“It means I didn’t mean to hurt you. Yes, I went behind your back. Yes, I technically stole your art. But I know how good that piece is, Stella, what it means. What it could mean to another hurting person here at the theater tonight—to one of the residents at the shelter who doesn’t have anywhere to go later.” He gestured behind them to the lobby doors. “Everyone is dealing with rain in some form or another. Why shouldn’t they be taught how to be puddle stompers too?”
She licked her lips, glossy tonight, and he wondered briefly if they tasted the color they looked. Like fresh peaches. “I didn’t think of it that way.”
“It’s selfish to have a gift and withhold it.”
“Are you calling me selfish?”
He shrugged. “Not yet. But up until now, I’d have called you afraid.” He paused. “I don’t think you’re afraid anymore, Stella. I think you’re just hiding because you’re used to it.”
She took the remark well, nodding slowly as she stared into space. Nodding agreement? Or nodding to some unspoken agreement in her own head that would come back to bite him?
He never could tell anymore.
“Afraid of the healing, you mean.”
“That’s one way to put it.” He shifted his position on the curb, nudged her shoulder with his. “This is for you.” He handed her the card.
She read the name and the amount, and blinked. “I don’t understand.”
“Your friend Dixie is apparently best buds with some art broker in California. He wants to buy your umbrella mosaic.”
“For that much money?” Stella’s eyes bugged. “Is he crazy?”
“Who knows? He’s friends with Dixie.” He grinned.
But Stella was still too busy freaking out to notice. “He has to be crazy. It isn’t worth that. It’s just a bunch of broken pieces.”
“You’re still not looking at the whole.” He gently trapped her chin between his fingers, tugged her face toward his. Looked into her eyes. “Look at the whole thing, Stella. I am.” He reached up with his thumb and grazed it over her lips. “And it’s not broken anymore.”
She pulled away before he could consider planting a kiss on those lips and getting an answer to his question about peaches. “If he really means it . . . if he’s serious about that much cash . . . I still don’t know. That’s my picture. It’s sentimental.” She looked at Chase as if he could make the call for her. “But that much money could really help the shelter right now.”
It could, indeed. Go a really long way, actually.
“It’s your call, Tiara.” Chase stood up, reached down, and pulled her to his feet. “What’s it going to be?”
The movie was going to end way too soon, much sooner than Stella was prepared for. Not that she’d ever feel fully prepared to give an art dealer a response about so much money. For a piece of her own heart. It felt like a dream.
But if this was a dream, then the shelter’s fire was a definite nightmare.
And she was the only one right now who could help.
“More champagne?”
Stella shook her head at the well-dressed server, her eyes glued to the double doors of the lobby. Chase had texted the man as requested, and they waited now for him to join them by the umbrella.
She sagged against the wall, straightened her dress, then sagged again. Tonight hadn’t gone nearly the way she’d planned. By now, she was supposed to be snuggled in the theater with Chase, holding hands, sharing popcorn, and dreaming about the future.
Not trying to figure out what to tell a West Coast art dealer about a secret art project that should have never left the light of her apartment.
“Ah, there she is.” The art dealer—Chase had told her his name was Jonas—was by her side in moments. “The genius herself.”
Genius? Hardly. She shook his hand, allowed the kiss he planted on the back of it, and looked to Chase for help. He smoothly stepped in, asked Jonas what they thought about the movie so far.
Stella looked at Dixie, standing serenely by Jonas, and wondered how in the world she was going to make this decision.
“My friend.” Dixie pointed to Jonas and grinned.
“He’s very nice.”
“And very talented.” Dixie pointed at Stella. “That’s why I brought him.”
She balked. “For me?”
“To meet you. To see your talent.”
But how did Dixie even know—well, she’d been the one to give her the umbrella handle piece in the first place. Maybe Dixie knew a lot more than Stella thought she did.
