Ethan glanced around the huge space, now even more out of sorts than when he’d walked in. Talking about Delaney only made him want to see her. “No, but my mom’s the reason I’m here.”
After he explained his mother’s request, Phoebe chuckled. “I think your mama’s dabbling in her notorious matchmaking again. Bunny hasn’t been here in a week. She’s out with a sinus infection. And if Colleen needed help, she would have come to me, or asked her daughter”—she gave Ethan a pointed look—“since Misty is with her.”
Ethan rolled his eyes to the ceiling, then let them slide closed and rubbed them. Two emotions collided in Ethan’s chest—humor and irritation. On one hand, his mother’s matchmaking skills were so lousy they were funny. On the other, it was hard to find anything that involved his family and all their manipulation funny today.
“You may be wrong about me and Delaney,” he said, “but you’re right about my mother.”
He glanced at the door, calculating which would be more trouble—making excuses to his mother about why he didn’t stay and help, or enduring Misty’s wandering eyes and propositions.
“I’m not wrong. You just don’t want to admit I’m right. Observation, Ethan. Everything you want to know is there if you look for it. All you have to do is really watch people. Humans are creatures of habit, patterns are developed for a reason, and character is built over time. People don’t change overnight.
“That’s how I knew about you and Delaney. I read you both well. Which is why I’m disappointed in your behavior—not because you slept with Delaney, not even because you didn’t tell her who you were, but why you didn’t. That is the crack in your character concerning me.”
Ethan’s irritation flared. “Everyone has character flaws, Phoebe. I never claimed to be perfect.”
“But not all flaws cause pain. We both know the minute your daddy or your uncle catch you looking Delaney’s way, there will be hell to pay. And family has been the bane of her existence, yours and her own. I’m trying to retie some of those connections for her so that when I’m gone, she’s not left floating in this big world alone. So if you really care about her—beyond the bedroom—let the girl be. Let her heal the way she needs to so she can move on.”
A mix of anger and sadness tangled inside him. “I plan to do what I can to keep my family from interfering in her life. And I’m also doing my best to leave her alone, because she’s as concerned about the problems that would come of us being seen together as you are. But I really do like her, and whether she’s willing to admit it or not, she really likes me, too. And for what it’s worth, I think Delaney needs more than healing. I think she needs a few wins in her life right now, too. Especially in this town and where that bar is concerned, which is why I know renovating it would be a big mistake.”
Phoebe’s eyes narrowed, and she studied him a long, tense moment. “I do love that steel streak of yours, Ethan. It reminds me so much of Delaney’s. She is your equal—or better. Remember that when trouble comes knocking. Her foundation won’t be swayed by a handsome smile or a flash of charm. She’s not just the kind of woman who weathers storms; she weathers hurricanes, and she’s learned a little about the best way to do that over the years. Don’t underestimate her.” Phoebe straightened and collected her papers. “Colleen’s space is in the southwest corner. I don’t think she needs help anymore seeing as Delaney’s in there now, but I suppose that’s not going to keep you from going back there, is it?”
Ethan’s body flicked on like a light. The strange sensation of fluttering wings brushed his chest. “No, ma’am.”
“Didn’t think so.”
Phoebe turned for the office door behind the counter, and Ethan started toward the southwest corner of the building. He might be relieved to be walking away from that awkward situation, but he had mixed feelings over the one he was headed toward. Far too much excitement bubbled through his body over the prospect of seeing Delaney again after he’d been reaffirming his decision to stay away from her no more than fifteen minutes before.
He glanced in the various spaces as he walked through the four-thousand-square-foot main level. Each area was rented out to different artists, where they designed, decorated, and stocked their own handmade crafts. Even in the middle of the week, well past tourist season, dozens of shoppers strolled through the beautifully restored building.
As he passed gorgeous watercolors, intricate oil paintings, stunning pottery, jewelry, soaps, candles, dolls, bath bubbles, puzzles—the variety of fine arts and handmade crafts was endless—he struggled with emotions he hadn’t felt in decades. Conflicting emotions he had no outlet for and no idea what to do with.
As he neared Colleen’s corner space, he heard Delaney’s smooth, feminine voice. “Is this a good height?”
“Maybe a little to the left?” an older woman answered.
As he listened to her back-and-forth with Colleen over placement, Ethan sighed, remembering her voice in bed that night. Sultry in his ear. Teasing and laughing. Whispering. Begging.
He let his eyes fall closed and soaked in the comfort her voice brought without judgment. The last week without Delaney felt like it took a month to pass. The only good part about that week was that she hadn’t shown up on his schedule.
“A little higher, I think,” Colleen said.
He forced himself to take the last few steps to the space’s doorway and glanced around one of the walls, where he found hand-painted knickknacks for the home. Mailboxes with sparrows, cutting boards with cows and pigs, benches with morning glories.
And a ladder against one wall.
He scanned upward and found the woman he’d been craving for days standing on the fifth rung. His gaze floated over her from the toes up, and he drank in her cute little feet in rhinestone-encrusted flip-flops; the long, smooth, curvy length of gorgeous, bare tanned legs; her tight ass covered in denim cutoffs; and her slim torso hidden behind a heather-blue fitted tee. All in all, an ordinary, no frills, nothing-to-write-home-about outfit. Yet the way her body filled the clothes made Ethan’s mouth water and his heart beat faster.
Her hair was in one long braid down the middle of her back. She held a birdhouse with lilies painted on three sides above several other birdhouses.
“Or would you rather have them offset, like this?” she asked, moving the birdhouse a little to the right.
Misty was sitting on one of her mother’s pieces scrolling on her phone. The wooden rocking chair beneath her had been painted with an incredible sunset over the ocean that covered the back and spilled over the arms.
Misty glanced toward him as he stepped into the space, and her face lit up. “Well, hey, Ethan. Haven’t seen you around in a while.”
“Hi, Misty.”
She was a very pretty brunette with big dark-brown eyes. Tall and girl-next-door fresh, she’d cut her long hair into a sleek, sexy bob when her fiancé had broken off their engagement to pursue his affair with a cougar he’d been seeing on the side in Sundance, the town next door. They’d only been broken up a couple of months, but Misty had been on a serious manhunt ever since. And for a reason Ethan didn’t care to understand, she had her scope zeroed in on him.