Dreaming Of… Italy. Alison Roberts
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eye, but she knew the paintings were good. Tucker, on the other hand, clearly thought they were magnificent. But it didn’t matter. Her brain had stalled on his quiet statement that he’d been left at a church, didn’t know his parents. Her heart broke a little bit picturing a tiny baby, wrapped in a blue blanket, alone for God knows how long in an empty church that had probably echoed with his cries.
But she forced herself to think about business. They’d opened a door for discussions about his parentage and one for displaying his work in a showing. She didn’t want to push too hard, too fast. It was time to go.
She stepped forward. “Mr. Engle will give you his cell phone number.” She smiled at Antonio, then Tucker. “And you can give us yours.” Antonio quickly tore a sheet from a drawing pad and scribbled his number before he handed it to Tucker. He tore off another sheet and offered it to Tucker to write his number too.
Instead Vivi’s boss pulled a business card from his jacket pocket.
“You’ll be hearing from us.”
Antonio beamed. “Great.”
The second they were in the car, Tucker turned on her. “What the hell was that all about? We could have stayed there for hours, asked a million questions. He loved us. He’d have done anything we wanted.”
“We’re supposed to be scouting, not hiring him on the spot. I wanted this to look real.”
“There were at least three chances for us to have ‘the’ real conversation. I could have easily told him who he was.”
“And he could have easily turned on us. He’s proud of his work. You seemed to agree with his assessment that it’s very good. We’ll go back to Constanzo’s, tell him my plan, see if he likes it. If he does, we ease into Antonio’s life over the next few days and ease Constanzo into the art show plan. When the moment is right, we’ll tell him.”
“Do you know how many ways that could go wrong?”
“Yes. But I also know that if we do it my way, give them a little time together before we drop the bomb, even if he freaks and heads for the hills, he’ll still know his dad and when he calms down he could come back.”
Tucker started the car. “You’d better be right.”
“I may not be.”
He gaped at her.
“But I think my plan is better than just dropping him in a pot of boiling water.” She peeked over at him. “You know the rule about cooking a live frog don’t you?”
His eyes narrowed.
“You put him in warm water, water he’s comfortable with and turn up the heat so gradually he doesn’t even realize the water is boiling until it’s too late.”
He shook his head, but didn’t argue.
Vivi relaxed. “So, how did you learn about art? Anything looks good to me. I mean, it was clear Antonio’s work was good, but I couldn’t tell you if it was exceptional. Yet you knew it was.”
“It’s in the eye of the beholder. If the technique is good, you just check your gut...did it touch you, say something?”
“And what did his work say to you?”
Tucker turned onto the country road again, heading back to Constanzo’s. Seconds ticked off the clock. Then a minute. Vivi wondered if he was going to reply to her question.
Just as she was about to ask again, he sighed. “His work tells me that he sees beauty even in an ugly world.”
“He thinks the world is ugly?”
“He knows the world is ugly. He was raised as a foster kid, remember? Even the foster parents who loved him probably gave him up from time to time, depending upon their own conditions. A foster dad can need heart surgery or a knee replacement. Sometimes they just can’t keep you. When he turned eighteen, government help ended. And it’s possible he might have suddenly found himself out on the street.”
He spoke with such confidence, such surety, that her heart melted a bit. She pictured the baby in the blue blanket, crying in the church again. “I’m guessing some of that happened to you.”
He sighed. “I’m not special and I’m not crazily depressed. Things like that happen to a lot of kids. Growing up as a foster kid isn’t easy.”
“But you made something of yourself.”
“Yes, I did.”
“And you still think the world is ugly?”
“I think the world is hard, not a sweet soft place like you do.”
She gasped. “Are you calling me a Pollyanna? I’m not a Pollyanna!”
He sniffed a laugh. “Right.”
“There are things in my past, too.”
“Uh-huh. The law suit.”
Her chin lifted. “It was humiliating.”
“And I’m sure it probably scared you. But I also know the kid dropped his suit. And I’m pretty sure your two parents cuddled you the whole way through it.”
“Well, you snob!”
His mouth fell open. “Snob?”
“Do you think everybody with parents had it easy?”
“Certainly easier than those of us who didn’t have parents.”
“Parents can’t fix everything.”
“And what happened to poor Miss Vivi that couldn’t be fixed? Boyfriend break your heart?”
“My boyfriend turned out to be nothing like everybody thought he was.”
“So you called him evil names, his parents sued and you ended up the bad girl.”
“Leave it alone.”
He sucked in a breath, suddenly so curious he couldn’t stop himself. All along he’d recognized there was something about her, something different, something important. And he knew it had something to do with that lawsuit. Yet she wouldn’t tell him. She pushed and pushed and pushed to hear everything about his life. And he’d coughed up one fact after another. Yet here she was refusing to tell him something he could probably find for himself.
“I could look it up.”
She blanched. “Don’t. This is painful for me, as painful as your past is to you.”
He pulled the car to the side of the road and cut the engine. “Seriously? You have some kind of teenage Romeo and Juliet thing happen to you and think you can compare it to being left in a church? Abandoned? Raised by people who only took care of you because the state gave them money?”
She licked her lips.
“Come on. You started this. You ask me questions all the time. Now I’m pushing you. What the hell did this kid do that was so bad you had to try to ruin his reputation and force his parents to sue you?”
She glanced down at her hands. “He attacked me. He would have raped me if I hadn’t been able to get away.”
Tucker froze for three seconds before regret poured through him like hot maple syrup. “Oh, my God. He attacked you?”
“And the thing I did that was so bad that his parents sued? I tried to have him prosecuted.”
He’d never felt this combination of remorse and fury before, and had no idea how to deal with it. For every bit as much as he wished he could take back his angry words, he also wanted to punch the kid who’d hurt her. “I’m so sorry.”
“We were dating. Everybody assumed we were doing it. After all, he was the star quarterback on the local college football team. Handsome. Wealthy. Every girl in town wanted to date him and he picked me.”