Although they couldn’t possibly like looking at it as much as she’d liked painting it. She’d started again as soon as she’d woken up this morning, after eating the breakfast Ren had already graciously fixed, and had been at it most of the day. She’d only stopped when her arms or back—unused to this type of abuse since it had been so long since she’d painted—had begun to protest too loudly.
She painted in another section of blue that morphed into teal. The colors blended beautifully in front of her, the image from her mind taking formation on the wood. This was what she was meant to do. Had always been what she’d been meant to do.
She couldn’t believe she’d allowed this to be stolen from her for so many years. During her marriage—when none of her paintings had ever been perfect enough for Damien—but then also after. She’d been so busy making sure she was ready to run, able to hide, that she’d forgotten to live.
“Is that an ocean view?” Ren asked now that the picture was really starting to take shape, the lines of blues and greens clearly the ocean.
“Yep.”
He’d been in and out of the cabin all day. They had eaten dinner, which he had prepared—more small game with mixed canned vegetables this time—and she tried to do the cleanup but he’d insisted she spend her time painting. She’d been happy to agree. Now she was back to painting by firelight, like she had last night. Normally that might be frustrating but she didn’t care.
“You drawing that from your imagination or from a place you’ve been?”
She smiled at him over her shoulder. “Believe it or not, this was the view from my back door in Santa Barbara. The Pacific.”
“Really? Wow. I can’t believe you even pretended to have interest in my family’s farm if you had that view to wake up to every day.”
She turned back to the painting, laughing. “Well, it wasn’t actually my house. I wish I had that sort of money. I’d just been house-sitting for a couple of weeks before I left.”
“House-sitting?”
She added another patch of blue that would blend into the gold of the shoreline. “Yeah. Honestly, I don’t even know the people who live there. It just fell into my lap. A lady I worked with was supposed to do it but then had to go out of town on an emergency. Next thing I knew I had a close-up view of the Pacific.”
Not that she’d taken advantage of it. And she hoped Olivia didn’t get in trouble with the owner since Natalie had left so abruptly.
“Really? You were house-sitting?”
Ren’s voice sounded strange. Half-strangled. She turned to look at him. “Yeah. Do they not have a lot of house-sitting in Montana?”
“Not really.” He shook his head, looking a little strange. “I guess you were lucky your friend thought of you for the house. What did you guys do together at your job?”
She turned back to the painting. He was fishing for info, as he had been all day. Questions about her childhood, her past, her friends and plans. That should make her nervous, but instead it spread a feeling of warmth through her.
Ren wanted to know more about her.
This sexy, intelligent, insightful man wanted to know more abouther.
She knew that didn’t mean anything, that this...attraction between them couldn’t lead to anything permanent, or any sort of serious relationship.
But he wanted to know stuff about her. What harm could there be in telling him about herself? So she had. Not everything, of course, but some. It wouldn’t hurt her to tell him about a job she was never going back to.
“Olivia and I worked together at a bar. She waited tables. I did other stuff. Washed dishes, bussed tables, cleaning.”
“Living in California on a dishwasher’s salary couldn’t be easy, even with house-sitting.”
She shook her head without looking away from the door. “You’re not kidding. I actually worked two other jobs. Nothing very glamorous, just cleaning office buildings in the mornings. Between the three jobs, I was able to make ends meet.” She laughed a little. “Barely.”
“Why stay in California at all? It’s so expensive there, especially in Santa Barbara.”
She shrugged. “Honestly, I was avoiding someone. My ex.” There. She’d said it. It hadn’t been so hard. “He once said henever wanted to step foot in California ever again. I was sort of hoping that was true.”
“How long has it been since you’ve seen him?”
“Six years.”
“He never tried to get in touch with you in all that time?”
No, because he thought she was dead. That was too complicated to even begin telling. “I kept a pretty low profile.”
