A Summer Affair: A Novel - By Elin Hilderbrand Page 0,12
don’t get it. We have to make money.”
“Right, so the piece would have to be on par with the Bubbles series.”
Claire returned to her chair and polished off her wine. Because she hadn’t eaten anything, her head was vibrating like a tuning fork. “I don’t work anymore. I shut down the hot shop when my son was born.”
“But as I understood it, that was temporary? A sabbatical rather than retirement?”
Claire put her hands to her face to cool her cheeks. Lock Dixon knew more about her—much more—than she would have guessed. Claire was curious. He understood this how? From whom? Claire herself didn’t know when she would resume working. The hot shop behind the house was now shuttered and locked, cold and dormant. Claire looked at the shop with longing—of course she did, glassblowing was in her blood—but also with a sense that she was a woman with her priorities straight. She had four children who needed her. She could go back to glassblowing once she had them all safely in school.
“I’m not working anymore,” Claire repeated.
“So you won’t do a piece for the auction?”
Claire stared at him. Was he taunting her? Was he daring her to say no? He poured her more wine, which she gratefully accepted.
“I’m not working,” she said.
“Just think how that will bolster the price,” Lock said. “You haven’t produced anything in over a year—it will be nearly two years by next August, right? This would be your triumphant return.”
“But art is subjective. What if I make something and nobody likes it?”
“You’re a genius.”
“Now you’re teasing me.”
“Tell you what,” he said.
“What?” Claire said.
He was quiet, looking at her, the hint of a smile on his face. Claire was confounded. He was teasing her and she was enjoying it. Her sensibilities were aroused, her intelligence piqued. Lock Dixon was, perhaps, the only person in the world—short of her handful of patrons—who cared if she started blowing glass again. But he couldn’t egg her into it just because he was a man, a wealthy man, a man who had poured her a glass of wine, a man whose wife Claire had unintentionally wronged. He couldn’t make her do it. She did have boundaries!
“What?” she said again.
“I’ll bid fifty thousand dollars on it myself.”
“What?” Claire said, incredulous now.
He bent over to look her in the eye. His face was so close she could have kissed him. Just the fleeting thought of kissing him put the color back into her cheeks. She pushed him away mentally and backed up a few inches in her chair.
“You will not.”
“I will. Fifty thousand dollars. If you create a piece for the auction, a real Claire Danner Crispin original, museum quality, one-of-a-kind, whatever your mind’s eye comes up with, I will bid fifty thousand dollars on it myself.”
Claire shook her head. He was kidding. He had to be kidding: fifty thousand dollars was the sum of his take-home pay as executive director.
“You’re nuts,” she said.
“Maybe I am,” he said, in a way that seemed to have meaning, and although Claire was high from the wine, she didn’t let him undermine her resolve.
She stood up. “I don’t work anymore,” she said, astonishing herself. She wanted to give back to the universe, she wanted to act in kindness—but even she had her limits.
The kids were all asleep when Claire got home, and she checked on them one by one, rooting around like a raccoon in the dark. They seemed reasonably clean, the girls’ hair was combed, and J.D.’s homework was complete, though stuffed into his backpack like garbage. Claire smoothed out the pages of long division and tucked it in neatly. In the nursery, she pulled the blanket over Zack’s shoulders and stroked his cheek. God, how she worried about him! He was healthy, despite having been a preemie; her pediatrician, Dr. Patel, reassured her of this again and again.
In their bedroom, Jason was waiting for her. He wanted sex all the time, even after so many years of marriage. Tonight would have been a good night to indulge him with a serious, creative effort, but sex seemed too tame for Claire’s mood. Her meeting with Lock Dixon had gotten her gears turning. She wanted to pore over her back issues of GlassArt. She wanted to go into the hot shop—museum-quality piece!—and sketch until dawn.
“Come to bed,” Jason said.
Thinking about the hot shop suddenly felt illicit. “How were the kids?”