Sculpting Grace: A Light Romance Novel (Art of Grace Book 2) Read online

  Carter sighed, his flirty smile dropping off of his face. "You know, that's the challenge in businesses like this," he said, his tone more serious. "Same thing happens with real estate. Lots of people come through, but ninety percent of them aren't planning on actually buying anything, and never will. It's a lot of fishing, sorting through all of the little nibbles in order to find someone who will actually bite."

  "I don't think that's how fishing works," I said after a moment, frowning at him.

  He shrugged. "Come on, Becca, look at me. Look at this suit. Do I look like I go fishing much?"

  "You look like an ass, that's what I think," I told him, laughing and dodging aside as he swung a mock fist at me. "By the way, you still haven't told me what you're doing here in the first place, anyway. Aren't you supposed to be off running your own business?"

  Carter pursed his lips at me, although he made even that expression look hopelessly sexy. My friendship with Carter only spanned back over the last month, but I already felt comfortable with him, something that often took a considerable amount of time. I didn't know exactly how to define what we had between us, but whatever it was, I liked it.

  I'd first met Carter a month previously, when I first started running this art gallery. I claimed that I took over the day-to-day management of the Halesford Gallery as a favor to my uncle, Preston Halesford himself. In truth, however, I didn't have anywhere else to turn for help out of my desperate situation. Fresh out of a divorce from a greedy, cheating lump of an ex-husband, I needed a quick way to earn enough money to pay for my liabilities from the failed marriage.

  I turned to selling art as my last resort.

  Somehow, to even my own surprise, I managed to make it work. With only a couple days left before the deadline for making the payment to my ex-husband, I managed to sell a big piece, one with a six-figure price tag, and earned enough commission to buy my complete and total freedom from that crashing failure of a marriage!

  Along the way, I'd also struck up a relationship, of sorts, with Carter James, the man sitting beside me and easily driving me half-crazy with all his flirting. Carter worked as a commercial real estate agent, helping rent out buildings in town to various businesses. He bought a fair amount of art from the Halesford Gallery to decorate the spaces that he showed off to clients, so I'd been ordered by my uncle from day one to keep Carter happy.

  For some reason, Carter decided that he wanted to keep me happy, as well - and the best way to accomplish that was to sweep me off my feet and try and carry me off to bed! I did my best to hold off his advances politely, but I couldn't deny the attraction that I felt towards him. Despite just getting out of a disaster of a marriage, I let him take me out to lunch, then dinner, and then eventually back to the cute little house that he owned.

  Still, I wasn't totally ready to commit to a new relationship so soon after my last one ended, so I tried to keep our interactions light. Carter tolerated my standoffish nature, it seemed - but he never missed a chance to slip in a flirtatious comment, if only to make me blush beet red.

  Now, Carter just shrugged, still sitting behind the front desk of the art gallery. "I'm waiting for clients to call me," he answered. "It's the best way to run a business - I put out the feelers, wait for a client to express interest, and bam! Reel them in, tug them into my net, and sign a contract. Dinner, all caught!"

  "You really need to improve your fishing metaphors," I told him, shaking my head.

  "But seriously, maybe you can think of a way to improve the business," Carter went on, sitting up a little. "Here, you're complaining that the problem is that you're not getting much foot traffic, right? How could you fix that?"

  I tried to think of some solutions. "Maybe hold some sort of social event?" I suggested after a minute. "Or offer something to people to get them in the door. Some sort of advertising, perhaps? Or feature a new artist, someone who can draw a lot of people in?"

  "All good ideas," Carter nodded, but I was already shaking my head.

  "Yeah, they're good ideas," I went on, "but most of them won't work without me putting in money - which I don't have! I don't have any extra funds to offer people free stuff, or to pay for advertising. And we haven't gotten a new artist in a while. So there go all my ideas, shot down right away."

  I sat back down in my chair, dropping my forehead down until it pressed against the cool surface of the desk in front of me. "Hopeless," I finished, speaking into the stack of papers beneath my head.

