Page 65 of Embraced at Seaside
He left his house early to head down to his father’s hardware store. Some guys turned to alcohol when things got tough, as his father had after they’d lost his mother. Hunter usually turned to his work, but after spending so many hours working on the sculpture for which Jana was his muse, he knew the shop would only further confuse him. The next best thing to working with his hands was being around power tools—and his father. A double dose of calming influences.
Hunter had grown up in the small town of Brewster where, thankfully, not much ever changed. He parked beside the hardware store and headed around front. His phone rang as he reached for the door, and he smiled when he saw Jana’s beautiful face on the screen. But his mind zipped back to last night, to their argument over the key and her sexy dancing, tempering his emotions.
Running a hand over his closely shorn hair, he paced the sidewalk as he answered. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
Silence stretched uncomfortably between them.
“I just got a call from Brock. The girl who was fighting in the exhibition match today got food poisoning, and he needs me to fill in for my weight class, so…”
Hunter’s gut clenched.
“I know your competition is today, and I hate to miss it, but he’s really in a bind, and I kinda thought—”
He hadn’t made a big deal about the competition because they’d been dealing with Jana’s studio, but itwasimportant to him. He debated asking her not to go to the fight, but that didn’t feel right, either. Especially after he’d given her a hard time about the way she’d danced last night. Everything he was saying lately came out wrong. Everything he did pushed her further away. Hunter never claimed to know how to handle women or relationships, but with Jana, together they’d somehow figured it out. He had faith that this, too, would somehow work out.
“Sure, good luck.”
“I guess we’ll catch up later?” she asked tentatively. “I’ll try to make it after the fight. I just never know how late they’ll run.”
“Yeah, whatever.” His biting tone surprised him, but he couldn’t have covered the sting of her missing his competition if his life depended on it.
He ended the call before his voice could shoot any more darts, then headed inside. How many times had he and his siblings walked into their father’s shop on their mother’s heels? Running up and down the aisles as his parents talked or kissed or whatever adults did when their kids were busy terrorizing a store.
He thought about his childhood. He’d had a good one, and as he’d grown into a man, no one had ever questioned his playing around with women. No one had ever held him accountable, either. Men were lucky like that. He thought of Jana and all that she’d been through, and an empathetic ache weighed heavily inside him.
She’d poured her heart out to him, and he’d made it even worse by judging one of the very things that drew him to her. Her dancing. His heart ached at how stupid he’d been. She’d become vital to him. Essential.
As he opened the door to his father’s shop, he realized that he’d always thought there were four essential elements to life: earth, wind, fire, and water. But he’d been so very wrong. There were five, at least for him, and he had a feelingJanawas the only element he needed.
His father looked up from behind the counter. A wide smile graced his handsome face as he came around the counter with open arms.
“Hunt. How’re you doing, son?”
Hunter welcomed his father’s warm embrace. Neil Lacroux had hair the color of sand after a harsh rain. When he’d been drinking, his belly had gone soft and his face had aged, but now that he’d been sober for a few years, he’d lost the weight. Losing his wife had stolen a piece of his spirit and left behind a shadow of emptiness that Hunter assumed would always be there. But he was glad his father had climbed out of the bottle and gotten back to the business of living his life.
“I’m okay, Pop. I thought I’d come down and walk the aisles for a bit.” He smiled, knowing his father would laugh at the reminder of what he’d said to his son so often in his youth when Hunter had had a bad day.Come on down to the shop with me. Walk the aisles. We’ll talk tools and you’ll feel better.
“Gotchya.” His father’s large hand landed on Hunter’s shoulder and squeezed gently. “What’s on your mind?” He picked up a can of paint from the counter and placed it on the shelves beside the others. “Is it the competition? I’ve got Mira, the young gal I hired last month, coming in later so I can be there.”
“Thanks, Pop.” Thinking of Jana and the sculpture he’d created in her image, he said, “It’s not that. I’m pretty sure we’ve got that nailed.”
“That’s what Grayson said, too. He said you’d finally found your muse.”
“Yeah, you could say that.” Was there such thing as a life muse? Because that’s what he felt like Jana had become. She inspired so much more than his creativity.
They walked up and down the aisles. His father pointed out a few new tools and a new brand of electric screwdriver he carried. Normally the distraction would be enough to ease Hunter’s mind no matter what he was dealing with, but today he couldn’t shake the churning in his gut.
His father looked at him with an assessing gaze and tilted his head toward his office. “Come see what I found last week.”
Hunter followed him into the small office just beyond the counter. Neil waved to a chair, and Hunter sat down, watching his father push aside stacks of papers. The wall in front of his desk was littered with pictures of Hunter and their family.
“I was digging around in your mother’s sewing room, looking for something I’d misplaced.” He opened his file drawer and withdrew a green hanging file folder. “And I found these.” He set the folder on his desk and opened it, revealing Hunter’s original drawings of his very first sculpture.
“She kept them?” The image of his parents standing across from Wellfleet Harbor came rushing back, the smell of the bay, the glimmer of love in his mother’s eyes. Man, he missed her. He reached for the drawings, poring over the notes he’d written in the margins.Remember her fingers. His arm.
“She kept everything,” his father said. “Those drawings were the catalyst for what you’ve become, Hunter. I saw it as kind of a sign, seeing as how your work is going to be judged in the very spot where you saw us standing.”
