Read Between The Lines: Business of Love 6

by Parker, Ali

  I had a beautiful girl to make mine.

  Officially.

  There was a chance I was taking too big of a leap by showing up on her doorstep when she was hosting her parents for the weekend. Nora was already overwhelmed. Either this would be too much on her plate at one time or it would be the thing that spared her from the misery she was currently enduring.

  Seeing as how she was holed up in her bedroom trying to get away, I had a good feeling this might be a redeeming action.

  It took less than fifteen minutes for me to get to Nora’s house. I parked at the curb right behind her parents’ Volkswagen, got out, and stopped at the bottom of the stairs leading to the front door.

  It was dark out, so the curtains were half closed, leaving about a one-foot open space between them for warm light to pour out of. Inside, I could see people walking back and forth. It looked like perhaps someone was setting or clearing a table for dinner.

  I hoped this wasn’t a bad time.

  “Don’t get cold feet now,” I told myself.

  With that, I made my way up the stairs to the black front door, lifted a hand, and knocked.

  Chapter 29

  Nora

  “Nora!”

  I rolled over on my bed so I was lying on my stomach. Then I dragged a pillow under my face, and screamed into it.

  “Nora!”

  Leave me alone. Can’t I have half an hour of peace?

  How long had I been up in my room? Forty-five minutes? An hour? On a scale of one to rude, where did that fall?

  Grace hollered one last time up the stairs for me.

  I rolled off the bed, stormed to my door, and threw it open to bellow back at her. “What?”

  “Someone’s at the door for you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Why don’t you drag your lazy ass down here to find out?”

  Grumbling and already in a piss-poor mood from the dental convention fiasco, I made my way to the top of the stairs and began to descend. As I made my way down to the main floor, I heard Julie’s feminine laughter flowing around the house. It smelled like lasagna and garlic, and when I came around the corner at the bottom of the stairs, I was half expecting Grace to be there with an oven mitt to slap me silly. I’d have deserved it.

  But I didn’t happen upon Grace at the front door.

  Instead, I found myself face to face with Walker, who’d just closed the door behind himself and was rubbing his hands together to warm himself up.

  He smiled when he saw me. “Hey.”

  Right on cue, my cheeks began to burn. “Hey.”

  I noticed several things about him. He had paint under his nails and on his dark gray sneakers. Shades of blue competed with shimmering silver that somehow looked wet but I knew it wasn’t. His hair was a bit disheveled and untidy, and his cheeks were a little rosy too, and I wondered if it was from something else other than the cold.

  “Were you at your studio?” I asked.

  He looked down at his hands. “Yes, I was. Then you called and I had to come here straight away.” He peered over the top of my head into the house, where my parents, Grace, and Julie were all gathered in the kitchen sipping wine in my absence. “I hope I didn’t interrupt.”

  “I was still in my bedroom.”

  His eyes flicked to me and he smiled. “Coward.”

  I reached out to shove him, but he caught my wrist. I tilted my head back to look up at him. Curiosity rolled through me. What was he playing at?

  Walker’s smile slipped away and his expression softened into something more serious. “Nora, I didn’t want to wait another minute to ask you if you’d be my girlfriend. To be exclusive. Whatever the term is.”

  I thrummed with joy. Had he really driven over here just to ask me that?

  My answer was simple. “Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes,” I said, nodding eagerly.

  He leaned over and met my lips with his. We broke apart and he glanced up to the kitchen once more. “Your parents are glaring daggers at me. Do you think I should get out of Dodge and let you finish your evening?”

  “You’re not getting out of it that easy,” I said, taking his hand in mine. “If we’re exclusive, then my parents are also your problem. Which means you’re staying for dinner.”

  His eyes still lingered on my parents. “Your father won’t try to pull my teeth out or anything, will he?”

  I giggled. “Having second thoughts?”

  “About you?” Walker asked, chuckling. “Never.”

  With that, he took the lead and walked me into the kitchen with him. He held himself with confidence as he apologized for crashing the evening. “There was something important I had to ask Nora,” he amended after his apologies were made.

  Grace pulled the lasagna out of the oven and rested it on a hot plate on the counter. “And what might that have been?”

  I blushed and failed to wipe the smile off my face. “Walker is my boyfriend.”

  I felt like a childish teenager when I said it like that. It took everything I had not to giggle and make a fool of myself. I turned expectantly to my parents, expecting enthusiastic smiles or sighs of relief, but all I got were stiff shoulders and lackluster smiles.

  Walker held out his hand to them. “Mr. and Mrs. Riley, it’s nice to meet you both. I’ve been curious to meet the people who made Nora. She’s not like anyone I’ve ever met before.”

  Grace smiled to herself as she cut up garlic bread. Julie fetched an extra wine glass for Walker. She poured him a glass and held it out to him.

  He thanked her but didn’t sip it yet. I assumed he was letting it breathe.

  My mother’s gaze roamed all over the man by my side. Her attention settled on his paint-stained sneakers and it wasn’t hard to imagine what she was thinking. She didn’t like the way he presented himself.

  Of course, she wasn’t seeing all of him.

