by Alison Kent
“I don’t think it is. I’m just…” She returned one hand to her lap, picked up her fork with the other. “Careless isn’t exactly the right word, but I sometimes get so wrapped up in what I’m doing that I totally zone out. I know that sounds dumb. But weaving for me isn’t the mindless repetitive motion you might think.”
“What is it?” he asked, though he would never have applied the word mindless to anything she did. She was too mindful of everything.
“Promise not to laugh.”
“Of course not,” he said, earning himself a roll of her eyes.
“My scarves… I don’t know if it’s like this for everyone, but I can’t work until I know what I want them to say.” She paused, and when he didn’t respond, she seemed to grow self-conscious, picking uncomfortably at her food. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Try,” he said, his chest tight with wanting to know more about this part of her.
She breathed deeply and lifted her gaze to his, holding his, as if she needed to know he was fully present before she shared this part of herself. As if she didn’t share it often. Or as if this bit of who she was wasn’t always taken seriously. Paid attention to.
He set down his fork, wiped his mouth, and placed his napkin next to his plate, silent, attentive. Almost like old times, when she’d talked and he’d listened.
“Earlier,” she began, “when I was outside and heard you on the guitar, I remembered listening to your father play. I loved when he did. It was one of the best parts of being at your house. The flamenco music, the fire and the passion. It makes me think of a deep pink, nearly red, rich and lush and full. Like a flower in a dancer’s hair. Or her lipstick. But it’s never red. And it’s not magenta, or a bright neon.
“So pink, and gold. Like the fires that burned in the living room fireplace. Long tongues of gold. The gold of pollen in the center of a hibiscus. A vibrant, living gold. Like that of a spiced peach. To go with the pink. And then I see black. Like a dancer’s shoes. Shiny patent leather. But there’s always a yearning in the songs, so I see indigo, I think. Or a violet-blue. So close to purple, but never purple. And yearning isn’t all of it. There’s happiness. I’m happy hearing the music. Your father is happy playing. That’s pure orange.
“When I have the whole story in my head, the song, the laughter, the dancer’s skirts flying and the intensity I see on her face, when I have all those colors, I look at the yarn I have to choose from. You should see all the yarn I have to choose from. I’ll have to show you.…” The sentence trailed, and she found another path back to her tale. “I lay out the skeins, decide which color is the theme. The color the rest have to support and complement without overwhelming.
“Then I start. And I play music while I work. And I forget everything else but telling the story. I see the dancer and hear the guitar and know just when to switch threads. And I reach for the scissors and forget I moved them and manage to slide my knuckle along the blade. And that is why my hands look like they do, and why weaving the Luna Meadows way is to be avoided at all costs.” And that was it. The end. She reached for her juice, took a long swallow, sat back, and sighed.
He didn’t know what to say. The way she felt about her work, her art… He’d never felt any of that zeal, that involvement, that sort of attachment to what he created. She was an artist. He was a craftsman, and until now he’d been fine with that. It had served his father well. He’d thought all this time he’d been served, too. And maybe he had been. But something inside of him wondered what it meant to be consumed the way Luna was consumed. To live and breathe and know nothing else.
That sort of passion… “How does the kiss play into that?”
Frowning, she picked up her fork, avoiding his gaze as she asked, “The kiss?”
She was trying to play it cool. She was doing a terrible job. Color darkened the skin over her cheekbones, bloomed in the hollow of her throat.
“You heard the music. You came inside. You kissed me.” He finished off his coffee, shrugged. “I figure that’s part of the story.” Because it wouldn’t make sense for it to be anything else. He didn’t want it to be anything else. Anything else would get in the way, and so he waited, needing her to slip a knife through the cord choking him and set him free.
She looked down at her plate, her hands still, her hair a dark canvas behind her shoulders and neck. “I hated seeing you looking so sad. I know this can’t be easy, being here, all the memories. I wanted to give you what comfort I could.”
