Page 29 of Forever: The Companion

ELEVEN

Lucia couldn’t help but run her fingers over the strokes of oil paint that made up the sunset and beach portrait the artist had painted on a smooth piece of wood carved in the shape of a surfboard. It wasn’t a one-of-a-kind design, considering there were twenty other painted miniature surfboards right beside it, but that didn’t matter to her.

It was still amazing.

All the attention to detail.

“That’s all you want for this?” she asked the man behind the small booth who had previously given her the price.

One that was far too low for the time put into this.

He gave her a look. “Ma’am, people tend to barter lower in the market. It’s how things are done.”

She couldn’t imagine that.

“I don’t barter with artists,” she explained quietly, her attention going back to the foot-long surfboard painting in her hands, “because I feel like they know what their art is worth and who am I to tell them differently?”

Even if that was her job …

That never mattered.

Lucia’s respect for art was unmatched in that regard, and without artists who could make a livable income on their work, then there wouldn’t be anything for her to admire and appreciate. She wouldn’t have a goddamn job, either, without people willing to make art for her to show off, celebrate, or sell.

“No need to barter,” she told him, smiling.

She understood that it was a tradition here, and even Renzo had warned her about it when they’d first stepped into the market later in the afternoon—everything will be a higher price because we’re later in the day, he’d added—but she couldn’t do it. Bartering wasn’t in Lucia’s blood, but frankly, she was happy to pay the price the man originally asked.

Which she did.

He offered a brown paper bag to wrap her treasure in, but Lucia refused, fine to carry the item through the market for now. Besides, once she found where Renzo had gone, it was only around the corner at a shop selling T-shirts and musical instruments that the two of them had broken away from each other, he could hold her painted surfboard.

There were quite a few more things in the market that she wanted to check out, but not without Renzo keeping her company. Plus, she needed his arms to carry all the things back to the car, and he was so good at doing that.

Lucky for her, she didn’t have to search long. In fact, he hadn’t even left the shop with the T-shirts and music. Only now, as she stood in the doorway looking in, she found that her husband didn’t seem as interested in the clothing or whatever else the store was selling.

A little girl had caught his attention.

The brown-eyed, black-haired girl looked to be no more than five, if that. Maybe even younger. And yet, she was having the time of her life, dancing on the tips of Renzo’s combat boots while he held her hands and a man sat on a nearby stool, strumming out a fast tune on a guitar. A woman next to the man wearing a loose-fitting, flower-printed dress clapped in tune, her smile wide and her gaze fond as she watched the two.

Maybe the girl’s mother.

Lucia had no idea.

Although, as fast as she noticed the other people in the shop, Lucia was quick to go back to the sight of Renzo dancing with the little girl. It wasn’t just the child who seemed as though she were having the time of her life.

Renzo was loving it, too.

She hadn’t expected to feel something stirring in her stomach and chest at the sight—something new; a feeling she had never given much thought to before now. But watching him dance with that little girl, his smile so fucking wide, reminded her of how good a father he would be. That all the love he kept so close to his chest because that’s just who he was deserved to be shared with someone else in their life. Yeah, they had Diego, and Renzo often volunteered when he had the time for the youth centers in the city, but none of that was the same, she knew.

It wasn’t their child.

It wasn’t lost on her in that moment how Renzo had never once asked that of Lucia. They’d talked about kids, yeah, and what they wanted, but he never said it needed to happen. And he certainly didn’t put a time limit on it. He didn’t make demands or constraints, almost like he was waiting for her to decide when the time should be right for them.

Was the time right now?

Did they have time in their already busy lives for something like babies?

She didn’t know.