Page 53 of Rocky Mountain Cowboy Christmas
More focused on the sketches than the sculpture they detailed, Micah traced over a line on one of the horses. His finger hovered over the paper, close but never touching. “Why did you draw it this way?”
“What way?”
His brow knit as he considered the picture. “It’s like it’s just the… I don’t know. Like, you drew theideaof horses, rather than what they actually look like.”
“I always sketch out my ideas for sculptures like that,” Camille said, speaking slowly so she could figure out how to put her process into words. Normally, she didn’t talk about her art; she justdidit. “I think it’s to make it easier to find or cut the right part for each area. See, like this is going to be the middle horse’s cheek.” She dug through the box of smaller metal scraps that she’d salvaged from Joe’s heavenly field of junk cars. If it hadn’t been so cold, she could’ve spent all day harvesting parts behind Joe’s cabin.
Pulling out an old washer, she held it up. “If I stick to general shapes and impressions in my drawings, I don’t get stuck trying to find something to exactly match, which I’ll never find.” She looked around her small audience, trying to check if she was making sense to them. She’d never had to explain her process before. It was both intimidating and exhilarating.
Micah looked from the drawing to the washer and back to the sketch again. “So you draw the idea of a horse because your sculpture is just the idea of a horse?”
“Yeah.” She smiled at the rightness of what he’d just said. “That’s exactly it.”
He didn’t say anything else, but she could tell by his expression that his mind was still working things through.
“Why three horses?” Maya asked, taking Camille’s attention off Micah. “Aren’t there usually two or four in a team?”
“Or eight, like in those beer company ads?”
Pulling out more sketches, these more preliminary than the others, Camille put two sheets next to each other. On the first, she’d drawn two horses pulling the wagon, while on the second piece of paper, she’d drawn her current plan of three abreast. “I went back and forth between a pair and three horses for a while. When I did an internet search for old photos of fire wagons, most had one to three horses pulling it. I decided on three, since I like the wild, urgent look to it. There’s a sense of barely controlled chaos.”
“Chaos?” Steve’s voice had them spinning around to see him in the workshop doorway. Camille rushed to flip the drawings upside down, and the kids, clearly experts in hiding the evidence, moved to block Steve’s view of her section of the workbench. “Should I be worried that you’re talking about chaos?”
“No,” Maya said a little too quickly, and Will jumped in.
“What Maya means is that if we’re talking about chaos, we can’t becreatingchaos.”
Staying quiet, Micah just nodded.
“Hey, Steve.” Now that Camille had all the pictures facedown and the completed portion of her sculpture tucked out of sight under the bench, she slid off her stool. Her welding goggles slipped down onto her forehead, and she yanked them off, mentally cringing at the messy state her hair had to be in. He always seemed to see her at her most disheveled.
After their mostly silent ride through the trees, they hadn’t had a second alone. Between dealing with her insurance company and helping around the ranch and trying to squeeze in some metalworking, Camille felt like she was constantly running at full speed. There were always people around, too. As wonderful as spending time with Steve’s kids was, she wished that the two of them could have just a few minutes—or, better yet, a few hours—to finish what they’d started. She felt like she was walking around with a low-grade fever, and her temperature spiked every time she caught a glimpse of Steve or their eyes met across the breakfast table for a charged moment or she remembered how his breath had felt as it warmed her lips. Things were getting desperate, and she was a little worried about the lengths she’d be willing to go to in order to get Steve alone.
“Hmm…” Despite his clear suspicion, he seemed to let their odd behavior go for now. Turning to Camille, he asked, “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Or maybe he wasn’t letting it go. Maybe he thought she was the worst secret keeper of all of them, and he was going to interrogate her. She was worried, since she knew she’d be helpless to resist if he touched her or hugged her or even whispered in her ear and warmed her skin with his words. There was a very high likelihood that Steve was right—she was the weakest link. “Uh…sure.”
The kids must’ve been thinking the same thing. As she passed them, Maya whispered, “Don’t tell,” as Will muttered, “Be strong.” Camille bugged her eyes out at them in anot helping!expression, which made Micah snort and Maya dissolve into muffled giggles. Camille made her way to where Steve stood in the doorway, feeling his gaze on her the whole time. It made her feel both hot and weirdly guilty, even though the only secret she was planning to keep was his Christmas gift.
He stepped back, giving her room to pass by him into the office before closing the door behind them. Once they were alone, she expected him to say something, but he stayed silent. He looked unhappy, and as soon as his hand came up to rub the back of his neck, she knew for certain that something was bothering him—and it was more than a silly Christmas secret.
“What’s wrong?” She moved toward him automatically. By the time she realized what she was doing and came to an abrupt halt, they were only a half step apart. She looked up at him, so aware of how close he was that it was hard to think of anything except how it would feel if he pulled her against his broad chest and kissed her breathless.
“It’s Zoe.”
Her thoughts about kissing and touching came to a screeching halt. “Zoe? Is she okay?” His worried expression fueled her concern.
“I don’t know.” He grimaced, pivoting to pace away from her a few strides before returning. “I think I screwed up. When I picked her up after her robotics club meeting, I could tell she was upset. I asked her what was wrong, and she burst out crying. She’s been sobbing like her heart’s breaking or her leg has been ripped off or something even worse, and I’m getting more and more worried. I finally got her to admit that her friend’s moving away, and I was so relieved that it wasn’t something more serious that I just blurted out the first thing that came to mind.”
When he paused, Camille made akeep goingmotion with her hand. “What’d you say?”
He strode away again, pacing back and forth between her and the conference table. “Something like ‘Is that all?’”
Camille winced.
“I know. And when she stared at me like I was a monster, I just made it worse.” His hand rubbed the back of his neck again. “I said, ‘Haven’t you only known each other for six weeks? You can’t bethatgood of friends yet.’”
This time, Camille actually groaned out loud.
