Page 86 of Getting Down to Business

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Doug had gone to heaven. Or rather, he’d moved into a two-bedroom loft with the woman of his dreams.

Chanda had offered to move her studio out of the loft so there was more room for the living room, but Doug wouldn’t have it. She’d already done so much; he wouldn’t have her displaced so they could have a bigger television.

Besides, he’d rather watch her work than watch television. Every time he thought her project was perfect and couldn’t need one more thing, she would do something to make it even better. Eventually, she would stop and smile in a way that beamed with her accomplishment.

“It’s done?” he said quietly, in case she was still thinking it over.

“Yep. What do you think?”

“I think it’s great.” He paused, and smiled down at her. “What is it?” Not being an art guy meant her work often looked like a lump or a bunch of squiggles until she explained it. He felt like she was removing a film from his eyes when she enlightened him.

She laughed.

“This is called Blended Family. It’s my interpretation of what a family looks like after divorce, when there’s a child that will always bind them. This is the child.” She pointed to the roundish orb in the center. “These spirals are her parents. And the tendrils coming off of those are the parents’ partners. As well as the grandparents and aunts and uncles.”

The spirals intertwined around one another. In some places they were smooth and flowing; in others they were kinked and bent. He felt them as much as saw them. He knew what those kinked parts were. The arguments and accusations.

“The most important thing is that the child is safe inside. What happens out here isn’t as important.”

“This is magnificent. You will sell this as soon as it’s listed.”

“I don’t think I’m going to sell it. I think I want to donate it.”

He didn’t understand. She’d worked so hard on this project. She needed to make a living. Didn’t she?

He looked around the apartment where they lived. He didn’t know how much she paid for a two-bedroom loft in Manhattan with this much room, but surely it was more than she made at the bar.

He assumed she made a lot of money on her paintings and sculptures, but if she gave them away…

“Who are you going to give it to?”

“Remember that horrid office building where they have the family court?” She’d gone with him when he requested he be allowed to keep Lucy overnight and provided the documents that showed she had a room of her own. To say Lucy had been excited by her new bedroom was an understatement.

The office was dark and gloomy, and made even more so by the emotions generated by everyone involved.

He looked at the sculpture again, imagining it in the lobby. Maybe it would inspire some family to keep things civilized and positive for the sake of their child.

He leaned over and kissed her.

“I can’t even…I don’t have words to describe how blessed I feel to have you in my life. Your heart is…unbelievable.”

“You might not think so if you knew I envisioned your ex-wife being there for the unveiling and due to faulty installation, it fell on her. It kind of goes against the spirit of the piece.”

He laughed and pulled her closer.

“Your heart is unbelievably real,” he amended.

* * * *

Grayson finally got off the phone with his frustrated client. The man had been yelling at him for more than fifteen minutes, as if it were Gray’s fault that his business wasn’t doing better.

They were dealing with numbers. There were no emotions with numbers, which was why Grayson loved them so much. Two plus two always equaled four, without question.

But now he was rattled. Unfortunately, it was after lunch and he couldn’t expend the extra energy with Alyssa at their apartment.

He pulled out his phone to send her a text. He would have walked over to her office, but someone might have stopped him to chat, and he wasn’t safe to be with humans yet.