“So it wasn’t about the story,” he said, struggling to breathe. “You just wanted to kiss me.”
“Yes, okay.” Her head snapped up. “I wanted to kiss you. And it was equally clear that you wanted to kiss me.”
He shifted in his seat, braced his forearms against the table, and leaned forward, his voice low, his words fiery. “I’ve wanted to kiss you since I walked into the kitchen and found you climbing down from the chair.”
“What?” The word came out husky, almost a whisper, disbelieving and uncertain.
“I’ve wanted to kiss you since I walked into the kitchen—”
“I heard you,” she said, shoving at her plate and knocking it against her coffee cup, grabbing that before it spilled, her hand shaking.
He gave her a moment, savoring it. He wanted her off balance, wanted to jar loose the secrets she held. Then he came back with, “What? You’re not going to admit that you’ve wanted to kiss me just as long?”
Her chest rose and fell, the color on her face deepening. “What good would it do either of us for me to tell you that?”
So he had it right. “It might get us back to doing it again. Or at least get us back to doing it sooner, because we both know that’s where we’re going to end up.”
She set her fork and her knife on her plate, cleaned her mouth with her napkin, and added it on top. Then she reached for her purse on the banquette seat at her hip, pulling several bills from her wallet and placing them in the center of the table. “Here’s my share of the tab. If you wouldn’t mind taking care of this, I’m going to make a stop in the ladies’ room, and then I’m going back to the house.”
“That’s it?” he asked, as she scooted out of her seat and stood.
“No. There’s one more thing,” she said, hitching the strap of her bag up her shoulder. “Don’t assume you know where we’re going to end up. Don’t assume you know me anymore.”
“I don’t have to assume anything, Luna. I do know you.” He reached for his wallet, opened it, and tossed his cash to the table before he looked up. “Probably better than you know yourself.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Luna parked in the driveway behind Angelo’s rental car but didn’t get out, staying instead behind the wheel to gather her wits. After finding the calm she’d needed to leave Malina’s ladies’ room, and finding Angelo gone once she had, she’d thought about going home. Then she’d thought about going to visit Kaylie. Then about going to Austin to see who was playing in what bar on Sixth Street.
What she’d tried not to think about were Angelo’s parting words. His voice, when he’d said them, had left her unnerved; the look in his eyes had perplexed her. It was as if their nearly four years together hadn’t existed at all, when she knew very well that they had.
She’d been sixteen the night she’d sneaked upstairs to his bed. Too emotionally young, too mentally immature, physically just right. Granted, they hadn’t really dated before he left for Cornell, but that year and the ones that followed had happened. She’d still gone out with her friends. He’d still gone out with his.
They’d each met a need in the other. She’d given him an escape from the pressure that came with being the oldest of six and a natural athlete with no desire to play college ball. He’d wanted to study architecture, to be Frank Lloyd Wright the same way Sierra wanted to be Yo-Yo Ma. Luna got that. Sierra got that. No one else did.
And Angelo had gotten her. Even if he’d had a car of his own, he would never have used it to im
press her. He had used his star quarterback status, but she couldn’t blame him; that even impressed her father. He’d read the same books she did because she did, and listened to her rant about plots gone wrong. She’d ranted about the movie versions of her favorites sucking. He’d listened then, too. He’d listened to everything.
And now that they’d kissed… yes, she’d wanted it; after their history, how could she not? But she was old enough to know getting what she wanted was not necessarily a good thing. She wanted ice cream. Daily. Rocky road or vanilla bean. She wanted pizza. Greek pizza, with spinach and red onions and Kalamata olives and feta cheese. She wanted salted caramel apple cupcakes from Butters Bakery. And really. There were more things she wanted than food. And food shouldn’t even be on her mind after all she’d ordered at Malina’s.
