Secrets Gone South (Crimson Romance) Read Online Free Page B

bad.
    He had approached Shine Sipes about sharing a booth. Shine owned the barbershop but, for a hobby, made pine birdhouses, magazine racks, and bookends to sell at the Booster Fair every year. Turns out, Shine’s grandchildren were coming for the weekend and he’d told Will that he would pay for the booth and Will could keep all the money from his own wares if Will would mind the booth the whole weekend for both of them.
    That weekend, Will got a break, when he wasn’t looking for a break, when he didn’t know there were any breaks to be had. Ellery Kane, who turned out to be a master craftsman from North Carolina, saw Will’s little carvings and offered him an apprenticeship in his shop. Ellery, who was half Cherokee, maintained that Will must have Native American blood or he wouldn’t have such talent. Will had no idea and he doubted if his parents had known either. People who were always worried about food for the table and—in his father’s case—whiskey in the cupboard didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about heritage and culture.
    But Will
did
spend a lot of time learning to please Ellery, no mean feat. Ellery taught him to respect the wood, to feel its life force. He learned right away that you didn’t compel the wood to be something it didn’t want to be. The object that the wood would become was already there; it just had to be drawn out.
    In return for what he learned, Will spent long hours in Ellery’s workshop helping to create the fine furniture that had earned Ellery an impeccable reputation and not a small amount of money. Though Ellery paid Will barely enough to live on, it was the best bargain of Will’s life.
    After three years, Ellery pronounced Will his equal in some areas and his superior in hand carving. He promised Will would have all the work he could do, because Ellery would send him referrals.
    Before he left, Will had said to Ellery, “Sometimes I wonder why you did all this for me.”
    Ellery nodded. “And other times?”
    “You think it was your duty. You think, when you recognize talent, it would be wrong not to cultivate it.”
    Ellery nodded. “I’ve trained others. Only two. You’re my best accomplishment.”
    “Better than that bed that’s in the museum out west?”
    Ellery had only nodded.
    So Will had gone back to his woods in Merritt and set up his shop. The orders poured in. Eventually, he made enough money to build his log house with its six bedrooms, exposed beams, and a stone fireplace big enough for a child to stand up in. Eventually, he made a name for himself. Eventually, to his great sadness, Ellery Kane died and Will had to become choosier about the commissions he accepted because there was only so much that one man with standards could do.
    Somewhere along the way, he came to revere his surroundings and cherish the woods that gave him serenity and satisfaction. He replanted when he harvested and he never harvested lightly. He stopped eating the creatures of the land, though he would sometimes eat fish. The water was alien to him.
    It was the trees that gave him his life, even if they couldn’t give him Arabelle Avery. And he was all right with that. He was all right with everything—even that he wouldn’t be able to work on the music stand until the stitches dissolved in about two weeks. His hand would heal and he would finish then. When he called the client and told him the project would be delayed and why, the man’s main concern would be Will’s injury. Will knew this for sure because he didn’t accept commissions from greedy, impatient people.
    Meanwhile, until he healed, he would consider the large number of inquires from people from all over the world who were begging him to make them a bed, a bread bowl, a jewelry box, or a whole dining room suite. And he would sketch, plan, and walk a property and read the wood in a church with his friend Brantley.
    Life would go on with no surprises and little excitement. There were worse ways to