Page 139 of Painting Celia

Celia snuck a look at him. His attention to Kelsey felt off, artificial. It had been so easy to understand what he wanted before they broke up. Where was that honesty he’d always railed about?

Kelsey moved a sticky note to a new place on the calendar. “Hang out. We can talk after this.”

León shrugged, offering a half-smile that didn’t quite reach his dark eyes.

He hadn’t pushed back at all. Why wasn’t he fighting, burning with the same intensity that once defined him? Who was he now? The uncertainty was a vise, squeezing tight around her heart.

Celia looked over her shoulder at the black iron stairs, offering escape up to distracting work, up to her new loft home. For the first time, she saw an echo of her father’s black iron bridge; another way of escape. She clenched her jaw. No. She was better than that.

•••

León stuffed the rejection deep down, ignoring the sinking feeling in his gut. It had been a long shot, and ill-timed due to his pleasure at landing Hector for her. She’d considered having him here, though! He’d seen her body respond, that pink blush creeping up her neck like the slow bloom of a morning rose.

The damned drill noise stopped again, and the board-carrying bigshot Carlos disappeared through a back alcove. Celia had wanted to go help the tall klutz; he’d seen her stifle a step in his direction. León risked a peek at her.

She still looked toward the stairs, the lovely familiar line of her neck and jaw like the curve of a river, her shoulders inching back as she stood taller and looked back to the front desk.

As if a cold gust of wind had blown straight through the room, Celia suddenly froze, snapping rigidly to attention. Her eyes grew round with terror.

León’s skin prickled, a shiver tracking down his spine. What… why? Her eyes were riveted past him, on the front door. Frowning, he glanced quickly too, seeing a short, vague figure outside, a silhouette cupping a hand to the fogged glass to look in.

“Oh no,” Celia breathed, her whisper nearly lost in the vast space. She was pale as death, her face suddenly as blank as an untouched canvas.

The figure entered, an older woman well-bundled against the damp weather. She was petite and graying, her champagne-toned anorak beaded with mist as if she had walked through a cloud, her neutral light-eyed gaze taking in the empty brick warehouse.

“Good morning,” Kelsey chirped, slipping into her La Creche sales voice. “We’re not open yet, but do you have a question?”

“A few.” The woman smiled absently, her footsteps a soft tip-tap against the concrete floor as she walked to the front desk. “I have been leaving you voice mails for weeks, Celia Rose.”

León gasped. No way. No goddamn way.

Kelsey still had no idea. “Our grand opening is in two days. Do you live nearby?”

“No,” the woman said. “I’m visiting.”

She didn’t look like a monster. She seemed polite, comfortably social. Sort of like a retired teacher or office manager. She had a competent air, her presence solidly normal.

A glance at Celia was alarming. She was stiff as a ramrod, her posture as rigid as the steel beams that framed the warehouse, but her blank face told him everything. A protective rush flooded through him. He stood at the ready to help, as soon as she gave any hint of what she wanted.

•••

Mom was here, and she was mad.

Celia could see her anger in the flinty fractional narrowing of her eyelids, the thin creases at the corner of her mouth, the smoothly deliberate restraint in her walk. Celia was dead in her sights. Careful, her trapped body crooned, careful….

“We’re not open,” León said. He sounded different, hard-edged.

Mom flickered a glance through him, dismissing him immediately. “What is this place?”

Celia’s voice, small and cracked, sounded far away. “How did you know about….”

Kelsey’s head tilted.

“I thought your phone number might have changed,” her mother said. “I put your name in Google and saw this place.”

“I said we’re not open!” León said louder. Celia wanted to look at him, encourage him to say it again, draw some strength from the steel she heard in his voice, but she was pinned by Mom’s gimlet eyes.

“I stopped at your house first, but no one was there.” She lifted her hand, bulging purse dangling from her fingers, a loose charging cord hanging out of the top and whipping about as she waved it. “I’ve got bags. The least you can do is give me a room. And your new phone number.”

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