It was that kiss, making her hungry, making her want more of him. Making her ache to end up exactly where he’d said they would. She’d wanted to slap him for suggesting such intimacy was inevitable. As if she hadn’t gained any self-restraint. As if she hadn’t learned to say no. Please. She was over him. Completely over him. And she had been for eight years. That kiss meant nothing. She refused to let it.
Pushing open her door, she forced herself out, pocketing her keys as she heard another vehicle brake to a stop on Three Wishes Road’s gravel shoulder. Praying it wasn’t Oliver Gatlin again, she turned, and was genuinely surprised—and pleased—to see Will Bowman climbing from his big Keller Construction pickup. He headed toward her, the sun casting a funhouse shadow of his tall, lanky body down the driveway and onto her car.
Welcoming the distraction, she walked away from the house—where Angelo waited—to meet him. “Will! What are you doing here?”
His smile was coy, the light glinting off strands of his blue-black hair. “Wanted to see where you’ve been spending all your time.”
The implication being that she wasn’t spending it with him? Or was she reading more into the one dinner he’d cooked for her months ago? “I’ve been busy, which working for Ten you should know. And from what I hear, Kaylie’s house has been keeping you busy, too.”
He nodded, shoved his fists into the pockets of his skinny black jeans. “Who knew the short-term gig for the café would turn into a long-term gig after the fire? Though a lot of the delay goes to the insurance company for dicking around so long.”
“I’m just glad the house was salvageable. I haven’t driven by in weeks. I’m anxious to see how it looks.”
“It looks a lot like it did a hundred years ago. Or it will once the exterior’s painted. Though I have a feeling the particular shade of blue Kaylie chose is completely anachronistic.”
Luna laughed. “I imagine Kaylie is less concerned about being period authentic than she is being able to live there. She loves that house.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, sweetheart,” Will was saying as Angelo walked up, his scowl no doubt spawned by Will’s casual familiarity. Will scowled, too, his upward chin jerk and the resulting flip of his ironically emo hair equally—and unnecessarily—territorial.
Men. Such ridiculous posturing. As if either one of them had laid claim to her. As if she’d let either one of them do such a thing. “Angelo Caffey, Will Bowman. Angelo’s sister was my best friend in high school, and this was their house. And I met Will a few months ago while he was working on Two Owls Café.”
“On what?” Angelo asked, continuing to take in the other man.
Instead of throttling him, Luna explained. “Do you remember Winton and May Wise? They lived in the big blue Victorian on the corner of Second and Chances? A friend of mine bought the place and converted the first floor into a café. Or was in the process of doing so when a fire broke out on the third floor.”
Will offered Angelo his hand. The two men shook, each sizing up the other before Will spoke. “We’ve just about finished rebuilding the turret, and Kaylie’s thinking she’ll be open by November.”
“That’s great,” Luna said. “I know she hated the delay.”
“Pretty sure she hated more the idea of losing the house.”
“Oh, of course,” she said to Will, then said to Angelo, “Will works with Tennessee Keller. Keller Construction is going to be building the arts center.”
Angelo only nodded, leaving Luna to ignore him and ask Will, “What do you think of the plans?”
Will looked over Luna’s head, beyond Angelo’s shoulder. “Seeing the place in this light, we may have gotten it wrong, thinking we’d have to raze the house.”
And here, after saving it, she’d come to terms with losing it for the cause. “I thought you decided there wouldn’t be enough room for the center otherwise.”
“That’s because we’re thinking about the plans as they are,” Will said. “Not as they could be.”
“You want to keep talking in circles? Or maybe you could spell things out straight,” Angelo said.
Luna rolled her eyes, but Will wasn’t fazed. Not surprising. In the months she’d known him, she had yet to see him ruffled, even when working on a ladder three stories high replacing Kaylie’s shutters.
“Ditch the utilitarian schoolhouse look. Keep the homestead, farmhouse vibe. Build the center around it, and use the rooms already here for administration, or whatever.”
Luna glanced from Will to Angelo, got a don’t look at me—it’s your house now expression in response.
