“You’re an artist.”
I looked up, amused by the surprise in her voice. I’d been sketching in a sketchbook I’d just bought at an art supply store while I waited for Libby to join me at the restaurant where we’d decided to have lunch. She looked a little disheveled as she skirted around my chair and plopped into the one across from me.
“Bad morning?”
She sighed as lifted the water glass sitting beside her plate and took a deep gulp.
“Harrison is a wonderful man, a great uncle, and an unbeatable CEO. I can’t even pretend to fill his shoes at the office. I barely got out of there between the constant phone calls and lists of must-dos that end up on my desk every morning.”
I carefully closed my sketchbook and took a second to slide it into my bag, not really sure I wanted to discuss Harrison with his sister. I wasn’t sure I was ready to discuss Harrison with anyone at the moment. I was still reeling from his pretty obvious attempt to tell me he had no feelings for me last night in that stupid convenience store. I mean, come on! I’d practically asked him if he wanted me, and he made a joke out of it.
It was pretty obvious that his feelings didn’t go much deeper than our shared enjoyment in the bedroom.
The waiter came over and Libby ordered a bottle of red wine that was worth more than the bakery made in a week. When she caught the look on my face, she asked, “You do like red, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
She smiled. “I’m kind of partial to it. Harrison keeps trying to convince me that you should only drink red with specific meals, but I drink it with anything. I don’t really care about all that stuff.”
“I like red, too. That’s all I ever order.”
“Good. I knew you and I would have something more than Harrison in common.”
I sort of nodded, my eyes falling to my hands where they were clutched in my lap. I felt out of place. Not only in the restaurant, but with Libby. I felt like she thought she knew something about Harrison and me…or maybe she was just so fond of her brother that she assumed everyone loved him too. I don’t know, but I hoped she would want to talk about something other than Harrison.
“So, I feel like I know so little about you. Harrison said that you run your parents’ bakery back in Texas?”
“It was the family business before they died. And after, it just seemed logical to keep it going to pay off their debts and to make a living for JT and me.”
“Do you like working in the bakery?”
No one had ever asked me that. The truth was, I hated it. I hated having flour in my clothing, my hair, my pores. I hated the constant cloying feel of sugar that seemed to get into everything. I hated having to taste the frostings and the cake batters and the cookies all day long. And I hated getting up before dawn to open the shop, hated keeping the books, hated having to deal with the customers—as much as I loved my friends and neighbors who’d done so much to help me keep the bakery open. The only thing I really liked about it was the cake decorating. But even that got a little tedious after a while.
Libby watched me search for an answer, her chin resting on her hand.
“You have so much in common with Harrison,” she said before I could come up with anything.
“Do I?”
“The last thing he wanted was to work in the furniture factory. From the moment he turned eighteen, he was out of here, going to the one college our father would allow him to attend that was as far from home as possible, taking every internship he could to stay away during the summers. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with Ashland Furniture.”
“What changed?”
“Father died.”
The waiter came with the bottle of wine. He poured us both a glass. It was the sweetest, most flavorful wine I’d ever tasted. I think I finished that first glass in just two swallows. Libby poured me another glass, waving the waiter away as she raised her own glass to her lips. After a long sip, she set it down and focused on me again.
“My father was a lot of things, but he was not a great business man. Turns out he owed everyone he knew and then some. Mother would have lost the house, and she and I would have been out on the streets if Harrison hadn’t agreed to come home and take over the business.”
“What about Randy?”
Libby groaned. “He’d already been in and out of rehab a half dozen times by then. Mother knew absolutely nothing about business and I was only fifteen, the same age as JT. Harrison was the only one who could do it. And he never balked.”
I needed another sip of wine. I hadn’t known any of that, what Harrison must have gone through in the wake of his father’s death. I had JT to think about after my parents died. Harrison didn’t have just an underage sibling, but his mother and a drug addicted brother, too.