Cherry Creek was adorable on a good day, potentially stifling on a bad one. Main Street cut through the center of the town, populated with cute shops and restaurants, with a two story brick City Hall, complete with its own clock tower. The entire place almost looked like it had been plucked off of a movie set and dropped at the base of the mountains, but had better weather. Even the Lodge at Cherry Creek, which Andy’s brothers owned, wasn’t as horrible as Leonidas had pictured it in his head when they’d talked about it in France.
The Lodge wasn’t anything like the hotel hispateraowned, which was more like a monolith that stood near the coastline. The lodge was warm and woodsy, thick and rich, and Leonidas couldn’t fight the way it felt like home. But not oppressively so. Just in the way he felt when he thought of his parents and sisters.
He didn’t know how long he was going to be in Cherry Creek for, but he knew he didn’t want to spend all his time at the hotel. Finding the cabin rentals had been easy enough, even though the website for the town could use a serious redesign to make it easier to navigate. He’d already set up time to meet with Ronan Alling to see about getting a cabin for a bit.
His coffee had cooled, and he popped the lid back on, standing and checking the addresses on the buildings to make sure he was going toward the studio and not in the wrong direction. When he arrived, a man he assumed was Greyson stood out front. He had tattoos and piercings, and a menacing looking scowl on his face. He held a keyring in his hand and he flipped the keys around his fingers, catching them in his palm before flipping them around again.
“Are you Greyson?” he asked, pushing his hair behind his ears.
“Leonidas?” The frown on Greyson’s face softened and he looked up, almost smiling, but not quite.
“Yeah. Good to meet you.”
Leonidas held his hand out and Greyson gave it a quick shake, turning toward the door and unlocking it. He didn’t seem like he was a big conversationalist, and Leonidas couldn’t fault him for that. He wasn’t either.
The studio was spacious, but cramped with wooden tables and easels that stretched from wall to wall.
“I do a paint and pour thing sometimes,” Greyson explained, gesturing to the set up. “I have a more private space in the back.”
Greyson pushed through a paint spattered door, and Leonidas followed. That room was much smaller, but a big window took up half of the back wall, and there was a larger easel set up in front of it, a half done canvas in process. There was a long workbench table along the other wall, stacked with various supplies and decorations. It looked like Greyson didn’t have a preferred medium, but tinkered with anything he could get his hands on.
“This is great,” Leonidas said with a nod.
“It’s small. No one here really wants to do this kind of thing.” Greyson’s frown returned. “They like the paint and pour things, but not much else.”
“Do you teach the classes?”
“I do.”
“When would you be okay with me being here?” Leonidas asked.
“I teach the classes at night, and if I’m here, it’s in the afternoon. The mornings are all yours.” Greyson worked one of the keys off his keyring and handed it over to Leonidas.
“Just like that?” he asked, shocked at the trust.
“It’s just paints and canvas.” Greyson shrugged. “If you’re going to steal from me, you would whether you had a key or not.”
“I’m not going to steal from you.”
“That’s why you have the key.” Greyson swiped a hand through his hair. “I need to get going, just lock up when you leave. You can pay me on that app thing, twenty bucks a day that you’re here. Oh, and the captain of the fire department has a forge.”
Leonidas balked. “Like a blacksmith forge?”
“Yeah. He bought it when I got this space. He’s not professional, but he’s never said no to letting people hammer out their frustration on a hunk of burning steel.”
“Right.”
“Remember, lock up when you leave.” Greyson tipped his chin and disappeared out the door they’d come through. The bells on the front door rang when he left, and Leonidas looked around, not even sure of where to start. He wasn’t feeling terribly inspired, and he still needed to go to the lake to meet with Ronan about getting the cabin rental.
There wasn’t room in the studio for ceramics, which was fine. He hadn’t spent much time painting in the past few months, so the prospect was appealing, and the back window had amazing light that seemed to bounce off the mountain and cast the canvas in a bright, white glow.
He took a drink of his coffee and walked back through the studio, locking the front door behind him, bumping into a man as he turned to head down the street.
“Whoa, whoa. Sorry about that.”
The man was young and well dressed, crisp and pleated khakis cuffed at the ankle with a short-sleeved, white button up tucked in. His hair looked like it was still damp and his eyes flashed with awareness after they locked on Leonidas’s face. Leonidas recognized him, too.
“You work at the hotel,” he said, pocketing the key to the studio.
