Proving Paul's Promise(22)

I look down and fidget with my jean shorts. “What?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I’ve never seen you look so…normal.”

“Is it bad?” I ask.

He closes his mouth. “No,” he says. He smiles. “It’s good. Very, very good.”

I usually wear my vintage clothes and heels when I’m working at the shop, and it’s what people have come to expect so I keep doing it. I get a lot of attention that way, and that’s what the shop needs. “You ready?” I ask.

He is wearing jeans and a T-shirt with the Reed’s Tattoo logo on it. “Are you going to be okay getting that dirty?”

He looks down at what he’s wearing. “I don’t see why not.” He stops and grabs my elbow. “You’re not going to have me rolling in mud or anything, are you?”

“Nothing quite that sophisticated,” I say.

He rolls his eyes and follows me out the door. When we get to the street, he takes my backpack from my shoulder and puts it on his, and then he takes my hand. My heart skitters. I never would have taken Paul for a touchy-feely kind of guy, but he totally is. He never touched Kelly much in public, or any of the other girls I know he slept with, but with me, it’s like he can’t get enough contact.

He squeezes my hand. “This okay?” he asks.

I nod and grin at him. He has the most adorable dimples, and he gives me a crooked smile, showing them off.

“Aren’t you afraid someone will get the wrong idea about us?” I ask.

“What idea are you worried about?”

I shrug. “That they’ll think we’re a thing.”

“We are a thing,” he says. He starts to swing my hand in his between us. “We are totally a thing.”

When we get to the park, I see that there’s already a line at my booth. I do this every year and people come just to get some of my art put on their faces.

“What are we doing?” Paul asks.

I grin at him. “We’re painting,” I say, rubbing my hands together with glee.

I motion the first person forward, and he has a little girl with him. She hops up onto my stool.

“What would you like to be?” I ask her.

“An ice cream cone!” she says.

Her dad teases her. “She didn’t ask what you want to eat. She asked what you want to be.”

“A butterfly!” she cries.

I get out a brush and start to paint, and Paul watches me closely. In less than a minute, I have a butterfly painted around her eyes that looks like mint chocolate chip ice cream. Paul looks at me. “It’s really good,” he says.

I grin. “I know.”

I point to the stock art that’s pinned to the fake wall behind him. “You can do the stock art ones. The baseballs and the glittery flowers.”

“Okay,” he says, and he sits down. He motions a man forward, and he brings a little girl with him, as well. She hovers between her dad’s legs. Paul holds out the brush to her. “Would you like to try out my paint?” he asks. He sticks out his arm. “Right here,” he instructs.

She takes it and makes a swirl on his arm, and he makes a big deal about how awesome it is. She grins and hands the brush back. “Your turn,” he says as he sets her on his stool and starts to paint.

A few minutes later, he helps her down, and I see that he turned her into a tiger. And it’s pretty f*cking awesome. I knew he would be good at this. His job is art. The permanent kind. Of course, he rocks at it.

The kid’s dad shakes Paul’s hand, and one of the volunteers comes forward to take his money and lead someone new up to the stool.

A few kids later, I look up and find that our line is wrapping around our tent and down the row, and the end is way past where I can even see it.

Paul picks up his phone and makes a call. “Hey, Matt,” he says. “I want you to close the shop and come to the festival in the park. We need some help.” He talks for a second. “Bring everyone,” he says.

Paul grins at me, and I shake my head. He seems happy to be here. And I’m happy to have him with me. There’s not much I’m passionate about, but I am about art. And the Reed family. Put the two of them in the same place, helping out a charity I love, and I might as well be in heaven.

A cheer goes up when his four good-looking brothers show up and set up work stations. Logan brought Emily, Matt brought Sky, and Pete brought Reagan. They all get busy helping to take money and form lines for each of the tables.

The boys grin and settle in for the day. I hear giggles, and I realize that our line is no longer made up of only kids wanting their faces painted. There are teenage girls and even older women in line now, too.

“You guys are drawing a crowd,” I tell Paul. His face colors, and he shrugs. The man is seriously sex on a stick and he still blushes when he gets attention? I step up onto a chair and wrap my hands around my mouth. I call out to the crowd, “Attention, please,” I yell. “I think it’s getting hot out here, so they should all take their shirts off! What do you think?”

A cheer goes up, and I see people who aren’t even in our line stopping to watch.

Sam grins and yanks his shirt over his head. These boys have nothing to be shy about, I’ll say that for them. I fan my face and look at the crowd. “Just one of them? I think they need some encouragement!” I hold out the money jar, and people come up to put cash into it. I look down and mentally count. “There’s enough in here for one more of you to strip.”