“I know rain, my dear.” When she whispered, she seemed normal—downright regal, even. And for once, she wasn’t wearing her trademark blazer. “And this umbrella needs to be seen. Too many people are afraid of rain.”
“What was your rain, Dixie?” Stella twisted the ring around on her finger, half expecting Dixie to cop out of the question with some crazy, irrelevant remark.
But she didn’t.
“I lost my daughter. My only daughter.” Her eyes grew remorseful. “It’s been so long. But after that . . . I didn’t want the life I had anymore. It was scary. Too many unknowns.”
Stella nodded, her throat tightening. She knew that feeling. She cast a look at Chase and Jonas, still in negotiations over her art.
And she still had no idea what she was going to do.
“I decided to embrace my worst fear head-on.”
“What was that?” With Dixie, there was no telling.
“To live a life of the unexpected.” She spread her hands, pulled out the empty pockets of her worn tunic dress. “No money. No home. Just me and God. God and me.”
“And what did God do with your unexpected, Dixie?” She didn’t doubt He honored such a sacrifice in a big way. Maybe that was why Dixie heard Him so clearly.
“Found my husband again.”
Stella shook her head. “What? Again?” Dixie was married?
“We divorced. Before our daughter was born.” Dixie rubbed her bare left ring finger. “He didn’t know about her. He left.”
Dixie had been left too. Wow. “But we found each other again.”
Stella frowned in confusion. Surely not Jonas . . . Her eyes flew open. Howard.
Dixie grinned as if she’d heard Stella’s thoughts. “Howard.”
Talk about Alice in Wonderland and rabbit holes. Nothing made sense. But somehow, at the same time, it all began to be more clear than ever before. “But you’re not married again.”
“Not legally. Not yet.” Dixie pointed to the heavens. “He told us to wait. To date. To fall in love again.”
Stella blew out a slow breath, wondering how on earth she was going to absorb all of that at one time. Chase caught her eye from several steps away, still deep in conversation with Jonas, and he held her gaze for a minute before he winked.
Her stomach fluttered, tickled. Like it always did when she was with Chase. She might still be mad at him, but he was right. He’d done this for her.
And look at what jewels had come from the discovery.
Then an image popped to mind, a flashback of another evening with Chase, spent on a bench at the bayou, making up stories about tree bark and umbrellas. “Dixie, did you and Howard ever carve—”
She was already nodding.
Of course she was.
Stella looked at her portrait on the wall. Looked at all the various umbrella pieces, then at the umbrella as a whole.
She couldn’t sell it. It was hers. It was Dixie’s. It was Chase’s.
It was the entire town’s.
It was for anyone who ever feared the rain. Who needed to be taught the storm was just an opportunity to play in a different way. To stomp in puddles and splash and own the rain rather than let the rain own them.
To embrace the trials of life, because those very storms they ran from were what finally led to healing.
Total healing.
“My answer is no.” Her voice rang solidly across the lobby, effectively cutting off Jonas’s rambling
conversation with Chase.
Jonas was at her side in an instant. “Then you must agree to commission several other pieces for me. I have many mosaic tile ideas, all right up your ally.” He kept scribbling on another business card, his accent thickening in his excitement. “I have an idea for this one about a tree. And another about a—”
“She’ll call you. Don’t worry.” Chase cut Jonas off, handed Stella the card, and offered his hand. “We appreciate your business, sir.”
“So we have a deal?” He looked with anticipation back and forth between Chase and Stella.
Chase showed Stella the figures on the card, and she gasped. Then nodded. “Yes, sir. We sure do.” She could keep her umbrella portrait and be able to help rebuild the shelter. It almost seemed too good be true.
“I want to see the end of the movie.” Dixie began to tug Jonas away. After quick good-byes, Stella breathed a grateful prayer of thanks to God for allowing Dixie to come into her life.
Crazy? Maybe. But she walked with God a lot closer than most.
