Sculpting Grace: A Light Romance Novel (Art of Grace Book 2) Read Free

Halesford himself. In truth, however, I didn't have anywhere else to turn for help out of my desperate situation. Fresh out of a divorce from a greedy, cheating lump of an ex-husband, I needed a quick way to earn enough money to pay for my liabilities from the failed marriage.
    I turned to selling art as my last resort.
    Somehow, to even my own surprise, I managed to make it work. With only a couple days left before the deadline for making the payment to my ex-husband, I managed to sell a big piece, one with a six-figure price tag, and earned enough commission to buy my complete and total freedom from that crashing failure of a marriage!
    Along the way, I'd also struck up a relationship, of sorts, with Carter James, the man sitting beside me and easily driving me half-crazy with all his flirting. Carter worked as a commercial real estate agent, helping rent out buildings in town to various businesses. He bought a fair amount of art from the Halesford Gallery to decorate the spaces that he showed off to clients, so I'd been ordered by my uncle from day one to keep Carter happy.
    For some reason, Carter decided that he wanted to keep me happy, as well - and the best way to accomplish that was to sweep me off my feet and try and carry me off to bed! I did my best to hold off his advances politely, but I couldn't deny the attraction that I felt towards him. Despite just getting out of a disaster of a marriage, I let him take me out to lunch, then dinner, and then eventually back to the cute little house that he owned.
    Still, I wasn't totally ready to commit to a new relationship so soon after my last one ended, so I tried to keep our interactions light. Carter tolerated my standoffish nature, it seemed - but he never missed a chance to slip in a flirtatious comment, if only to make me blush beet red.
    Now, Carter just shrugged, still sitting behind the front desk of the art gallery. "I'm waiting for clients to call me," he answered. "It's the best way to run a business - I put out the feelers, wait for a client to express interest, and bam! Reel them in, tug them into my net, and sign a contract. Dinner, all caught!"
    "You really need to improve your fishing metaphors," I told him, shaking my head.
    "But seriously, maybe you can think of a way to improve the business," Carter went on, sitting up a little. "Here, you're complaining that the problem is that you're not getting much foot traffic, right? How could you fix that?"
    I tried to think of some solutions. "Maybe hold some sort of social event?" I suggested after a minute. "Or offer something to people to get them in the door. Some sort of advertising, perhaps? Or feature a new artist, someone who can draw a lot of people in?"
    "All good ideas," Carter nodded, but I was already shaking my head.
    "Yeah, they're good ideas," I went on, "but most of them won't work without me putting in money - which I don't have! I don't have any extra funds to offer people free stuff, or to pay for advertising. And we haven't gotten a new artist in a while. So there go all my ideas, shot down right away."
    I sat back down in my chair, dropping my forehead down until it pressed against the cool surface of the desk in front of me. "Hopeless," I finished, speaking into the stack of papers beneath my head.
    After a moment, I felt Carter's hand settle softly on my back. Thankfully, he didn't try any moves on me this time. Instead, he just softly rubbed back and forth with my knuckles across my shoulder blades. It felt seductively good, but I didn't lift my head up yet.
    "I'm sure something will come along," he told me. "Besides, when things do start happening, they'll all come at once, and you'll be thinking wistfully back to times like now, when you weren't so stressed. Try and enjoy the peace before the storm hits."
    "Thanks for the Zen wisdom," I said sarcastically into the papers beneath my head.
    He chuckled. "You know the expression about the ancient Chinese curse, don't you?"
    I shook my