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His card had just touched her fingers. She closed her hand around it but didn’t move.
“This is my business.”
She didn’t know where those words came from. She didn’t typically talk back to him at all. Whatever he said went. Of course, typically when they interacted, he was the boss and she was his assistant. However, currently, she was the artist and he was a patron. Still, the dynamic didn’t feel right.
And to her consternation, her fingers trembled.
Not because she was scared, because that was her body’s reaction any time she was around Alexander. He intrigued her, inspired her, intimidated her, and made her knees weak. He infiltrated her dreams and made her sigh.
He was also bossy, controlling, and she almost wanted to say ruthless. Although, she knew he had a soft side. She also knew he had a difficult past, although she didn’t know the details. No one seemed to. But speculation had run rampant, from him being stolen as a child, forced to work as a sex slave and worse.
Clara figured most of those were grossly exaggerated, but they didn’t quell her curiosity.
Alexander’s lips turned up just a little. His look was almost chilling. “That’s what we’re going to talk about.”
She tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry. Instead, she lifted her chin and finished pulling the card from his fingers.
Fifty thousand dollars was a tiny amount of money to Alexander. A little bit of nothing. But it was six months’ salary to her. And he had just dropped it without blinking on her paintings.
Was she crazy to be leaving a company headed by a man like that?
At least he’d given her good seed money if she decided to start a new business. But she wasn’t fool enough to think that it would be enough to live on for the rest of her life. Could she make a living at this?
Maybe she should continue to work for Alexander and have her shop open in the evenings and on weekends.
She considered that as she ran his card.
Rather than standing in front of her watching her, he had started to walk around the shop, his hands behind his back.
She half expected him to tell the current browsers of the shop that it was closed and the paintings were no longer for sale, but she didn’t hear a word.
Instead, he stopped at the back wall, where she’d hung ten large paintings on the canvas that lined the entire back of her tent.
He stood in front of one in particular, one she had painted using her brothers’ herd of horses for inspiration.
Ranger, her favorite horse from childhood, stood in the center. She’d lost Ranger almost five years ago, and she’d cried for days. She’d actually taken three days of work off and come home to help her brothers and family bury him. He’d been the horse that she’d grown up with, learned to ride on, and had spent hours on the beach with. In the painting, he was not arthritic and sick anymore, but he had his head lifted proudly, his mane flowing in the breeze along with his tail. Several of the other horses from her childhood were there, along with Cal, their dog.
That whole painting was a time capsule of her idyllic childhood. Somehow, her mom had managed to shield her from most of the care and worries, and she hadn’t even really been affected too much when her dad had left. Her mom had acted like everything was just fine, and if her mom cried or even had bad days, Clara had never been aware of it. She just had her horses and her dog and the lake and sun and snow and wind, and thinking about it now made her feel a deep, happy contentment at her life and the family and friends that had surrounded her all through her growing-up years.
That picture brought it all to light. The little girl in it was holding hands with a taller, older boy. She imagined the little girl to be herself and the older boy to be her brother Matt. Her mother was off in the distance, and her sisters and brothers played around them. It was a carefree, happy picture with horses and wind and dogs and fun and smiles. So much like her childhood.
By the time she was done running his card, Alexander was still standing in front of it.
She walked back to him. “Here’s your receipt and your card back.”
He took it from her, his fingers brushing hers, sending something warm and sweet up her arm, but his eyes never left the painting in front of him. “Why didn’t I know you could paint?”
“I guess you never asked.” She had never bothered to tell him. She could have said that too. But she hadn’t because she didn’t think he’d be interested. They didn’t talk about personal things. They talked about business, because that’s what Alexander always focused on.
“And you couldn’t just volunteer the information?” He finally turned to look at her, his eyes dark and hooded, his face impassive, although she got the feeling that he was angry.
“Between dictating emails, fetching your coffee, and retrieving information for your business?” She didn’t know where her bravery came from. She didn’t typically talk to him about anything other than work. Typically, it was a “yes, sir” or “no, sir” type of communication.
She tried to be pleasant, smiling when she could, and she always got along well with the staff. She might have to work in Chicago, but she wasn’t leaving her small-town roots behind. The roots that dictated she was friendly to everyone, because they were probably someone who, if she didn’t know them, knew her parents, or her siblings, or both.
That wasn’t true in the big city, but a workplace could feel like family, if enough people made the effort to have it that way. Plus, she didn’t want to work somewhere where she wasn’t comfortable. Where she didn’t feel like the environment was friendly and uplifting.
She hated the cutthroat feeling of many businesses.
