The Damaged Hearts Bargain (Tetherington Hearts #2)

Chapter Twenty Six

T he large canvases were stacked against the walls of the garage, and each time Lucy moved one, Cal gasped again as she saw the next. They were big, almost as big as her, but Lucy carried them as though they were nothing. And each was layered with color after color, the shapes abstract but the themes very clear.

“It’s the ocean,” Cal said as Lucy moved aside a canvas to reveal a new one. There was no beach, no promenade, nothing but blues and greens and whites swirling together into what was unmistakably the sea. It was what Cal imagined being swallowed by the waves would look like.

“That’s the last of these,” Lucy said. “And it’s getting late. Billy has to be up early to do his rounds and I don’t want to keep him awake by banging around in here.”

Cal stepped up to her, wrapped her arms around her torso and squeezed. “Thank you for showing me these,” she said.

In truth she was astonished. She’d been around, she’d seen plenty of so called art and was very aware that talent wasn’t doled out in heaping tablespoons to everyone. Not that she’d expected Lucy’s work to be bad. Just… not quite so good as it really was.

She hadn’t expected to be swept away by it, hadn’t expected to smell wheat fields in September or the crisp sharpness of snow, or the salty bite of the ocean, all just from swirls of color on a canvas.

She hadn’t expected Lucy to be just so talented.

And now she felt… odd, different, like Lucy was even more out of reach than she was before. Which was ridiculous given that she was quite literally holding on to Lucy.

“They’re there to be seen,” Lucy said, pulling back a bit. “Not much point in painting things if no one sees them, is there?”

“I suppose not,” Cal said.

“You’re looking strange,” said Lucy, studying her. “You okay?”

Cal nodded. “I am. I just… they’re lovely Lucy. You’re immensely talented. Whatever this residency is, you sorely deserve it.”

“We’ll see,” said Lucy. “I mean, I can’t say that I know much about anything. I’ve never studied art, I don’t know much about the competition or anything. Probably there’s a hundred other people at the institute that are a million times better than me.”

“No,” Cal said, feeling Lucy’s spine through the thin material of her dress. “No, there aren’t, take it from me. These are… special. You’re special.”

Lucy shrugged, starting to look embarrassed. “Yeah, maybe, I don’t know. It’s hard for me to tell, I’m too close to them maybe. I just sort of paint what I feel. It seems to work for me.”

It was hard to believe for a second that she was allowed to touch someone who was capable of doing things like this. Cal felt a shiver go down her spine.

“Just to be clear,” Lucy said, drawing Cal in closer, close enough that Cal could feel her heartbeat start to speed up. “When I said I didn’t want to keep Billy awake by banging around out here, I meant moving the paintings around. I didn’t mean… any other type of banging that might occur.”

Cal’s breath caught for a second. “Oh, didn’t you?” she said, a smirk sliding across her face. “Though I’m not so sure I appreciate my well-choreographed seduction moves being classified as banging. ”

Lucy began to run her fingers up Cal’s spine and Cal shivered. “Well-choreographed, huh? I suppose I should consider myself lucky to be in the hands of such an expert.”

“Oh God, someone poke my eyes out,” George cried from behind them.

“George!” Lucy said.

Cal stepped away.

“Blind me, lest I see such sights again,” George wailed.

“You could have cleared your throat or something,” grumbled Lucy. “That way you wouldn’t see anything you didn’t want to see. Besides, we’re both fully dressed.”

“I wasn’t looking at the details,” George said.

Cal recovered herself and laughed. “Hold on a second, don’t you run a romance bookshop?”

George turned to her and raised an eyebrow. “What of it?”

For an instant, Cal wondered if she’d gone too far, got too comfortable, overstepped some kind of boundary. “Just, um, well, you should appreciate love in all its forms, right?”

George stared at her for a moment and then snorted with laughter. “I suppose I should at that,” he said.

Cal let out a sigh of relief. She hadn’t overstepped. She was allowed to kid, to join in the fun. George was… nice. Kind. She could tell that he wasn’t entirely comfortable with her running the bakery and that Lucy had bullied him into asking for the favor. But he’d asked, he was willing to give her a chance. Which was nice, inclusive.

“Anyway, Billy’s off to bed, so I came to see if you ladies would like a drink. Either cocoa or wine, there’s no in between,” George said.

“Not for me,” said Lucy.

“Me neither,” Cal said. “I really need to get up early in the morning. Thanks for offering though.”

“No problem,” George said. He looked at Cal. “How about you drop by at some point tomorrow morning and we’ll quickly go through everything you’ll need for Friday. Sort of a trial run. Say before lunch? ”

Cal had been planning on putting in a full day of work at the house. Still, she supposed she’d need to take a lunch break. “Alright, I’ll stop by for half an hour when I can,” she promised.

