Legally in Love Boxed Set 1

by Jennifer Griffith

  We ordered and talked about nothing— the weather, a mutual love of autumn in southern California, our favorite beaches by season, a disagreement as to which wood-fired pizza place in Old Town was best. It was light, easy, fun.

  Until …

  “You have probably been dreading this moment.” He set down the last forkful of his couscous. “But I still have to throw it out there.”

  “Not the offer to buy the painting again.”

  “I’ll up the price.” An earnest light and an anxiousness covered his face. “Three million.”

  Three million dollars! I caught my breath.

  “Why do you even want it? I came up with theories all morning. You saw it and fell for the girl and she’s all you can think about?”

  “I think I’ve made it pretty clear that’s not the case.”

  That brought me up short, but only for a second. Considering he was still begging for ownership of her, maybe not pretty clear. However, at that moment he slid his hand across the table and traced the back of my hand with his fingertip. Showers of tingles flew up my arms.

  But I couldn’t let them distract me.

  “Here’s another theory I’ve come up with, then. You have a plan to open your own gallery, and use it as the flagship piece.” Even though he was shaking his head vehemently, I went on. “The problem with that, Aero my friend, is it’s already being done, and I’ve laid too much groundwork.”

  “Groundwork.” He muttered it, withdrawing his tantalizing fingertip and staring at my hand. He grimaced a moment and then renewed his attack. “You’ve got so many other things going well, though. Do you really need that one little painting? It’s nice, but—”

  “If it’s just nice, then why do you want it so much?”

  “Touché.”

  “There are a dozen reasons, Aero, maybe more, why I can’t let you have it. People are counting on me now, and I have to have both parts of my gallery— the tried and true and the new. You’re in the money business. Surely you know the necessity of diversification. Now that I’ve gained the trust of several artists, I don’t want to let them down. Their hopes and dreams are on the line.” Surely he had to understand that. “You’re the hopes and dreams guy, after all.”

  “That’s me.” He smirked, but he didn’t look beaten, so I forged on with my explanation, hoping somewhere in it would be the coup de grace and he would back down from this fight at last.

  “There’s been a resurgence of interest in Mars Yuber in the last couple of months. His work is selling at auction for double the prices it would have fetched in the spring. You probably saw the grocery store tabloid stories about his not really being dead. It’s like those Elvis stories where we find out he’s been cryogenically frozen all this time and thaws out to run for president and save the world.”

  Now I was rambling.

  “Yeah, I saw those.” And I could see the wheels turning in Aero’s mind as he said this. To my dismay, he wasn’t giving up. For some reason unknown to me, he was bound and determined to get the painting.

  “Why, then, do you want it so much?”

  “I am not at liberty to say.” Of course he wasn’t.

  A little spark of ire ignited in me, but I tamped it down. He had to understand how much was at stake here. I hadn’t mentioned the magazine article. Maybe if he knew, he’d back away from the pressure.

  “Frankly, the wheels are turning, and even three million dollars wouldn’t be worth stopping them, since it’s not all about me at this point. It’s also about the viewing public. With the Art World issue featuring the painting coming out next week, I have to have the painting available for all the patrons to come and see in person. I’m expecting droves of viewers for it, and—” And I had loads of stuff to do to prepare for the onslaught and the publicity and—

  Aero put up a hand. “Wait. Wai-wai-wait. It’s being featured in Art World?” He blinked in disbelief.

  “I mentioned this to you the other day.”

  “Well, you were so casual about it, I hardly knew you were in earnest.”

  I knew it was a triumph— and one I’d scrambled, fought, and almost begged for. Art World lived up to its name, with its worldwide readership and its print-run going out in seventeen languages. That was why the article couldn’t release before the gallery opening— too much prep needed to go into the magazine issue. However, late meant a prolonged splash in the art pond for Red Drape Gallery, so I counted it as a win. A huge one.

  “I was in full earnest. And it will be the first printed, professional printed copy of Woman Draped in Red. Close-ups, analysis of tone, discussion of style are all part of the article by none other than Milo Abernathy. Ross Beckwith himself came and photographed it before the grand opening, even. This release has been in the works for months.”

