“Yeah! bye, Tent!” Renee called out, skipping through the sliding glass door.
Trent watched them disappear before looking back at me, his eyes lit with amusement. “Your friend is . . . colorful.”
She was something, that was for sure. “She’s not really my friend. She’s just the town crazy lady. She doesn’t have very good people skills because she spends most of her time holed up at home with her twenty cats.”
“I heard that!” Luna yelled from inside. “And I have one cat!”
“I’m so sorry she pulled you from your run and into her orbit of crazy. If you want to take off running, I’ll cover for you.”
He hit me with those dimples again and my knees almost gave out. “Nah, it’s all good. She’s entertaining.”
“She’s certifiably insane.”
“Like I said. Entertaining.” His gaze shifted over my shoulder. “What’s all this?”
“Oh.” I looked behind me into my workshop. “It’s nothing,” I answered, nerves fluttering around in my belly like a swarm of butterflies. Having the shop owners in town sell my pieces for me was one thing, but there was just something about witnessing people’s reactions to my art firsthand that left me feeling exposed. My creations were personal to me, my passion. I did much better taking my cut from the people in the stores who’d sold the items on my behalf. It was one of the reasons why I didn’t sell them right out of my workshop directly. “It’s just a hobby,” I said, downplaying what it really meant to me.
I watched, feeling itchy and tense as his gaze scanned the entire space before coming back to me. “You mind if I take a closer look?”
“Oh, um . . . sure.” I stepped to the side so he could come into my inner sanctum. Other than Renee and Luna, no one else had stepped foot in here, and seeing Trent in my space felt like an invasion. But I didn’t know how to explain it. It didn’t feel bad, necessarily. More like he was seeing deep inside of me.
I stayed rooted in place as he moved around, taking in all the pieces lining the shelves, spending as much time on the ones that were still raw and incomplete as he did the ones that had already been glazed. Each step he took echoed the loud bang of my heart against my ribcage. Watching him as he studied everything so closely was a form of torture, but I couldn’t bring myself to look away or step out of the workshop.
“You made all of these?”
“Well, Renee painted a few of them,” I said as he bent to pick up one of the mugs that she’d handled the week before that was waiting to be brought inside. She’d used every single color of paint she had, making the mug look like a rainbow had puked all over it. There was a crude facsimile of a stick figure on the side that was supposed to represent her, and she’d had me paint her name in bright neon pink in an arch above it. “As I’m sure you can tell.” I smiled as the thought of my baby girl.
He glanced back at me with a grin, replacing the mug, “Looks like she’s quickly on her way to becoming as talented as her mom. These are amazing, Sawyer.”
He picked up one of the completed pieces. It was a bowl I’d made a few weeks back. I found a pebble on the beach shaped kind of like a cone with two rounded edges, and used it to indent the sides of the clay before it was hardened to look like different sized bubbles. Then I’d used different color glazes on the inside and outside, the effect making it look almost like waves, starting in a dark navy then blending into teal and lighter shades of blue before edging the top with white.
“You’re incredibly talented.”
I knew from experience that my cheeks were probably glowing pink. I couldn’t stop the almost-timid smile that pulled at my lips, curving then upward. “Thank you,” I said quietly.
“Do you sell your stuff?”
“Yeah. A few of the stores in town set up displays and sell them for me. Small town hospitality, you know? Neighbors helping neighbors.”
“I get it. I live in a small town myself.” He looked at me over his shoulder and winked, making the voice of the teenage girl who apparently lived inside my head scream like she was backstage at a boy band concert. “I’ll have to look around, find the places that carry your stuff and buy a few.”
That flush in my skin grew even hotter. “You really don’t have to.”
“I know I don’t have to. I want to,” he stated plainly. “Especially this one.” He picked up the bubble bowl again. Much larger than a regular bowl, it was made to be used as a centerpiece, filled with whatever the owner desired. “How much for this one?”
I shifted from foot to foot, my skin suddenly feeling too tight over my bones. “You . . . want to buy it?” I didn’t know if it was because it had been so long since I felt any kind of attraction to a member of the opposite sex, or if it was something intrinsically Trent, maybe he wore a cologne laced heavily with pheromones? Whatever it was, I felt like my world had shifted off its axis.
“I really do. It’s cool as hell.”
“Well . . .” I fumbled for the right words. God, I hated talking money with potential customers. It was so uncomfortable. “I usually sell pieces that size for about two hundred.” I had to keep myself from cringing.
“Sold,” he said without pre-amble.
My eyes went wide. “Really?”
“Absolutely. I’ll swing by tomorrow with the cash if that works for you.”
That girl in my head screamed again. “Um, y-yeah. Sure.”
“You should stick around for that home-cooked meal we mentioned.”
I jumped at the sound of Luna’s voice and whipped around to where she stood in the open doorway, hand in hand with Renee. I pressed my palm to my chest. “Jeez, Luna! Don’t creep up on people like that.”
She shrugged, looking way too damn happy with herself. “Who’s creeping? I made plenty of noise on my way out here. You just didn’t notice.” She waggled her eyebrows. “Wonder why.”
“I hate you.”
She was unfazed, looking back to Trent. “So how about it? You swing by with cash for that incredible bowl, and she’ll make you dinner.”
Renee jumped up and down. “Yeah, Tent! Yeah!”
I held my hand up in her face to block her from view and said to Trent, “Just ignore her. You really don’t have to.”
Luna smacked my hand out of her face. “Of course he does! Two beautiful single people? It would be sacrilege for you not to share a meal together.”
I pinched my face up like I’d just sucked on a lemon, gritting quietly, “I’m going to smother you in your sleep.”
“Sounds good.”
At his casual response, my head whipped around in surprise, my hair smacking me in the face. “What?”
He lifted one meaty shoulder in a shrug. “She’s not wrong about the whole home-cooked meal thing. It would be nice to have something other than fast food and takeout. That is, if you’re okay with it.”
Honestly, I wasn’t sure my heart would survive a prolonged period in his company. As it was, the damn organ was trying to prison break its way through my ribs.
“I’m not—”
“Pweese, Momma! Pweese!”