  She was only seeing this moment of Walker. She saw the paint, the denim, the leather jacket, the stained hands, the unkempt hair. I saw the wrinkles near his eyes from smiling so big, the warmth in his gaze, the kindness in his touch.

  I wished desperately that all of that wasn’t so lost on my parents, who were undoubtedly wondering what his salary was.

  “Dinner is ready,” Grace announced. “Grab your plates from the table. Walker, I’ll get you one and make a quick extra setting.”

  “I appreciate your efforts,” Walker said. “Are you sure there’s room for me to join? If it’s too—”

  “You’re staying,” Grace said.

  Julie grinned. “You’ll be glad you did once you try some of Grace’s lasagna. She’s a fantastic cook.”

  “It’s true,” I said.

  My mother chimed in as she swirled her wine. “One would think after living with her for so many years that Grace’s talents would have rubbed off on you, Nora.”

  Grace answered smoothly before I even had a chance to get my hackles up. “I’m sort of a control freak in the kitchen. Nora hasn’t had many chances to learn from me because I don’t share the kitchen well while I’m in here.”

  That shut my mother up tactfully. I made a mental note of how well Grace had handled that.

  Together, everyone collected their plates while Grace made an extra setting for Walker beside me. We put lasagna, garlic bread, and Caesar salad on our plates before taking our seats, where Walker toasted to a homecooked meal and Grace’s control-freak tendencies.

  “I feel lucky to be here to reap the benefits,” he said before taking a sip of wine.

  Grace liked his compliments. She nodded, toasted him one extra time, and took a sip from her own glass. “Bon appétit.”

  Walker savored every bite of his meal and made it known how much he was enjoying it. Whenever he rested his fork to sip his wine or chat with Julie or Grace (my parents were steadfastly ignoring him as they dined), he’d reach one hand under the table and put it on my thigh or hold my hand. He constantly reassured me that he was co
mfortable here and could hold his own even though my parents were being far from welcoming.

  And this wasn’t even their damn house. It was mine.

  My temper began to prickle. Walker must have sensed it because he put a hand on my knee and squeezed as if to say, breathe.

  I did, and it helped a little.

  An hour into the night, once all our plates were nearly licked clean and I’d removed them from the table, my mother finally spoke directly to Walker.

  “Do you work with paints?” was all she managed to ask.

  Walker nodded. “I’m an artist, yes. I do mostly portraits.”

  Grace must have sensed where this was going because for the first time all night she went tense. She knew how disapproving and condescending my mother could be. She sat up straight. “I have one of Walker’s pieces up in my office. It was a beautiful gift he gave me. You should come see it.”

  “How long have you been painting?” my father followed up.

  “Two and a half decades or so,” Walker answered smoothly. “It started out as just a hobby, as most of these kinds of things do, but as time went by and I honed my skills, my work started to get noticed. Over the years, I started acquiring personal orders and requests and didn’t have to rely on traditional brick and mortar stores for sales.”

  I swelled with pride and sat up a little straighter in my seat.

  The way Walker spoke about his work seemed to intrigue my parents because they exchanged a curious look that said, maybe he’s not as much of a loser as we first thought. I still loathed how dismissive they’d been of him but I hoped it would turn around by the end of the night and they would start to see him the way I did.

  “So you are successful then?” my mother asked.

  “Mom,” I said, “that’s impolite.”

  Walker chuckled, unfazed by her forwardness. “I see where Nora gets her lack of a filter from. I’m successful, yes.”

  I blinked. So did my mother.

  Then she grinned. “I have been told on more than one occasion that I have a tendency to step right into shit instead of tread around it.”

  Walker laughed. “I’ve never heard that expression before.”

  “I think it applies strictly to me and my daughter,” my mother said.

  Walker twisted in his seat, rested his elbow on the table, and gave me a devilish smile. “Why don’t you tell them about the first conversation we ever had?”

  I looked everywhere but at him. “Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell them,” he said and launched into the whole mortifying tale of how I’d openly criticized art and artists alike while unwittingly standing right beside the artist of the painting I was insulting.

  My father thought this was hysterical. Grace and Julie enjoyed hearing the story again. And my mother? Well, she couldn’t stop smiling at Walker.

  This was new territory for me. No guy I’d ever been with would have stood a chance of charming my parents. But Walker? He did it with ease and transparency. He wasn’t trying to be someone else. He was authentically himself and they were eating it up.

  Just as I had.

  Had I been nervous over this for no reason?

  “I’d love to see some of your work, Walker,” my mother said, now nursing her third glass of wine.

  Grace invited all of us to go upstairs to her office to see the painting she’d taken home from his gallery. We all made our way up the stairs and into her office, which was done up in bright, airy colors. The painting behind her desk pulled all the focus to it. Nothing else could even compete. The colors and the woman in the sari were an absolute showstopper.

  “Wow,” my mother breathed, stepping up close to admire his work. “This is impressive.”

  “Very impressive,” my father echoed.

  “I fell in love with her the minute I saw her,” Grace sighed, gazing up at the picture. I’d caught her staring at it like this on weekday mornings several times over the past week before starting her workday while I was walking down the hall to get in the shower. “All of Walker’s art is equally as beautiful as this. He’s really talented.”

