Free Selling Grace: A Light Romance Novel (Art of Grace Book 1) by Samantha Westlake Page A

the warehouse, I saw the workshop - big blocks of stone were stacked on pallets, and I saw several boards on the walls holding a wide variety of tools. I saw chisels galore, of course, as well as all different sizes of hammers, but there were plenty of other stone carving tools that I couldn't even name.
    On the other side of the warehouse, a wooden multi-panel screen shielded the far side from view. "What's over there?" I asked, nodding towards it.
    Onyx smiled at me. "That's where I eat and sleep when I'm not working on my art. Would you like to see?"
    "No, that's okay," I replied casually, as my heart nearly leapt out of my chest as it thudded. Onyx's bed! Someplace horizontal, where he probably slept naked, his muscled form on display on top of the silk sheets, where he brought back the women he picked up so that he could show them his own prodigiously sized statue...
    I quickly moved across the warehouse floor towards the workshop side. "Are these some of the finished pieces?" I asked, nodding over to where a sheet covered up a bunch of lumpy but otherwise unclear shapes beneath.
    Onyx nodded, moving after me. "In fact, this is one of the pieces that I haven't yet managed to move," he said, reaching for the sheet. "I approached Preston about displaying it in the gallery, but he wasn't sure that he would have enough floor space."
    Before I could respond to that, Onyx twitched the sheet aside, and I gasped out loud as I saw what lay beneath.
    Holy crap. Talk about an imposing statue! The piece that had been hidden beneath the sheet was smooth black stone, much like Onyx's other pieces, but this one was most definitely oversized, big enough to make any woman's eyes water with pain as she imagined it in real life, and definitely more than big enough to make any man, no matter how much heat he packed down south, feel totally inadequate. Hell, I could straddle the thing and practically ride it around like a horse!
    "Oh my god," I gasped out.
    Onyx smiled again at me. "My inspiration came from a beautiful documentary on Africa," he said. "The unsullied beauty of the wilderness there lit an inner fire in me, and despite the lateness of the hour, I couldn't sleep until I'd carved the rough shape of this piece. It took far longer than I expected to finish, but I truly believe that it's one of my finest pieces, and an incredible representation of my work."
    "Yeah, Africa," I echoed faintly, wondering if the documentary, more specifically, had focused on elephants. "I, um, I can see why Preston might not have wanted it in his gallery."
    Onyx frowned. "He said something about not being sure if the floorboards could accommodate the weight of the carving, I believe."
    "Right, right, that's what I meant, too. The floorboards." Not because my Uncle Preston didn't want to have a five-foot stone cock sitting front and center in one of the rooms of his art gallery. My uncle had a fairly open mind, but I couldn't imagine even him going quite this far in embracing the art.
    Hah, embracing the art. Looking at the massive shape, I doubted that I could even get my hands wrapped around the thing. Onyx certainly had a grandiose imagination.
    "I wonder if he measures up," Portia's voice whispered inside of my head, and my face momentarily went blank as I clamped down on that line of thinking before it could progress any further.
    Fortunately, a different line of thinking had instead started up in my head, one that could probably do a much better job of helping me out in the short term. "But you do want to sell this piece, right?" I asked Onyx.
    He nodded. Was that a glimpse of regret in his eyes? I couldn't tell in the shadows and dappled sun streaming in through the high windows of the warehouse space. "Yes, although the price is quite high. This is a piece for a true collector, one who can appreciate the imagery that I'm trying to capture."
    "Or someone who just really, really wants to brag," I added, but I made sure to say it under my breath,