On the Steamy Side - Louisa Edwards [85]
Just before she dropped off, she turned her face into his neck and muttered, “Tomorrow. Gonna catch fireflies.”
Devon smiled. One more mystery to ponder before sleep took him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Lilah was speaking quite literally when she said they’d catch fireflies.
It was on her list of Things to Do with Tucker to Make Devon Realize He’d Be a Great Dad. The list was long; she was proud of it.
On Monday, they went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for an hour in the afternoon. Tucker was very interested in the paintings, although he pointed and snickered at the nude sculptures.
“Which painting do you like best in this room?” Lilah asked.
Cocking his head to one side, Tucker took the question seriously. “This one.”
It was a gory scene, two men on horseback being attacked by tigers. Lilah wasn’t terribly surprised by the subject matter he chose; what surprised her was the reason he gave: “The leopard, the dead one in the front, with the tongue going like this?” He demonstrated, unnecessarily. “I like how real it looks. Like you can see every hair in its tail.”
“That’s quite an observation,” she said, impressed. She looked more closely. The painting was a Rubens. Tucker had good taste.
Devon cleared his throat. “You like art, huh? I’ve seen you drawing in that notebook.”
Tucker shrugged. “Yeah, I like it. We started learning how to draw some cool stuff last year in art class.”
A frisson of excitement raised the hairs on Lilah’s arms. They were talking! They were having a moment!
Hoping to gently encourage it, she said, “What do you think you’ll learn next year?”
Tucker shrugged again and turned away from the painting. “Nothing. We don’t get to have art next year.”
“Why not?” Devon asked.
Tucker scrunched up his face. “Ms. Donaldson, the art teacher? We had a big party for her at the end of the year because she had to go away. But there’s not going to be a new teacher, they said. So we can’t have class.”
As they moved on to the next room, Lilah noticed Devon’s drawn brows.
“Same story all over,” Lilah said. “Public schools are losing funding for arts programs.”
“That doesn’t seem right,” Devon said. “Where else are kids going to start figuring out what they like to do? I took home ec in high school to piss off my dad, but it turned out to be the best decision I ever made. I found cooking and knew I could be good enough at it to get out of Trenton. I can’t imagine any other way I would’ve figured that out.”
“Believe me, I know. I loved teaching drama—those bright, young faces all eager to explore the possibilities. For some of those county kids, practicing a scene in my class was the closest they’d ever come to seeing what else is out there in the wide world. But the school levy failed, cuts had to be made, and of course, the theater and art departments were the first things to go.”
“And just like that, the job and the future you thought were so secure were ripped away,” Devon said with one of his sudden bursts of insight.
“Not to be trite, but I do believe things happen for a reason. If I hadn’t been let go by the school district, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
It was easy to be philosophical, Lilah found, when the handsomest man in the room was staring down at her with something perilously close to affection on his face.
“You’d still be Lolly, not my Lilah Jane.” Devon smiled, the real smile he didn’t wear on television or to get his way or to hide what he was truly feeling. It was small, a little lopsided quirk of the mouth, and it made Lilah want to drag him behind the nearest marble sculpture and kiss him breathless.
Instead, they followed Tucker around the rest of the European Paintings gallery before hitting the museum shop, where Devon spent a small fortune on art supplies for Tucker.
Lilah shook her head, but she recognized gift-giving was Devon