Free Jane Bonander by Winter Heart Page A

of scribbling, anyway.” Daisy had used this ploy on a patient at the hospital. It had worked.
    “I don’t scribble.”
    Dinah gave her a careless shrug and turned away.
    “Whatever you say.”
    “Well, I don’t. But, I…I can’t show you.”
    Continuing to feign a lack of interest, Dinah examined the wildflowers that grew beside the blanket. She recognized some of them after finding them in a small book on California wildlife and wildflowers written by a California naturalist by the name of Ian MacDowell, who had lived for years in the Yosemite Valley.
    She plucked a stalk holding a profusion of California buttercups and brought it to her nose, inhaling the fragile scent. “Fine. Then don’t.”
    “If I show it to you, you’ll take it from me.”
    Dinah stopped but didn’t turn around. “Why would I take it from you?”
    “Because Mama didn’t want me to draw. Before I went away, she took all of my supplies and hid them. I don’t remember much about being gone, but I do remember that the nurses there wouldn’t let me draw. Mama must have told them not to.”
    Dinah sat on the gazebo steps. “Why would she have done that?”
    “Because … because she didn’t like what I painted.”
    “Has Tristan told you not to paint?”
    Emily’s brow wrinkled and she started breathing hard. “No, but he doesn’t remember that I like to.”
    “Your mother is in heaven, Emily.” Actually, she wasn’t so sure the old hag wasn’t burning in hell. Although she’d been taught it wasn’t up to her to judge someone, she couldn’t help hoping the woman was suffering for some of the things she’d obviously done to her own daughter. “She can’t stop you from painting anymore.”
    “Yes, yes she can.” Emily’s agitation was real. “She told me she’d look down and watch me. And that bad things would happen to me if I did. I thought if I did it here, she couldn’t see through the roof and discover what I was doing.”
    Dinah swallowed a disgusted sigh. What kind of mother would make threats that would reach out from the grave? “I’d like to see what you’re doing, Emily. Won’t you show me?”
    Emily drew the tablet out from between the folds of her skirt and handed it to Dinah.
    “Why, Emily,” she said with a sigh. “It’s beautiful.” The rustic garden scene was alive with trees and flowers. Despite the fact that they were drawn in black pen, color seemed to leap from the page. That’s how perfect they were.
    All of a sudden, Emily’s face was pinched with discomfort. “Tristan’s coming. Please,” she pleaded, grabbing for her pad, “he mustn’t see it.”
    She stood, hiding the tablet as she hurried down the gazebo steps. “I’m going inside.”
    She stopped briefly, and Dinah heard her tell her brother she was going in to lie down.
    Tristan continued to stroll toward Dinah, his worn buckskins clinging to his muscular legs. He wore the vest, as he had the day she’d arrived. His outdoor clothes transcended fashion, however she had the feeling that he could wear a loincloth and not be out of place anywhere. The sight of him made her tingle. He was without a doubt the most handsome man she’d ever seen.
    The devil dogs appeared out of nowhere, loping beside him.
    “They truly are ugly dogs,” she remarked as the three of them approached her.
    He appeared offended. “I’ll have you know they’re championship Irish wolfhounds.”
    “Irish?” She snorted a laugh. “Leave it to them to breed the most unsightly animals in the world.”
    “I would have thought that with a name like Odell, you were Irish as well.”
    “Me? No. Lord, no. Odell is a Norwegian name. There’s no, you know,” she explained, making a twist with her index finger, “no apostrophe after the O.”
    He actually laughed. Or made a sound that passed for a laugh. “Better not let Mrs. Linberg know that. According to her, every evil done to man was perpetrated by a Norwegian.”
    “Then she’d better not meet