  After a moment, I felt Carter's hand settle softly on my back. Thankfully, he didn't try any moves on me this time. Instead, he just softly rubbed back and forth with my knuckles across my shoulder blades. It felt seductively good, but I didn't lift my head up yet.

  "I'm sure something will come along," he told me. "Besides, when things do start happening, they'll all come at once, and you'll be thinking wistfully back to times like now, when you weren't so stressed. Try and enjoy the peace before the storm hits."

  "Thanks for the Zen wisdom," I said sarcastically into the papers beneath my head.

  He chuckled. "You know the expression about the ancient Chinese curse, don't you?"

  I shook my head.

  "'May you live in interesting times,'" Carter quoted.

  "And that's a curse?"

  "Yes, in fact. It sounds like a great thing - until it happens to you, and all you want is for things to relax, calm down, and go back to boring old normal."

  Still with my head down, I considered this proverb for another minute or two. "Nope, I don't see it," I finally said, lifting my head back up and brushing my forehead in case any of the papers decided to cling to my skin. "I would still rather be in interesting times than boring ones."

  And as if on cue, waiting for me to speak those very words, my phone started to ring in my purse.

  Both Carter and I paused, and exchanged a glance with each other. "The curse!" he whispered to me, wiggling his fingers in a manner that might have been intended to appear spooky (although in truth, it reminded me of an attempt at doing "jazz hands" from my old high school drama teacher).

  "Knock it off," I told him as I reached for my purse. I felt around until my fingers closed on the hard, vibrating rectangle, and I pulled it out.

  "Who is it?"

  I frowned, looking down at the caller ID. "It's my Uncle Preston," I responded.

  "As in Preston Halesford, the owner of the gallery?"

  "One and the same." I swiped my finger across the phone to answer the call, turned and shushed Carter by holding that finger up to my lips in the universal gesture for "quiet," and then lifted the phone up to my ear. "Hello?" I said.

  "Hi there, Rebecca! How are things going?"

  "Um, hi to you too, Uncle," I replied, not sure why he decided to call. "Things are going fine; there's not much new. It's pretty quiet here."

  Had Uncle Preston heard something bad about the gallery? Was I in trouble? He'd never called me before, so I wasn't sure what might have changed.

  "Great, great. So you're not too busy then, are you?"

  "No?" I answered, feeling like this might be the wrong response to give. Maybe he was going to give me some unenviable task, like cleaning out the mess of disorganized papers that he'd left behind in the back storage area, or trying to figure out which members of the artists' collective had died and were no longer coming in to pick up their residual checks.

  "Great, that's good to hear. I mean, not particularly, but it's good in this case." Preston paused, muttering something to himself.

  "Uncle?" I asked. "What's going on?"

  "An opportunity, that's what's going on!" he responded. "And as soon as I heard about it, I knew that you were just the right person to put in charge of this new task."

  "Oh. Great."

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Carter raising his eyebrows. "May you live in interesting times," he mouthed at me.

  If he wasn't so damn sexy when he smiled at me, I would have punched him.

&
nbsp; Chapter Three

  *

  "So, Uncle Preston, what's this exciting new opportunity?" I asked after another minute of waiting, while my uncle pattered on about how he'd instantly known that I was the right woman for this task.

  "Oh, yes, didn't I say? There's a new artist who's making big waves, and I want you to recruit him!"

  Oh no. This definitely sounded like a recipe for disaster. "Recruit him?" I echoed back hollowly. "Uncle Preston, are you sure that this is really a job for me? I don't know the first thing to say to someone to convince them to let us sell their artwork for them!"

  "I'm sure that you'll do fine," Preston replied with confidence, although it didn't quite make it across the phone line to buoy my own outlook. "Here, got a sheet of paper and a pencil ready? I'll give you the details."

