Page 142 of The Right Kind of Wrong

After dinner, Maisie had insisted that they go see the bats who flew out from under the bridge at sunset, though Blake had a sneaking suspicion it was so she could orchestrate a later bedtime.

Once they’d gotten back to the hotel, Monroe had given Maisie a bath and then taken her own shower. Maisie had chatted happily at Blake from the other bed, wanting to review the day in extensive detail.

“If people work there, why were there so many toys?” she asked, referencing the game room in the startup offices. “You don’t have toys in your office.”

Blake felt another notch tighten on her belt of insecurity, but she wasn’t going to let Maisie know that. “The people there work a lot, so it’s nice for them to be able to relax and play sometimes.”

Maisie nodded, like that made perfect sense. “Aunt Monroe says even though I’m going to school soon, I can still play.”

“You absolutely can,” Blake agreed, ignoring the sound of the shower turning off. “Plus, you’ll get to learn lots of cool stuff. Reading. Writing. Math.”

“Will school be hard?” Maisie looked nervous, shifting on the bed.

Blake felt for Maisie. It seemed like her whole life had been one change after another. “Sometimes things can be hard, but they also let us grow.”

Maisie scrunched up her face. “Well, I hope it’s not.”

Blake laughed just as Monroe exited the bathroom. Her hair was wet, but she’d changed into a pair of shorts and an oversized T-shirt. It was one that Blake had already seen her wear multiple times, and it sent a pang of something Blake couldn’t quite name straight to her heart.

Or, perhaps, something she didn’t want to name.

Instead of meeting Monroe’s soft but bright eyes, she jumped up and grabbed the clothes that she’d placed at the foot of her bed. “I’m going to hop in the shower.”

“It’s bedtime for you,” she heard Monroe tell Maisie as she shut the door behind her.

Usually, Blake would be racing through showering to get back to Monroe as quickly as possible, but she found herself lingering under the hot spray, washing off the day.

Summer was coming to an end. Maisie would be starting school in a few weeks, and Blake would soon have enough credits for her undergraduate degree in accounting. Which meant that she could sit for her CPA exam and get a better-paying job that probably didn’t require her to work around guys wearing jumpsuits all day.

She hadn’t realized until this moment that this trip was marking a lot of change, not just for Maisie, but for all of them.

Soon, Monroe’s pieces would be finished and sent back to New York. She’d learned from Monroe that there was an almost two-month gap between when the finished paintings would be delivered and when the show was to be held.

She had asked Monroe about the process this past week, as they’d lain in bed. They liked to talk until one of them eventually drifted off, which was worth it even though it meant waking up at an ungodly hour and sneaking back to her own house before the sun came up. It was an occurrence that had become more common than not since they’d started sleeping together.

And Blake had told herself that she had a handle on everything.

Most days, she meant it, too.

But standing under the spray of scalding water, it was easier for her to admit that she was already falling in love with Monroe.

Her heart fluttered with acceptance of the words that had been bubbling up more and more as the days wore on.

And truly, maybe she had been since the first time she’d barged into Monroe’s house and seen Monroe angrily holding her broom, trying to turn off the fire alarm. At the time, Blake had been so embarrassed that she hadn’t been able to recognize the feeling of being pulled toward Monroe. Of how she’d clocked all of her features and had needed to keep herself rooted in place despite her desire to move closer.

Or maybe it had been when Monroe had started letting her in, bit by bit. During their slow, low conversations in the backyard, the ones where Monroe chose to share with her and the ones where Monroe, so overwhelmed by her situation, let Blake support her through her uncertainty.

Then again, it could have been any of the hundreds of moments in between. The quiet ones. The sexy ones. The playful ones.

Her thoughts from the gallery roared back, making the steam in the bathroom feel even more cloistering.

Both of the Lockhart women had so quickly embedded themselves in every part of her life—or she into theirs, more accurately—and the idea of losing any part of that made her feel like rocks were tumbling around in her stomach.

She’d known that she and Noah hadn’t been especially happy, but that didn’t change the fact that, one day, her life had been completely flipped upside down.

What if Monroe wanted to take Maisie back to New York? It was clear that she could do certain things from Cypress Falls—work on existing paintings or do some commercial jobs—but, as she’d learned from Monroe, a lot of art was about connections with buyers and galleries and keeping up appearances in that world.

Even though Blake didn’t know much about art, she did know a lot about schmoozing. It had been nearly constant when she was married. Noah golfing with prospective customers. Blake hosting dinners in their palatial home while she pretended that she cared, even a little bit, about Duvall Distribution extending its reach beyond Texas.