Fortune Found (13 page)

S
leepless nights made for extra time to get things done, so after a long day of rock hunting with Ella, Braden, Bethany and Adam, driving home and getting all four kids bathed and to bed, Jessie even managed to shower herself, shampoo her hair, unload the van and get all the rocks washed.

She'd just finished that when there was a knock on her studio door.

It was after ten o'clock and she didn't have to look to know that it was Flint who was standing outside of that door.

She willed him to go away, but then she heard his deep voice say ever so softly, “It's me, Jess,” and she knew that wasn't going to happen.

She was aware that he could see the lights and would know that no one else would be using the studio at that
time of night. So she didn't have a choice but to open that door to him.

And nearly wilt at that first close-up glimpse of him in days.

Tall and lean and muscular. His hair shiny clean and carelessly disheveled. His face clean-shaven and so handsome that it made her just want to stare at him for hours. Wearing a pair of low-slung jeans and a black T-shirt that hugged every inch of that sculpted body. And looking at her with those coffee-colored eyes that seemed to convey confusion and hopefulness at once.

How was she supposed to resist all that?

All that and his holding up a bottle of wine when he said, “I have news you're gonna want to hear and something to celebrate it with. Can I come in?”

If only she could say no.

“Sure, come in,” she answered, stepping aside and working like mad to make it appear as if she was as aloof as she wished she truly were.

Certainly how she was dressed didn't give her away, though, and now she wished she'd done more with herself after her shower. But she hadn't thought she'd be seeing anyone else tonight and with Texas temperatures rising as the month of June progressed, she was in her bare feet and had only put on a simple, knit sundress cut like a tank top to fall in an A-line to a hem that barely reached her knees.

Plus, the only thing she was wearing underneath it was a pair of panties. And while there was nothing revealing or indecent about the black-and-white polka dot dress that had a very minor built-in bra, she still felt a little too uncontained. Especially when her nipples tightened up the minute she laid eyes on Flint.

Hoping it seemed casual, she crossed her arms over her chest, clasping each upper arm with the opposite hand, and pivoted on her heels to allow him into the studio.

“I wasn't expecting company,” she said self-consciously, thinking, too, about her hair. Left with only a brushing after it had dried, it always formed waves that tonight she'd clipped back—again for the sake of cooling off. A few stray strands had escaped the clip to fall around her face and she wondered if she looked a mess because of it.

“You might not have been expecting company, but you look good enough to go to a party,” Flint said with enough appreciation to be convincing. Especially when his dark eyes seemed glued to her even as he came in and closed the door behind them.

His compliment helped remove some of her concerns about her appearance, but the way he was looking at her was somewhat of a turn-on, and Jessie began to worry that the heat in her cheeks was going to become a full-fledged blush.

Then he grinned, held up the wine bottle again and said, “I have more than a dozen gift shops that want to buy your sculptures and three galleries open to display them for sale.”

And shock replaced some of her discomfort. And some of the turn-on that had come with the purely primal awareness she seemed to have of him.

“You have twelve shops and three galleries interested just since Sunday?” she asked.

“Just since Sunday,” he answered smugly. “I told you this stuff is salable.”

“And you came to gloat?” she goaded.

“I came to celebrate. And to find out if something is wrong because I haven't seen you in three days.”

Maybe a glass of wine would help calm her nerves.

Jessie went into the kitchen section in search of a corkscrew and two glasses.

“Nothing's wrong,” she said along the way, glad she didn't have to look him in the eye when she did. “I just felt like I'd neglected the kids and put too much burden on my parents while I helped out with Kelsey and Coop's house, so I wanted to give the kids some concentrated attention and give my folks a break.”

“Ah, that makes sense,” he said as if he didn't doubt her word.

That went a long way in preserving the illusion she wanted to maintain, too—that she could kiss him—and more—on Sunday night, and take it so in stride that she hadn't given it another thought. The illusion that hid the fact that she had been nearly sleepless for the last three nights and plagued day and night with wanting more of that kissing—and even more than that…

With wanting
him.

Instead, she could be breezy, as if Sunday night hadn't been completely out of character for her and knocked her for a loop.

“And now we can talk money,” Flint said as he joined her at the kitchen counter, took the corkscrew she'd just located and opened the wine.

“Right…money,” she repeated.

Pouring the wine, he said, “I purposely didn't discuss price with you before because I knew you'd undervalue your work.”

He went on to tell her how much he was asking for
her sculptures and Jessie knew her shock had to show in her expression.

“Are you kidding?” she said.

“And that's for the small pieces that I offered to the gift shops. The bigger ones that I presented to the galleries will go for much more.”

Jessie didn't think there was any color left in her face after he told her exactly how much more he was talking about.

“For rocks that I found in the woods?” she said in astonishment.

“It isn't the rocks themselves that we're selling. It's the artistry in the way you put them together.”

“I can't believe it…”

Flint laughed. “Maybe we better sit down—you look like you need to.”

Jessie was still doing math in her head while he led her to the sofa where they both sat in the center of it.

“This will help so much,” she muttered as figures began to form.

“Good. I'm glad. Now tell me the truth—were the kids and your parents the
only
reasons I haven't gotten to see you yet this week?”

Oh. So she hadn't been off the hook on that score after all.

“You don't think those are reasons enough?” she countered because he'd again taken her by surprise and she was at a loss for an answer.

“Let's just say that kids and parents don't seem like reasons enough to me.”

Jessie sipped the wine. “Maybe that's because you live a different life than I do—the life of a childless
bachelor who doesn't have too much contact with your own parents.”

