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He was vibrating under my hand.

One of the movers, a big guy named Chuck who'd been hauling our furniture since Nashville, caught my eye and grinned. "We'll do his room first."

James looked up at him like he'd been handed a trophy. "Thank you," he said, with complete sincerity.

Chuck laughed. "No problem, little man."

Chapter Seventeen

“What are you looking at?” Ernie was totally getting on my last nerve.

“Nothing.”

“Good.”

Another customer came into the shop, so I shot away from the register so I could go help him. Usually if a guy came in alone, Ernie made him feel uncomfortable, and what’s more, he was in a serious shopping mode.

“Can I help you?”

He looked at me and smiled. He smiled a little too much. Great. Just great.

“I’m sure you can, Sugar. I’m looking for something for my mama. It’s her birthday tomorrow. She’s mentioned your shop before, so I thought I could find something she would like.”

“Do you have something in mind?”

He looked me up and down. “Something expensive.”

I managed not to roll my eyes. I turned around and saw Ernie had taken over the register, but there was a line.

Shit.

“Do you have a budget?”

“Price is no object.”

Ick.

“Oh, I have just the thing.” I took him to the front of the store where Henry Sharp’s Eternal Flame piece was. “This just came in from a local artisan. He’s already making a name for himself. Just last week we sold one of his pieces to a collector on the West Coast and another one of our more established clients who likes to remain anonymous.”

I like to remain anonymous, and the west part of Tennessee could be considered the West Coast, couldn’t it?

“Here’s his biography.”

I handed him the card with Henry’s pictures on it. Besides a portrait, there was also one of him working in his ‘studio.’ Leslie had had to really zoom in to make his garage workbench look more like a workroom, but she’d managed it.

“How much?” he asked suspiciously.

I hadn’t put a price tag on it. “If I priced it like I did for the others, it would be six-thousand dollars, but because this is for your mama, and she’s a regular customer of ours, I could sell it to you for forty-five hundred dollars.”

“That’s still pretty steep.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I’m sorry. Let me take you to another section. We have some very nice things in the hundred to two-hundred dollar range,” I said sweetly.

“No, no. I told you price was no object. And since you’re going to give this to me at such a good deal, I would be a fool to let it go.” He reached out and caressed my arm.

I stepped back.

“Now, you’ll want the lighted pedestal as well, correct?”