Free The Unwilling Bride by Jennifer Greene Page A

sandblasted her entire afternoon—she’d been on a roll. Finally it had happened. A breakthrough.
    Partially finished cameos were strewn all over the shop—projects in jet, tortoise shell, amber and mother-of-pearl—but they were coming fine. It was the coral cameo for her sister that had been giving her fits, and it was the one that mattered most to her.
    She’d done all the base work. She’d already removed the rough backing, lubricated the first cuts with water, and carefully, painstakingly filed the exterior layers. The next step was the actual carving.
    For two blasted weeks, she’d studied that coral upside and down, willing it to talk to her, frustrated thatshe could not see the truth in it, the vision, the potential picture.
    But this morning, she’d picked up excitement. Squirm-in-her-seat, bounce-up-and-down excitement. Few things on earth required more rigid and exacting discipline than cameo carving, and Paige both demanded and expected that rigid discipline from herself. But when serious creative inspiration hit, her mood soared hopelessly into the stratosphere.
    It had hit like a sniper’s bullet, all at once. Suddenly she saw it. Two potential faces in the coral. Echoed in the two shadings of color, one rose, one paler—the profile of one woman shadowing another. And oh, man, that was so much like her sister, so perfect. Gwen’s self-image was so different than the woman Paige knew her sister to be. Gwen never saw herself as beautiful, as wonderful and warm and giving and compassionate, the way her sisters saw her, the way everyone saw Gwen but Gwen.
    And it was there in the coral.
    Or it had been earlier in the day.
    An hour later, Paige tossed down the graver in disgust, stomped around the shop slamming drawers and putting away tools. Concentration was her gift, her talent, her forte. She never had a problem with it. Ever.
    Until That Man had come into her life.
    Scowling, she trudged down the hall into the kitchen and yanked open the door to the refrigerator. Some absentminded nitwit had put the peanut butter and bread in the fridge after lunch. More to the point, the same nitwit had forgotten to defrost anything for dinner. She slammed the refrigerator door closed. She wasn’t hungry anyway.
    She stalked toward the stairs, figuring a nice long shower would shake her out of this restless mood. The phone rang when she was on the third step. She hesitated—no way she wanted to talk with anyone right then—but it could be Abby. Her oldest sister almost always called on Thursdays. The answering machine picked up after the second ring, but it was a man’s mellow tenor on the line.
    “Paige? It’s me. I know you’re there—I also know damn well you won’t pick up if you’re working—but just try not to erase the message this time, would you? I’m shooting you a big fat check in the mail, more than even I’d hoped for. You’re temporarily rich, you crazy hermit. But I need to talk to you about orders ahead, and how soon you’re going to be finished with what pieces. Just give me a ring in the next couple days. And write that down, Paige, so you don’t forget.”
    Harry Sims. She could never mistake his voice. Harry was the only man in her life, and he was a godsend. She’d never wanted anything to do with the hoity toity art world. As far as she was concerned, cameo carving was no different from being a plumber. It was what she did. Her chosen work. And she just wanted to be left alone to do it in peace.
    But Harry made that possible. She mailed him her work; he sold it. He did all the marketing and business, the art shows and art world nonsense. He’d found her ten years ago, tracked her down when he saw one of her cameos at a jeweler’s in Boston. They’d been instantly compatible. The art world was his love, where she hated it, and Harry was gay—not that anyone would know that to look at or talk with him. But he respected her choice of solitude and anonymity,respected other people