“Private buyer. He wanted to watch.” I waggle my eyebrows, and Shiloh’s climb up his forehead. Pinching my thumb and forefinger together, I slide them back and forth in the universal sign for cash. “Big money.”
“Yeah, I imagine. Didn’t it make you nervous to have him watching you?”
“I mean,youcan’t watch me. But art collectors are an odd bunch, and this was during one of the best years I’ve ever had as an artist. I just showed up, popped my earbuds in, and painted. Actually, I kind of had fun, to be honest. Weirdest experience of my life, to be sure, but not a bad time, considering. He wants to commission me again, actually. It’ll be something we need to talk about—you and I—because it’s not something that I can whip out overnight.”
“Huh. Well…assuming you’re not going to be working on something like that here, what size building are we talking?”
I glance around the lower level of his house, chewing idly.
“Probably about this size. Doors like that”—I point my fork toward his glass accordion doors leading out to the deck—“so it’s easier to move things in and out.”
Shiloh smiles, putting his half-finished omelet down on the counter and approaching me. Hands on my knees, he pushes my legs apart and steps between them.
“I have an idea,” he says, cupping my cheeks and pulling me down for a quick kiss. He points through the window at the rough yard. “Could we fit a studio there?”
Epilogue
SHILOH
One Year Later
Ewan looks like he’s about to be sick as my parents’ RV bumps down my drive. He’s been fidgeting nearly nonstop and earlier offered to help me clean before they arrived. If anything was an indicator of how nervous he is, that was it.
“Calm down,” I entreat him again, the same way I’ve done on the hour, every hour, all day long.
“I should have worn the blue sweater,” he mutters, tugging at the sleeves of the green one. I shake my head.
“You look great.” He glares at me as though I’m lying, as though there has ever been a day when Ewan Fate hasn’t looked amazing. Silly man.
Kissing the top of his dark head, I raise a hand to my dad in the driver’s seat and leave the porch. Without looking, I knowEwan is following behind. The moment the RV comes to a stop, my mom is shoving open the passenger door and hopping down. I laugh when she hugs me, her greeting interspersed with a few comments about the state of my yard, my dad’s stomach, and the traffic. When she finally comes up for breath—and stops squeezing me hard enough to hinder mine—I step back and reach a hand for Ewan. Before I can grab him, Mom’s got ahold of him.
“Oh, look at you,” she says, pulling him into a hug until his face is smooshed into her shoulder. Dad claps a hand on my upper back, a look on his face that says we’d better just let her get on with it. “We are so happy to have you home, and I just know Molly would be as well. I told Joey you’d marry our boy one day, didn’t I, Joe? I said it all the time.”
“We’re not married, Mom,” I correct at the same time as my father agrees with a “You sure did.”
Ewan mumbles something only my mom can hear, with the way she’s hugging him. I give her another thirty seconds before I gently try and extract him. The moment she can see his face—flushed bright red with pleasure and embarrassment at being the center of attention—she puts her hands on his cheeks.
“You look just like your mama. Just like Molly,” she says. Clearing my throat, I put a hand on Ewan’s lower back. He leans into the touch.
“It’s good to see you guys,” Ewan says before my mom can say anything else that might make him sad or try to crack any more of his ribs.
“We would have been here sooner but had to stop off and seethe biggest ball of twine,” Dad says, voice gruff and completely without sarcasm. Ewan makes a pinched, strangled sound in his throat but does an admirable job of holding back his laugh.
“Oh, Shiloh, you’ll just die when you see this twine,” Mom puts in. “I got a couple pictures of your father next to it for scale. It is really something.”
“Can’t wait,” I deadpan. Ewan hums in agreement, cheek depressed at the corner of his mouth where he’s chewing on it. “Want to come inside?”
Mom latches on to Ewan like a barnacle, fingers brushing through his hair as she compliments his haircut, exclaiming over how handsome he is, and wanting to know all about painting and Daniel and what he thinks about the upcoming changes to the town fair. Dad, looking around the yard with an appraising eye, asks if I’d like help staining the deck while he’s here, hand fiddling with the doorknob. I know what he’s going to say before the words even leave his mouth.
“Little bit loose. I’ll grab my toolbox and tighten it up for you.”
I don’t even bother calling him back as he turns and walks back to the RV. The doorknob is not loose, and I am perfectly capable of fixing it if it were. I’m also perfectly capable of staining my own deck. There is absolutely no point in trying to explain this to him, though, as it will simply go in one ear and out the other, only delaying the inevitable. Better to just let him get on with it.
“Coming along, sweetheart?” Mom asks, clueing me in to the fact that I’ve missed their conversation.
“Sorry, what?”
“Ewan is going to show us his studio!”