  I scrambled through the pile of papers sitting on top of the desk until I found a blank notepad and a pen. I gave a little scribble in the corner, confirming that the pen actually wrote and wasn't some sort of decorative artwork that issued a statement on the limitations of free speech or something like that, and then stuck the phone between my ear and my shoulder. "Okay, go ahead."

  "His name is Dean Benjamin de St. James," Preston said.

  "What, all of that at the same time?" I asked, scribbling the name down. Carter had risen up from his seat and moved closer, leaning in over my shoulder so he could read what I wrote down on the notepad. I tried to wave him off, but he just raised his eyebrows at me and smirked.

  "Yep. Comes from quite the distinguished family, in fact. Makes very evocative art."

  "Um, what type of art? Exactly?" I asked, thinking of the last "popular artist" that Preston bragged to me about. Onyx was certainly the kind of artist who could be described as evocative... but that didn't mean that I wanted another artist displaying sculptures of genitalia in the gallery.

  "He makes sculptures," Preston said diffidently, adding fuel to the fire of my concern. "Very abstract pieces, but he mixes in paint as well, gives them brilliant splashes of color. I don't even pretend to understand it, but all the media magazines loved him last year. He's kind of dropped off the radar for a bit, but if we can announce him signing on with our gallery, we'll bring in a ton of publicity." He paused for a moment. "And a lot more sales, too," he added, an addition that didn't escape me.

  More sales meant more commission, which meant more money in my pocket. That was exactly what I wanted - although I still wasn't sure how I'd go about trying to convince this artist to sign on with our gallery. What could we offer him? We certainly didn't have the same renown as a national gallery, but I decided that it was still worth a shot. Besides, if he'd dropped off the national radar, maybe I had a chance...

  After all, the worst that he could say was no.

  "So? We got a deal? You'll go try and recruit de St. James to sign on with the Halesford Gallery?"

  "I'll have to think about it," I stalled for time. "I mean, I'm pretty busy running the gallery right now, just about on my own." Carter made sure that I saw him roll his eyes as he held out one hand, as if to take in the totally empty interior of the art gallery. "I can't just leave the place unattended to go off and talk with this artist-"

  "Not to worry!" Preston interrupted. "I've already worked out a solution for you."

  "Oh. Great." I paused for a minute. "What's the solution, exactly?"

  "An assistant! I've already found her and hired her on. She'll be able to fill in part time, letting you take off and go hunt down this artist. She'll be starting up bright and early tomorrow morning!"

  I tried to find another way to buy myself some time to do a bit of research into this Dean Benjamin de St. James fellow, but I didn't have any other excuses. "Well, I guess it'll all work out, then," I finally said, rather weakly.

  "Perfect! Oh, this will be so exciting for you." Uncle Preston really did sound like he meant the words, but then again, he also thought that I was having the time of my life running his mostly deserted gallery for him, dealing with the occasional customer who wandered inside. My uncle had a low threshold for excitement, I'd decided.

  "Well, I'll leave you to it!" Preston stated, as I tried to think of what else I needed to ask about this de St. James guy. "After all, I can't stand around gabbing to you on the phone forever - I've got lots to do today!"

  "Wait, I still don't know exactly-" I started, but my words came too late.

  I had more questions, but a half second later, I heard a click come from the other end of the line. Preston, it seemed, had delivered his assignment to me, and no longer needed to stay on the phone.

  I lowered the receiver, wondering what other activities he was rushing off to do. With me running his gallery for him, Preston was essentially retired, and as far as I could tell, he spent most of his time lounging in swimming trunks next to the senior center pool, furtively checking out some of the female senior citizens as they participated in their aquatic aerobics classes.

  Maybe one of those classes was about to start, and he didn't want to miss the show, I considered half-jokingly to myself, trying not to grimace at the mental image conjured up inside of my mind.

  "So, looks like you've got something new and exciting to do," Carter commented, as I dropped my phone back into my purse.

  I nodded. "A new artist to recruit to the gallery," I repeated, just in case he hadn't picked this up from listening to my side of the conversation. "Dean Benjamin de St. James. Ever heard of him?"

