Free Keeping You by Jessie Evans Page B

had picked out. The rest of the house bore feminine touches as well—curtains, decorative pillows on the big green couch, and a giant potted plant in one corner by the window. Nash’s place was cute in a country sort of way, but it was the kitchen that had grabbed Aria’s attention when they walked in, and the kitchen she returned to when Felicity was tucked in and chewing on her bunny’s ear in her nightly pre-sleep, self-soothing ritual.
    Aria wandered through the living room into the large, combined, kitchen-and-dining-room space, getting a closer look at the artwork crowding the walls. The wood the pieces were painted on was different colors, but all faded, as if it had been sourced from various crumbling buildings. The choice of canvas was interesting, but it was the paintings on the wood that demanded a second look.
    Each portrait was of a different local animal—owl, deer, rabbit, hawk—but with the animals’ body parts made up of pieces of old machinery, cogs, wheels, engine parts, and other things you might find in a junkyard. The artist had used muted reds, blues, and a wide variety of rust colors in his or her choice of paint. The effect was stunning on the old wood. The portraits looked modern, but old-fashioned; sad and worn, but somehow playful at the same time.
    They were unlike anything she’d seen before, but still strangely familiar. She was inches away from a painting of an owl with mufflers for wings and bicycle spokes for eyes, trying to figure out how she might be familiar with the artist’s work, when Nash spoke from behind her.
    “ I just pulled those out of the garage a few weeks ago,” he said. “My ex hated them.”
    “ Really? I li…” She turned, losing the ability to form words when she saw Nash dressed in nothing but a pair of loose, black, drawstring pajama pants.
    He had said he was going to grab a quick shower while she bathed Felicity, but for some reason she’d expected him to change into something less…comfortable.
    “ Yeah, said they gave her the creeps.” Nash wandered over to the fridge and grabbed a beer. “You want one?’
    “ No, thanks. But the…um…the paintings. I like them. A l-lot,” she stuttered as he twisted the top from a Michelob Ultra and perched on a stool at the kitchen bar a few feet away.
    Aria glanced up at the ceiling, then down at the floor, letting her eyes rest anywhere but on Nash’s bare chest. His stunning bare chest with its perfectly sculpted muscles and concave stomach and that six pack that looked closer to an eight-pack judging from her brief glance at it. The man was built like a professional athlete, all muscle, with a body designed to perform.
    Aria was doing her best not to imagine Nash’s body performing in a bedroom-type setting when he said—
    “ Thanks. I only started painting again a few years ago. I still feel a little rusty.”
    — and Aria’s jaw dropped for entirely different reasons.
    “ They’re yours?” she asked. “Oh my god, they’re stunning. I love them!”
    Nash shrugged, looking pleased, but embarrassed. “They’re all right. I still have a long way to go. You know how it is, you only see the places where you didn’t get things the way they were in your head.”
    “ No, I think they’re great. Really, I love them,” Aria said, turning back to study the paintings. “It almost makes me want to pick up a brush again.”
    “ You should. You’re talented.”
    “ No. Maybe, once, a long time ago,” Aria said, waving her hand dismissively in the air. “But I haven’t painted since high school. I mean, I messed around with clay and Paper Mache at this commune I lived in for awhile, but nothing after that.”
    “ Why not?”
    She shrugged. “I wasn’t making a lot of money, and art supplies are expensive.”
    “ I hear you,” Nash said. “That’s part of the reason I quit for years. My sister and I were helping my parents build a new house. Most of my spare money went there for a long