When I'm with You (Hope Town #3)(60)
“You’re trying to distract me with your talented fingers and huge penis, aren’t you?”
His face doesn’t lose its intensity, but his lips twitch at my words.
“Do you know why my father moved everything I own into storage?”
He sighs. “I don’t know for sure, but I can only assume.”
“And your assumption would be what?”
“That he’s doing what he would have done in my shoes, taking a guess at what I want, and doing it correctly.”
“You’re talking in riddles,” I whine, tossing my hands up with a huff.
“Actually, I’m not. But I’ll expand on that. He hasn’t asked me how I feel about that fire or how I felt knowing that you could have been taken from me had you not got out. He does, however, know how serious I am about you, and with that being said, he decided to act as if he knew what I wanted to happen and make sure it’s done.”
“Seriously, Nate! How is that any clearer?”
He laughs, low and not with much humor. More like a sound that one would make if they knew something that the other person didn’t. Which, duh, he does.
“In his shoes, if it had been your mother, he would have packed up her shit, repaired the house, sold it, and never let her out of his sight again. Her shit would stay in storage until she decided what to keep or donate, but her ass would stay in his house … forever.”
I gasp, his meaning starting to become clear.
“Are you saying my father is preparing me to move in with you?”
“Like I said, he’s acting as if he knows what I want.”
My heart in my throat, I ask, “And what do you want?”
“Exactly what he would in my shoes, baby. The exact thing.”
“It’s been a month!”
He steps closer. “One month or one day, I would still feel the same about us.”
And then his mouth is on mine, and I lose all ability to even form a thought, let alone another word.
“Come on,” he says against my lips, taking my hand and pulling me from his living room and up the stairs to his bedroom. “I have you for another two hours before you need to head over to the gallery. How about we make good use of that time?”
And good use he does.
Over and over again.
“I think I like this one in here,” Annabelle says, looking away from the series of landscape paintings to the few still-life ones that I have.
“Are you sure? I thought you wanted to mix them up some?”
She hums but keeps looking at the pictures she had cataloged of my artwork, placing a few against each wall in preparation to hang the respective canvases.
The way that her gallery is set up, it is essentially one large room with different ‘walls’ erected to hold various pieces. Normally, she has a good mix of art, even some freestanding displays for other mediums, but for my show, she has cleared off the whole floor.
We’ve already placed half of my collection, starting with the vivid colors of my nature scenes and ending now where we have the landscapes and still-life paintings scattered to make way for the huge abstract piece that will be the big focus of the event. The black wall that holds the picture solely takes my breath away; just seeing it up there with the spotlights on it and the tiny plaque that she had attached to the right corner.
It’s a showstopper, and she knows it. When she told me that she was putting a fifteen thousand dollar price tag on it, I almost choked on my tongue. It’s normal for some of my larger pieces to go for a couple of grand but never that much. However, now that I see it up there in all its huge glory, I now can see what Annabelle sees in those brushstrokes that make it worth that kind of price tag.
Hell, if she sells my whole collection, I could make almost seventy-five thousand dollars. And if this show goes off as she is saying it will, it’s going to push my art to a whole new level when it comes to pricing. I’ve been waiting for this show. No longer selling five to ten paintings a month but selling that in a week. It will mean that I no longer have as much free time as I have now, but I’ll be doing what I love, and since I already paint for fun seven days a week, this will mean that my ‘fun’ will now be sold instead of sitting in closet.
It’s an overwhelming thought, but one that I’m ready for.
“I think we’ve pretty much got it all settled, Ember. We just need Daniel and his crew to come and hang the rest of your pieces. I can take care of placing the plaques tomorrow. You just need to spend the day focusing on getting ready for our big night. I’m so excited for you, honey.”
“Are you sure you don’t want more help?”
She laughs and places her hand on my arm. “You’ve done more than I ever would have asked. It’s time you go on and enjoy some relaxing before tomorrow night.”
“If you’re sure.” I look around one more time, seeing everything start to come together, and smile. “If you change your mind, just call.”
She nods and walks away, dismissing me as her mind starts to wander with tasks, something she has a bad habit of doing.
When I first met her, I wondered how such a beautiful woman had never settled down with a family of her own, but I realized really fast that Annabelle Kingston is married to her work, and at fifty-two, she is perfectly content with her clients being the children she never had.