“And then what?”
“They’ll make a great story,” he said, his expression suddenly shuttered. “When we do that big magazine spread. Showing my new custom home, and the equestrian facility you’re going to build me. A big picture of me with these horses that Alicia took from me.”
“Is that what everything is about?”
“My entire life has been about her for seventeen years, Faith. In the last five years of that all I could do was think about...” He gritted his teeth. “That is the worst part. I worried about her. All that time. And she was fine. Off sipping champagne and sitting on a yacht. Screwing who the hell knows. While I sat in prison like a monk. An entire life sentence ahead of me. And I was worried about her. She knew I was in prison. She knew. She didn’t care. That’s the worst part. How much emotional energy I wasted worrying about the fate of that woman when...”
She stepped forward, put her fingertips on his forearm. “This isn’t emotional energy?”
He looked down at her. “How would you feel? How would you feel in my position?”
“I don’t know. Possibly not any better. I don’t know what I would do. You’re right. I can’t comment on it.”
“Stick to what you do, honey. Comment on the design work you can do for me.”
She took a step back, feeling like she had overstepped. That little bubble of fantasy she’d had earlier, that need to get closer to him, had changed on her now. “I will. Don’t worry.”
“How did you realize you were an architecture prodigy?” he asked suddenly.
“I don’t know,” she said, lifting a shoulder. “I mean, I drew buildings. I was attracted to the idea of doing city design in a slightly more...organic way. I was fascinated by that from the time I was a kid. As for realizing I was good... I was naturally good at art, but I’ve always been good at math and science as well. History. Art history.”
“So you’re one of those obnoxious people who doesn’t have a weakness.”
“Well, except for...social stuff?” She laughed. “Academically, no. Not so much. And that opened a lot of doors for me. For which I will always be grateful. It was really my brothers who helped me focus. Because, of course, Isaiah being a numbers guy, he wanted to help me figure out how I could take what I did and make money with it. My education was paid for because I was brilliant, but that comes to an end eventually. You have to figure out what to do in the real world. Architecture made sense.”
“I guess so.”
“Why...manufacturing? And what did you make?”
“Farm equipment,” he said. “Little generic replacement parts for different things. A way to do it cheaper, without compromising on quality.”
“And what made you do that?”
“Not because I’m an artist. Because there are a lot of hardworking men out there, pleased as hell to replace the parts themselves if they can. But often things are overcomplicated and expensive. I wanted to find a way to simplify processes. So it started with the basic idea that we can get around some of the proprietary stuff some of the big companies did. And it went from there. Eventually I started manufacturing parts for those big companies. It’s a tricky thing to accomplish, here in the United States, but we’ve managed. And it served me well to keep it here. It’s become part of why my equipment is sought after.”
She giggled. “There’s a double entendre.”
“It’s boring. That was another thing my wife objected to. She wanted me to get into real-estate investing. Something more interesting for her to talk about with her friends. Something a little bit sexier than gaskets.”
“A gasket is pretty sexy if it’s paying you millions of dollars, I would think.”
“Hell, that was my feeling.” He sighed heavily. “It’s not like you. Mine was a simple idea.”
“Sometimes simplicity is the better solution,” she said. “People think you need to be complicated to be interesting. I don’t always think that’s true, in design, or in life. Obviously, in your case, the simple solution was the revolutionary one.”
“I guess so. Are you ready to go for a ride?”
“I am,” she said.
And somehow, she felt closer to him. Somehow she felt...part of this. Part of him.
She wanted to hold on to that feeling for as long as it would last, because she had a feeling it would be over a lot sooner than she would like.
But then, that was true of all of this. Of everything with him.
She was beginning to suspect that nothing short of a lifetime would be enough with Levi Tucker.
Twelve
