What Sean had said was, “You probably haven’t been seeing women because of me, huh? That’s stupid. I mean, if you like her.” He’d shrugged with elaborate unconcern.
Nolan wondered if Sean’s father had dated after the boy’s mother deserted them. Grandma presumably hadn’t. His only real experience of adults in a relationship might have been the married couple who’d been his first foster parents. Nolan had no idea whether that couple had loved each other or not. All he did know was that they hadn’t loved Sean, and hadn’t been willing to stick to it long enough to find out whether with time they could.
This is a first date, he reminded himself. He wasn’t bringing home a wife. Now, that might be reason to scare a boy in Sean’s position.
He found Allie’s carriage house with no problem. None of the old homes in West Fork were all that grand, but this was one of the fanciest, trimmed with some modest turn-of-the-century gingerbread. It appeared that the ground floor of the carriage house was now a detached garage. An outside staircase led up to the apartment. Allie came out, locked up and had started down the steps by the time he got out of his pickup.
“Sorry,” he apologized. “I don’t have a car. I use this for hauling.”
She looked in the back, dented a few thousand times, and grinned. “No, really?”
His mouth quirked. “Guess you can tell.”
Racks were installed to hold slabs of granite or marble to prevent cracks or breakage. Chunks pretty much got tossed in. The pickup had a long bed and a double set of tires in back to support the weight of a heavy load of stone.
“Is this part of the ‘what do you do for a living’ question?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact it is.” He opened the passenger side door and realized she wouldn’t be able to swing herself up the way he did. Nolan winced.
Allie wore a skirt, but hadn’t really dressed up, for which he was thankful. He’d gone as far as slacks and an open-neck sport shirt, dressy enough for any north county restaurant. She accepted his boost, but didn’t seem to have any trouble with the scramble.
They agreed on Mexican food, and he backed out of her driveway. “I’m a stonemason,” he said abruptly. “I work mostly with granite, sometimes marble, rarely other stones.”
She stared at him. “What do you do with the granite and marble?”
“My bread and butter is countertops. Kitchen, bathroom.” He frowned, thinking how to explain. “All custom work. People come to me when they’re building or remodeling high-end houses and want something out of the ordinary.” He told her about some of his other jobs: the garden bench, tabletops, even floors occasionally. “Fountains, too. And when I have time, I sculpt.”
They’d reached the restaurant. Not until they were seated and had ordered did she cross her arms on the table, lean forward and fix a fascinated gaze on him. “Tell me about your sculpting.”
Nolan shifted in his seat. “I’m not always good with words,” he admitted after a minute.
“Maybe you’ll show me your work one of these days.”
“I can do that.” Though he always felt uneasy showing his pieces to others. A couple of galleries carried his sculptures, but he twitched some even when the gallery owners were exclaiming over them.
“Do you do figures? Animals? Abstract shapes?”
“Yes,” he said, then laughed at her pursed lips. “All of the above. I guess everything I carve has a sort of modern look. I don’t do literal or detailed.” He found his hands were trying to shape the air. “The stone tells me what it wants to be,” he finally said, helplessly, bracing himself for rolled eyes.
But she nodded her understanding. “To some extent, I feel that way with quilts. Usually I decide to do a certain pattern, or have thought of a variation that will make my quilt different, but often the idea comes in response to a wonderful fabric that comes in and I suddenly see what it would do the best.”
He looked at her in amazement. “That’s how it is for me. It’s as if something is inside that particular block of stone. I’m uncovering it more than creating.”
Her nod held equal satisfaction. “Most people don’t understand that, do they?”
“No.”
Conversation flowed surprisingly easily after that, an experience that was rare for Nolan. Of course, he got her to do most of the talking, which helped, but she poked and prodded some answers out of him, too. They shared chips and salsa as he heard about the quilt shop, how she’d been a quilter for years until she realized her hobby was more of a vocation and decided to figure out how she could make it provide a livelihood.