Stella slowly turned to face Chase. “I owe you a thank you.” She wanted to avert her eyes until she knew his reaction, but she fought the instinct. She was done hiding.
His smile was more than enough reassurance. “You don’t owe me a thing.”
“Well . . . you might owe me a dance.” The quartet was playing again in the corner, gearing up for the movie that was going to let out any minute. “That’s what I thought earlier, anyway.”
“Earlier, you mean, before I ruined your night?” Chase pulled her gently into his arms, gripped her waist lightly in his hands. Turned her to the music.
“Pretty sure you didn’t ruin it. I almost did. But you—you made it better.” She danced in a little closer to him, wrapped her arms around his waist. “Perfect, really.”
“I embarrassed you. Made you face your biggest fear. Had you sitting outside in a cocktail dress crying on a curb.” Chase winced. “That was perfection?”
“It ended here, didn’t it?”
“That it did.” Chase wrapped her up tighter, and she almost burst with everything she wanted to tell him. Kat’s approval of their being together. Howard and Dixie. Dixie’s former lifestyle. Who knew?
God knew.
God knew all along. Knew how He was going to take the most broken of things and turn it all into something beautiful.
And then teach her how to do the same.
Teach her how to love the broken pieces. How to mend them.
“I’m still not whole.” She whispered that truth to Chase, who had started humming softly in her ear.
“That’s okay, Tiara. Not many of us are.” He dipped her backward, then pulled her up until their faces were inches apart.
“I might still have some rough edges.” More than a few, probably. But she was getting there.
“I love the broken parts of you. They’re my favorite.” He turned her again, pulled her in closer as the music rose in crescendo. “Want to know a secret?”
She nodded, pressing her cheek against his, reveling in the rough stubble he never could quite seem to shave off.
He lowered his voice to a whisper. “The broken bits are what make you the most beautiful.”
And then he kissed her. Beneath an upside-down umbrella. Ready to catch all her rain. All of their blessings.
Because, as it turned out, most of the time—they were one and the same.
epilogue
Dude. I’m telling you, it’s shocking how many Baby’s First Christmas bibs can actually exist in one child’s dresser drawer.” Lucas’s voice held as much awe as someone who was standing before the Eiffel Tower for the first time, or maybe the Grand Canyon.
Stella snorted back a laugh at the conversation between Chase and Lucas as she switched three-month-old Ryan to her other shoulder. “Guys. Come on. At least Kat threw out all the pink ones.”
“That’s what he thinks, anyway,” Kat mumbled under her breath, bumping Stella’s arm with the bulging diaper bag as they walked.
Lucas might not believe how overboard his wife could go with the holiday clothing. Stella was shocked at how much stuff it took to go anywhere with a baby in general.
Like for their group field trip to the art gallery in East Texas, where Jonas had hung her latest mosaic tile project for sale. The bag Kat carried, full of wet wipes and extra clothes and containers of formula, weighed more than the baby on Stella’s shoulder—even in his full diaper. Stinky diaper.
Ew. She wrinkled her nose and handed Ryan back to his mom. “Your turn, Mama. Do your thing.”
Kat winked. “Watch this.” She cleared her throat, pouring honey into a voice that was about three shades of Claire Varland. “Hey, super-husband?”
“She’s not even trying to be subtle anymore, is she?” Chase fell back from the bantering new parents to join Stella’s side.
“Nope. She’ll play that ‘I already put in my nine months of time’ card for as long as he lets her.” Stella watched her sister hand over the baby to Lucas, who resisted, then relented at the kiss she planted on his cheek. They ended up heading to the restroom for diaper duty together.
She couldn’t look away from the happy little family as they disappeared around the corner, her heart full to bursting with gratitude that they’d come. All together, all willing to put aside the past for the hope of the future, for appreciation of the present. Chase and Lucas were even slowly becoming friends.
Chase followed her gaze to where Kat and Lucas had vanished. “That could be us soon, you know.”
