“I got the feeling based on today’s music choices. You and One-for-Three call it quits?”
“One-for-Three?”
He shrugged. “By my count. Like I said, sound travels.”
“Oh my God. You heard how often I—”
“I mostly heard how often you didn’t.” Something in his tone suggested he could do better. Much better.
She ought to have been mortified, but the statement, combined with his matter-of-fact expression, coaxed a laugh out of her. She reached out and patted his cheek. “Maybe I’m just a quiet storm kind of girl?”
He crossed his arms and stretched his legs so they extended beyond the footrests of the wheelchair. His dark brow lifted again. “You sing in the shower. You crank your music to eleven.” Slowly, purposefully, he traced the yellow handprint stamped across the thigh of his jeans. “You even like your walls loud. You’renotthe quiet storm type.”
Since when was she so easy to peg? Following some defensive instinct to throw him off balance, she lined her hand up with the imprint on his thigh. “You don’t like loud?” Backfire. Of their own accord, her fingers sank into the taut muscles beneath the soft denim.
His eyes darkened, and almost reluctantly, he moved the pad of his thumb along the peaks and valleys of her knuckles, his slow, circling touch light but thorough. Mesmerizingly thorough. She imagined the same gentle massage along other, more personal peaks and valleys. The muscles in her legs dissolved, and she tightened her grip on his thigh in a useless attempt to anchor herself against a sudden wave of longing.
His touch traveled to the crevices between her splayed fingers. “I didn’t say that.” He slipped his thumb between her fingers and raked the edge of his nail lightly across the center of her palm. The faint scrape woke nerve endings there, and in every other area of her body where nerve cells concentrated—her scalp, thesoles of her feet, and some frustratingly neglected territory south of her belly button. When his nail grazed her palm again, the tingling between her legs intensified, turning into something sharp and demanding. If her erogenous zones could speak, they’d be saying…
“Mr. Montgomery, we’re ready for you.”
A nurse stood at the door between the waiting area and the imaging suites.
Beau jerked his head around, and then practically sprang to his feet.
She leaped up as well and went after the chair. “Hey. Hold on. They put you in this for a reason.”
He simply kept walking. The nurse stepped forward and waved Savannah back to her seat. “The ones who should know better are always the most stubborn.”
“Says Miss Lettie, the queen of stubborn,” he shot back, but allowed the heavyset woman to take his arm. To Savannah, he said, “Don’t go anywhere,” and disappeared through the door.
Go anywhere? As if her limbs would support her. She dropped back into her chair, crossed her right knee over her left, and rubbed her overstimulated palm along her leg.Note to self. Do not pet the paramedic.
What she needed right now was a distraction, so she opened her clutch and pulled out the letter. Her heart quickened as she spied “The Solomon Foundation for Art” in gold calligraphy in the upper left corner.
Holy shit. Was she about to catch an actual break? She tore open the envelope and unfolded the sheet of crisp ivory stationery.
Dear Ms. Smith,
Thank you for your interest in The Solomon Foundation’s patronage program. After a careful review of your application, your body of work, and your project proposal, we are pleasedto offer you a nine-month fellowship at our facility in Venice, Italy, commencing this January.
Her hands shook, making it hard to read the rest of the page. Compensation—yes, they’d pay her to create her most ambitious pieces to date. An apartment in the historic Solomon Palazzo adjacent to their state-of-the-art glassblowing studio. A collective of skilled hands to assist her. In short, the opportunity of a lifetime, and she could desperately use one at the moment.
She refolded the letter and returned it to her purse for safekeeping. As she did, her phone vibrated. A text from Sinclair lit the screen.
How’s Beau? Everything’s under control here. I cleaned up your room best I could in between basting two turkeys. How much bird do you think we eat?! Also put champagne in the fridge, because I know Mom & Dad will want to celebrate.Any ETA on when we get this party started?
Was her little sister psychic? How in God’s name did she already know about the fellowship? Wait. Realization sank in as she reread the text. The celebration Sinclair referred to was for her “engagement” to Beau. She texted a thanks and told Sinclair to sit tight.
Her sister was right. Their parents did want to celebrate. A ruthlessly honest voice in her head admitted that an engagement to Mitchell Prescott III, Esq., wouldn’t have generated the same unbridled enthusiasm. Magnolia Grove wasn’t Mayberry, and she didn’t hail from a family of bumpkins, but something about him had always struck her as a little overly ambitious for their tastes.
For hers, too, as it turned out. She’d honestly had no clue he’d been dating anyone on the side. Apparently marrying into the firm offered more upside potential than marrying a glass artist grappling with a serious career downturn.
He loved her work. That much she believed. They’d met theevening of her very first Atlanta showing when he’d purchased one of her pieces.
She’d loved him for loving it. How could she not? She literally breathed her life into her creations. They represented her in an intimate, elemental way. His respect for her artistic process, and his genuine appreciation for the result, had captured her heart. Even after her career went off the rails, his steadfast belief she’d be selected for the fellowship had bolstered her sagging confidence and made her think they understood each other on a fundamental level.
A mistake, obviously, and as a result, she’d projected other admirable qualities where none actually existed. Important qualities like integrity and fidelity.