The Woodworker

by Westlake, Samantha

  “You look…” Thankfully, the dress seemed to be working its magic on him. “Amazing,” he finally decided.

  “She’s a fancy modern lady,” Shay piped up.

  In staring at Rick, I’d totally forgotten that Shay was there beside me. I turned to shush her, urge her to go find Lisa, but Rick was already turning and smiling down at the little girl.

  “Hello there,” he said, dropping down to squat on his knees and putting on a grin that, if I hadn’t known better, would almost be flirtatious! “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Shay,” the seven-year-old replied confidently. “I’m Ellie’s friend. I helped do her hair!”

  From his squat, Rick looked up at my hair. “You did an amazing job,” he told Shay. “How much do I owe you for it?”

  The little girl giggled. “A hundred dollars!” she declared.

  Rick patted his jacket pockets. “Oh darn, I forgot my wallet in the car. How about this – you let me take Ellie off your hands for this evening, and I’ll bring you something I’ve carved from wood.”

  “Like what?”

  He tapped his chin. I saw his muscle flexing in the jacket and nearly swooned. How had being apart from the man made me miss him so intensely? “Two options. Tiara – or racecar.”

  “Racecar,” Shay decided instantly.

  He pointed down at her. “You got it. Now, can I take Ellie for tonight?”

  “You can take her forever,” Shay said, to my mute horror. “She takes up the sofa when she’s sleeping, so I can’t sneak down and watch TV.”

  Rick just laughed, slipped an arm around my waist as he stood up. I felt his fingers through the thin fabric of the dress, pressing in against me. “Deal,” he told Shay. He turned the wattage of his smile on me. “Shall we go?”

  Unsure if I could trust my voice, I just nodded.

  In the driveway, I had my next surprise. “This isn’t your truck,” I said, looking at the powerful, sleek luxury car parked there.

  I didn’t have to see Rick’s face to know he was grinning. “Rented it for the night,” he answered. “I figured I should show up to something as fancy as a gala with a vehicle that won’t be in danger of breaking down when the valet parks it.”

  He stepped around to the passenger side, held the door courteously for me as I tried to maneuver myself into the seat without the short dress flashing anyone. I was certain that I’d look up to find Rick ogling my chest, but he had his eyes averted!

  “So,” I said, once he’d climbed behind the wheel and started the car. “How have… things been?”

  “Since we talked a week ago?” he asked, and I was thankful for the darkness that hid my blush. “Pretty good. Orders are still coming in, and I’m trying to build up stock, since I bet they’ll explode after the gala.”

  I bit my tongue. I wanted to point out that it sounded like entering Rick into the gala had proven to be a very sound business decision. I didn’t want to ruin the temporary peace between us, however. I racked my brain for another topic.

  “I guess I owe you for that, don’t I?” Rick went on, sounding a bit rueful. “Getting me all this business, even if I didn’t want any part of it at first.”

  “I did tell you that it would pay off,” I said, trying not to sound too much like I was pulling an I-told-you-so.

  He laughed. “Go on, say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “Say you told me so.”

  “I’m not-“

  “You are,” he countered, glancing over at me. “Come on, Ellie, I know you better than anyone else. I can practically hear your thoughts, where you’re shouting it out.”

  “Oh, fine. I did tell you so, and I’m right!” I might have just shattered our truce, but I still felt a childish surge of validation for being correct.

  “See?” Rick said. “I know you pretty well, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Well, I know you too,” I countered, as he pulled into the roundabout for the gala, lit up with spotlights and with suited valets standing by to take his keys. “I spent just as much time with you as you did with me – and I’m more observant than you.”

  He raised an eyebrow as he slipped his hand around me and guided me towards the entrance to the gala. “Really? So what am I thinking about right now?”

  “You’re trying very hard to not grope my ass or stare down my dress,” I predicted.

  His grin widened. “Is that an invitation for me to indulge?”

  His hand dropped lower, slipping around the curve of a buttock. I swatted it off, but the heat of his fingers lingered on my skin, and I remembered how good it felt whenever he’d touched me.

  But two could play at that game, I decided. “Ooh, there’s a photographer!” I exclaimed, nodding towards a man with a camera taking photos of all the guests as they entered the main ballroom. “Let’s get our picture!”

  Rick looked suspicious as I pulled him over, but he didn’t catch on until I’d gestured the photographer to capture our images – and then pressed myself bodily up against his chest. I made sure he felt every inch of my body, from breasts down to thighs, as I draped my arms around his neck and clung to him. I smiled innocently at the photographer, while Rick managed to put on a strangled rictus of a grin.

  “That was cruel,” he hissed at me as we stepped away.

  It was my turn to smirk as I watched him attempt to surreptitiously adjust his crotch, where the presence of my body had apparently caused some swelling. “You seem to like it.”

  Rick didn’t have a retort ready. “I’m going to go find the placards for our seats,” he said instead, stepping away from me. “Try not to take charge of anything else until I get back.”

