Page 49 of Now That It's You
“So why did you bring it up?” she asked. “What’s it to you where the engagement ring ended up?”
“I was making a point about broken engagements and gifts and the law. To show you the courts have a lot of different ways of looking at this, and it’s not as black and white as you seem to think.”
Meg nodded, conscious of his fingers still twined with hers. “So you’re saying this thing with the book is going to play out in the courts.”
“It looks that way, doesn’t it? I mean assuming you’re not just going to roll over and cut my mother a check.”
“Is that what you think I should do?”
He hesitated, then turned around, not letting go of her hand. “Come on,” he said, pulling her toward the door.
“What? Where are we going?”
“I want to show you something.”
“What if I don’t feel like going anywhere with you?”
“You do.”
Damn straight, her heart telegraphed, while her brain pointed out she was wearing dirty sweatpants and a Scooby-Doo T-shirt. Meg dug her bare heels into the floor, which left her feeling like a reluctant cocker spaniel trying to avoid a walk.
“Wait,” she said. “We’re not leaving the house, are we?”
“Yes.”
“Can I at least put away the food or put on some pants or blow my nose or?—”
“You have five minutes,” he said, letting go of her hand. He folded his arms over his chest and held her gaze with his for a few beats. Then he nodded. “And bring the ring.”
“I thought you didn’t want the ring back,” Meg said behind him as Kyle fumbled the key into the lock and then rolled back the barn doors that led to the studio behind his gallery.
He turned to look at her and his heart cinched up into a tight ball when he saw those speckled brown eyes studying him. “I don’t want the ring,” he said. “But if you don’t want it, either, there’s something I’d like to do with it.”
“It’s all yours,” she said. “Make a doorstop out of it if you like.”
“Not a bad idea, but not my plan.”
He turned around again and led the way into the studio, flipping on the overhead lights as he went. He heard Meg rolling the barn doors closed and he thought about telling her not to bother, that he liked the night air blowing through the open space.
But he didn’t want anyone strolling in off the street. It wasn’t quite eight o’clock, but darkness had already fallen and the raccoons that frequented the alley behind the gallery had a fondness for wandering through to look for sparkly objects.
There were plenty of those here.
“So this is where you work.” He turned to see Meg walking the perimeter of the room, her gaze traveling from one sculpture to another. She held her hands twined behind her back like a kid afraid of breaking something in a glass shop.
“You can touch anything you want,” he said.
“What?” She looked at him, and Kyle’s pulse quickened at the flush in her cheeks.
“The—uh—the art. You can touch any of the pieces if you like. One of the advantages of working with large-scale mixed metal is that most of it’s pretty sturdy.”
Meg laughed. “Have we met? In case you’ve forgotten, I’m the girl who broke Karma’s ‘unbreakable’ dog toy.”
“She told me on her deathbed she forgave you.”
“That’s a relief.”
Meg moved slowly around the room, and Kyle moved with her, trying to imagine what things might look like from her eyes. His studio space wasn’t particularly tidy, since gallery visitors didn’t get to wander back here. There were scraps of bent steel in one corner and a pile of copper shavings on the floor by his workbench. Big windows along one wall gave him plenty of natural light to work by, but right now they showcased an inky black sky pinpricked with stars. The air in the studio smelled like sawdust and metal, and next to Meg’s perfume, it was the sweetest scent he knew.
