She gave him an odd look. “You’re kidding.”
“Um . . . I sort of tweaked them from the menu flavors. They know what I like.” He left out that the restaurant had named the unique combinations after him: “The Markmallow Smash” and “Rivers of Fudge.” He didn’t call them that. Ever. “You don’t have to have one,” he said. “More for me.”
“I’m having one.” She grabbed a couple more fries, then closed her eyes and swung her finger back and forth between the cups, her lips moving.
“What are you doing?”
“Eeny-meeny. Hush.” She continued until her finger stopped, and she grabbed the hot fudge.
“Eeny-meeny?” he asked.
She nodded, looking up at him with those big eyes as she pulled a hard sip from the straw. After a large swallow, she sighed. “This is good. I mean, really, really good.” She took a big bite of her burger and gave him a thumbs-up.
He smiled. He couldn’t help it. He pulled in a deep breath. “I was wondering if you would help me with something next week. Something different, not big like this. After you’re not doing anything, I mean. That is, if everything is going well with the painting and the house, and you have time.” His leg bounced under the desk, and he forced it to remain still. “It would only be a morning thing. Maybe more.” The words spilled out as smoothly as potholes on a dirt road.
She swallowed her bite and took a sip of soda, her brow furrowed. “What is it?”
“You’ll see,” he said. You’ll see? Like she’ll accept that as enough to—
“Okay. But if it’s Christmas stuff, could you give me a heads-up? I feel stupid having to ask, but I have to get my head in the right place.”
“It’s not Christmas stuff,” he assured her, though in the back of his mind, he reeled from her answer. She’d said okay. Okay as in yes.
She dropped her eyes and nodded, taking another bite, then looked at his barely touched food. “Eat. We need to get painting.”
He picked up his burger, his appetite returning.
He’d just asked out Riley Madigan. Sort of. It wasn’t his best work, but it was the best he could manage.
He picked up two fries and crammed them in his mouth. He was counting it.
Riley watched Mark out of the corner of her eye. He dipped his brush into the paint and smoothed it along the grain of the shepherd cutout. He hadn’t met her gaze since he’d rolled up his sleeves to his elbows. When he’d turned away to take off his compression glove, she’d respected his need for privacy. But now he held the brush securely and only switched to his left hand when the angle called for it.
On the forearm that had been burned, a web of scars covered his skin like pink veins, traveling from the backs of his fingers to up under his sleeve, and she wondered again about how he’d been burned, and how he’d endured it—how much still hurt, and how much didn’t.
“Riley?” he asked. His arm was poised over the board, his face tight with apprehension.
She jerked her chin up, looking him in the eyes. “I’m sorry. I just . . .”
His voice was low, strained. “I needed to roll up my sleeves so I wouldn’t get paint on them. If it’s too much—”
“No. I like your forearms.” She immediately felt heat rising to her face, and she closed her mouth.
A smile teased at his lips, but his eyes remained tense.
She put her hand on her cheek and shook her head. “I mean I like both of them. I mean, it’s not a problem to have your sleeves rolled up. Forearms are attractive on guys, and I don’t think something like scars detract from that. Women like forearms.” Her voice trailed off. “Generally speaking, of course.”
His tense look turned into one of concern for her sanity, she was sure of it.
She straightened. “All I’m saying is that I don’t think you should be ashamed of your arm.” She went back to brushing paint on Mary. “That’s all. In case you were wondering. I mean we should be grateful we have arms, right?”
STOP TALKING.
“Yes,” he said, a trace of amusement in his voice. “We should definitely be grateful we have arms.”
She dipped her brush in more paint, laughing nervously. “Listen to me, telling you what to be grateful for. Between the two of us, I’m pretty sure you have a better handle on that than I do.”
“On arms?” he asked.
“On being grateful,” she said.
“Why is that?”
She stopped painting. “Because you’ve been through so much. And with your job, you’ve likely seen more.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s been easy to be grateful,” he said, his expression clouding.
“I didn’t say that.”
He nodded. “And for the record, I’m not sure that what I’ve been through can be measured against what you’ve been through. It’s different, sure. But it’s all pain.” He glanced at her but kept painting.
“You can’t mean that,” she said.
He shrugged and remained silent.
Riley went back to work, but what he said gnawed at her. The truth was, her heart had been broken a few times. With every move, with every fight, her grandma’s death. A string of adult relationships doomed by her fear of commitment, followed by the most humiliating breakup she’d ever experienced. She’d be lying if she said she’d never considered what her life would’ve been like if her dad had been an electrical engineer or a podiatrist. If her parents hadn’t fought. If they’d just stayed home.
It shouldn’t matter anymore. It shouldn’t still affect her this way.
She stabbed at the edges of Mary with her brush as her mind shifted unwillingly to the night they’d painted a nativity set as a whole family. Dad had brought home a ceramic set, the paints, and the shellac to make it shiny after the paint had dried. It hadn’t