“Not that small-business ownership is hugely profitable.” She scrunched her nose in a way he thought was cute. “Overhead, inventory, taxes... I only have one very part-time employee, and I keep her hours down as much as I can. Do you know what a bite payroll taxes add?” she asked indignantly.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve had employees off and on.”
“Why off and on?”
“Well, it’s more that I used to have employees then decided I wouldn’t take on more jobs than I could do myself. I like to work alone.” It was more than that, of course; what he really wanted was absolute control. He didn’t like having to look over someone else’s shoulder to be sure they were working to his standards. He could make more money if he had a production line of sorts going, but he did fine as it was.
Once again she surprised him with another nod. “I wouldn’t want to sell quilts under my name that someone else had pieced or quilted, even if I did check them over carefully to be sure I was satisfied.”
Over a burrito for him and a taco salad for her, they got around to talking about family. No surprise, first she asked about Sean. Nolan told her about his couple of encounters with the boy, and then that phone call out of the blue.
“Took a while to be approved as a foster parent. I had to jump through some hoops, which was frustrating when I knew how unhappy Sean was parked in a group home. I think the county accelerated the home visit and what have you, though. The social worker told me they never have enough foster homes for teenagers. Especially one being returned for having a snotty attitude.”
“Does he?”
Nolan shrugged. “He’s a kid who has had the rug yanked out from under him time and again.” He told her some of Sean’s history. “I’d say he’s pretty damn normal, considering.”
“How awful for him to get dumped again so soon after his grandmother died.” She smiled at Nolan. “I knew I liked you.”
So, okay, that gave him a warm, fuzzy feeling, but also embarrassed him. His motives for taking Sean in were still a little muddled, but Nolan knew one thing—it sure as hell wasn’t so people would admire him.
As soon as he could, he turned the conversation back to her.
Her mother was here in town, Allie said; in fact, they’d had dinner together last night. “Mom keeps books for a couple of downtown businesses owned by the same guy—Mark Solver?”
“I know him.”
“Otherwise—I don’t really hear from my father.”
“No siblings?”
She was silent for a moment. “A brother, but I don’t even know what he’s up to anymore.”
“Older? Younger?”
“Older.” She gave him a bright smile that seemed a little forced to him. “You?”
Apparently, she didn’t want to talk about any family but her mother. He couldn’t say he blamed her. God knew, he had issues with his own parents.
Parents. He didn’t even like to think of them that way.
Nolan shrugged. “I grew up in Chicago. That’s where my family still lives. I talk to my brother and sister regularly. Don’t see any of them very often.”
“The Windy City.”
“That’s right. Chicago was all right.” He thought about it for a minute. “Sometimes I miss it. Great food. I haven’t found an Italian restaurant out here to match the ones back home. When I was ready to go into business for myself, though...I guess I wa
nted to get away.”
No shit, he thought sardonically, and hoped this time she didn’t push for an explanation.
For a moment her expression was rather searching, but to his relief she let it go. “What do your brother and sister do?” she asked. “Or your dad. Is the stonemason thing familial?”
“Nope. My brother, Jed, is an attorney, my sister, Anna, a potter.”
“That’s not so different,” Allie pointed out gently. “You’re both artists. Texture and shape matter to you.”
He shrugged his agreement. He guessed there was a creative streak in their family. But it was an irony because their mother was a publicist—owned her own business—and so far as he knew neither of her parents had been of an artistic bent. And he and Anna likely didn’t share a father.
As it happened, neither of them had the same father as Jed did, either.
Irritated by the tug of something like pain, he pushed the subject down deep where it belonged. He wanted to know about Allie, not talk about himself.
But she wasn’t done. “How did you end up working with stone, then?”
Her question resurrected his edgy thoughts of family. He’d always wondered if his affinity for stone had been inherited. He’d never know, since he had no idea who his biological father actually was.
