The Unwilling Bride by Jennifer Greene Read Free Book Online Page B

raw material for a long time before I’m sure what to do with it.” She motioned around the shop, where there were various cameos in different stages. “Each part in theprocess takes some studying and thought, so that’s partly why I work on several pieces at the same time.”
    “I see. I also see many pieces that you have finished.” He paused at the top shelf where she had a dozen finished cameos, ranging from pendants and jewelry to freestanding sculptures. “Paige?”
    “What?”
    “They steal my breath. And I am not making joke.” His head swiveled toward her, eyes dark and piercing. “You create beauty like I have never seen.”
    She’d just taken a sip of hot Japanese green tea, tangy, almost bitter, and for a second she couldn’t seem to swallow. Others had praised her work. Obviously she couldn’t make a living at it if she were pitawful rotten. Talent was an ingredient that enabled her to do something she loved, but otherwise she couldn’t care less what anyone thought of it.
    Yet his praise meant something. It was embarrassing, to feel the nest of warm fuzzies in the pit of her stomach, the sudden flush climb her cheeks. He wasn’t even smiling, but he’d delivered that comment bare, in a quiet, rough-wrapped baritone that struck her as intimate and honest, meant to touch her. And it did.
    “I’m not due that credit,” she said quietly. “I don’t really create, Stefan. All I can ever do is have the skill to bring out the best from the raw material.”
    “You take no credit for being creator? Whoever told you that was dimwit numskull, not appreciate you, sold you bucket of malarky.” Numskull and malarky had been two slang expressions he’d picked up this week, and he’d been testing them in some mighty funny applications. Just then, though, there was no humor in his eyes or his voice. The frown on his brow was a scolding. “You have a gift for beauty, a gift fortruth. It is everywhere in this room. Perfect example, this one—”
    He strode over to the jade, the cameo of the woman staring at her reflection in the pond, the unsettling cameo that she’d made for her sister and had yet to figure out what to do with. Paige was surprised he’d even noticed it. It wasn’t with the other finished pieces, but stashed in limbo by itself on another shelf. There was no specific reason she should have minded his seeing it, yet her pulse was suddenly beating uneasily, her nerves on some strange edge.
    “This is you,” he said.
    “Pardon?”
    “This is you, in the cameo.” He glanced at her face, and his shaggy eyebrows suddenly arched in question. “Surely you knew this? That you captured yourself?”
    That strange, sudden uneasiness instantly passed, as she let out a peal of laughter. “You have a wonderful imagination. That’s nothing remotely like me, not in a million years. And that isn’t how cameo carving works, Stefan. You can’t do a portrait of yourself—or anyone else—nothing that deliberate. The carver works with the grain and layer of the stone, finds a face or profile in the raw material, but you can’t ever ‘order’ that raw material to make a face you want.”
    “I understand this explaining. And not to get your liver in an uproar, my lambchop. I believe you.” He motioned again to the jade. “But that’s still you.”

Four
    “D o you need some money? You wouldn’t be a doofus and lie if you needed some financial help, would you…? Yeah, I know you can take care of yourself, Gwen, but I’ve been making so much money I’m ashamed, downright sinfully ashamed—you’d be doing me a big favor if you took some of this guilty loot off my hands…okay, okay, don’t get your pride all bent out of shape. I hear you, you’re okay financially…”
    Paige had grabbed the telephone just as she was climbing upstairs to get ready for bed. In one swift move, she lifted the receiver, tugged the mens’ extra large Harvard nightshirt over her head and plastered the