Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 133878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 669(@200wpm)___ 536(@250wpm)___ 446(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 669(@200wpm)___ 536(@250wpm)___ 446(@300wpm)
He pulled out his sketchbook, the one he’d been working in for the last couple of months. It had been fresh and clean when they’d taken the jobs at the Kingman Ranch, and now he was down to four or five pages left. It made him oddly anxious. When he got this deep in a sketchbook, he kind of wanted to start a new one. To feel fresh and new. This one chronicled the last year of their lives. There were sketches of Kale Kingman lording over his land like some Greek statue. A drawing of one of the only female hands he’d worked with there. He studied it for a moment. She was walking away from the main house with the saddest look on her face. He’d taken a mental picture and thought he’d done a good job capturing all the chaos going on as the woman was walking toward the truck that would take her to the bus stop.
The later pictures were of Bliss. There was one of everyone sitting in Stella’s in the early morning light. One of Trev and Bo on their horses, riding out to work. One of Beth and her children in the sunlight.
One of Shane standing alone in the bunkhouse. It had been a question of light at the time. He’d liked how the sun lit his brother up like a halo, but now that he was looking at it there was a loneliness to the drawing, an ache for something. For a home.
How hard had all the wandering been on his brother? He’d never thought about it but had Shane ever had a real home? One where he was welcome and loved simply for who he was and not what he could do?
What if Brooke could give him that love?
What if he couldn’t handle living in the city? What if he couldn’t breathe?
Well, he was here now. He wasn’t thinking about that. He pulled out his pencil and started to draw his perfect future.
Chapter Seven
Brooke stared at the sketches the last designer left behind and decided Cleo was the luckiest director in the history of time. “None of this works. I understand you’re modernizing Three Sisters, but did she even read the play?”
Cleo sat back in the makeup chair. The Bliss Rep Theater didn’t have a ton of office space, so she was working in the large dressing room the cast shared. “I won’t lie to you. We fought about it. A lot. I think it’s one of the reasons she left. She was, as she put it, an artiste. I think the whole guy thing was just an excuse.”
“Well, I like to think I’m an artist, but I also have to serve the customer. In this case the play itself is the customer.” She’d watched the rehearsal and thought she’d gotten the vibes Cleo was throwing out. Though they’d modernized Chekhov’s play, Cleo still had the heart of it in the production. What if she could do the same? At first it had been a simple way to get her mind off her trouble. A way to justify being here and staying for a couple of weeks. She had a job to do. It wasn’t about Shane and Bay. She was just hanging with them while she was here. That’s all.
She wasn’t sure her friends were buying that but at lunch they’d all nodded and agreed that it was good to take a sabbatical.
Could she call it a sabbatical when it hadn’t been her choice?
“So what are you thinking? Usually you would have months and months, but we’re running short on time. It’s why I decided to not do it as a period piece. This way we can order the things we need that we don’t have,” Cleo offered. “Not that I have much of a budget.”
She wasn’t sure she needed much of one. She’d worked with very little before. “I’ll figure it out. I want to take a look at what we have. Is it all here?”
“Yes, though the older pieces are kept upstairs. I’ll leave you a key so you can come and go as you please.” Cleo stood and grabbed her crossbody bag. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. I know it’s kind of beneath you.”
She looked up. “It’s not, you know. I can’t believe you haven’t heard the rumors by now. Everyone else has.”
Cleo sobered. “Yeah, you didn’t mention that the other night. You know it’s okay. We’ve all been there.”
“We’ve all had our work stolen from us by a sexual harassing asshole?”
Cleo sent her a sympathetic look. “Unfortunately, yeah. I work in the creative world, too, though it’s not just us. It’s kind of what it means to be a woman. I wish it wasn’t true and maybe some of us come out of it without ever having to see the harsh side of life, but I know what happened to me. I was straight out of college with a degree in theater. I got on at a really great theater group in LA and quickly became an assistant director. I was told how amazing I was. How they couldn’t live without me. When the play moved to Broadway, they cut me. I staged three quarters of that play because the director was working on a TV show at the same time. But let me tell you, he took all the credit and didn’t change a thing when the show had its Broadway run. He didn’t bother to mention me in his Tony speech.”