  “Months.” He didn’t look happy for me, or even impressed with the names I’d dropped. Not that I expected him to, but surely he had to see what a big deal this was for Red Drape.

  “In fact,” I went on, “I believe as of last night the issue is off the presses and is getting labeled for mailing today. It goes in the mail this afternoon to subscribers.” They mailed out simultaneously to countries all over the world. Europe, Asia, even Africa. Woman Draped in Red was going global.

  Aero not only didn’t look happy for me; if anything, he looked worse. Sick, almost.

  “Don’t worry. I will still let you come and see it anytime. I know you have a place in your heart for it, and you desperately want it for your own; but because it’s a Mars Yuber, it really ought to be on display and be owned by everyone. Don’t you think art is larger than its ownership sometimes?”

  Yeah, I shouldn’t have been getting into this philosophical topic with him. Not now. Not when he’d just offered me three million bucks for a painting and I’d shot him down.

  Or maybe it was that one of his clients was bent on owning it. He’d said he was the buyer— but honestly. Did Aero Jantzen have a cool three mil at his disposal for some canvas, wood, and oil?

  How had I missed something like that?

  Whoa. I looked at him with new eyes and a sudden nervous anxiety.

  Then again, he bit the tip of his knife, showing he clearly had a nervous anxiety of his own. “You’re sure, a hundred percent sure that this magazine is already being mailed out? Today?”

  “I mean, yeah. Relatively certain. The contact at Art World gave me the timeline so I could run my online promos simultaneously.”

  Aero had stopped listening, and he was doing something on his phone. I heard it dialing a number.

  “Manny?” he said into the phone.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I’m stopping today’s issue of Art World from going into the mail.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Stopping the article! He couldn’t. But he shut off his phone and looked at me with grim finality.

  He could stop it. And by all appearances, he had.

  “You’re being ridiculous, Aero. You’re … you’re persecuting me. Why?” I dug in my purse and pulled out a twenty, slapped it down on the table and turned to leave.

  As I reached the door of Gateaux de Gaul, Aero’s grip took my forearm.

  “Wait.”

  “I’m not waiting. You’re trying to douse the very fire you ignited in me. I don’t understand, and you won’t tell me, and I’m getting all discombobulated. I really like you, Aero. A lot. More than I should.” And a lot more than I should admit. “But what you’re doing right now amounts to sabotage.”

  “This isn’t about you. It’s not about you and me. Trust me.” He walked me out onto the sidewalk to deprive the patrons of Gateaux de Gaul of the entertainment we’d provided with our argument. We stood under its green awning in a stiff autumn breeze.

  “I was open, Aero. I told you all the reasons why I couldn’t give in to your request, but you won’t entrust me with the slightest information. I’m stymied here.” I had to sidestep to allow another Gateaux pat
ron to pass by, and it put me far too close to Aero, to where I could smell his cologne, and it triggered a scent-memory of kissing him at Thrillsville, which made another dozen emotional dominoes fall inside me. I couldn’t trust myself to be firm. “Why are you dead set on stopping the magazine?”

  “I couldn’t. You were right. It had already gone out.”

  I exhaled, relief at my victory turning my knees to water. I had to lean against the front window. I pushed my hair out of my eyes and looked up into Aero’s blues. “So this means you’ll relent? If it’s gone out, it’s too late. You’ll let your opposition drop?”

  “Actually, no.” Aero scrubbed his palm up and down his cheek, making me note the stubble. “I’m going to up my offer.”

  What? This guy was incorrigible. I shook myself and headed out down the crowded Old Town sidewalk past the ritzy candy boutique. I didn’t stop walking until he caught up and took my hand. We were under a bowery of trees in the plaza off Coronado Street, with way too many people coming in and out of the shops to be having any kind of conversation about private business or personal matters like this.

  “Will you never quit?” I may have stomped my little foot on the cobbled pavers. “No offer is going to sway me. If you’ll notice, I barely batted an eye at three million dollars. It’s not about money.”

