Free The Gossiping Gourmet: (A Murder in Marin Mystery - Book 1) (Murder in Marin Mysteries) by Martin Brown Page B

all unique of course, but they have to
work well together, otherwise you’ll never be able to cultivate a collector to
move from one artist to another.”
    Anna’s experience came
through in everything she said and did.
    What Barbara enjoyed most was
Anna’s constantly prodding her for her opinion. “I want to know what you think,
Barbara. I don’t think I’ve met anyone more in tune with collectors than you.”
    Barbara equally enjoyed
getting to know Anna’s forty-year-old son, James. Barbara felt an immediate
attraction to him, since the first day they met at the gallery. James, she
learned, had divorced two years earlier, and as he told her, “I doubt that I’ll
ever find the right woman now.”
    Barbara, ever the optimist
insisted, “none of us knows what tomorrow might bring, James. The perfect woman
for you might come walking through the gallery’s front door next week, and all
your pessimism will vanish as if it was never there.”
    “What if that woman already
walked in? What if she’s you?” James asked in that sly, half-teasing,
half-serious attitude that she’d come to recognize.
    James didn’t have the raw
physical appeal that Grant embodied, but he had a level of sensitivity that
Grant had in short supply. His eyes were a remarkable blend of blue and green.
His face was open and kind. And while it would have been impossible for her to
explain, a small thrill went through her whenever he would laugh and gently pat
her hand.
    Watching Barbara and her son
together, Anna declared, “Watch yourself, my dear. When he wants, James can be
very charming. He’s much more like his father than I ever thought possible.”
    Barbara laughed. “James is
wonderful, but I assure you, my Grant is man enough for me.”
    Still, as the commuter bus
that dropped her within six blocks of her home crawled along the overburdened
approach to the Golden Gate Bridge, Barbara found herself staring out the
window and wondering what James would be like to hold in her arms. Would his
kisses be tender? Would his lovemaking be a little less fierce, and hopefully
more patient, than Grant’s?
    She had to admit that she was
curious. But she had no intention of acting on her curiosity until, at a
reception for the budding young geniuses that made up the heart of the Gate Six
Artists Cooperative, she met Grant’s latest prodigy, Kitty.
    Twice during the evening
event, she caught a glimpse of them sharing a joke. At one point, when Grant
wandered off to another artist’s studio, Barbara made it a point to strike up a
conversation with Kitty.
    “We have two artists at the
Moss Gallery in San Francisco where I work who use a similar blend of colors
and materials as you,” Barbara said, hoping to seem relaxed when she really
wasn’t. “You should come in one day, and we can have lunch.”
    Kitty seemed disinterested
and distracted, and then said, “I should ask Grant if he’d like to go into the
city with me; all three of us could have lunch together.”
    Everything Barbara disliked
about Kitty doubled with that one comment. It didn’t help that she was ten or
more years’ Barbara’s junior, with high check bones, ash tinted blond hair,
exotic brown eyes, and her breasts were all but falling out of the stylish
white cotton she was wearing.
    Call it a woman’s intuition,
or just put it down to the glances she saw them exchange, but for the first
time in many years, Barbara wondered if Grant had once again fallen victim to
his own insatiable appetites.
    Before coming to Sausalito,
he had seemingly ended the distractions that frequently arose in their marriage
whenever he found himself interested in another woman. Barbara was never sure
if it was just lustful curiosity or something more serious than that. After
all, when she met Grant, he was involved with that Jamaican woman he moved out
shortly before he suggested that she move in.
    Barbara also wondered if his
pursuit of a perfect physique had returned to Grant not just