams and the level of her obsession. But still…
Fuming, she glanced down at the brochure he’d left behind, noting the words “Sex Through the Ages” and “Now in Chicago!” swirling over an illustration of two marble lovers tangled in an intimate embrace. Hmm…
Not the normal college promo piece, that was for sure. Sex Through the Ages? What did that mean? Some kind of art exhibit, apparently.
Maybe she should go. At least it would get her out of the office and she wouldn’t have to think about Daniel and his outrageous insults anymore. Besides, the picture on the cover was reminiscent of some of Isabella’s work.
Jordan always followed up on any exhibit, any museum show that had anything remotely like Isabella’s work. You never knew when you might stumble over a small statue or a sketch. In fact, she had a piece of sculpture, a man’s hand, sitting in her living room at home. She felt sure the object was Isabella’s handiwork, even if she hadn’t exactly proved it yet. There was just something about the power and the passion in those elegant fingers that cried “Isabella Tempest” to her.
Although “Sex Through the Ages” sounded like a theme Isabella’s sculptures would fit, a lot of late Victorian artists had worked with nudes, and the chances that this show had anything of Isabella’s weren’t good. “Highly unlikely,” she reminded herself as she peered at the pamphlet.
“‘Many periods and cultures,’” Jordan read aloud off the front. “‘Lingerie, lacing and leather. Fertility icons and totems. Erotic paintings, drawings, pottery and sculpture.’”
She scanned the rest of the flyer, looking for any details about the specific sculpture in the exhibit, about ninety percent sure there wouldn’t be anything of interest to her. Maybe more details on Victorian nudes, but she already had plenty of sources on that, so…
“Wait a minute,” she whispered. “It can’t be.”
But it was.
There, on the inside panel of the tri-fold brochure, was a small picture of an arch.
An arch just like Isabella’s.
4
How to Be a Scandalous Woman, Rule 4:
Leap before you look.
T HE PICTURE WAS TINY , and there wasn’t a lot of detail, but it was definitely an arch. Could it be Isabella’s?
“Too small to tell for sure,” she decided, peering at the picture. Her eyes swept over the poster-size reproduction on her wall, and then back at the tiny illustration in the brochure. They looked the same, but…
Stunned, Jordan took a deep breath. It couldn’t be Isabella’s arch! Not in some crazy advertisement stuck to her door. That was too easy, too weird, too coincidental. Her arch? The one that might provide the missing piece of the puzzle she needed so desperately? Showing up out of the blue?
Jordan had done all the research, looked high and low for references to the arch in every collection, every museum, every estate, leaving no stone unturned. How could it turn up like this?
It would almost be insulting if it were her arch.
“Okay, this is no time to stand on pride,” she chided herself. “If there’s even a tiny possibility it’s the right one, I have to go. I have to find out. If this is it, there could be a paper trail to tell me where it’s been all the time. Maybe all the way back to Isabella. Oh, my God.” She gulped. “That would be huge .”
Even without a paper trail, the arch would be a crucial, dramatic addition to her dissertation. Exactly what she needed to finish and prove to herself and to Daniel that she was a serious scholar.
“Art Institute, opening Friday,” she read aloud.
Damn. It was only Tuesday. Maybe if she grabbed a cab and got to the Art Institute right now, she could talk her way into the gallery where they were setting up the exhibit.
Deciding quickly, Jordan pulled open her yellow messenger bag and stuffed the slim brochure in there, alongside her wallet, cell phone, PDA, keys, an umbrella, a package of gum, a small notebook, several pens, aspirin, a lip balm and all the other things she usually carried. She liked to be prepared.
But then she looked down at her outfit. It’d been blazing hot and humid all week, and she’d planned to be in the office with no appointments for most of the day, so she hadn’t exactly dressed professionally. In fact, she’d thrown on clothes that made her feel more free and saucy, in the hope of sparking enough creativity to get around her dissertation impasse. Which meant she was wearing a too-short jeans skirt, a slinky camisole with a bold red-and-black print on it, and her favorite high-heeled