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She also had an ulterior motive for bringing out the journal. She wanted to see if there was any spontaneous interest from the guests. The way she would gauge it would be by seeing if anyone came over and either asked what she was doing or simply watched as she worked.
Seven people had come down for breakfast and six of the seven had expressed an interest. Of the six, five had said they would be interested in taking a free art journaling workshop.
Five would be a nice number for a beginner class.
Without even asking Gigi or her mother, she made the executive decision to offer the Forsyth Galloway Inn’s inaugural art class on Wednesday. She told her prospective students that all they would need was a journal or a notebook—the size, shape and type was up to them. If they wanted one like hers, they could find it at the SCAD bookstore on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. She would provide the rest of the materials.
She had glued down the last item into her own journal when she looked up and saw Daniel standing in the doorway. Happiness flooded through her at the sight of him standing there, all freshly showered and looking delicious.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning.” He walked over and bent down to look at her open journal.
“How did Chloe do this morning when you dropped her off for her first day of camp?”
“She did great. She has a lot of friends doing the camp. She was happy to see them. She waved goodbye to me and ran inside with them like a big girl. What’s this?” He gestured to her open art journal.
“It’s the first draft of my inaugural art class here at the inn. I’m glad to hear she was ready to have fun. We’re going to miss her around here.”
He gestured at the journal. “Does that make you the first artist in residence?”
“I guess it does. Or maybe art teacher in residence.”
“Artist,” he said. “Don’t sell yourself short.”
Elle shrugged against the thrill that coursed through her at his encouragement. It had been so long—since art school—since she’d thought of herself as an artist rather than an art teacher. There was safety in hiding behind the teacher label. As a teacher, she taught. Students looked up to her, counting on her expertise. There was rarely any judgment from the beginners she taught. Especially not among her elementary students. Tempera paint and modeling clay rarely brought out the kids’ inner critic, except when she tried to sneak in a lesson about color theory or the different styles of the masters. And those were usually groans of constructive learning tainting a good old free-for-all with paint and brush. The kids didn’t care if it was in the style of Jackson Pollock. All they knew was that it was fun to fling paint off a brush onto paper—and each other. Mostly onto each other.
Daniel carried over a chair that one of the guests had moved to another table and sat next to her. He ran a calloused thumb down the fan of completed pages in the front of the journal. “May I look? I just realized I haven’t seen your art since high school.”
Her first reaction was to hide her work, to protect herself. How long had it been since she’d laid herself bare in the form of her art?
“Careful.” But she had been eager to render herself naked and vulnerable at his hands on Friday night when they’d made out in his truck. The memory of that night sent electric currents of longing pulsing through her and pooling in her center. “The matte medium I used to glue down the ephemera isn’t dry yet.”
However, it was set enough to hold. And if she could trust her fragile heart in his strong, capable hands, she could trust him with the various studies that had been closed off in this book, hidden away from critical eyes for years.
A million thoughts went through her head at the same time—Roger. Hurt. Love. Devastation. Vulnerability. Jilted. Nudged. Innocent. Wronged. Cheater. Naked. Hungry. Saved from making the worst mistake of her entire life.
“I’ll be careful,” he promised, and she let him slide the book closer to himself.
Elle held her breath as, with one hand, he carefully held out the page she had been working on when he’d entered the sunroom and thumbed through the rest with his free hand.