“I always liked rocks,” he said. “I picked them up wherever I went. Seventh or eighth birthday, my parents bought me a tumbler for Christmas.” He grinned. This was a good memory. “Made a god-awful racket. Everybody complained whenever I ran it. But I had a real good time with that thing. Turned out, rocks that looked plain had something pretty inside.
“Family figured I’d end up a geologist. When I was in high school, I saw an article in this insert in the Chicago Sun-Times about a stonemason. The guy wasn’t a sculptor—that came later for me, anyway—but otherwise he did about the same kind of work I do now. I still remember a picture of this backsplash he’d done, using a dark red granite with veins of grayish-green that looked like a tree. It was really spectacular. I tracked him down and begged for a job.” Nolan smiled. “I swept the workshop floor for about a year.”
“I suppose you generate a lot of dust,” Allie said, the corners of her mouth betraying her amusement.
“Oh, yeah. When I peel off my goggles, I look like a raccoon.” He paused. “Sean begs for the chance to sweep my workshop floor.”
“Because he wants to work in stone?”
He hesitated. “I don’t know yet. I suspect the big power tools are the appeal for a kid his age. Plus...” He thought better of what he’d been going to say.
Turned out he didn’t have to say it.
“He’s trying to please you,” Allie said, echoing his thought from yesterday, and he saw that her gaze had turned inward. “After my parents divorced and I realized Mom was all I had, I went through a phase like that. I was too old to let myself be clingy, but...” Her sigh sounded sad. “I suppose I tried to be as much like her as possible. If that makes sense.”
It did make sense, but disturbed him, too. Had her father completely abandoned his family? Nolan reminded himself this was an old hurt for her, but it didn’t feel that way to him. It spurred him to want to protect her from something he couldn’t.
“How old were you?”
Her eyes focused on his. “Seventeen.” She grimaced. “I should have been pulling away and instead I had this weird regression. Oh, well.” She gave herself a small shake. “It’s natural, I guess.”
“Maybe,” he said, but wasn’t convinced. Regression happened to kids when they underwent trauma, from what he’d read, not your average, everyday divorce.
“Your mom into quilting?”
Allie laughed. “Heavens, no! She doesn’t even sew, except for the most basic mending. It was my grandmother who originally taught me to sew. She didn’t quilt, but she tatted.”
“Tatted?” he echoed, mystified.
“It’s another fiber art, I guess you could say. Doilies are tatted. You know, those lacy white things old ladies used to like to put on the arms of sofas. Well, Nanna made snowflakes for the Christmas tree. When she was done, she’d starch them so they were stiff.” Allie’s voice had become softer and softer. “They were so delicate. So beautiful.”
There was an odd sort of hushed silence. Nolan pictured those snowflakes, a bit like the paper ones every school child cut out of paper but far prettier. He bet no two were alike. He hoped Allie had been able to keep some of those snowflakes for her Christmas trees, but he had a bad feeling she hadn’t. There was something in her voice that told him this memory was both precious and painful.
“Your grandmother gone?” he asked.
Oh, yes. There was definitely pain in her eyes. “Gone? Yes. A long time ago.” After a moment she said, “Anyway, when I was in high school, we were required to complete a volunteer project.”
He nodded. Lots of high schools did that now.
“I ended up making quilts—really comforters, because they were tied rather than quilted—for preemies in the hospital. I only did a couple of tied ones, though, because when I went to the fabric store to pick out materials, a quilting class was going on. The instructor was teaching about the almost unlimited variations on a nine-patch block.”
Greek to him, but he nodded. He liked to hear her talk about what she did.
“I fell in love,” she said simply, then laughed. “It was like having a crush on the geekiest guy in school, the one with zits and knock-knees. I did not tell my friends that instead of going to the mall with them, I was dying to rush home and sew a few blocks of my Churn Dash quilt. I discovered eventually that it wasn’t only an old-lady hobby, but at the time I was painfully self-conscious.”
