CADE
Iwas an hour deep into a complex sketch of a custom bed frame someone had commissioned from me when I heard the doorbell. It knocked me right out of my concentration spiral, which had me already a little annoyed when I answered the door, and then I found Allie Tate standing on the porch of our rental house, and there was a whole new riot of none-too-pleasant feelings settling into my chest.
“Allie,” I said gruffly, not the most elegant of greetings even without the addition of my unpleasant tone, which I was sure would make her bristle. “What are you doing here?”
She frowned. “I’m…here for Gavin, actually.”
“He’s not here.”
She frowned again. “Oh. That’s…I thought he’d be here.” A pause she seemed to expect me to fill, but she jumped in again when I didn’t. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”
Like I was the guy’s keeper. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “No.”
I stepped back from the door, gesturing into the house to invite her in despite the urge to send her away. Allie’s shouldersrelaxed as she stepped into the breezy beach house living room, and I closed the door behind her.
“I guess I’ll wait for him for a while,” she explained, though I didn’t ask. “We were supposed to…work more. On my music career, I mean.”
I gave her another wordless nod and moved back to the couch, where I could return to my sketch. I felt rather than heard Allie move closer, peeking over my shoulder to get a look at what I was working on. It was like she’d touched me, run her fingernails over my sensitized skin, when I heard her small intake of breath.
“Wow,” Allie breathed, leaning closer. I could feel the warmth of her even though she didn’t make contact. “That’s…not what I pictured when you said you did woodworking.”
“The sketch is just the first part of the process,” I explained, though any idiot could figure that out. I added a clarifying “it’ll end up a little different in wood” as I shuffled the papers away, not quite hiding them but certainly not encouraging her to look.
“Still, even being able to draw like that…” Allie trailed off, a tone of reverence clear in her words. She surprised me with her next words, spoken after a short pause. “You’re really talented.”
For the first time since we’d briefly spoken about art that day at Marv’s Diner, I felt a relaxation in the air. The tension that usually existed between us dissipated in the mutual joy of creativity. When I thought of Allie as a musician, a fellow artist who understood what it took to create something out of nothing, it was a lot harder to fend off my dumb romantic fantasies.
This sudden visit had the potential to be very bad.
Against my better judgment, I turned, looking into Allie’s face. So effortlessly pretty, with those damn endearing freckles and eyes blue enough to hurt me, my own blue eyesnotwithstanding. She had me beat in this way and any other way she wanted.
Enough, Cade. Don’t be an idiot.I decided to find a safe topic, something that could diffuse the alluring tinge of desire in the air—which surely Allie had to feel too, since it was so potent that it threatened to choke me—and get us to someplace other than hostile or horny.
I cleared my throat, shuffling all of my papers together into a neater stack. Then I met her eyes and asked, “How’s Daphne?”
I watched her soften even as the question surprised her. Allie’s lips tilted, a gentle smile she couldn’t fight off when the topic of her little girl came up. “She’s…really good. Doesn’t know about all of the chaos going on with me, and I plan to keep it that way.”
“Naturally,” I agreed. Allie cracked a crooked smile.
“Right. And, um … well, she’s just … the sweetest kid. I’m really lucky.”
My heart gave a painful squeeze. “I know she’s pretty young, but…is she a budding artist? A musician?”Is she like you? Like me, maybe?
“She does love to draw, actually,” Allie admitted, her eyes darting briefly down to the stack of sketches in my hands. “I know I’m biased, but I think she’s pretty good for her age. And she loves when Mommy sings to her. I’m not looking forward to her getting older and thinking it’s annoying.”
“Maybe she won’t. I hear you’ve got a pretty killer voice.” Gavin had said as much, and he’d even shared the video he’d recorded of Allie that night at their open-mic fame-seeking orientation. But I wasn’t sure she’d want me to have seen it, or if she even knew Gavin had taken footage of her that night. Watching her on stage, hearing her melodic voice float over the crowd even through a less-than-perfect cell phone sound system, made me a little envious that I wasn’t there to see hersing in person. But that could have been because I knew what happened between the two of them afterward too.
Allie looked down, humbly avoiding the compliment I’d given her. “I can carry a tune,” she said. She glanced up at me through her lashes, almost flirtatious, a flash of pearly teeth. She was teasing. That made more sense with the picture of her I’d had in my head since Vegas, and as much as I wanted her confidence to rub me the wrong way, to strike me as an unappealing arrogance, I couldn’t help but be charmed.
I’d always found that kind of fire exciting in women. A passion that matched the innermost parts of me I usually hid behind stoicism, only revealed in my art, my secret romanticisms. I liked the contrast of a bold woman, even when I suspected that my ex-fiancée’s own embers were part of what made her leave me, even bigger than her snobbishness about my career. I was too steady, too boring to be worth a lifetime of marriage, money or not.
“I, uh…I found your ring, by the way,” Allie surprised me by saying. As if she’d somehow sensed the direction of my thoughts. “I didn’t bring it today, since I was here to see Gavin. But…I’ll give it back to you soon. The next time I see you, I guess.”
I blinked. “Oh. That’s … thank you. I … that’s really cool of you.”
“It seemed important,” she shrugged. I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to explain it, but I did.
“Just because of the money,” I explained. “I mean, it’s not…sentimental. I was happy to be rid of it. I just…I’m hoping to sell it for a little cash that I can put toward a deposit on a storefront. To, uh, sell my woodworking.”Cool story, Cade. She literally didn’t fucking ask.
