Page 68 of Hard to Love
Because he’d never said a word about it to her. “I sent you to Georgia because you have family there.”
“Cousins of my cousins’ cousins. It’s not the same.” She placed her hand on his forearm, and even through his shirt, he felt her pain. Her hand was heavy on his arm, as if her body had turned to lead after being away from her home for so many years. “I miss yourtíasandtíos. I want to be with the people who love me.”
“Don’t you understand it could still be dangerous? Tejanos Pintados has a very long memory.”
“We didn’t move back to the old neighborhood.”
How could she have thought for a second returning to Texas was a good idea? “San Antonio is big, but not that big. They’ll find out.”
Her face tightened, making the lines around her eyes deeper. “They already have.”
The delicious food she’d made spiraled in Alex’s stomach, turning rancid. “What have they done? Have they threatened you? Have they—”
She swept her fingers across her damp eyes and lowered her head. “They recruited Nicolás.”
Greer knewshe was grinning like a lunatic possum as she directed the truck hauling a big flatbed trailer into the pasture, because her first two outbuildings were being delivered. What they might turn into, she wasn’t totally sure yet. But they were hers.
She checked the sketch in her hand then held up a palm traffic cop-style and called, “Hold. This is where I want the Sunday haus.”
The driver cut the engine and climbed down from the cab to inspect the area between two live oaks. He noddedhis approval. “This’ll do.”
Of course it would. She’d planned it, hadn’t she?
With his special hydraulic trailer, it didn’t take the driver long to unload the three pieces of the traditional wooden cottage Germans and Czech immigrants had built all over the Texas hill country. Unfortunately, too many of them were falling or being torn down. A shame.
But not this one. It was a compact two-room structure with the left and right sides connected by a dogtrot, the perfect breezeway for insufferably hot Texas summers.
Maybe she’d offer the haus to Alex. It wasn’t big, but he’d have more room than he currently had in the barn. And the way he stayed hunched over his work in his booth, she knew he wasn’t comfortable creating in public. This would give him a private living space and studio. After all he’d been through with his brother, he deserved a place where he could heal himself, a place where he could build beauty back into his life.
Then he could teach and perform demonstrations in the main building.
Perfect, perfect, perfect. She hugged herself and did a little shuffle step there in the grass.
Once the three sections of the Sunday haus were on the ground, ready for Cal to do his put-Humpty-Dumpty-back-together magic on it, she directed another driver to a more secluded section of the property. The wildflowers had bloomed and faded this year, but next spring, there would be an amazing view of a field of wildflowers—bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush, blanketflower—from the windows of this miniature structure.
She used a hand to shield her eyes from the sun and noticed Alex strolling in her direction.
He stopped beside her and studied the flatbed. “Why doyou have a church?”
“Isn’t it gorgeous?”
“Truth? It looks like hell.”
“God’s gonna strike you down for that.”
“Insulting a church is the least of my sins.”
She reached for his hand but hesitated when she realized his shirt cuffs were tightly buttoned again. The day after they’d made love, he’d had them folded back one turn. Just when she thought they’d made some progress, he drew inside himself again. Yesterday evening when the booths were closing down, she asked where his mamá and brother were staying. He’d abruptly informed her they’d driven back to San Antonio.
Since then, he’d been as closed up as she’d seen him since he first arrived in Prophecy.
You can’t expect him to reveal everything to you. What he did share with you was huge. Be patient.So she slid her hand into his, simply held it in support because she knew now all the things he tortured himself with. “It’s one of the tiny painted churches from around Fayette County.”
His eyebrows rose. “They’re pretty protective of those things, from what I hear.”
“This one never made it on the historic register, and the guy who bought the property planned to bust it up for kindling.”
“Now that’s sacrilege.”
