Sea Glass Inn Read Free

so lasting, so permanent, when she knew too well how transitory beauty and love really were? All she could promise Melinda was a big enough pile of broken canvases to fuel a decent beach fire.
    “But I’ll try,” Pam said.
    Pam didn’t know why she made the weak promise, but Melinda accepted it with obvious gratitude. Pam hung up after taking down her cell number and sat behind the front desk, her hand stiff from holding the phone so tightly. She looked at the paper on the counter and sighed. She had scrawled Melinda’s number and a series of geometric patterns in ink across the consignment form for a group of seal sculptures. She folded the paper and tucked it behind the register.
    Now she’d have to ask the artist to sign a new form. And find a way to disappoint the beautiful Melinda.
    Pam rarely had trouble disappointing people who wanted her paintings, and she was surprised by her reluctance to do so to Melinda. Even more surprising, Pam wanted to see her again, to draw her, maybe in pastels. Pam chose a pale green background to set off Melinda’s hazel eyes and the chestnut tones in her dark hair before she could stop herself. She had painted hundreds of portraits, had made a living at it, but there were very few people she had felt this yearning, this itch to paint. Not to capture Melinda’s beauty—Pam had seen plenty of gorgeous women, but she was usually content to admire and appreciate them in person, in the flesh, in bed. But Melinda offered something more, something Pam couldn’t define. Something she didn’t want to define but that her disloyal hand wanted to grab onto, suffuse with color and texture. Melinda had stood here, determined to look at Pam’s painting and not only accept the wave’s destructive power but to uncover the hope in it, while Pam—unable even to glance at her own work—had listened to her and almost believed.
    A group of three twentysomething women entered the gallery.
    Pam’s part-time assistant, Lisa, sat at a table surrounded by colored pencils. She was chewing on the end of her long blond ponytail and working on a drawing, but she stood up to greet the customers. Pam waved her back to her seat. Lisa more than earned her wages during the busy tourist seasons, and Pam liked to give her time and space to work on her own art when business was slow. Besides, she needed a distraction from Melinda.
    She walked over to the women and smiled with more enthusiasm than she felt when the one with long dark hair made eye contact. She was too young for Pam’s usual taste, and within a few minutes Pam knew they didn’t share any artistic values. The three were immediately drawn to the cheap, mass-produced—but popular—trinkets and prints Pam carried out of necessity. They bypassed the original, quality pieces by talented local artists without even a glance. But the dark-haired woman glanced at Pam again, for a few seconds longer than before. Pam’s hands still tingled from the imagined contact as she posed Melinda for her portrait. Shifting Melinda’s shoulders so her face caught the light. Unbuttoning the top of her silky blouse and letting her hands linger as they exposed her neck a little more. Pam forced an image of the dark-haired tourist into her fantasy, and she was relieved to feel the too-intense physical arousal caused by Melinda’s phone call ease into something safer. Something sufficient for tonight.
    “Where are you ladies from?” Pam asked, directing the question only to the woman cruising her.
    “Portland,” she said. “We had a long weekend off work, so we came here for a few days.”
    Pam smiled again. Temporary. Exactly what she was looking for.

Chapter Two
    Mel woke with the sun the following morning. She had arrived at the house the night before, thankfully when it was too dark to see just how bad her present circumstances were. The real estate agent had accepted delivery of her belongings, apparently instructing the movers to dump everything just inside