“How is it, having your sister so much older?” he asked.
“I don’t know anything else, so it seems normal to me. Of course, my nieces and nephews are all more my contemporaries than Ava is, but it’s just how our relationship has always been.”
“That makes sense. When I was younger, I used to wish for siblings but I don’t know that I would have liked it. I’m pretty competitive with just me. If you add others to the mix...”
“Disaster?”
“Maybe. I don’t know,” he said wryly. “I can’t imagine being any other way.”
“Me either,” Piper admitted. “It has caused some friction with Ava over the years. She wants me to be more like...everyone else, I guess. She grew up with such a firm vision of the perfect family she wanted to create, and anything that doesn’t match that image is a problem for her.”
“You were a problem?”
“I tried not to be, but I can’t conform to what anyone else wants me to be,” she said.
And that was why he was sitting across from her on this Wednesday afternoon getting wildly aroused while they discussed business. But there was a part of him that felt like this was more than just lust. And yet another part of him didn’t trust what was happening between them because she was Ava’s sister. Was she playing him? Was he playing her? Should he just walk away?
His libido wasn’t going to let him. Not until he’d had a chance to explore the sensuality she kept letting him get glimpses of. “I’m glad.”
They finished up their lunch and made plans to meet later in the week, and Brian contented himself that he’d see her again soon at his offices. He knew that the best things in life took time.
Gracie Diaz had the kind of long, straight brown hair that Piper envied. She also had beautiful olive skin and big brown eyes. Piper smiled when she saw the woman she’d known since she was a girl. Gracie’s father had done work for the Wingates until his untimely death. She’d recently had a huge lottery win and was now a mega-millionaire. Something that Piper suspected the other woman was still trying to come to terms with.
Gracie had been waitressing to put herself through school and working hard to support her mom and brother over the years. After she graduated, Beth Wingate had offered her a job as her assistant and showed her the ropes of event planning. But now, due to her good fortune, she would never again have to worry about taking care of her family.
“Hi, Gracie,” Piper said, giving the other woman a warm hug.
“Hello, Piper. The gallery isn’t as busy as the last time I was in here,” Gracie murmured.
“It’s not. I think some people aren’t sure how closely tied my gallery was with the Wingate companies. But that’s not a problem. We’re doing just fine. I spoke to Lauren and she mentioned that you were going to invest in the restaurant and help her decide on the art for your new restaurant venture.”
“I am,” Gracie said. “This is so exciting! For the first time in my life if I want to help someone, I can just do it. I love it.”
“I bet.” Piper smiled brightly. “I’ve pulled a few different paintings and some prints for you to look at, and we’ve set them up in the viewing room. Can I get you something to drink while we look at them?”
“I’d love some water,” Gracie said.
“You got it,” Piper replied. “Head into the room at the end of the hall. I’ll be right there.”
Piper entered the break room where Coco was eating a chimichanga that smelled strongly of chilis and seasoning. Piper grabbed two refillable water bottles that were monogrammed with the gallery’s logo and headed out into the hallway where she noticed Gracie bolting toward the bathroom. Concerned, she closed the break room door and went after her.
From outside the locked bathroom door she could hear the other woman throwing up, then the sound of a flushing toilet. “Gracie, are you okay?”
The door opened and Gracie wiped her pale face with a towel. “Yes. I think I might have a stomach bug. Sorry about that.”
“Here, have some water,” Piper said, leading her into the viewing room and helping her take a seat. “I don’t think we have anything bland to eat. There might be some butter cookies.”
“I’m okay. The water is perfect,” Gracie reassured her, looking at the paintings on the walls. “I love that longhorn image. Do you have more from that artist?”
“I do. I like it too. His work reminds me a lot of Ansel Adams’s black-and-white photos. They are so evocative,” Piper said. “I left the book of prints in my office. He’s done some limited lithographic runs, so that’s an option too.”
She left Gracie looking at the other works they’d assembled in the viewing room and went to collect the artist’s portfolio. She returned to find the younger woman standing under a picture that was titled Broken Giants. It was a photo of the oil derricks that dotted the landscape out toward Royal and Midland. The land was vast and empty except for the derricks with the sun reflecting off the tops.
It was a very different image from the longhorn steers, but she could start to get an idea of the kind of subjects that Gracie liked.
“Do you like that?”
“Yes. It reminds me of how oil has given so many wealth, yet at the same time there is still all that land with nothing,” she said.
“So true,” Piper said. “Here is the first artist’s portfolio. I have another artist who is doing something you also might like, but he’s not established, and his art would be more of a risk than an investment. Do you want to see it?” she asked.
“Yes. I think Lauren and I both want the restaurant to have the right feel, and if the art is an investment that’s great, but it’s secondary to the feel of the images.”
“Okay. Look through that while I find his work on my tablet,” Piper said. They had a lot of different ways for their patrons to view the art that the gallery sold. As an artist herself, she got that. It was easier to represent herself through her art than to allow people to see the inner emotional part of her in real life. Safer, she thought. She knew that some of that was baggage from her past failed relationship, but it had felt less risky to let herself be free in the studio instead of with...men. Unbidden, a vision of Brian’s sensual mouth drifted through her mind.
She shook her head, forcing herself back to the work. Some of the artists she’d worked with were more old-school and liked to send in slides that the gallery had to reproduce. Others sent in jpg images. She liked the variety because it reflected how the art and those who created it were all so different.
She and Gracie spent the next hour going over everything they had in the gallery that had the feel of the artwork that Gracie had been initially drawn to, and at the end of their meeting, Gracie had agreed to purchase several paintings and then asked for that new artist to come to the restaurant and create a custom piece for her.