“I didn’t tell the guys in high school that I liked to play with rocks, either.”
They smiled at each other, and it was like the first time he’d met her eyes. She’d grabbed him and wasn’t letting go. He couldn’t have looked away if someone had yelled, “Fire!” The gold in her eyes seemed to intensify, like sparks. Or real gold. The lines of her face were pure and clean and elegant. He couldn’t have sculpted anything more beautiful. But it wasn’t only about her looks anymore; it was as if he’d cut a piece of granite, expecting beauty and finding something inside that he knew he’d never find again in this lifetime.
“I’ve...really had a good time tonight,” she said softly, as though her thoughts had paralleled his.
“Yeah.” He had to clear the roughness from his throat. “Me, too.” Wait and call her tomorrow? The next day? That was probably the polite thing to do, but a sense of urgency wouldn’t let him be that patient. “Can we do this again? Soon?”
This smile glowed. “Yes. I’d love to, Nolan.”
“Good.” He reached across the table and took her hand in his. It was only the second time he’d touched her. A tactile man, he savored a hand that was fine-boned yet strong. The skin was incredibly smooth except for the toughness he felt on a finger pad or two when she gripped him in return. He liked that she had calluses, too.
He liked everything about her.
So far, he reminded himself. People weren’t always what they seemed. Probably more often than not, they weren’t what they seemed. He wanted to believe she wasn’t flawed beneath the surface, as occasionally happened when he started cutting and sanding a promising slab of stone. He wasn’t going to be a fool, letting himself believe in her too soon.
But oh damn he wanted to kiss her.
* * *
DURING THE SHORT drive back to her apartment, Allie clasped her hands on her lap and felt the throb of her pulse. She was almost frightened by how much she wanted to know how it would feel to be held by Nolan, kissed by him, devoured by him. She’d met attractive men before, had crushes, dated fairly seriously—and now she knew how tepid her responses had been.
He certainly wasn’t handsome by any objective standard. Not that he was plain, the way she’d first thought. Wrong word. His face was all angles. He made
her think of the basalt outcrops along the Columbia River—not pretty, but powerful and somehow raw. Set in that stark backdrop, his blue eyes were even more stunning.
Sneaking peeks as they drove in near complete silence, Allie decided she liked how solid he was. Big, strong hands, muscles powerful enough it was easy to imagine him handling enormous chunks of stone, without giving him that thick-necked, weight-lifter look. A deep, rumbly voice and a quiet sense of humor. She liked the way he reflected before he spoke, and the unwavering way he watched her when she was talking. Nolan Radek felt...dependable.
She averted her face and grimaced. Oh, boy—nothing subtle about why she was drawn to him like a tiny metal filing to a giant magnet.
Except...she knew her feelings were more complicated than that. Lust tangled with the lure of that sense of certainty he exuded. There were those wonderful moments when they discovered they understood each other, thought alike. His face wasn’t especially expressive, but his hands were—Allie doubted he even knew how often he seemed to be trying to express his thoughts with those big, blunt-fingered hands instead of his tongue. There was the way he listened to her, as if what she had to say mattered and wasn’t only an interlude before the focus returned to him. If she hadn’t been feeling so tense, she’d have laughed at that—Nolan would prefer the focus never returned to him, she suspected.
When she looked ahead again she saw that he was steering into her driveway. She’d left the light on at the top of the outside steps, but it wasn’t yet needed. Nights came late here in the Pacific Northwest, even in September. She always hated the abrupt change in October, having to close the shop and come home in pitch darkness.
“Those stairs are steep,” Nolan said with a frown. He was staring at them and not at her. He sounded distinctly disapproving.
“I think they’re original, but they seem solid enough.”
He wasn’t listening. The engine turned off, he got out and came around to open the door for her and extend a hand. Considering the distance down to the ground, Allie was glad to take it. Instead of drawing her into his arms, Nolan walked over to inspect the staircase.
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