Chapter 16 #3
“I didn’t mean you. Or Dad.” They’d seen for themselves what I couldn’t do after the accident.
“I’d love to see your shop,” she said almost tentatively.
“Sure. Once the roads are clear.” Hadn’t they been in my shop? Once, Dad had stopped by and dropped off some old tools he never used. His way of weeding out and ramping down the ranch, but also to check on me. I might’ve herded him through and out.
Seemed pretty fucking immature.
“I’ll call you when it’s safe to come out here.”
“Yes, Jonah. That’ll be nice.”
I ended the call before the throb in my chest could tear a vessel. My parents deserved better than me. Eli had been the type of kid they could dote on. I’d only grown worse the older I’d gotten.
Summer was quiet on the couch. I dropped to sit next to her, and she curled up next to me.
“How are your parents?” she asked.
“Worried.”
She angled her head up. “Mama never quits fretting. It’s a parent thing.”
I gave her a knowing look. I’d seen how fast she answered the phone whenever Wynter called. “And a sister thing.”
She returned the knowing look. “Yes, but we’re not talking about me.”
Fine. I was apparently helpless against my fresh-faced guest. “I hate that I still worry them. Mom was surprised I make a good living making furniture.”
“Haven’t they seen your kitchen table?”
“Yes.” I smirked. “But they haven’t seen how much I sell that kind of table for.”
“How much?” Her expression turned almost shy. “I mean, I’ve snooped on your site. You had an end table for five grand?”
“Rich people like unique things.”
“Rich people like custom-made products from places like Montana,” she agreed. “When I first priced a small batch exclusive of holiday bourbon, I thought Daddy was crazy. I thought getting hundreds for a bottle was a pipe dream. It’s just bourbon.”
“Damn good bourbon.” I used to enjoy having a drink once in a while with Teller.
Except for a few times as a teen and a couple more after I turned twenty-one, I hadn’t gotten drunk.
More memories piled on. “We’d come in from a hunting or snowmobiling trip and toss one back as we unpacked and cleaned our gear. ”
I waited for her to tell me I could still try hunting, or even snowmobiling.
And I’d tell her that even short hunting excursions made my joints ache so bad I couldn’t sleep for a week.
A little bird meat wasn’t worth it. I could buy a goose from the butcher shop, a turkey from the grocery store.
I could order venison. Then I’d be able to walk the next day.
As for snowmobiling, I couldn’t risk getting in snow so deep I’d have trouble taking a step. I couldn’t high-knee like I used to. I wasn’t going to make myself a victim so others could put themselves in danger to come help me.
But she didn’t placate me. She didn’t force optimism. “I used to have a drink with Teller when we were both up late at home. The last couple of times, he asked me about Boyd. Now I can see that he was fishing, trying to get me to admit I wasn’t happy.”
“He’s a good brother.”
“They all are.” She threaded her fingers through mine. “So were you.”
A shock of tension rippled through me. I hadn’t expected to talk about Eli. “I wasn’t.”
“Eli was a lot like Tenor. Quieter, more subdued, a little nerdy, but still enough like Tate and Teller that it’s clear they’re brothers. Yet people are often surprised.”
“I think it was the same with Eli. I kept expecting him to act like me, but he didn’t. I didn’t know what to do with him half the time.”
“Teller and Tate are like that with Tenor.”
That made me feel better. I respected the hell out of the older Bailey brothers.
They had a hard time understanding a more sensitive brother?
I wasn’t infallible. Eli had reacted to the world differently than me.
If I’d gotten dumped and the girl had told me she was into Eli, then I would’ve taken a trip to the mountains—hunting, fly-fishing, camping, hiking, whatever.
I’d have found something to do, and I wouldn’t have returned until I’d decided I was better off alone and the girl was better off with Eli.
Dad would’ve taken over all the ranch duties like he had when I had gone where I wanted when I had wanted. Mom had worried.
Fuck.
Summer traced a pattern on my thigh. “Do I get to see some of your work too?”
Pleasure at the thought of seeing her in the place where I spent so much time radiated warmth through my chest. “When I battle the drift in front of the shop door, yes.”
“You said you were updating the website?”
I nodded, but she gave me an expectant look. “You want to see some pictures?”
She snuggled closer. “Why, yes, what a good suggestion, I’d love to.”
Chuckling, I pulled my phone back out of my pocket. I pulled up my album with my project images. My chest nearly exploded from the way her eyes widened and her lips parted.
“You did all those?”
“These are from last year.”
She took my phone and scrolled through. She stopped at a picture of a tree stump and flipped to the decorative end table with a winding wooden base I’d turned it into. “Seriously? You took a log and did that? We’d just make it into firewood.”
“It was Bastogne walnut, and the client asked me to make a design out of it.”
“Do you just make it up?”
“No, I talk with my customers. Send questionnaires. Then I give them mockups. Definitely if they’re providing the resources, I spend a lot of time on each step. There are no take backs once I start cutting.”
“How much did you sell this for?”
The price hovered on my tongue. I knew exactly how much I’d sold the piece for. The customer had also paid for shipping the raw materials to me and for getting the finished product to them. “Eighteen hundred dollars.”
“One thousand eight hundred?” She sat up and twisted toward me. “How long did this take you?”
Having her full attention on me was unnerving. When I was naked and she was looking me over, I’d had the same sensation of wanting to run. “A week.”
“No way!” She enlarged the picture and studied it. “Only a week?”
“Two days to do the physical work, and then drying times for the coatings, plus a few extra hours going back and forth in the planning stages. But it’s not the only piece I’m working on during the week, and little tables like this are the smallest items I sell.” And by far the cheapest.
“You’re an artist.”
I scoffed.
She gave me a sidelong look and flipped to another picture. A set of stools I’d made out of old barrels. The barrel staves were the backs of the seats and the steel hoops from the barrel had also been repurposed into the design.
“These were in the coffee shop,” she said. “You could’ve charged well over twelve hundred for these but they were only marked for like four hundred dollars.”
“I price lower for local. Besides, I’m just playing around with those.”
“Just playing around?” She enlarged the picture and inspected every inch of the stool. “Just playing?”
“When I’m constrained to a material and to a certain design, then I charge more.”
She smirked. “You charge anyone who’s not from Bourbon Canyon more. I like it. Just what Daddy would’ve done.”
“Your daddy did do it.”
She snickered. The Copper Summit gift shop had cheaper bottles of their bourbon than anywhere else in the country. “Have you made your parents anything?”
I shook my head.
She glanced at me, then clicked out of the album and shut my screen off. “I heard what you told your mom about getting sick of being told what you couldn’t do after the accident.”
I knew she’d heard, but the knowledge didn’t bother me like it should. “I know. You like to eavesdrop.”
She sucked in an indignant gasp. “Do not.”
“You were always spying on me and Teller.”
“You guys were always up to something fun.” She settled back into my side and grabbed the remote, but she didn’t turn on the TV right away. “Are you sure you’re okay showing me your space?”
“I wouldn’t have offered if I weren’t.”
“You spend a lot of time out there, don’t you?” When I nodded, she said, “I thought you were hiding from me.”
“I was. It’s not polite to lust after a runaway bride.”
“And now?”
I still shouldn’t be as into her as I was.
Her life wasn’t on this mountain. Her life wasn’t even on her family’s land across the valley.
But we were stuck together in a storm and I wasn’t strong enough to turn away someone who looked at me the way she did.
“I like the idea of watching a lame-ass movie with you. What’s it going to be? ”