“I can’t believe I’m going to do this,” she muttered, but then she clapped her hands together, brushing off dirt as if that was all decided. “What if Ben were to come here two days a week after school? I could keep him busy in the garden here and replanting the roses that he destroyed over at the little house.”
“Gardening? The kid crashes a sports car and his punishment is gardening?”
“If it makes you feel better I won’t give him and food or water while he’s here.”
“That does make me feel better. If you could put together some kind of ball and chain...?”
“Better yet, I’ll make Walter watch him.”
“Now that would be suitable punishment.”
They grinned at each other, the sizzle and pop of their attraction undiminished for their having agreed to ignore it. In fact, it was probably worse. Forbidden fruit and all that.
“I think if I tell Mia and Jack, they’d have some stuff for him, too. We can keep him busy.”
“I can make arrangements to have the bus drop him off here on Thursdays and Fridays. I’ll pick him up after Aaron’s hockey practice at around five. Does that work?”
“Sounds good to me.”
“But...when are you heading back to Los Angeles?”
She tucked her long caramel-colored legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them as if she were a turtle heading back into her shell for safety.
“Mom wants to stick around until Jack hires a caregiver for Walter.”
“But don’t you have some kind of jewelry empire to run?”
He made it sort of a joke, but she didn’t laugh. To his great distress she groaned low in her throat and put her head down on her knees, a little ball of Lucy Alatore, and he fought, he actually had to clench his teeth, against the strong desire to touch her back, to run his hands along the curl of her spine. Memorize the press of her bones against her skin.
“I blew it, Jeremiah. I totally blew it,” she said into her knees.
“Blew what?”
“My business.”
“The jewelry?”
“Yes, all of it. I...” She pulled up her head and stared out at the flowers that filled the gully, and every instinct Jeremiah had was screaming at him to run. Absolutely clamoring that he get the hell out of there because she was about to confide in him and he had enough, more than enough, to deal with. He shifted away, as if to stand, but she opened her mouth and he forcibly relaxed back into the ground. An unwilling listener. Prisoner of the moment. “I had this huge order for those stupid horseshoe necklaces. An order so big I thought...I thought I had made it. I thought I’d struck gold. So I charged my regular wholesale price, but when it became obvious that my little three-person studio couldn’t produce all the pieces, I subcontracted out the work. But I couldn’t raise the price that I already charged and I’d never factored in the cost of having someone else make my jewelry for me, and suddenly, instead of making money on every piece, I was losing money. It was costing me everything to fulfill the order, so I had to back out of the contract. And now I’m waiting to hear from the accountant how much of a fee I owe.”
“But don’t you have other orders?”
“None big enough. And most of them, when they found out I’d started manufacturing pieces instead of making them by hand, started to lose interest.”
She lifted her chin as if to tell him it didn’t matter, the loss of that interest, but he knew better. You couldn’t hide a slap in the face.
“What about your employees?”
“I closed the studio. Set my employees free and closed up shop.”
“Over one order?”
She blinked out at the columbines before turning to face him, her eyes bright.
Oh shit. He’d made her cry.
Stop, he wanted to beg, please stop. No crying. Don’t cry. He never handled this stuff right.
She blinked and the tears were gone. Thank God. “It was a doozey, Jeremiah, trust me. I had to sell my supplies, all the stones and gold, just to make my final payroll.”
He knew he was gaping at her, slack-jawed and stunned. “But your family—”
“Has no idea and I don’t want them to.”
“Your business is bust and you’re not telling them?”
Her eyes narrowed and she dropped her knees. “Don’t make me sorry I told you.”
He held up hands. “Sorry. God, Lucy...that sucks.”
Her laugh was slightly wild, frayed at the edges. “That sums it up to a T, Jeremiah.”
The silence that unfolded around them was heavy with everything she’d said. He wasn’t anyone’s confidant—he was everyone’s good time, their drinking buddy and flirt—and he didn’t know what to say to make her feel better. All that bravado had dried up and blown away, and now Lucy sat there, looking and feeling like a failure, and he didn’t know what to say to make it better.