Page 17 of Undertow

Random, but okay.

I shrug when Julia’s gaze locks on my face. “Maybe.Areyou an artist, Shaw?”

“Does sculpting words count as art?”

Did her lips just tip up? If they did, they return to their flat stasis in the next breath. Her eyes, though, they’re still touching me. Caressing my features with intense concentration. Her mind is definitely on a much different trajectory. The one I want?

“Somehow I think your words would. Well, sorry about your experience in Palmetto Acres, but you’re always welcome in Undertow. Get him a piece of Lincoln’s key lime pie,” she says to Nicole. “And a shot of the corn fire.”

“Corn fire?” I ask.

Her pretty lips spread into their first genuine smile.

Damn. Now that’s a thing to write about.

Ethereal.

Magnificent in its transience.

“You’ll see,” she says, walking away.

For the next hour,I study Julia Hartford as discreetly as possible. More accurately, I study her studying me. I can tell shedoesn’t like the fact that I’ve piqued her interest, but it doesn’t stop her gaze from wandering to my table every chance it gets.

As much as I enjoy the view as well, I only let our eyes lock a few times. Just enough to indicate I might be interested, but not enough to assure her I am.

The rest of the time I act like I’m engrossed in my book, a biography of an obscure Eastern European sculptor. I actuallyhavebeen reading it, which is why I have the book with me in the first place. Not surprisingly, the literature selection in the gift shop of The Palmetto Grande was woefully lacking when I looked for a prop before I left.

“Good book?” Julia asks.

I pretend to be surprised when I look up, even though I saw her coming. By the spike in my blood pressure, she’d be locked in my awareness even if she wasn’t my mission. I can’t remember a time I’ve had to manage my own impulses in these encounters. I’m in deep shit if I don’t get my reactions under control.

Emotion is weakness. A lesson learned long before Montgomery McArthur.

Torn pages, bloody faces, shredded traces of what’s left to be locked away.

“What is this garbage?! How is this our son?”

Always with a physical sting to punish what I am.

Smiling, I hold up the book to display the cover. “Actually, yeah. This artist sculpts gardens.”

“She’s a landscaper?”

I shake my head. “Not real gardens. She uses scraps of salvaged materials to design flowers and plants, then installs them as an outdoor collection to resemble a garden. I looked up some of her work. It’s pretty cool, actually.”

“So, she’s a scavenger of beauty.”

Wow.

“Like I’m a scavenger of words,” I muse to myself. Except it wasn’t to myself.

Shit. Where did that confession come from?

Her gaze finds me again. “A scavenger of words. I like that.”

I swallow a cringe and look away. The truth has no place in this conversation—or anywhere in my life. Only one notebook knows what’s real. The words that hide in the dark.

“What doyouscavenge?” I ask, adding a flirtatious grin.