Page 38 of Hard to Love
“And this new artisan’s village is what your sister wants to do for a living,” Delaney told him. “You need to let her go at it her own way.”
He angled his chin toward Greer. “You don’t even know if the guy is any good with his hands.”
Completely inappropriate laughter backed up in Greer’s chest. Delaney stuck her bottom lip over her top. Didn’t matter, because they both lost it, with wheezing chuckles escaping them.
“Shit,” Cal said. “You know what I mean. And as for the other…” He closed his eyes and drew a breath in through his nose. “I don’t care how old you are, Greer, you’re still my baby sister. And a guy like that? He’s not ever what I imagined for you.”
This was the problem with an older brother. One second, you wanted to tear out your hair and his. The next, you wanted to curl up in his lap and give him a big hug.
“I’m not sure how everything will all play out,” she said, “but I do know that taking the risk on this village and on Alex is the most thrilling thing I’ve done in a long time.”
The expressionon Alex’s face was decidedly grouchy, bordering on petulant, as he glared at the canvas braced on the easel in front of him. Greer would’ve laughed if she hadn’t been hoping for exactly this reaction.
“Why are we here again?” he grumbled.
She’d racked her brain for ideas that would get Alex interested in the artisan village itself, rather than him simply seeing the competition as something he had to get through to win PBC’s tooling contract. At first, she’d thought getting him more invested in the Prophecy community was the answer, but he wasn’t quite ready for that. What reason would he have for becoming part of the town, part of her vision, if it didn’t further his own goals? And although he seemed hesitant to identify himself as anartist, that was exactly what he was.
What she’d come up with was a field trip to an Austin art studio where they led painting classes that reminded Greer of the old paint-by-number kits. A teacher stood at the front of the studio and taught everyone in the class how to paint the same picture. “I thought it would be fun.”
He jabbed a paintbrush at his canvas. “Bad enough that they expect everyone in the class to paint the same damn picture, but then they had to go and stencil the design for us.”
Yeah, and tonight’s subject probably wasn’t one Alex would’ve picked if left to his own devices. Each canvas was preprinted with a cow’s face and partial body. The whole thing was done on an angle so the cow looked as if it were floating midair or maybe stretching its neck around a bothersome fence.
Greer had dabbed some paint on her own picture, doing a sort of pop-art-inspired scene. Crud, it was still missing something. Like personality. She looked at the canvas from several viewpoints. Wait, maybe if she sketched a line here and a curve there…
His own canvas bare of a single stroke, Alex leaned over to look at hers, bringing with him the scent she was becoming addicted to—a combination of cotton and leather. “What are you doing?”
“Making art.”
He snorted. “This is not art.”
With a subtle movement of her brush, Greer pointed around the room. “The people here think it is. They’re having fun, they’re paying a reasonable amount for an evening’s entertainment, and they’re learning a little something.”
Eyeing her canvas closer, he asked, “Is that a cape?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you drawing a caped cow?”
“Because I think it’s way past time for a farm animal superhero.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” He laughed, and his eyes were touched with a light that transformed him from dangerously sexy to seriously adorable.
Greer wanted to kiss him all over his face and tell him how cute he was but doubted he’d appreciate that kind of praise. “Even livestock need role models. Besides, weren’t you the one just complaining at lack of originality?”
“You obviously have a point for bringing me here,” he said. “So why don’t you tell me what it is?”
But Greer glanced over to find him sitting back on his stool considering his own canvas rather than scrutinizing her. He set aside his brush and pulled a charcoal pencil from his shirt pocket. In just a few movements, his cow boasted a pair of horns like the handlebars on a lowrider motorcycle, wide and wicked.
“That’ll work,” he mumbled to himself. And although he’d just asked her a question, his attention soon became absorbed by the painting in front of him, one he was meticulously turning into a bovine badass in colors of cobalt and scarlet and steel.
A half-hour later, Alex was applying the final touches when the perky twenty-something art instructor walked behind Greer and him. She stopped and gawked at Alex’s masterpiece, not sparing a look at Greer’s cheeky SuperAngus. “Wow. You have real potential. Have you ever thought about pursuing art?” She placed a hand on Alex’s shoulder and leaned over him, her breasts resting against his back.
A possessive growl formed in Greer’s chest, but shewouldn’t allow it out. That was crazy. Alex certainly wasn’t a bone to be fought over. But to her relief, he eased away from the teacher and said, “Greer here is the real artist.”
She wanted to laugh. Her comic book cow looked like a lightweight next to his heavyweight longhorn. But it was a stark reminder there was room in this world for all kinds of art. All kinds of people.
The instructor just gave Greer a polite smile and nod, an acknowledgement of either her picture or her claim on Alex, she wasn’t sure which.