“It’s an interesting concept,” she said, turning her back on the grump to respond to Will. “What do you mean, utilitarian schoolhouse look?”
His arched brow said she’d missed the obvious. “You’re building an arts center. Don’t you think putting some art into the center would help your cause?”
He had a point. Still… “I don’t want to buy frills when the money would be better spent on the supplies. And the instructors.”
“Thinking of aesthetics as frills is your first problem. You’re an artist. Why would you do that?”
“I just told you why. It’s a nonprofit. We’re not made of money here.”
“I’ll do you up a new design gratis. And I’ll toss in my hours with Ten for free.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I am made of money,” he said, taking off on a tour around the house.
Luna wasn’t sure whether to follow, or to let him do whatever he was doing on his own. She’d wondered in the past about his roots, especially after the first time they’d met, when he’d told her he’d been raised by wolves. And the night he’d cooked for her she’d been made well aware that he wasn’t hurting financially. But this?
“What do you know about him?” Angelo asked, cutting into her musings.
“Just what I told you,” she said, keeping her thoughts to herself. “I met him a few months ago, the morning he came to work for Ten.”
“Did you date him?”
Not Is he from here or Does he have family nearby or What’s with the haircut? “I had dinner with him one night.”
“Did you sleep with him?”
And, of course. “That’s not any of your business.”
“Embarrassed to admit that you did? Or that you didn’t?”
“I’m not embarrassed about anything,” she said, crossing her arms as she looked up at him. “Except you being rude to and dismissive of Will.”
He snorted. “My being rude is hardly anything new.”
Nice to see he recognized that about himself. “No, but for some reason I keep forgetting.”
“Because you want to civilize me?”
“I’m no Saint Jude,” she said, and waited for another smart comeback.
What she got instead was a confused frown, and after an uncomfortably long moment, “You think I’m a lost cause?” just as Will finished his tour and returned.
“Well?” Luna asked, happy for the distraction. She wasn’t ready to analyze the emotion she’d seen on Angelo’s face.
Will was nodding. “I think it’s doable.”
“How m
uch more is it going to cost me?” She wasn’t totally naive. Adding on to the house and the current structure would not come as cheap as the utilitarian concept Will eschewed, even with his throwing in the design and his hours for free. And especially since the house itself would make up such a small portion of the finished center.
“That part’s up to Ten. I’m just the idea man.”
“Didn’t take you long to come up with that one,” Angelo said.
A shrug. A hair flip. A wolfish grin. “It’s what I do, figuring things out. Figuring people out.”
“Oh?” Angelo asked.
His tone, a ridiculous display of machismo, had Luna rolling her eyes. Then Will made a big mistake, opening his mouth and giving Angelo more ammunition along with more of the wolf: “I had a lot of quiet time to learn how during the three years I was in prison.”
“You were in prison?” Angelo asked, advancing.
“Come on,” she said to Will, grabbing his upper arm and turning her back on the raging bull snorting behind her. This was one drama she did not need in her life. “I’ll walk you to your truck.”
“While I’ve got your attention and you’ve got my arm, have you thought more about snatching up one of the textile warehouse lofts? Those things are going fast, and there aren’t that many to be had.”
“Not only have I thought more about it,” she said, pausing before the punch line. “I pick up my keys tomorrow.”
“Seriously?” He opened his door and dug for his key ring, bobbing his head as if he approved. “All right. Neighbors. We’ll have to grill a crate of corn or something. Celebrate.”
“Sure. If you’re still there by the time I’m all moved in.”
“I like Hope Springs. I like working with Ten. I might stick around awhile. It’ll be good to have you close,” he said, his dimples digging crescents in his cheeks when he grinned. “You know. If I need to borrow a scarf or something.”
“Uh-huh.” She’d decided months ago this one was too clever for her. She was pretty sure she’d decided right. “I’d thought about renting a house in town, or an apartment, but with the lofts being snapped up… And there’s enough space for my loom. I really like the idea of working from home.”