I have ideas, but I don’t say them out loud. There’s no use. I know some things I could do if I wasn’t always worrying about my galleries, but that’d never happen. It’d take a lot for me to let go of them. I started them to prove something. And I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like I proved enough to stop.
“How long could we hide in here until Margo comes looking for us?” I change the subject, trying to deny the inevitable. After the confrontation with Jason and my conversation with Pippa, I don’t feel like going back out there. I want to be alone, but I don’t have a choice. Despite Jason derailing things for a bit, I need to get everything back on track. I need to sell more art. And I need to prove that I can make a gallery profitable, no matter the location.
“She’s too busy to—” His words stop when his wife comes into view.
Margo gives Beck a look, her dark eyebrows raised to her hairline. “You said you’d be one minute.” Her voice goes up an octave at the one. Maybe she didn’t have as much fun out there as he thought she would.
Beck shrugs, closing the distance and pulling her into his body. He plants a kiss on her lips. I’m worried they might start making out in front of me like a pair of horny teenagers, but Margo pulls away. “No, no, no,” she scolds. “You don’t get to kiss me and pretend that you didn’t leave me talking to two dudes who kept asking me who my art tutor was as a kid so they could get their grandkids in with them.”
“Did you have an art tutor?” I ask, fairly confident Margo grew up in Iowa. Or was it Ohio? I don’t remember what state it was, but I know it wasn’t New York.
Margo laughs, shaking her head as her almost-black pieces of hair dance with her movement. “I had an art teacher, Mrs. Kiebler, and she was a saint. But my family couldn’t afford an art tutor. They could barely afford the supplies I begged for.”
“What’d you tell the men?” Beck asks. His fingertips stroke over the bare skin on her shoulder. I never thought I’d see the man so happy and in love. For a fraction of a second, I wonder what it’s like to love someone as much as he loves Margo. What it’s like to be loved the way she loves him. It’s only a thought I humor for a moment before I rid it from my mind. I don’t want to be in the position he’s in. I remember the terrified phone call I got from him when he thought she’d ended their engagement.
To love is to be vulnerable. I’ve never been very good at being vulnerable.
I’ve been lost in my own world, not hearing a thing either one has said. I only catch the tail end of their conversation. One that has apparently reverted to me because they both stare at me expectantly.
“What?” I ask, stepping around them to finally leave this office and return to the event.
“I asked how you felt it was going.” Margo’s voice is cautious. I don’t know why.
“Oh.” I clear my throat, my fingers absentmindedly fiddling with one of my cufflinks. “I think it’s going great—despite the one minor mishap. I haven’t rung up all of the purchases, obviously, but it seems like a lot of it has sold. Last I checked, there was a bidding war going on over your newest piece.”
Beck hums. “Maybe I need to put them all to shame and buy it for my own personal collection.”
This makes Margo roll her eyes. She playfully swats at his abdomen. “Like you don’t have enough already.”
Beck’s voice gets low as he mutters something against her ear. It makes me want to throw up. I need space from the lovesick puppies, and I need it immediately.
“I’m leaving. The two of you aren’t allowed to fuck in my office,” I growl.
I hear Beck’s laugh from behind me. “Maybe we already have, Hunter.”
I don’t enlighten him by reacting. But before I step through the small entrance to the hallway and join the party, I rattle off a text to one of my employees still in Manhattan despite the opening and tell him I need the entire art gallery cleaned. Immediately.
12
PIPPA
“Pippa, darling, who are you getting freaky with lately?”
I’d respond to the sweet old lady sitting in the salon chair next to me, but I’m too busy choking on the latte I’d been sucking down. I sputter, trying to swallow the iced coffee that’d gone down the wrong pipe.
“Stop wiggling,” Rhonda chides, holding on tight to a chunk of my hair as I try not to die at the words from a lady who hosts her bible studies at Wake and Bake some mornings.
“What?” Rosemary asks innocently, like the question she asked me was completely normal conversation for a Saturday afternoon at the hair salon.
“You can’t just go asking young ladies who they’re boinking, Rosemary,” Lenora chides from next to her friend. They’re both old enough to be my grandmother. In fact, they both were very close with my Grandma Pat before she passed.
“Who uses the word boinking?” Rosemary fires back, her focus on the gossip magazine in front of her. I wish I was underneath one of the hair dryers so I could pretend this conversation wasn’t happening. That might not even work, considering the both of them seem to be hearing things just fine, despite being under the hair dryers themselves. “The kids these days are using the term getting freaky with it.”
If I wasn’t attempting to melt into a puddle of embarrassment because two sweet old ladies are arguing over which terminology to use while discussing my sex life, I’d correct them that neither are relevant terms.
“Leave the girl alone,” Rhonda demands, painting hair dye onto strands of my hair. It’d gotten a shade lighter than I prefer over the summer, so I’ve decided to spend my Saturday getting it touched up. Maybe I should’ve forgone the haircut and color. At least then I wouldn’t have to talk about my nonexistent sex life with half the women of Sutten. But Camden had dropped off a large check for me and everyone who helped with his opening, and I wanted to treat myself after dealing with the people he’d invited. At first, I wanted to tell him not to bother. But it took a lot of ingredients and overtime from my staff. His payment was the right thing to do. I deserved to pamper myself. I just thought it’d be relaxing and I wouldn’t be discussing my sex life with Rhonda and Rosemary on a Saturday afternoon. “Maybe Pippa isn’t sleeping with anyone,” Rhonda continues. “There’s nothing wrong with waiting for the right person.”
I groan, trying to slide down in the salon chair. Rhonda keeps a hold of my hair, pulling on it slightly, which I’m sure shouldn’t be good practice for hairstylists. Isn’t she supposed to be gentle with me?
“Can we have a new subject, please?” I beg.
Rosemary snickers. She knows exactly what she’s doing. I’m never serving her again. “No, dear. You aren’t getting any younger. Soon, someone will have to plant their seed in you.”
Oh my god. It keeps getting worse. My cheeks heat. I’m sure my entire body is red with embarrassment. I want to disappear. Move away from this town forever so I never have to look at Rosemary again and remember her telling me that someone needs to plant their freaking seed in me.
“I didn’t have my first baby until I was twenty-nine,” Rhonda says from behind me, finally being somewhat gentle with me again. “Pippa has time.”
“I had three kids by Pippa’s age,” Lenora adds.
That’s great, Lenora. I’ve started a successful business and have dealt with the loss of my mother on top of helping to keep my family’s ranch afloat in my twenty-three years of living. Just because I haven’t had children yet doesn’t mean I haven’t done anything with my life.
“I have Kitty,” I argue. “She’s high-maintenance enough that she counts as a child.” She was an impulse decision one weekend after my mom passed. I needed something to focus on besides work, something that made me want to come home. So I got Kitty. My next-door neighbor even helps take care of Kitty on long workdays. She lives the best life for a dog rescued from the streets, but it doesn’t make her any less high-maintenance.