  I resisted sticking out my tongue at his broad back. Instead, I moved slowly around the outside wall of the ballroom. The center of the ballroom was filled with tables, with a small placard at each spot indicating where the guests should sit. A stage stood against one wall, with a podium and microphone ready for an emcee. Along the sides of the room, however, were small objects illuminated on pedestals. They were, I realized as I drew closer, the wooden pieces carved by the finalists in the competition.

  It didn’t take long to spot Rick’s piece. Once again, I was struck by the beauty of the carved stag that he’d given me. It stood atop the wood from which it had been carved, head turned back to look distrustfully over its shoulder, one leg slightly raised, caught in that moment of indecision between fight or flight. The antlers fluted up from its proudly raised head, looking too fragile to be carved from the same, single piece of wood.

  It was a masterpiece. The other bits of artwork around it – hand-turned wooden bowls, furniture with smoothly flowing lines, a tall totem pole with dozens of faces peering out of it – were nice, but they couldn’t compare to the stag’s elegant and pure beauty. Rick deserved to be recognized for it.

  “Nice, isn’t it?” asked a voice over my shoulder.

  I turned, saw a portly man with salt-and-pepper hair and a matching goatee examining the stag. “It’s amazing,” I replied honestly. “Although I’m a bit biased.”

  “Not the artist, are you?”

  I shook my head. “No, but I’m here with him. Rick Morgan.”

  “Never heard of him before tonight, although I’m inclined to agree with you on your judgement of his work,” the man said. “Strange, to have a total newcomer make it to the finals. Most of these pieces are made by masters of the craft, not novices.”

  “He’s not a novice.” I hesitated, not sure how much to divulge, but I didn’t want this man thinking of Rick as a beginner. “He just hasn’t been a fan of competitions. He hates being judged. I pushed him to enter.”

  The man chuckled. “Well, fortunate for him that he found you,” he said. “It’s a common problem for us artists, you know. We love working, but we’re too close to our projects. We see all the flaws in our own work.”

  I couldn’t imagine Rick finding any flaws in the stag, but I nodded.

  “Not just art
ists, mind you,” the man continued. He glanced at me sidelong, gave me a wink. “We all do it. Turn our own little cracks into massive chasms. Real blow to the confidence, it can be.”

  “What’s the solution?” I asked, when he paused.

  He shrugged his wide shoulders, making his belly bounce a little. “Find someone who balances us out,” he offered. “Someone who sees the beauty where we see imperfections.”

  “That’s very poetic.”

  The man let out a strangely adorable giggle, almost too high-pitched for his rotund frame. “Oh, I’m just a woodworker,” he said. “Not sure anyone should be trusting my judgement on much.”

  I gestured towards Rick’s stag. “You like the same work I do, so I think your judgement can’t be too awful.”

  He smiled and wandered off.

  A minute later, Rick caught up with me, handed me a glass of wine. “Found our tables,” he said. He started to say something else but paused, perhaps caught by my expression. “What?”

  “You’re a good balance for me,” I said, the words unprepared but true. “You stop me from getting too much into my own head, getting caught by my own thoughts.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” He looked a little uncomfortable, but didn’t pull away. “You do get trapped in your own head, sometimes. You need to not worry so much about everything being perfect.”

  “And you need someone to encourage all your good habits,” I went on, feeling my stomach clench as it guessed what was coming next. “I think I help with that.”

  He nodded, but his eyes burned intensely into me, not looking away from me. “So?”

  “So…” I took a deep breath, tried to get myself ready to say what I had been toying with, what I’d been considering since Lisa and Jack spotted it so easily in me. The trait that I hadn’t been able to recognize on my own, even though it was clearly there.

  Before I could say anything, however, someone’s voice spoke up, amplified by electronics. “Please take your seats!” it squawked. “The meal is about to begin!”

  Frustrated, I tried to push the words out, but the moment had been broken. Rick took my arm and gently guided me towards our seats. He didn’t say anything, but I thought I saw something in his eyes when he glanced at me. I wasn’t sure what it was, but that knot of tension remained in my stomach. I hadn’t spoken the words I wanted to say to him, and I felt them burning, unsaid, in my gut.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Rick

  * * *

  The evening passed, a blur of announcements that I didn’t hear, food that I didn’t taste, and a steady stream of people stepping up onto the stage to receive awards for things that I didn’t hear or understand.

  It all might as well have not existed to me. The rest of the world felt like static on an old television screen, the scratchiness of a song on the radio that didn’t quite come in clearly. All of it was the background, faded behind Eileen Davies, the sole thing in the foreground of my universe.

  I couldn’t tell if I wanted to kiss her, sweep her up and carry her off to bed, or shake her until she started making sense. This whole night had been enjoyable, but not in the way that I’d imagined. And throughout it all, there’d been some look in her eyes that I hadn’t seen before, that I couldn’t quite pin down.

  Take that moment before we’d been called to take our seats for the main courses. We’d been talking about nothing, on the surface, but it felt like one of those conversations with a lot of important subtext. I was awful at picking up on that kind of thing, but even I hadn’t missed the energy crackling between us, back as strong as it had ever felt.

  And then, just before we went to sit down, it felt like she’d been about to confess something. Or had I been the one about to confess, to burst out that I wanted her back, god dammit, that she drove me crazy when she was in my life, but once she was gone, I couldn’t think of anything but getting her back?

