PAINTED PASSION now appears on All Romance Ebooks, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble. In honor of the event, a new excerpt is below.
EXCERPT:
Trella
placed her sketchbook on Francois’ desk while she waited for his return. The
offer to show her paintings at his gallery couldn’t have come at a better time.
Paris had eased her grief, and the camaraderie of the art world helped her
heal. Now she was ready to get on with her life.
Moments
later, Francois returned to his office, shutting the door behind him. “We have
a month to prepare for your show. I know you can handle the deadline crunch,
but it’s not a lot of time for you to get it together, my dear.” He pinned her
with a hard stare. “You’re holding back.”
Knowing he
was right, she didn’t respond. The average buyer wouldn’t notice a lack of
depth in the work, but an experienced art connoisseur would.
She
smoothed the front of her dress. “The drive to create is returning,” she
acknowledged.
He
adjusted black, square-framed glasses on his aquiline nose. “You can’t run from
processing grief. You love what you do. Passion”—he waved his hands around in
his usually demonstrative way—“cannot be faked. You are either born with it, or
you’re not.” He pointed at her. “You were born with it. Stop trying to control
it, temper it. If you hurt, paint the hurt. You have a right to feel. Passion
must be free to breathe, to be alive and affect others.”
He removed
a set of keys from his pants pocket. After unlocking a door, he motioned for
her to follow him into a smaller room. He flipped on a light. Francois pointed
at five canvases. Instead of her usual intimate settings of bedrooms, dressing
rooms and cars, for which she had achieved critical acclaim, her latest works
featured landscapes.
“None of
these portray the warm palettes people are accustomed to seeing from you.”
“Francois—”
He shook
his head. “They are not representative of your best work. You need a key piece,
and you have not provided it yet.”
“I can’t
paint what I don’t feel.”
“True.” He
nodded as he studied the canvases. “Maybe you needed to exorcise the pain
before moving forward.” He stroked his chin. “None of these are your key piece.
The last time you showed. I was so moved I cry, no?”
She
nibbled her bottom lip as she studied the painting of an old palm tree, half of
its fronds a muted green, the remaining a sullen brown. Sadness and remorse emanated
from the canvas.
“Grief
does strange things to people, Francois.”
“True. The
reason the landscapes don’t work isn’t because they aren’t good. Your emotions
seeped through, but I can sense you feel you have to show what people have come
to associate with you.” He tugged her to him then folded her in his arms. He
tilted her chin, forcing her to look up at him. “The young woman who first
waltzed into my gallery was eager to take on the world. Bring her back. Paint
with abandonment. One doesn’t control a fire. It either flares into bright
flames or is extinguished.”
Didn’t he
understand she wanted to have her old mojo return? She eased from his embrace,
wrapping her arms around her middle. “Nothing I’ve tried works,” she whispered.
He sighed.
“You’re trying too hard. Art needs space to create.”
“The loss
of Louis—”
“He died.
Yes, it is sad. But you didn’t die. No one blames you for living.”
Francois
shooed her from the room, back into his office, before locking the door behind
him and returning the key to his pocket. He picked up her sketchbook from his
desk, flipping the pages one at a time before closing it with an audible snap. He didn’t say anything, and she
glanced at him.
He held a
hand over his heart. “Your key pieces,” he whispered. “Why are you hiding
these?”
She froze
in sudden shock. She’d forgotten to remove the drawings of Carlos.
“Look.” He
flipped to a page. He held it up for her perusal. “The longing, the wanting. I
feel it from the sketch. This is it!”
She bit
her bottom lip as she studied the rendering of Carlos, naked and proud. If
Francois recognized the latent desire she possessed for her husband’s former
partner, would anyone else?
“Why the
gloomy face?”
She
sighed. “I’d rather not use any of the drawings.”
He tapped the
page. “These must make the show.”
He
couldn’t be serious. If, by some miracle, Carlos did agree to be used as a
model, could she withstand the pressure of people dissecting what they’d
believe to be the intimate nature of their relationship? “I can’t. I never used
a painting of Louis.”
“It’s no
one’s business why you never used your husband as a subject. I figured you
didn’t want to display your marriage to the world’s perusal.”
She
nodded. Everyone assumed that, including Louis. In her soul, she knew her
paintings of her husband wouldn’t be on par with her other work.
“Francois,
this man…I can’t.”
He perched
on his desk. “I’ve been where you are, Trella. Art does not lie. There is no
subterfuge. You cannot pretend what doesn’t exist.”
But
could she pretend what existed, didn’t?
