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But who was she to criticize when she brought so little added value to the process? This time she vowed to keep her opinions to herself, and when she could finally gather her thoughts, she rolled onto one elbow to face him.
He was still breathing hard, and who wouldn’t be after what he’d gone through? She stroked his sweaty, deliciously un-manscaped chest and licked her lips. “Ohmigod, I saw stars!”
His eyebrows slammed together. “You’re still not happy?”
His mind-reading tricks were getting out of hand. She manufactured a gasp. “Are you kidding? I’m delirious. The luckiest woman in the world.”
He just stared at her.
She fell back into the pillows and moaned. “If I could only market you, I’d make a fortune. That’s what I should do with my life. That should be my life’s purpose, to—”
He threw himself out of bed. “Jesus, Meg! What the hell do you want?”
I want you to want me, not just to make me want you. But how could she say that without making herself look like another Beaudine groupie? “Now you’re getting paranoid. And you still haven’t fed me.”
“I’m not going to either.”
“Sure you are. Because that’s what you do. You take care of people”
“Since when did that become a bad thing?”
“Never.” She gave him a wobbly smile.
He stalked into the bathroom, and she lay back in the pillows. Ted not only cared about others, but he followed up on that caring with action. Instead of giving him a sense of entitlement, his agile, gifted brain had cursed him with the obligation to look after everyone and everything he cared about. He was almost certainly the best human being she’d ever met. And maybe the loneliest. It must be exhausting to carry such a heavy load. No wonder he hid so many of his feelings.
Or maybe she was rationalizing the emotional distance he kept from her. She didn’t like knowing he treated her the same as he’d treated all his other conquests, although she couldn’t imagine him being as rude to Lucy as he was with her.
She tossed back the sheet and climbed out of bed. Ted made everyone feel as though he shared a special relationship only with them. It was the biggest rabbit in his silk hat of tricks.
,
Spence and Sunny left Wynette with nothing settled. The town teetered between relief that they were gone and concern that they wouldn’t come back, but Meg wasn’t worried. As long as Sunny believed she had a shot at Ted, she’d be back.
Spence called Meg daily. He also sent a luxury tissue holder, a soap dish, and Viceroy Industries’ finest towel bar. “I’ll fly you out to L.A. this weekend,” he said. “You can show me around, introduce me to your parents, some of their friends. We’ll have a great time.”
His ego was too big to comprehend rejection, and trying to navigate the increasingly thin line between keeping her distance and not pissing him off was becoming more difficult every day. “Gee, Spence, sounds great, but they’re all out of town right now. Maybe next month.”
Ted was traveling on business, too, and Meg didn’t like how much she missed him. She made herself concentrate on regrouping emotionally and building up her bank account by taking advantage of her downtime on the drink cart while she waited for the golfers to play through. She found a jewelry supply store on the Internet that offered free shipping. With the tools and materials she bought, along with a couple of artifacts from the collection in her plastic bin, she worked between customers, assembling a necklace and a pair of earrings.
The day after she finished the pieces, she wore them, and the morning’s first female foursome noticed. “I’ve never seen earrings like those,” the group’s sole Diet Pepsi drinker said.
“Thanks. I just finished them.” Meg slipped them from her ears and held them up. “The beads are Tibetan Sherpa coral. Quite old. I love the way the colors have worn.”
“What about that necklace?” another woman asked. “It’s very unusual.”
“It’s a Chinese needle case,” Meg said, “from the Chin people of Southeast Asia. Over a hundred years old.”
“Imagine owning something like that. Are you selling your work?”
“Gosh, I hadn’t really thought about it.”
“I want those earrings,” Diet Pepsi said.
“How much for the necklace?” another golfer asked.
Just like that, she was in business.
The women loved the idea of owning a beautiful piece of jewelry that doubled as a historical artifact, and by the following weekend, Meg had sold another three items. She was scrupulously honest about authenticity, and she attached a card to each design documenting its provenance. She noted which materials were genuine antiquities, which might be copies, and she adjusted her prices accordingly.
