Read Summer on the Mountain Online
Authors: Rosemarie Naramore
Summer on the Mountain
By
Rosemarie Naramore
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
SUMMER ON THE MOUNTAIN
© Copyright 2012 by Rosemarie Naramore
All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Summer Windham held the painting in outstretched hands, her eyes trained on the lovely pastoral scene. Smooth green rolling hills, leafy trees, and a gorgeous sunset enlivened the artwork—a recent addition to the gallery. Summer felt certain the landscape would prove popular with patrons. Her boss, Gwendolyn Lawton, wasn’t so certain.
“You really like that?” Gwendolyn asked, wrinkling her nose to convey her distaste.
She sighed. “I do.”
Summer knew her boss was partial to impressionist painters, and featured a good many of their works. But, being the pragmatist she was, she knew that like Summer, many patrons favored landscapes. And as long as people were buying them, she intended to keep landscapes prominently displayed in the gallery.
Gwendolyn gave her a breezy wave before scurrying to a potential customer. Summer bit back a smile. The customer had bypassed the impressionist paintings and was currently viewing a mountainscape she particularly liked, featuring a snowcapped mountain peak towering above a pristine lake.
Summer loved all the landscapes in the gallery, whether calm and serene like the painting she was currently hanging, or rugged, mountainscapes—it didn’t matter. Landscapes held her rapt attention, eliciting perhaps a primal response that spoke to her connection to the earth.
Maybe that was it, she mused. Perhaps her ancestors were country people who had toiled in the soil. Or maybe they had been well-to-do aristocrats living in country manors surrounded by thousands of acres of land. Summer would never know, and in truth, had no real desire to know—or at least for the time being. Later, perhaps…
Adopted as an infant, she had enjoyed a happy childhood with parents who adored her. She suspected were she to inquire about her past, her adoptive parents might be hurt, and she certainly had no wish to inflict pain on the family that had doted on her. Well-to-do like Gwendolyn, her parents had given her everything a child could want, including a sound value system, and she loved them for it.
She hung the painting, stepping back to assure it was perfectly straight. Leaving nothing to chance, she hurried to her desk and retrieved a level. She used the tool and found her picture-hanging attempt spot on.
She smoothed a hand to her glossy blonde hair, assuring a stubbornly errant tendril remained in place. A quick glance downward confirmed her sleek, black dress remained wrinkle free, and that her panty hose were free of defects. She sighed. She knew she was the picture of professionalism. She was also tall, wispy thin, and elegant. Were she anything less, Gwendolyn would never have hired her, though Summer knew looks could be deceiving.
She often felt she was diametrically opposite to the outward picture she presented. If she had a job that allowed her to don overalls and work boots, she suspected she’d be as happy as a camper. In fact, she wanted to go camping!
She stepped across the gallery to view another painting, this one also a mountain scene featuring tall trees and a pristine mountain lake. A lakeside cabin, rustic and homey, called her name. She sighed loudly and Gwendolyn appeared at her side.
“If you could step into that painting, I believe you would,” she said, smiling ruefully. And then she shuddered, since her distaste for the Great Outdoors mirrored her distaste for the visual representations that hung in the gallery.
Summer raised an eyebrow and Gwendolyn pointed a manicured finger toward the painting. “Mother Nature isn’t as sweet natured as you might think, my dear,” she said. “I certainly found that out the hard way.” She shuddered, remembering a recent trip to the mountains with her husband, Leonard.
A true outdoorsman, he had finally persuaded a reluctant Gwendolyn to accompany him to the family’s cabin several weeks before. Leonard had enjoyed countless summers at the mountain retreat as a child, as had the couple’s own three boys. But Gwendolyn had never visited there longer than a few hours, usually citing work commitments as a means to avoid having any lengthier contact with Mother Nature. But … she had finally agreed to accompany her husband as a means to commemorate his sixty-fifth birthday. Unfortunately, the trip had been short-lived, with her high-tailing it off the mountain faster than Leonard could blow out the candles on his birthday cake.
Gwendolyn glared at the painting Summer was currently admiring as if it were an artist’s rendition of her husband’s mountain retreat. She pointed a finger at the forest depicted in the painting. “There are bears in those woods,” she said with a dramatic shudder. “And the mosquitoes are so thick, you need a spatula to scrape them off, and even the deer are a nuisance, sticking their noses into places they certainly do not belong.”
