Page 112 of Always to Remember
“There’s nothing wrong with your backside.”
“You don’t think it’s too wide?” she asked, her voice lighter.
Averting his gaze, he blushed. “No, I don’t think it’s too wide,” he growled. “But you’re wrong about the worse thing that can happen. I could smash your hand to hell.”
She wrapped her hand around his. “If you break my hand, we’ll stop … until it heals.”
He dropped his chin to his chest and slowly shook his head. “Meg, I don’t want to give you hands as ugly as mine.”
“How can they be ugly if you give them the chance to create something that will mean so much to so many people?”
She retrieved his hammer from the corner and handed it to him. “We’ll go slowly and chip off a little bit at a time. Just show me how you want the chisel positioned against the stone.”
He gave her a weak smile. “You’re crazy. It’ll take us years to finish.”
“I have nothing else I’d rather do.”
“All right. Stand over here,” he said as though resigned to her determination.
He set the hammer on the floor, and with his good hand he helped her position the chisel. She wrapped both hands around the chisel.
“Think you can hold it steady?” he asked.
She nodded, although she wasn’t at all certain. She didn’t want to let Kirk down, but more than that, she didn’t want to disappoint Clay now that she’d placed his dream back within reach.
He hefted the hammer and placed his wounded hand over hers. “I can’t grip the chisel, but I can at least protect your hands. This is gonna be awkward as hell.”
He tapped the hammer against the chisel a couple of times as though trying to get his bearings. He took a deep breath and swung his arm. Meg closed her eyes.
She heard the echo and felt the vibration travel down her arm as the hammer hit the chisel. She opened her eyes and reveled in the sweet victory. “It worked! We can do it!”
Clay walked to the table. He dropped the hammer on the wooden surface and stared out the window. “We’ll start tomorrow.”
Eighteen
ALTHOUGHMAMAWARNER WAS NOT AWARE OF HER SURROUNDINGS, Robert, bless his heart, told the townspeople that it was too much for her to have visitors traipsing in and out all day, and he restricted their visits to the afternoon. His thoughtfulness left Meg free to spend the mornings working with Clay. Their progress was slow because Clay took long moments to study the rock after they chipped off each small piece.
He told her it was because he found it strange not to hold the chisel himself, and he didn’t feel as close to the stone, but she suspected that the real reason was his anxiety about her hands.
And he had reason for that.
Meg hadn’t lived a soft life, but her hands had never worked so hard. She wasn’t accustomed to gripping a heavy piece of metal and holding onto it when harder metal slammed against it. Sometimes, she thought her teeth would rattle loose from the impact.
Then she’d glance at Clay’s hand covering hers, and she’d keep her complaints to herself. The wound was still puckered and red as it mended and scarred. She had a strong urge to place a kiss on the scar, which ran across his palm and traveled along the back of his hand.
She imagined that his agonized cry that night had come not so much from the pain, but from the realization that they had killed his dream.
But there were moments when she felt his hand close a little more over hers, when he’d hit the hammer against the chisel and the hand covering hers would react from instinct and tighten its hold.
She relished those moments, held them deep inside her, and longed for the day when her hands could slip away from the chisel and return his to the place where it belonged.
“Why are your hands shaking?” Clay asked.
“I didn’t realize they were.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Let me see your palms.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my palms.”
