Sea Glass Inn Read Online Free PDF

voice. Her body kept betraying her emotions, no matter how mentally resolute she tried to be. She wouldn’t beg again, but she wasn’t about to let Pam leave without agreeing to paint.
    “Okay, I’ll do it,” Pam said with obvious reluctance, as if she could read Mel’s thoughts. She quoted a price per painting that was a few hundred less than Mel had spent on the seascape. “It might be a month or more between paintings, though.”
    “That’s fine,” Mel said, reaching out and shaking Pam’s hand to seal the agreement before she could back out. Skin roughened by coastal weather, grip firm and confident. Just as Mel had anticipated.
    Her own hand must feel soft in comparison. She broke contact at the thought. “I can give you a check for a deposit.”
    Pam waved her off, hoping to shake off the sensation of Mel’s hand in hers as she did so. Mel had struck like a snake, snatching at Pam’s promise the moment it had been halfheartedly given and retreating again after a too-brief touch. “You can pay me as I finish each one,” she said. She hoped her confident attitude would erase the tormenting vision of five empty canvases. It didn’t.
    Pam got in her car and drove slowly home, wondering why she had not only agreed to produce more mosaics but to do so at a less-than-market price. Tears, beauty, and stubbornness. A deadly combination. Mel might be coiled and ready to fight for her new life, but Pam wasn’t about to join the battle. And she certainly didn’t need the stress from an obligation to paint hanging over her. But she had given her word, had calmly shaken Mel’s hand when all her instincts were screaming at her to run.
    Mel’s grip had been unhesitating and sure, at odds with the woman who only minutes before had been sitting in an empty room and crying over a bent nail. Warm and alive, as if she had been soaking up the October sun and could have shared the heat if she had only held on a few seconds longer. Shared her trust in Pam’s ability to paint, when Pam herself had no such faith. She had an uneasy feeling Mel was the type who kept her promises and expected others to do the same. She had no idea how she would be able to keep her part of the bargain and deliver five paintings over the next six months when she hadn’t been able to complete that many in the past few years.
    Mel had said to paint whatever inspired her. She couldn’t have realized how much that word hurt. Except for a brief glimmer of a vision, a flash of yearning to capture a scene, Pam rarely felt inspired to do more than a brief sketch on a restaurant placemat or on the back of a grocery receipt. Her muse, or whatever, seemed to have abandoned her, and she wasn’t even sure she cared. Art had been her connection to life, to the people—whether family or strangers—who caught her attention and wouldn’t let go. Now she breathed empty air, untouched and tasteless, except for those few occasions when a scene or landscape managed to get past her lips, into her lungs, and change her somehow. Those breaths were bitter, and she barely remembered the time when painting had been simple and painless. She could only hope Mel would give up on her business and move away before the paintings were due.
    Pam fumbled for another cigarette. As much as she wanted to be free from the commission, she was surprised to realize a part of her wanted Mel to succeed. She appreciated Mel’s desire to be independent and to take care of herself. Pam had always strived to be the same way. And she grudgingly admired Mel’s ability to get what she wanted, no matter how reluctant the other person involved might be. But in Mel’s quest for a successful business, something was going to have to give—either the broken-down mess of a house or her vision of a thriving inn. When Pam had first looked around the cluttered yard and time-worn rooms of the old Lighthouse Inn, her money would have been on the house as victor. Now she wasn’t so sure.

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