have accounts with some wholesale houses that bring up trinket-type things from Mexico. But whenever I can I buy from artists and craftsmen. I like to deal in the unique and original more than in the mass-produced stuff.”
“Do you work for a company or something?”
“The business is mine. But business sounds more … I don’t know, corporate than I am. I’ve just come up with a name—Fortune Fine Arts and Crafts—because I’m in the process of having a website set up so I can do more selling over the internet. But really, I’m just a middleman—I hunt down stuff to sell, usually buy it outright myself and then resell it at a profit. Or sometimes I find a gallery or shop that will let me place a piece there and if it sells, the money gets split three ways—between whoever produced it, whoever’s shop or gallery it was sold from, and me.”
“That would make you an agent or an artist’s representative, then, wouldn’t it?”
“Again, sounds a lot fancier than I am. What I am is an old-fashioned horse trader. Except that I don’t deal in horses, I deal in brass sculptures of horses and kachina dolls and hand-sewn moccasins and tribal headdresses and authentic totem poles.”
“Hmm. I never considered that there would be a market for tribal headdresses or totem poles.”
“They aren’t my best sellers, but they’re fairly popular for decorating hunting and fishing lodges and hotels that want a rustic appeal.”
“And I guess you can’t call yourself a totem pole seller,” she teased him a little.
“That’s why we just say that I’m in sales,” he concluded, pleasing her with the fact that he’d grasped her gentle gibe.
“Is the goal of the new website to reduce the amount of travel you have to do?” she asked.
“I guess potentially it could, but the traveling doesn’t bother me. I don’t have anything tying me down, and I like getting around, seeing the country. The life of a traveling salesman suits me.”
Their painting met at the center of the wall behind the washer and drier then, and while Flint stepped back to survey their handiwork, Jessie used one final application of her roller to blend that meeting line seamlessly.
And with that, she sat back and looked around, too.
“That didn’t take long,” she admitted, thinking that the time had actually seemed to fly.
“Apparently we work well together,” Flint said just as Adam burst through the door with an excited, “Hi, Fwint!”
“Hi, Adam,” Flint greeted the three-year-old with a mirroring of Adam’s enthusiasm. “Where’ve you been today?”
“He’ppin my grampa wis our new junger gym. We digged howes for plantin’ the powes so it don’t fauw over.”
“They dug holes to cement the poles into the ground so the jungle gym doesn’t fall over,” Jessie translated. “Sometimes the L’s come out and sometimes they just don’t.” Then to her son, she said, “What are you doing here now?”
Before Adam answered that Jessie heard the voice of her oldest daughter, Ella, calling for Adam.
“We’re in the laundry room, El,” Jessie called back.
The seven-year-old bounded in, much the way Adam had except rather than joyfully having discovered Flint, the much more serious Ella scowled at her brother. “Gramma said you could only come with me if you held my hand, and you didn’t!”
“I had to find Fwint,” Adam answered as if his sister should have known that.
“Ella, you remember Flint, don’t you? Coop’s brother?” Jessie interjected, both to remind her daughter of her manners and to avoid a fight between her oldest and youngest.
“I remember,” was all Ella said to Flint because she was still more intent on wrangling with her brother. And to Adam she goaded, “Flint. His name is Flint.”
“Okay, okay,” Jessie said before war broke out. “What’s up, El?”
“Gramma says it’s almost dinnertime and she needs a pan she can’t find to cook. Can you come home and show her where it is?”
“I think I can probably do that. We’re finished here, aren’t we?” Jessie said, trying not to analyze why she was sorry that that was true, and why she was also sorry to be pulled away so suddenly.
“Looks finished to me,” Flint confirmed.
To Ella, Jessie said, “You can tell Gramma I’ll come home as soon as I wash out these paint things.”
“Come on, Adam, let’s go,” Ella said as if she’d just been given the upper hand.
“Ouw go wis Mama when she goes.”
“Adam …” Ella said in the warning tone she always took when she was in the mode of oldest-child-as-boss.
This time it was Flint who stepped in before a fight broke out. To Jessie, he said, “I’ll take care of the cleanup, go ahead and go home.”
Jessie laughed. “Be careful. I’m the mother of four—I don’t get offers for other people to cleanup too often and I never turn them down when I do.”
That made him smile back at her—a wide grin that showed perfect white teeth and drew ever-so-appealing lines around the corners of his mouth. And the very fact that his smile made her flush was a phenomenon Jessie didn’t want to delve into.
“Go,” he urged with a nudge of that sexy, slightly dimpled chin.
“If you’re sure …”
“I’m sure. It’s nothing.”
So he’s not only hot, but he’s also a nice guy, Jessie thought, remembering the previous day’s conversation with her sister.
But that, too, wasn’t something she should be caring about and she decided that before she started to actually like this guy, she’d better go home where she belonged.
“Okay, I’ll take you up on that, then,” she announced, scooting around on the drier so that she could get down.
But that set the tarp into motion and it began to slide, taking her with it until Flint lunged forward to catch her.
And in a split second Jessie found herself with Flint Fortune’s handsome face scant inches from hers, his arms on either side of her, his hands flat against the tarp but so close to her rear end that she thought she could almost feel them.
And her own hands somehow clasped to his powerhouse shoulders to catch herself.
Wide-eyed, she stared into his dark eyes and wasn’t quite sure whether it was the near fall from the drier or Flint that had stolen her breath. But one way or another, for a moment she was frozen there, so close that they could have kissed had either of them moved an inch.
And why that went through her mind, she had no idea.