  Aero didn’t bat an eye. “Five million dollars for the painting. And— you take this.” From his pocket, he pulled a small box. He creaked open the hinges and there sat an antique amethyst ring surrounded by old, mine-cut diamonds.

  I stared down at it for a second, the way the purple gem caught the dappled noontime sunlight under these copper beech trees. “What?” I looked up at his eyes. “What is this?”

  “It’s my mother’s ring.”

  “I can’t take that. It’s beautiful, of course, but it’s your mother’s. You should save that. It’s special. Give it to a girl who can wear it forever.”

  A cool breeze ruffled my hair and my skirt where it hit my knees. Aero just kept the box open, holding it out to me.

  The wrongness of the situation whammed me over and over, waves on a winter shore.

  “Aero.”

  A cold seeped through me, from the top of my head to my fingertips and chest and toes.

  For air conditioning to work, it has to go through a compressor, and the pressure placed on the air makes it cold. That was going on inside me. Pressure to take the ring, the money, the bribe, whatever, chilled me.

  His voice went lower, and he spoke. “It’s hasty. I know that, but I sincerely want you to have this. And I’m asking you to trust me.”

  Everything inside me split— the rift from the other day reopening, now chasm-deep— between logic and emotion. Logic said walk away. Emotion said trust.

  Aero Jantzen’s countenance pleaded with me, while logic lectured that even if he was the kindest guy I’d met in years, and maybe in fact the kindest guy I’d ever met, he was hiding something huge and I couldn’t trust him, no matter how much those blue eyes drew me in and demanded my full faith.

  “It’s your mother’s,” I finally said.

  “And there’s no one else I want to give it to.”

  “Is it a marriage proposal?” I needed to understand what exactly the ring meant. Confusion filled the crevice deepening in me, threatening to split me in two.

  “I want to be with you, Jilly.” He looked a hundred percent sincere. “I want to share everything with you.”

  It still wasn’t clear what he meant. And besides, he hadn’t said he loved me. If I gave in and took the ring that my roiling emotions ached after— the one that seemed to mean he wanted to share life with me, even after we’d only been together so few times but were undeniably fitted for one another— if I took it, I broke trust with a dozen other people.

  I’d made promises; and I kept promises.

  “Please feel free to come see Woman Draped in Red anytime you want. Day or night.” As I walked away, a thunderous crack from inside me signaled the breaking halves of my soul— my logic separating from my heart, which crumbled into innumerable, irreparable pieces.

  My eyes blurred with tears as I raced away from him across the cobblestones.

  ______

  “It’s here!” I clutched the issue of Art World to my chest several days later, the vintage photograph of Mars Yuber staring out from the cover, and rushed out to show Tyanne, who’d dropped in this morning to bring me a few new pieces of Mindi’s work, which was growing even more in depth and skill.

  While it hadn’t been my painting on the cover, the haunting and universally recognized face of Mars Yuber would possibly catch more readers.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” I showed her the magazine, shaking it too much for her to actually take in. “Do you love the cover article title?”

  “Whoa. Mars Yuber Portrait Detonates Art World.” Tyanne took the magazine from my grasp, and we sat down to look it over together. “Explosive.”

  We opened it, sitting close together to both be able to read the article at the same time. The photo layout was gorgeous, with numerous close-ups of the various aspects of the painting, from the eyes’ level stare to a fine detail highly magnified of the wine-colored mark on the collarbone.

  “Eye of Horus Birthmark,” the caption read, with a sub-caption. “Reality or symbolic? Only determinable once the model who sat for the portrait is found. Meanwhile, it’s watching all of us.”

  Best of all, there was a fold-out of the entire painting, a double-length photograph of the whole, mind-stopping face and the intensely beautiful female form beneath the red drape.

  This, this was how the public should be allowed to view it for the first time in print.

  I sighed for joy.

