Page 15 of The Distiller's Darling

7

So maybe it was a two-night stand. Naomi rolled over lazily and stared at Iain, who was sleeping peacefully in her giant bed, his limbs sprawled loosely as he lay in the same position he’d collapsed in after their last round. His breathing was slow and even, the hair of his beard underneath his bottom lip waving gently with each exhale. Her thighs had felt that same hair a few times last night, and she reached down to lightly stroke the reddened skin.

Two nights with the same man probably weren’t going to kill her, unless it was death by orgasm. A distinct possibility, given the events of the night before. She grinned. She probably shouldn’t have issued that little ultimatum at Frankie’s, but she didn’t see how she could work with Iain and sleep with him. And given a choice between the two, she was glad he’d picked the second one. She was sorry he’d have to find another designer, but she had the gig redesigning Max’s menu to generate some extra income.

She thought of her studio upstairs and the work she had to complete in order to claim payment from the gallery. Instead of the dragging weariness she’d been feeling for the last several days, she felt… excited. Creative. Interested.

Could it be?

“Yessss,” she hissed to herself. She glanced at Iain again. He was still sleeping peacefully. Maybe all she’d needed to get her artistic mojo back was some rest and relaxation. Emphasis on the relaxation part—not so much the rest, given how little she’d slept last night. She flexed her fingers. Her muscles felt loose and warm. She let one leg dangle over the edge of the bed, then scooted over an inch. No response from the sleeping collection of muscles next to her. She slid further toward the edge, then out of the bed entirely when his breathing didn’t change.

She found a pair of yoga pants and a tank top lying in a pile next to her dresser and pulled them on as silently as she could manage. A quick trip to the bathroom, then to the kitchen to pull out the cold-brewed coffee in the fridge, mixing it with almond milk. She left an empty glass out on the counter in case Iain wanted some. Finally, she headed upstairs.

As she opened the door at the top of the stairs, she felt her whole body start to tingle with excitement. It was going to be a good day; she could feel it in her fingertips. Forgetting completely about the man sleeping in her bed downstairs, she set her coffee down on her work table and headed to the clay cabinet to pull out her materials.

When she’d bought this house, it had been in need of some serious renovation. The downstairs work had been simple: refinish the floors, fix some plaster, and replace the sink in the bathroom. She’d kept the vintage kitchen, though she’d replaced the countertops. Upstairs was a different story. There had been three small bedrooms, a bizarrely large landing at the top of the stairs, and a bathroom tucked under the eaves of the roof. After conferring with her contractors and paying an architect an exorbitant amount of money to make sure it was safe, she’d knocked down every single wall. The entire upstairs was now a bright, airy studio. She’d kept the bathroom, though she’d replaced everything about it and switched the tub to a small walk-in shower to save space. She wasn’t bathing up here, but it was nice to be able to get clay dust out of her hair occasionally.

Her brother had come out to see it when the renovations were complete, bringing some of her old pieces of sculpture from their parents’ storage unit. He’d muttered darkly about resale value. Nobody would want to buy a house with only one bedroom, but she didn’t care. She’d fallen in love with River Hill the second she’d visited the town, back when Noah had bought his vineyard here more than ten years ago.

When she’d finally decided to settle down—stop roving up and down the coast as an artist-in-residence anywhere that would take her—the choice of where to live had been obvious. River Hill was close enough to San Francisco to easily get back for the events her parents insisted she attend, but far enough away to keep her family at bay otherwise. Plus, she’d gotten a great deal on this house, and she was pretty sure her property values went up every time Max got nominated for a James Beard award or Noah’s wine won yet another award.

She chuckled. Property values! If her mother could hear her now.

She hummed quietly as she worked the clay to loosen it. She felt warm, relaxed, creative. Like she could finally see the images in the clay again, the ones hidden inside screaming to be let out by her hands and her tools. With the ease of long practice, she slid a second brick of clay onto her table and began to alternate her kneading. When the two chunks were flexible enough, she’d combine them. This piece was going to be big. She would shape the basic form of the sculpture first—a large egg-like thing built around a stability rod with some assistance from structural wire—then let it dry. Later, she’d move on to the carving portion of the proceedings: her favorite. She loved scraping away tiny layers of clay to find the art underneath.

Two hours later, she sat back from the table with a satisfied sigh. “There.” She narrowed her eyes. “Wait.” She leaned forward and used the back edge of her hand to create a shallow, curving divot along the length of the shape. “Much better.”

“What is it?” Iain’s voice came from the doorway.

She whipped around and discovered him leaning against the doorframe, clad in the same clothes he’d worn yesterday, but with hair visibly wet from a shower. He raised the glass she’d left out for him. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“Oh. Um, you’re welcome.” She blinked at him, trying to bring herself back to the real world.

“Did I interrupt? I’m sorry.”

“No, I—” She frowned at him. “Wait, how long have you been there?”

He grinned. “Not too long. About twenty minutes. You seemed busy, so I watched.”

She didn’t usually let people come up here at all, let alone watch her work. But she hadn’t even noticed him. Either she’d been in some kind of creative trance or he’d been incredibly quiet. Maybe both.

She moved automatically to clean up her mess, gathering the plastic wrap and the boxes the clay had come in, as well as a few stray, drying crumbs of the stuff, before tossing them all into a large garbage can in the corner. “I, um, didn’t want to wake you.”

Aside from Noah, she’d never had sex in River Hill. It was her sanctuary, the place she did her most creative work. Even he’d only been in her house a few times, and only in her bed once—on a night they’d had too much wine to go anywhere else. And he’d had the courtesy to creep out silently in the morning before she got up, since he generally woke at some bizarre early hour of the morning to go and do farm-like things at the vineyard.

But here was Iain. In her house. In her studio! He’d slept in her bed! What was she doing? He was watching her steadily as she cleaned, sipping his coffee slowly but not making any move to approach her.

She folded up the faded canvas she used to cover her work table and told herself to relax. It was just Iain. He was nice, he did extremely good work with his hands, and he wasn’t staying. He’d need to go looking for another designer for his labels, for one thing.

She pasted a smile on her face and turned to him. “All done.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You never answered me.”

“What?”

He nodded toward her piece, now drying on the rack next to the work table. “What is it?”

“Oh.” She stared at it, feeling awkward. Nobody had come to look at her work in progress since she’d been an artist-in-residence and it had been part of the requirements of the position to allow studio tours. She’d never done her best work that way. But the rent had been free. “I’m actually not entirely sure yet.” She smiled fondly at the blank shape as it sat there, waiting for her to sharpen its edges. “But it’s going to be good.”

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