  Carter frowned at the name for a minute, and then shook his head. "Surprisingly, no. If he's a popular artist, he must not make sculptures that work well in commercial spaces. Then again, I'm not going to always be the most up-to-date on the newest rising stars; I just buy pieces that I think will work well with the building, and fit within my budget."

  "Not a rising star," I corrected. "Fading one, apparently. Dropped off the radar in the last six months."

  Carter just shrugged, the name still meaning nothing to him.

  "I bet I know someone else that I can ask about him," I said, although a little part of me wondered if bringing up Onyx, even obliquely like this, was a good idea around Carter. I mean, the two of us weren't together - not really.

  Not that there hadn't been interest, on both sides.

  For a moment, I wasn't sure if I was talking about Carter and me, or Onyx and me. Maybe I meant both of them. I looked over at Carter's face, hoping that I didn't appear guilty for bringing up the other man.

  Was his face a little tighter, his lips slightly drawn back? If Carter was at all bothered by my mention of Onyx, he certainly did a good job of hiding it - but for an instant, I thought that I saw an expression of strong distaste on his face.

  "Onyx will probably know more about this artist than I will," he admitted. That was classic Carter; even if he didn't like a course of action, he still saw the reasoning behind it. "Artists like that tend to run in their own little communities. They all know each other, but that's what makes them so weird."

  "Weird?" I repeated. "What do you mean?"

  He brushed back his hair, looking up at me from where he still sat. "Come on, Becca. Onyx isn't exactly the typical guy. All the artists stick around in groups, and their weirdness bounces back and forth off of each other, growing more and more, until they're totally crazy. And they don't mind, because it helps them sell more art, but it's still weird."

  I set my lips in a hard line, looking back at Carter and wondering how to interpret this unexpected response. Was he feeling jealous?

  After another moment of uncomfortable silence between the two of us, however, Carter sighed and dropped his eyes down. "Look, it doesn't matter now. So what's going to happen to the gallery while you're off chasing around this de St. James fellow? Close it down? Or is your uncle going to come out of retirement and sit behind the front desk?"

  "He said that he got an assistant for me," I remembered. "Coming in tomorrow morning."

  "Ooh. Becca the manager." I could tell that Carter was tryin
g to lighten the conversation, move away from the more tense moment we'd had a minute earlier. "You gonna be able to handle that?"

  "I think I'll do just fine," I told him. I sat back down and reached past Carter to grab the keyboard to the gallery's computer, sitting on the desk. The computer, a desktop with a battered, oft-kicked case sitting under the desk, had certainly seen better days. It still ran well enough, however, and had an internet connection. I'd whittled away many hours on this computer, browsing various news sites as I waited for a customer to finally wander into the gallery. "Now here, let me do a bit of research."

  "If you're out running after this guy, and there's some assistant just sitting in your place, I might need to find a new spot to wait for people to call me," Carter complained, as I pulled up the web browser - and then gave the computer a minute or two to carry out my request. It was reliable, but most definitely couldn't be called fast, not in any sense of the word.

  "What, you don't want to get to know this impressionable young woman?" I asked, not quite sure what I meant by those words.

  He shrugged. "You're much more fun to tease."

  I looked over at him - and for a moment, I saw a flare of heat in his brown eyes as he looked back at me. That flare of heat promised all sorts of deliciously naughty activities, and it made my breath catch in my throat. I'd let Carter explore my body a couple of times previously, and it always proved to be breathtaking, more than amazing enough to make me forgive him for the occasional needling that got under my skin. I opened my mouth to respond, but that heat in his eyes distracted me, and I couldn't seem to think of any words.

  Carter didn't miss the effect of his dark, smoky, sexy look on me. "I suppose I'd better let you get to work on studying up on this fellow," he said, rising up from his seat.

  "Yeah. I need to focus." I couldn't pull my eyes away from him as he moved in closer to me.