  “Listen to this.” Tyanne took the copy from me and read aloud, “‘The authenticator, Grady Ingliss, pointed to the angle of the brushstrokes as an indication of a left-handed artist, as well as the fine detailing around the eye, with some lashes being done with as scant tool as a brush of a single bristle.’ They quoted him. He’s named.” Tyanne beamed.

  “So, you and Grady? Is that still a thing?”

  To my shock, Tyanne held up her left hand. Her ring finger featured a diamond and emerald suspended in rose gold. Tyanne grinned so widely every one of her stark white teeth showed.

  “No. Already? I mean, you’ve barely dated.”

  “We’ve known each other a long time. Dating was a formality before getting engaged. When you know, you know. It’s just a good fit.”

  “But he’s about fifty.” And he had a hint of froggishness about him. And a serious side of disorderliness.

  “Right? But he’s brilliant. There are a lot of things that might not make sense on paper, but when I’m with him, I’m more myself than any other time. And he’s glad someone likes listening to all his theories. Because I do, genuinely.” She pulled a little side smirk. “I know what you’re thinking and not saying, so I’ll just diffuse that by saying— don’t worry. The chemistry might not be obvious to outsiders, but believe me, it’s through the roof.”

  I knew all about that. But wow. She’d gone against all convention and logic and taken the ring offered her by Grady Ingliss. It was a gorgeous ring. I admired it and we talked about it for a few more minutes before she told me there would be a Christmas wedding.

  “This Christmas?” I about dropped the magazine. “Not next year.”

  “Of course. I told you when it’s right, it’s right. I’ve waited a long time for right. I’m not going to mess it up by postponing official, deep commitment.”

  Right. She wasn’t going to mess it up.

  A week had gone by since I’d messed up everything between Aero and me. Sure, it might not all have been my fault. When he’d offered me that amethyst ring of his mother’s, he hadn’t been completely clear, and I’d balked. Had the gesture been sincere? Because it could have been anything from a bribe to a stalling tactic. And since he wouldn’t come out and tell me exactly why he w
anted Woman Draped in Red so desperately, how was I supposed to figure out what a gorgeous heirloom ring offered on the plaza actually meant?

  What choice did I have at that point? I’d had to say no.

  Even when everything in me wanted to say yes.

  Even when I’d known it was right, this thing we’d discovered, this us.

  I’d loved having someone to listen to me and encourage me and make me a better version of myself. Someone who wanted to know what things made life my good, like texts from my sisters or bubble jets in the Jacuzzi, and inspired gratitude and hope.

  Regret flowed through me like wet cement, sludgy and cold and ready to harden me internally at any second.

  Tyanne signed the paperwork for Mindi and left me with my longing for Aero and what might have been, as I fielded phone calls from local newspapers, from art schools wanting to schedule group tours and discussions, and from enthusiastic fans responding to the article. The doors would be opening in an hour, and I’d have all that to manage as well.

  I put my nose to the grindstone and reminded myself this was a good set of stresses to have. A great set of problems. Woman Draped in Red was making a positive change in the lives of all the artists at Red Drape Gallery. Every single displayed artist had sold at least two pieces, and Mindi’s work needed to be replenished weekly. This was grand. This was what I wanted, right?

  A pounding came on the front door. “Jilly! Jilly!” The voice melted through the glass all the way here to my back room office.

  “Jilly!” Only two people ever called me that, one of them being the man I’d longed to see day and night. My heart skipped as I rushed out front before the yeller took out the leaded glass panels in my front door and activated the security alarm, causing all kinds of unnecessary drama.

  “Hey, cool your jets.” I unlocked and saw … Ryker. Not that disappointment should have filled me, but it did. Ryker’s face, however, beamed. He plowed into the foyer.

  “Jilly! I’m so glad to see you. Look what I brought you. You’re going to be so surprised. I mean, I don’t know if it’s exactly what you’re looking for, or whether it will be a perfect, ideal, magnificent solution to what’s going on here, but I can guaran-dang-tee you it will stop your breath when you see it.” He pushed his way into the front area of the gallery and dragged me to the viewing bench, where he finally handed over the large package he’d been carrying.