He laughed, took a drink of his own wine, then said, “
Childless bachelor
—you do not make that sound like something anyone should want to be.”

“You're not married—that makes you a bachelor. And you don't have any kids, so you
are
childless.”

“But both of those things are just simple facts, not things I've been sentenced to for some kind of crimes I've committed.”

The perplexed creases in his brow made her smile. She also thought that this line of conversation gave her another way to escape talking about why she'd kept her distance. And along with that she might also get the answers to some of the other questions she had about Flint. And his past.

“Why
are
you unmarried and childless?” she said with some challenge to her tone.

He laughed again. “I told you I was married once, years ago, but not for long enough to have kids.”

Jessie shrugged as she took another sip of wine, then tucked her feet to one side and behind her so she ended up facing Flint, resting her arm on the top of the sofa cushions.

“How many years ago were you married?” she asked then.

“We were both twenty-two—that was seventeen years ago. Her name was Myra.”

“How long
did
it last?” Jessie probed because as he drank his own wine he showed no signs that he was reluctant to talk about this.

“Seven and a half months.”

“You weren't even married for a year?”

“Maybe that's what happens when you don't put any thought into it.”

“You got married without putting any thought into it?”

“In Vegas. It was Myra's suggestion that rather than ending our fourth date, we get in the car and drive there for the weekend.”

“You got
married
after just
four
dates?”

“We didn't go to Vegas to get married, we went to make a long weekend of the date. But once we got there, we did a lot of drinking, Myra said wouldn't it be funny if we just got married and—” He grimaced at the expression on her face. “I know how bad that sounds. It was stupid, believe me. But I was young and she was…” He shrugged. “The whole thing with Myra was a burn hot, burn fast, burn out kind of thing,” he said. “That's what happens when it's purely physical.”

“Purely physical?” she repeated, knowing she'd done too much of that but suddenly feeling some insecurity about the fact that Pete had been her one and only, about Flint not merely having had more than a single other partner, but also having been with someone with whom things had been so hot that he'd been swept all the way into an impromptu marriage.

“Myra was…intense,” Flint continued. “In everything. In everything she liked, everything she disliked. In everything she said and did. In every emotion she had, including, especially and most of all, anger.”

“Really.”

“Actually, Myra was not just angry, she got enraged. At the drop of a hat. Anything she saw as a slight, or even imagined was a slight, meant a screaming match. Somebody talking in a movie theater—Myra would be
the one to stand up and make a scene about it. Myra was…”

“Irresistible to you?” Jessie asked, not understanding how what he was describing had had any appeal to him.

“She was like riding the most extreme amusement park ride. I…” He shrugged again. “I just couldn't
not
do it. But once I had? Once the thrill was over? Disaster.”

“In what way, besides her tantrums?”

“Well, strange as it may seem, insane sex is not enough to build a relationship on,” he said facetiously. “And for Myra, insane sex was not even something she wanted to have monogamously. I came home unexpectedly one day and found her in the shower with another man.”

“Oooh,” Jessie said sympathetically.

“Uh-huh. And yet somehow, to Myra, I was in the wrong for coming home unexpectedly. So she had no qualms about taking every penny she could get her hands on, every meager possession of any worth that I owned, and consequently, every drop of pride I had, when she took off with her lover. In my car.”

“Oh dear.” Jessie merely muttered because she wasn't sure what to say to that revelation.

“So between Myra and everything I saw with my mother, I'd say there are worse things than being a bachelor.”

“I guess it is good that you didn't have kids to get caught up in that,” Jessie observed.

“What did I tell you?” he finished as if he'd been vindicated. “Now, back to what got me into this—how come you've made yourself scarce this week?”

Did he have to be so persistent?

Jessie finished her wine and set the glass on the end table, realizing that her tension over this had been helped somewhat by the liquor. It hadn't, however, given her another way out.

Before she could answer his question, though, Flint said, “It was Sunday night, wasn't it? Too much? Did I scare you?”

Jessie grimaced and shook her head. “That's kind of the problem,” she said quietly.

“That I
didn't
scare you?” he asked, sounding confused.

“Sort of…”

He leaned far forward and around her to put his now-empty wineglass on the end table with hers. As he straightened up he drew his hand from her hip along the side of her thigh, to perch on her knee, leaving a ribbon of something glittery along the way.

She tried to ignore it but that was difficult when that glittery sensation seemed to scatter all through her.

“Why would my
not
scaring you be a problem?” he asked. But then, again before she had found an explanation, light seemed to dawn in him. “Oh, I know. You're feeling guilty about this—” he waggled a finger from her knee to make a motion between them. But he didn't remove his hand, instead he squeezed her knee when the waggle was over.

“Did you think,” he said then, “that if you stayed away, went back to the status quo, there wouldn't be anything to be mixed up or feel guilty about? An out-of-sight-out-of-mind deal?”

“Pretty much,” she admitted.

“Did it work?”

Jessie whispered, “No.”

He leaned just slightly forward again and confided in return, “Well, because I couldn't get you out of my mind, I'm sure glad.”

It didn't help anything to know that. In fact, as she looked into his eyes she thought she saw a vulnerability in them that hadn't been there when he'd been talking about his ex-wife. That quelled her fears that she couldn't compete with the other woman, the other
women
he might have known. But it also made that internal glitter sparkle all the brighter and caused goose bumps to erupt along the surface of her skin, making that element impossible to ignore.

Then he straightened away from her, raised his eyebrows at her again, loosened his grip on her knee and said, “Unless you'd rather I get out of here, leave you alone and let you keep working on it…”