Page 5 of Tribulation Pass

Jenna.

She knew he’d be up this early. She knew him as well as anyone ever had. That was part of the problem. The calls came less frequently than they had after they’d initially broken up. But for whatever reason, she wanted to know how he was doing and to tell him she missed him. It was a vicious cycle, and he wasn’t ashamed to say he’d used the emotion the breakup with her had caused in his work. He’d done some of his best painting over the last year. The only saving grace was she’d left before he’d embarrassed himself by asking her to marry him.

His parents and the rest of his family had taught him the value of marriage. It was a commitment that wasn’t to be taken lightly, and when he did find the right woman, he’d be with her until he took his last breath. O’Haras mated for life, and that kind of contentment was a tall order to fill for the younger generation.

He knew he needed to block Jenna’s number and move on. There was no need to hold on to those last dregs of a relationship that had fizzled so quickly. It didn’t matter that he’d loved her. She hadn’t loved him. At least not enough to stay.

But these occasional calls kept him tethered to her, and he’d stopped answering months ago and let it go to voicemail. And then he’d listen to her messages—the voice that was so familiar, yet so far away—and feel the faint tug to go after her. But Laurel Valley was his heart. And if she didn’t love him enough to stay, Duncan could admit that he didn’t love her enough to go.

He turned toward the sliding glass doors to go back inside and caught his reflection. He saw himself first as an artist would. Maybe he should paint a self-portrait today. Despite the scowl on his face, he shared the strong bones and angular face that all the O’Hara men had. His hair was dark blond and badly in need of a cut. He tended to forget such things when he was working, and he’d been working a lot lately. His eyes were hazel with flecks of brilliant green and gold, and the scruff on his face was getting long enough to irritate him.

He was tall and lean with the body and shoulders of a swimmer, which made sense considering he’d swum across the lake more times than he could count to get to one relative or another’s house.

He’d spent his life outdoors, and had the rugged looks and calloused hands of someone who knew how to work and play hard. But he had the soul of a poet, the heart of a romantic, and the temperament of a crotchety old man when his art and space were interrupted. He was a contradiction, but to Duncan O’Hara’s mind, life, just like art, should be contradictions. That’s what made it interesting.

“Come on, Winston, it’s time to go to work.”

Winston cracked an eye open and immediately closed it again. Winston wasn’t a big fan of work.

“Rain’s coming,” Duncan said. “If you stay out here you’re going to get wet. And I’m not going to stop what I’m doing to come rescue you.”

Winston gave an aggravated sigh and got up slowly, making sure Duncan knew how displeased he was, and then he lumbered inside to sit on the mat in front of the kitchen sink.

“Yes, you’re right,” Duncan said. “You deserve a treat for trekking the entire fifteen feet from outside to inside. You’re a dog Olympian.”

Duncan grabbed a treat from the canister on the counter and Winston took it delicately from his fingers before trotting off to the built-in doghouse in the wall under the stairs.

The two-bedroom cabin had been built with the views in mind. He and Hank had designed it together, and he couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. The O’Hara land was vast—thousands of acres—which was good because there were a lot of O’Haras and the last thing he wanted to be was crowded.

He’d chosen his plot of land across the lake and a mile or so down the road where Hank’s house was located. It was A-frame in structure, and had floor-to-ceiling windows on all sides. He didn’t worry about privacy. There was no one remotely close to him, and no chance of stray hikers on the private property.

His studio was in the loft upstairs, and the view was incomparable. The floor plan was open—living room, kitchen, and dining room—and the furnishings were modern, minimal, and sleek.

He touched the control panel on the wall and John Coltrane wailed through the surround-sound speakers as he detoured through the kitchen to refill his cup, this time adding a generous amount of sugar and cream. And then he padded into the master bedroom and stripped out of his pajama pants, tossing them across the foot of the king-size bed as he headed into the bathroom.

The bathroom was one of his favorite rooms in the house. It was large, and the entire back wall was glass and looked out over the lake, and there was a large walk-through shower with ceiling and wall jets. At the touch of a button he could slide the glass panel into the wall and walk out over the lake on the attached dock. There was an outdoor shower so he could rinse off before coming back inside when he spent a day on the water, and in the winter the tile floors and walls stayed heated.

Duncan turned on the water and walked into the shower with his coffee. He drank too much of it, but not drinking it in the mornings never turned out well for anyone. The water was hot, and he washed quickly, his mind occupied with the painting he’d left unfinished upstairs. There was something missing…

The morning light that had been streaming through the windows vanished and everything fell into shadow. Duncan had been so wrapped in his thoughts on the painting that he hadn’t noticed the change in the sky.

Gray clouds roiled overhead and the wind made tiny whitecaps across the lake. But there was still a single stream of sunlight that split between the mountains, and the sight of it made his breath catch.

He turned off the water with a jerk of his wrist and grabbed a towel from the bar, halfheartedly drying off as he ran across the tile and into the bedroom, leaving puddles of water behind him. There was a pair of cutoff sweats on top of his dresser, and he grabbed them and then ran naked through the house and upstairs to the loft.

The view from the second floor was even better, and he knew he’d only have moments to capture the power and emotion of Mother Nature before it was gone. He haphazardly pulled on the sweats and then moved the canvas he’d been working on off the easel and propped it against the wall.

He grabbed a new canvas, his movements methodical and practiced, and mixed paint with the fanatic intensity of a mad scientist. The first stroke slashed across the canvas like the lightning that danced in the sky. His heart pounded and the exhilaration was like nothing he could explain. There were days art was work—where he had to tear it from his soul and he thought he might not survive—but there were times like this where he was no longer in control of his body or his mind. It was as if he were standing outside his body and watching from the outside.

Drops of paint littered the hardwood floors and sweat dripped down his back, despite the cool breeze of the air conditioner blowing through the vent overhead. He was in a battle, a warrior wielding a sword with every stroke of the brush, and he would be victorious. There was no other option.

The clouds changed color and rolled toward him, as if they were coming to swallow him whole, and he felt the power and electricity in the air. His gaze was focused, his smile triumphant.

Time no longer mattered. He could have stood there for hours or days. But he felt the aches in his body as he put the final strokes on canvas. His concentration broke and he stopped to stare at the painting, breath heaving. There was a thudding, a pounding, that kept intruding even as he tried to push it away. He used his palette knife to thicken the clouds and add layers of color, and then he made a final stroke as another explosion of thunder shook the house.

“Done,” he said.

It was alive. That was the only way to describe it. And he was exhausted. But he wasn’t finished. When the creative energy was flowing through him like it was, it was best to ride the dragon until the bitter end. He took care of his brushes and scraped his palette and thought of his next project.

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