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Chapter 18
Alex backed the trailerup next to the schoolhouse and shut the truck off.
He’d been working all morning inside with a crowbar, taking out the flooring and the walls that he knew were going to need to go. He’d already decided that he wanted Clara to have an office facing the lake. Something with windows, where she could set up an easel and do her painting.
He hadn’t quite reconciled in his mind exactly how she was going to work for him and paint at the same time, but it was important that she was able to do the art she was born to do.
He was covered in dust and dirt and realized as he got out of the truck that he was starving.
He walked around, going toward the front of the school, figuring he’d look at the view for just a few minutes and try to get his brain settled down. He had a hundred things he wanted to do, plans he’d already made, and more he needed to make. Plus, leaving the business that he’d been in wasn’t just a snap of his fingers and have it done. He was still tying up loose ends from that too.
As he looked out over the lake, he realized there were three men walking up the hill through the dunes in the sparse grass.
He looked over toward the pasture where Clara’s family kept their horses.
He wasn’t sure why, other than he thought that they looked like her brothers. The two that he knew anyway. Matt, whom he’d seen several times, and... Luke maybe.
He hoped they weren’t coming up because they had heard what he was doing and were upset about it.
Small towns tended to be like that. They didn’t like to change anything. For some reason, he felt driven to move ahead. Maybe it was because of his fear of losing Clara, but he didn’t think that was it. He just...knew this was what the Lord wanted him to do, and he wasn’t the kind of man who sat around on things.
God knew that. Although there had been definite times in his life where God had told him to calm down and have patience.
Thankfully, this didn’t seem to be one of those times, even if things weren’t progressing as fast as he would like between Clara and him. She...was resistant to the idea of them moving forward in their relationship, or maybe she hadn’t understood the hints that he’d been dropping.
Maybe he wasn’t as bold as what he needed to be. Or maybe she just needed time to shift gears in her mind as to how things would change down the road.
He hoped that was it. Hoped that she saw a little bit of something in him that she might want to spend more time with. A lot more time, since he was looking at the rest of their lives.
“Hey there,” Matt said as they crested the hill and walked the rest of the distance over the old, cracked blacktop in front of the school. Weeds grew up through the cracks, but it would still work as a parking area. Not that he was parking anything there. The only people he planned to have working in the offices were Clara and himself.
“Hey. Nice day for a walk,” he said, grinning a bit.
“It is, although we were working just down the beach, and we knew you were up here, and we thought maybe you might be interested in joining us for lunch?” The men finally stopped in front of him, and he nodded.
“This is my brother Luke. I know you’ve met him. And then you know Davis who lives up the beach and owns the horses right here.”
Alex shook both of their hands. “Nice to meet you,” he said, liking the honest and upright look in both men’s eyes, their firm handshakes, and the way they seemed casually at ease.
“Always good to have a great neighbor,” Davis said. “I heard you were moving in.”
“I am. That’s true. I’m making some offices, and I’m going to live in the other side.”
“Every time I go in town, people ask me why you didn’t buy the big house on the beach. Like I would know,” Luke said with a grin. But there were questions in his eyes.
“You want the honest answer?” Alex asked, figuring he could be straight with these men. Maybe he would have tried to give someone else the runaround, not lying, just...not telling the truth.
“Yeah. What other kind of answer is there?” Luke asked, like people didn’t lie on a daily basis. Maybe around here they didn’t. Although Alex doubted it. Mankind was the same whether they were in a big town or small. Still, maybe there were more people to hold a person accountable in a small town. In the city, family and friends often didn’t have any idea what a person was doing, and they didn’t have a sense of community that they would be held responsible to.
“This is what Clara wanted.”
That was as simple as it got.
He didn’t move, letting his hands hang at his sides. Aware that he had just said that to Clara’s brothers.
