Chapter Seven
“I can’t do this. I don’t know which ones to pick. They all have something wrong with them. I’m not a professional. And this is stupid.” Lara narrowly resisted kicking one of the canvases propped up against the wall of the attic.
Grandma surveyed her from the door. “Is it stupid if it gets Ty to take that job we both know would serve him well?”
Lara wanted to stick her tongue out. Stamp her foot. Do something childish in response, but Grandma was always one step ahead of her.
“Don’t be a petulant child, Lara. It doesn’t suit you.”
Lara wished it did. She wanted to throw a bit of a tantrum. Because she felt foolish and nervous andbad. But she’d made a deal, and if it got Ty to consider that coaching job… She’d suck it up.
But maybe she’d suck it uppetulantly.
“I’m giving you fifteen more minutes, and then I’m sending Ty up to just grab the first five he finds.”
Lara scowled at Grandma’s retreating back. What would she care if Ty grabbed a random five? None of them were good enough to sell.
Sure, the rock scene she’d done the other day with Jack on the rock was pretty enough. Some tourist might like the depiction of their vacation spot, and the man out of time in the middle.
Thinking of it from that perspective was a little easier. A tourist who’d come west for cowboys might like the one she’d done last year depicting Clementine riding her horse, her white hair flowing behind her. And someone who liked small town history might think the one of Floyd’s famous speech on the courthouse steps, or Josie in her flapper girl finery hanging out a window was fun. Lissy, pregnant and weeping wasn’tfun,but the emotion in the paintingwasgood...considering she wasn’t a professional.
As Lara stepped back to survey the five, she realized they were all her ghosts from the museum. Italmostmade her smile.
They weren’t perfect depictions of the real-life people she’d taken a hand at putting into pictures. Lara had imagined and painted them in her own right and imagination, but still, the paintings embodied the stories she’d grown up hearing and telling at the museum.
There was no way they were worthy of being displayed and sold in a gallery, but they weren’tembarrassing. The gallery would likely give her a politenoand then she could say she’d tried, and Ty would never be able to bother her about it again.
As if thinking of him conjured him, he appeared at the top of the stairs. “Mary Lou said I’m supposed to prod you along. Hey, these are great.”
She only grunted in response. He sounded genuinely pleased, but hedidn’tknow anything aboutart. Lots of people could paint what they saw. There was nothing particularly special about what she did, and that was fine. It was ahobby. Arelease. It wasn’t meant to be something to stress over.
“You can grab those three. I’ll carry these two,” she told him, probably sounding a little too irritated to be fair, but she wasn’t feeling particularly fair.
They hefted the canvases down the stairs and out to Lara’s car. Which made everything feel ten times more real. And ten times more annoying. Once he closed the trunk, she turned to face him, hands fisted on her waist. “I still don’t know why I should go up therenowwhen you haven’t hadyourmeeting yet.”
“I’m meeting Mr. Stolt up at the school at four. We’ll both have our mutual pain and suffering over with by tonight. Now, I’ve got a reservation for six-thirty, so make sure you’re ready.”
“A reservation?”
“Sure. It’s a celebration. It should be special.”
The idea of special left her…unsteady. Unsure.
But this was all to get him to meet with Mr. Stolt. She’d suffer through whatever unsteadiness to make sure he ended up where he belonged, and she really believed he’d be just the best coach in the world. He’d experienced too much and was too good and kind and great with people not to be the best.
“You want me to go with you?” he asked, gesturing at the driver’s seat. “Moral support?”
“No.” No, if she was going to suffer through this, it was going to be on her own without an audience.
“All right, but I need you to promise me something.” He took her by the shoulders, gave her a playful kind of shake, but then his expression…changed, transformed into something more serious. And the hands on her shoulders moved up.
Sliding up her neck to cup her jaw. Causing a few personal earthquakes as her body registered the gentle, intimate touch.
“You don’t have to be Miss Confident, but don’t sell yourself short.” He said it earnest, his big, calloused hands on her face.Again, somehow. They weren’tunaffectionate, but this was…different than usual.
Everythingfelt different than usual.
She stared into his blue eyes, that same old feeling she’d long ignored taking up residence in her chest. A fluttering kind of yearning. She was reminded of that moment in the museum the other day. She’d been so sure…
