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"Maybe," he said slowly as he let himself take one more greedy glance at her gorgeous mouth, "isn't in my vocabulary."
"It isn't usually in mine either," she told him in her delightfully straightforward way. "Then again--" She smiled and her eyes sparkled in the rain of sunlight. "--I can't think of the last time I was so tempted by a billionaire. You are going to adore my chariot and horses."
"I'm sure I will." He couldn't imagine anything about her that he wouldn't adore. That he wouldn't crave. "Your new workshop is all ready for you."
"I've got some things to wrap up first. Let's make the move to your workshop the day after tomorrow. Plus, I've got to load all my welding equipment into my truck." She ticked things off on her fingers. "The MIG and the TIG. My torch. My plasma cutter. And any parts I can use from the yard. It will be better if I just drive my truck over."
Charlie spoke easily about trucks and trailers and torches. But he could see that she was beautiful and accomplished enough to fit into any world in which she chose to live. He would open a new universe to her, one full of glittering possibility, and he knew instinctively that his world would embrace her completely.
He wanted to take her upstairs to the helipad right this second and fly her off to his estate in the Hayward Hills so she wouldn't have a chance to change her mind. But he'd already learned that Charlie was as fiercely independent as her work. Was it because she'd moved around so much as a kid? Or was there another reason? Had someone in her past disappointed her and made it difficult for her to trust others? Sebastian understood that all too well, knew just how hard it could be to trust that the people who were supposed to be there for you would actually be there when you needed them.
Whatever her reasons, he knew for sure that dragging her to the workshop on his property as if he were a caveman would be a mistake. A big one. So instead of insisting she start today, he said, "I'll send a trailer with some guys to help with the loading. It'll be easier than trying to get everything in your truck."
Just as she had when he'd offered her the commission yesterday, she didn't jump at his offer. Instead, she took the time to turn it over in her mind, before she finally nodded. "That will work great, thank you." She tilted her chin at the fountain and when she touched him again, her hand on his arm, everything inside him stilled, absorbing her heat, her closeness, her heady scent. "The sun show...it's almost over."
He put his hand over hers on his arm, bound her to him as the wide swath of sunlight made its final arc across the floor, just as the chariot and its stallions would. "The horses will look like they're racing through an arena." Shining, alive. Like her.
And then, in the next moment, it was gone, leaving the fountain in the shade of the building's facade. But he could still see the brilliant vision as if it were a mirage lingering on his horizon.
"It will be spectacular," he told her. "You will be."
He felt the slightest tremble of her hand beneath his, before she took a deep breath, then smiled into his eyes and said, "That's the plan."
*
Francine Ballard's gnarled fingers gripped the walker's handles. Charlie's natural tendency was to let her mother hang on to her, so that Charlie could keep her steady and safe. But her mother had to do things on her own, and since Charlie was a chip off the old block, she understood that was better for her mother's wellbeing.
"Just two more passes along the hallway," her mom said. She walked the halls four times a day for exercise. Use it or lose it, she always claimed. And it was true that without the workout, she would have been in a wheelchair years ago.
As soon as Sebastian had brought her home from their excursion to the city, Charlie had jumped in her dusty old truck and rattled across the Dumbarton Bridge to Fremont. She couldn't wait to tell her mother all about her new project, but for the next few minutes she didn't want to break her concentration.
"Hello, Gladys," her mom called through an open door as they passed.
"You go, girl," the gray-haired lady called back. "Hi, Charlie." Gladys was ninety and bedridden, and she loved soap operas in the afternoon. She could recite everything that had happened over the last ten years on each of her favorite shows as if the characters were her relatives.
Charlie's mom had lived at Shady Lane for the last two years. But there was no shade, no lane, and no garden. There were only concrete walls, linoleum floors, beige paint, the underlying scent of cleaning fluids and medicines, and the competing sounds of too many televisions tuned to different channels.
Charlie had come to her parents late in life, and she'd still been a toddler when her mom was diagnosed with severe degenerative osteoarthritis. Though she'd been in her early forties, Francine's joints had begun to collapse. After years of pain and increasing loss of use, she'd had her first operation in her fifties to fuse three of the vertebrae in her spine. She'd soon had to give up sewing and needlework, which had been her joy. Since then she'd had all the joints in her fingers replaced, except the pinkies, which were etched into a permanent curl. Her ankles had disintegrated and were now held together by steel and bolts and staples.
But at seventy, her mother still walked a mile of hallway every day. Because Francine Ballard never gave up.
Charlie smiled at her mother as she moved at a snail's pace beside her, her mom's head barely coming to her chin now that years of arthritis had compressed her spine. "Okay, I need a short rest before I finish my walk." Her mother plunked her bottom down on the walker. In a compartment beneath the seat, she kept a book and a purse with her reading glasses, tissues, a brush, and her lipstick. Today's outfit was a skirt and sweater set in a dusty rose color. She had her hair done once a week in the nursing home's salon, and Charlie did her nails when she visited. It didn't matter that her fingers were bent in odd directions, her mom loved the pretty pink polish.
After resting a minute, she said, "Okay, I'm ready to keep going now."
Charlie put her hand beneath her mother's elbow and helped her up so that they could steer back into the central hall. This wasn't a bad place, but the staff was overworked and didn't have time for anything extra. The residents never went on outings. The food, though nutritious, was often unidentifiable. The worst, though, was the lack of anywhere to sit outside, to smell the flowers and get a little sun to heat old bones. Charlie often took her mom out for lunch or to a nearby park, but those excursions weren't the same as having a lovely garden she could go to whenever she wanted. She knew her mother would adore the gardens at the Los Gatos facility. Instead of walking institutional hallways, she could stroll through lush greenery and fragrant flowers and read her book in the shade of a leafy tree, in the gazebo, or by the koi pond.
At the end of the hall, her mother let out a long, satisfied sigh. "Another lap done. Let's sit in the lounge." Francine shared a room with Rosemary, who was nearly deaf and had the TV on so loud, Charlie couldn't think, though thankfully it didn't seem to bother her mother at all.
They parked her walker outside the lounge, and her mom made her way to the sofa, moving hand by hand across each chair back she passed, while Charlie brewed tea. She'd brought china mugs with her because her mother claimed tea tasted better in bone china, especially if the cups had been warmed with hot water. For herself, Charlie pushed the whipped coffee button, creating foam on the top, then added milk and sugar to both her mother's cup and her own.
At the opposite end of the lounge, a TV blared for the six residents seated in front of it. A sallow-skinned lady, who must have been new since Charlie didn't recognize her, slept in an overstuffed chair kitty-corner to the sofa her mother had chosen.
Charlie carried the two flowered mugs, setting her mother's on the coffee table. "I brought your favorite." From the shopping bag she'd slung over her arm, she pulled a pink box from a fabulous bakery only a few blocks away, two china plates, and pretty paper napkins, then placed one half of an almond bear claw on the china. In the old days, her mother had made the most delicious pastries. But she'd had to give up baking when the pain of standing too long became excruciating, not to mention what all the measuring, mixing, and spooning had done to her fingers.
"This is so yummy." Her mother savored the pastry in little bites, enjoying every morsel. "Now tell me what has you positively glowing."
Charlie had known her mother would see what she was feeling. Glowing was the perfect word for it. "I've got a new commission. A really big one."