She winced. “Not too soon.” She wanted a baby. Maybe two.
But she wanted Chase to herself for a little while first.
“Right. Not too soon,” he agreed as he wrapped his arm around Stella’s waist and guided her once again toward her project hanging under a spotlight—this one a sprawling oak tree with initials carved into the thick trunk. Dixie and Howard’s tree. “And that is, of course, assuming you can even quit being a famous artist long enough to have a baby.” He nudged her playfully.
She held up her left hand, allowing her diamond engagement ring to catch the light and cast snippets of tiny rainbows across the wall. “Did I ever tell you I’m a fantastic multitasker?” She craned her neck to accept the kiss she knew he’d be offering.
She wasn’t disappointed.
“Hey, no making out in front of the new display,” Lucas hollered from across the gallery as he and Kat returned from the restroom, baby Ryan in tow.
“Oops.” Chase dragged Stella away from her art and toward the fountain in the center of the room instead. “This better?” He planted another kiss on her, this one slow and lingering and enough to make Stella wish they hadn’t set their wedding date for January.
“Much better,” she whispered, her voice intentionally husky, and loved the glimmer that flashed in Chase’s eyes.
“Hey now. You better watch it, Tiara.” His grip around her waist tightened. “There’s more where that came from.”
“Is that a threat—or a promise?” She grinned up at him.
He leaned down and pressed his forehead against hers, a soft growling sound emitting from the back of his throat. “You make me crazy, woman.”
She blinked innocently. “Now that I believe.”
“Me too.” Kat sidled up to them, lowering Ryan into the stroller they’d brought but so far hadn’t used. “In fact, you’re both a little crazy.”
Crazy in love. Which totally worked. Stella slid her hand into Chase’s, loving the way he automatically threaded their fingers and held tight. Always reading her needs. Always there to catch her.
But not so close that she couldn’t falter a little on her own first.
“Not sure if we said this twenty times on the drive over, but just in case—we’re really proud of you, Stella.” Lucas gestured to the mosaic tile project hanging on the wall and shook his head. “It’s still unbelievable.”
No kidding. It all still felt like a dream. And the
fact that Jonas had commissioned two more pieces from her between now and Valentine’s Day. She’d be busy before and after her wedding.
Chase’s grip tightened on her hand, and she squeezed back, the butterflies in her stomach soaring into overdrive. Not too busy though.
“Thank you.” She smiled her appreciation at her brother-in-law, grateful for her family and wishing not for the first time that Aunt Mags were here to see her success. She and Kat had both finally achieved their dreams—as untraditional as the method might have been, here they were. With thriving careers and supportive men. With wedding plans and babies and a friendship between the two of them that went far beyond sisterhood.
Not to mention the shelter that had been rebuilt with the proceeds from her first commissioned piece. And she was getting weekly offers for interior design projects, mostly from new clients who saw her work at the Cameo on her website.
Unbelievable, for sure.
They stood silently, the four of them—well, five, counting Ryan—before the tiled oak tree, the massive limbs spreading wide as droplets of blue fell from the cloud-dotted sky.
Stella leaned into Chase’s side, smiling as Ryan softly cooed baby talk from the stroller.
The blessings were showering down.
She might never need an umbrella again.
Acknowledgments
I can’t even begin to express how much help I needed during the crafting of this novel. The entire completion of this book was a literal miracle, and I’m forever grateful to the following people:
My super-talented editor, Becky Philpott—you pushed me, and I flew. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
My amazing agents, Tamela Hancock Murray and Steve Laube—I know when you say you’ll pray for me, you really do. So thankful for the guidance and wisdom I receive from you both!
My marketing and editorial teams at HarperCollins. My, what big hearts you have! I just love working with you ladies!
Garry Thompson—thanks for letting me pick your brain for all things construction related. But most of all, thanks for being a great “uncle” to my sweet daughter. I couldn’t do this single-mom thing without you and Julie!
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