Summer chuckled merrily and clasped her hands together. “I can’t believe you saw an actual bear, and to think, you saw a fawn…”
“And a skunk,” Gwendolyn added, pursing her lips in distaste.
“Oh, I’d love to go to your cabin,” she said wistfully, staring at the painting.
Gwendolyn watched her intently. “Then why don’t you? Why don’t you indeed?” Her eyes shone brightly, and she quirked a smug, triumphant little smile.
“What are you thinking?” Summer asked, watching her friend through narrowed eyes. There was no telling what she had on her mind.
“I was thinking…” She continued to eye her thoughtfully, cocking her head as if trying to decide whether to divulge her idea or not.
“What?” Summer pressed. “Tell me.”
“Well, I don’t think Leonard has forgiven me yet for abandoning him on his birthday…”
“I don’t blame him!” she cried shrilly. “It was his sixty-fifth birthday, Gwendolyn.”
Summer adored Leonard, who often stopped by the gallery with either lunch or lattes in hand for both her and Gwendolyn when the gallery was particularly busy and they couldn’t manage to get away.
“When I took my vows, I promised to love and honor. I never said anything about roughing it in the wilderness.”
“But Gwendolyn, it wasn’t as if you were tent camping. Leonard showed me a picture of the cabin and told me all about the recent renovations. It looks and sounds lovely—a restful, rustic retreat.”
“Oh, yes,
lovely
,” she muttered sarcastically.
“Okay, anyway, what are you thinking?” Summer persisted.
“As I was saying, I don’t think Leonard has forgiven me yet for abandoning him, but, I think I may know how to win him over.”
“Really? How?”
Gwendolyn brightened, flashing her a high-voltage smile. Her teeth, blindingly white after a recent trip to the dentist’s chair, gleamed in stark contrast to her tanned skin. Blue eyes under a cap of crisp, dark hair twinkled with pleasure. “I’ve been telling you it’s time you picked up a paint brush, haven’t I, dear?”
She nodded, green eyes narrowed. “Yes, you have.”
Summer hadn’t painted for nearly a year, feeling as if her muse, whatever it had been, had abandoned her. She had accepted a commission from wealthy gallery patrons a year before, only to find the experience would ultimately sour her on the thing that had been most dear to her—her art.
The clients, a married couple, had insisted on several alterations to a painting of their home, although even Gwendolyn had declared the finished product perfect. In fact, she had been so delighted with the painting, which the client had refused to buy, she had displayed it in the gallery. It had sold quickly and for a considerable amount of money, which had been a tremendous relief to Summer—but not enough a relief to inspire her to pick up a paint brush again.
Gwendolyn giggled gleefully. “Summer, you’re due for a vacation, and you’re going to have it on the mountain, and I’m going to have a happy husband when you return.”
She shook her head. “What are you talking about?”
“I want you to go to the cabin, and while you’re there, I want you to paint the cabin, or the forest, or the lake, or whatever strikes your fancy, so long as Leonard recognizes it as his childhood stomping grounds.”
“Are you serious?” she asked, not daring to believe she might have an opportunity to actually stay in her friend’s mountain cabin. Astoundingly, she had reached the age of twenty-seven without ever having experienced any excursions into the Great Outdoors, other than a one-time camping trip with her father when she was only eight.
“I’m very serious,” Gwendolyn said. “You can leave today! The sooner I have that painting, the sooner Leonard will forgive me.” Her face glowed with hopeful anticipation.
“That sounds … I mean…” She abruptly shook her head. “I can’t go!” She couldn’t possibly leave today. She had work to do at the gallery, and packing to do at home should she actually decide to take the trip. Besides, she couldn’t very well snatch up a paint brush and expect her muse to return, could she?
Gwendolyn grasped her hands. “Please, Summer, will you do this for me? I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I can’t tell you how pleased Leonard will be to have a painting of his mountaintop, or cabin, or whatever…” She waved a hand dismissively. “And, really, you are due for a vacation. And, this may be just the ticket to getting you painting again.”
“But, how will you manage without me?” It was summer, the gallery’s busiest season due to the influx of tourists to their town.
“Holly is home for part of the summer, so she can always help out.” Holly was Gwendolyn’s eldest granddaughter, and had helped out often at the gallery during summers since she was sixteen.