“Then I suppose I’ll leave you two to your lengthy and sentimental goodbyes,” George grinned. “I’m more of a fade to black kind of guy. I don’t need to see the details.” He slid off around the corner and Lucy pulled a face.

“Sorry about that,” she said.

Cal smiled at her. “It’s fine. I like George.”

“He’s a drama queen.”

“He’s kind,” said Cal.

Lucy sighed. “He really is.”

“You’ve surrounded yourself by good people,” Cal said. The night was darkening. Maybe she was starting to see a little of what kept Lucy here. Not that she wanted to live here herself. But then she’d spent so long running away from this place right here that maybe she’d forgotten that it hadn’t always been a terrible place to be.

She’d missed the hiss of the ocean, the steady beat of it in the dark of night.

“I have,” Lucy said now. “I’ve been lucky though. I didn’t have to wash up here. But now that I have… I can’t really imagine being anywhere else. At least not right now.” She sighed. “Maybe going to London isn’t a bad thing. Broadening my horizons and all that.”

Cal perched on the edge of a paint-spattered stool. “What happened before all this? Before Tetherington, I mean.”

“You want my back story?” Lucy laughed.

“Only if you’re comfortable enough to tell me.” Cal wasn’t really sure why she was asking. She didn’t normally ask. But something about Lucy made her want to know.

“It’s not complicated,” said Lucy. “My mum wasn’t a great mum. I got taken off her when I was seven, grew up in care and foster homes. Left foster care, slipped through the cracks for a multitude of reasons, some of them my own fault, ended up living on the street for a while and then washed up here. At which point Pen promptly took me in, let me shower, and gave me a bed on her couch.”

“She sounds nice,” Cal said. Which was an understatement. She knew Pen was nice. More than nice. She remembered her clearly, remembered how she’d always had a kind word, even for the younger kids in school.

“So, you know, getting this sense of belonging, what I have here, it’s kind of important to me,” Lucy admitted.

Cal wondered how that could possibly fit in with dating her. How Lucy could go from needing to fit in and belong to wanting to be with someone who didn’t fit in anywhere and certainly didn’t belong in Tetherington.

Except she had missed the ocean. And people were starting to come around to her. She could feel that. Could feel that she wasn’t quite as hated as she was before.

“I’m getting soppy,” Lucy said. “I must be tired.”

Cal stood up. “And I’ll leave you to it then.”

“I didn’t mean to throw you out,” Lucy said, coming closer, stroking Cal’s hair with one hand and putting the other on her hip. “Especially after such a lovely date.”

Cal smiled. “It was lovely, wasn’t it? I’ve had an amazing evening with you, Lucy. And thank you again for showing me your work.”

“It’s there to be seen,” Lucy said again. She cleared her throat. “I’m not disappointing you? By sending you home again?”

Cal shook her head. “This isn’t the last night in the world,” she said. “We’ll have plenty of other nights, Lucy Evans.”

Lucy quirked an eyebrow. “Oh, will we indeed? According to you, we’ll only have six weeks of nights. I wouldn’t call that plenty.”

A breeze was blowing through the open wooden doors, the ocean was a steady heartbeat, Lucy’s scent was filling Cal’s senses. But there was more than the romance of it. There was the memory of joking with George, the thought of Rosalee bandaging her face. The idea of Lucy being there every evening, every morning, every minute of every day .

“Rules are made to be broken,” Cal said hoarsely.

Lucy looked at her long and hard, then leaned to kiss her slowly. “I think we should both be going to bed, huh?” she said. But happiness was gleaming in her eyes.

Cal walked away from the cottage with a warm heaviness in her heart. She knew what she’d just said but couldn’t bring herself to regret it. She liked Lucy. More than liked her. Lucy was special in a way that she couldn’t quite describe.

Lucy made her feel safe and secure and trusted. Though she was damned if she knew what Lucy was getting out of the deal.

She was still smiling as she walked into the empty pub. Rosalee was putting away the last of the glasses.

“You look like the cat that got the cream,” Rosalee said, a favorite saying of hers apparently.

Cal just grinned and shrugged. “I’m going to hit the hay.”

Rosalee nodded but didn’t turn back to her work. “I was thinking,” she said. “About what we talked about the other day. If you were contemplating sticking around, or just wanted to come back for visits, there is something that would help you be more accepted around here.”

“What’s that then?” Cal asked, edging toward the door.

“An apology,” Rosalee said. “That’s all.”

“That’s all.” Cal nodded. “Right, I’ll, uh, keep it in mind.”

She climbed the stairs steadily up to her room knowing that Rosalee meant well, and knowing that she was wrong.

Because Cal couldn’t apologize for something she hadn’t done in the first place.