  The moment had been lost. We’d taken our seats, smiled at each other, and I completely failed to remember a single word that the other people at my table said to me. They were other finalists, I worked out, but I didn’t catch another word beyond that. They blabbered on to each other about how wonderful of an event this was, Ellie nodded and managed to charm them all without even trying, and I just stared at her like a moonstruck calf, fighting to get a single thought pushed through the static barriers buzzing in my brain.

  They seved us dinner. I ate it, even though I couldn’t now name what it had been. Maybe it was meat, or perhaps fish. They probably could have put a plate full of wood shavings in front of me and I would have mechanically chewed and swallowed, eaten it without a single word of protest.

  There was an emcee up on stage, some minor celebrity who kept on interjecting our meal to share little jokes, or maybe they were anecdotes. I laughed along with the others in the ballroom, didn’t hear a word that he said. Ellie was next to me, and I imagined that if I sucked in a deep breath, I could smell her.

  We finished dinner and they cleared the plates away. I sat there stupidly for another minute, and then realized that there wasn’t anything else for me to stab with my fork and lift to my mouth.

  Before I could ask what was going on, Ellie leaned in, slipped her arm through my elbow. “They’re getting ready to announce the awards,” she murmured to me. I bit back a groan at the feel of her breath against my ear. “Are you nervous?”

  I turned, looked into her face beside me. Yes, I felt strangely nervous – my heart thumped so loudly in my chest that it drowned out the words of the emcee, up on stage. But I wasn’t nervous about winning.

  She peered back at me, intelligent eyes roaming over my face, intuiting meaning from the little lines around my eyes and mouth. “You are,” she said, correctly reading my emotions, if not the reason behind them. “Hey, it’s going to be okay. Do you need to step out and grab some air for a moment?”

  “Yeah.” Maybe some air would help. I let Ellie’s arm lift mine, let her pull me gently across the floor of the ballroom, weaving between tables until we reached the doors.

  A second door on the other side of the hallway led to open air, a courtyard of some sort with a towering tree in the middle and concrete benches stationed around it. The skies were cloudy but no precipitation descended, although I smelled the tang of ozone, heralding a downpour in the near future.

  We weren’t the only ones in the courtyard. A couple other guests, mostly men, stood around and sucked on cigarettes or talked quietly into cell phones. One guy held the door open, peering inside and across the hallway as if he didn’t want to miss a word that the emcee uttered into his microphone in the ballroom.

  I put the others out of my head. I looked down at Ellie, feeling my heart beat even faster inside my chest, rising to a fever pitch. “Ellie,” I said, hoping that if I just started talking, I’d find the right words along the way. “Can we talk?”

  She nodded, looking back at me. In her heels, she was only shorter than me by about an inch, and she could look almost directly into my face. I saw a slight tremor pass through her body, distracting me.

  “Are you cold?”

  She shrugged, but let herself move a step closer to me. I reached out and slipped an arm around her, feeling the warmth of her body through the elegant black dress. Had I ever thought that she was coltish and leggy, not elegant and beautiful?

  “Look, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over these last couple of weeks,” I said, wishing that my heartbeat would soften a little, let me hear something other than the blood rushing in my ears. “About you. And me. And what I want for the future.”

  “Do you mean the future of your business? Of The Woodworker?” I couldn’t tell if she was mocking or serious.

  I shook my head. “No. I mean, yes, in part.” God dammit, why couldn’t I just speak plainly, find the words to describe this warmth inside me whenever she looked at me? “Look, I miss you, okay?”

  It came out a little more aggressively than I’d intended, and I saw a couple
other people in the courtyard glance over at me. I didn’t care. Ellie, meanwhile, just raised her eyebrows.

  “Come on, say something,” I pleaded. “Have you thought about me at all since you moved out? Since we…”

  “Broke up?” she finished my sentence for me, and I felt blood flowing through my cheeks, a flush of equal parts anger and embarrassment, mostly at myself. “I have thought about you, yes. Mostly about a lot of things I’d like to do to you.”

  “Good things?” I tried.

  She shook her head, but I thought I caught a brief little hint of a smile on her face. “You’re the one who threw me out, Rick.”

  “And it was one of the dumbest decisions of my life. And I should know – I’ve made a lot of stupid mistakes, but that one’s near the top.”

  “You seemed to have a good reason,” she riposted. “After all, I did go ahead and submit your statue into this competition without your approval. You told me how you hated the thought of being in a competition.”

  “Screw the competition!” Oops. Again, louder than intended. That made a few more heads turn. From inside the ballroom, I heard clapping drifting out through the open doorway, but didn’t even spare a thought as to what it might be about. “That was another stupid mistake.”

  Her eyebrows drew together. “My entering the competition was a stupid mistake?”

  “No! Aargh, why is this so hard?” I took a step away from her, grabbed at my head with one hand. Why couldn’t I just find the right words?

  From inside, the clapping seemed to have ebbed, and I heard the emcee call out something through the microphone. The guy standing near the doorway, holding it open, turned and looked quizzically around the courtyard.