  Walker grinned. “Keep the compliments coming. Us artists run on praise and flattery like writers run on coffee and whiskey. I can say that,” he added. “My best friend is an author.”

  I rolled my eyes at him and he wrapped an arm around me to whisper in my ear.

  “I think this is going well?”

  I nodded. “Very well. You’re lucky you’re so charming.”

  “And handsome. Don’t forget handsome.”

  “Like you would ever let me forget,” I teased.

  After everyone had enjoyed the mini art showing, Walker told us he should leave and let us finish our family evening.

  We all followed him to the front door and I tried to get him to stay a little later.

  He shook his head as he put his hand on the door handle. “I crashed your dinner long enough. You only have a short amount of time while your folks are in town. Enjoy it. We’ll see each other soon.” His attention shifted to my folks. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Riley. I hope we get the chance to see each other soon.”

  “Goodnight, Walker,” my mother said.

  My father shook his hand, clapped his shoulder the same way he had Spencer’s, and led my mother back into the kitchen with everyone else so Walker and I could step out onto the top of the stairs outside and steal a kiss in private.

  “I can’t believe how well that went,” I breathed.

  “I think they like me.”

  “Like you? I think they want to adopt you.”

  “Well, that would make this a little weird, wouldn’t it?” He gestured back and forth between us.

  I grabbed the front of his jacket and pulled him down for a kiss. “Sometimes you just need to stop talking, hotshot.”

  Chapter 30

  Walker

  Monday rolled around with lingering memories from a dream about Nora.

  Flashes from said dream played in the back of my mind on the drive into the gallery that morning. I arrived well before Briar, and in an attempt to think of something else, I wandered across the street to the coffee shop on the opposite corner from the gallery and ordered us some coffees. By the time I returned, Briar had arrived and was behind the desk in the gallery turning on the computers and getting ready to open for the day.

  I handed her a latte with cinnamon sprinkled on the foam, just how she’d been drinking it lately.

  She pursed her lips on the lid and sipped. “Thank you. I needed that this morning.”

  “Long night?”

  “Long weekend,” she sighed. “Wes and I did some decluttering and it felt like we never had a chance to sit down. And someone interrupted the first morning we had to sleep in.”

  I grimaced. “Oops.”

  She held up her latte. “You are officially forgiven.”

  I was glad I’d shown up early.

  Briar walked around the studio and began opening blinds. “So, any more updates on the Nora front?”

  “I asked her to be my girlfriend. Officially.”

  Briar paused with the blinds half open and looked over her shoulder at me. “Are you serious?”

  “Yep.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  She smiled. “I’m happy for you, Walker.”

  “I’m happy for me too. I even met her parents.”

  Briar laughed and opened the last set of blinds. “Steady there, Romeo. Two big milestones in one weekend? Who are you and what did you do to my boss?”

  “One evening actually.”

  Briar snickered and returned to the counter to sip on her latte some more. “I’m proud of you.”

  “That’s all it took?”

  “Some nerve and a step in the right direction? Yeah, I guess so. The latte didn’t hurt either.”

  “Noted.”

  Briar pulled up my inventory list tha
t displayed every piece I had in all three of my galleries. On the to do list today was some sprucing up. I wanted to move things around and ship pieces to other galleries to keep things fresh. My new collection would be hitting my New York gallery within the next few weeks, which meant the pieces I had on display now were free to be moved and transferred to the other stores.

  “Do you think you can handle making most of the decisions?” I asked Briar as we clicked through all the pieces and began working through which ones complemented the others. I liked collections to stay intact. They showed best together, not apart. I wanted to give Briar a bit more responsibility in preparation for potentially letting her run the galleries if I was to ever up and leave and travel with Nora. This seemed like a great trial-run opportunity.

  “Of course,” she said confidently. “You know I have good taste and an eye for detail.”

  “Perfect, because I have a client coming in to start working on a special order.”

  “Right.” Briar nodded. “Mr. and Mrs. Ronfield.”

  “Yes.”

  Mr. Ronfield and I had been in contact off and on for the past few months. He’d wanted to hire me for some time to paint a collection of portraits of his wife, Morianna. She’d been a fashion model about ten years ago and the pair of them were used to a life of luxury and glamour. Now she was a new mother, and the changes in her body had her feeling unlike herself. Mr. Ronfield wanted me to capture her likeness and remind her how beautiful she was.

  I was more than happy to help. Not only was Mr. Ronfield a good guy, but he was also willing to pay handsomely for the project. And his wife? Well, I would do everything in my power to show her that tiger stripes, a soft tummy, and squishy thighs were not worth disliking what she saw in the mirror.

  Her husband adored every inch of her. If I was lucky and did a good job, maybe I could help her see herself the way he saw her.

  It wouldn’t be easy but it was a challenge I was willing to take on. Today would be our first in-studio session together where I would start painting after months of consultations and attempts by Morianna to back out. She was nervous and I understood that. It wasn’t easy to strip down to your birthday suit in front of a stranger and have him scrutinize every inch of your body to paint you properly.