“And another thing” — Trixie stopped as we came back to the bench area— “Mars thinks I should come forward.”
“As the model for Woman Draped in Red?” Shock now colored Aero’s voice, and his hand gripped mine hard, the base of his fingers squeezing so tightly it actually hurt mine. “Even in its, er, state of undress?”
“Won’t it help Jilly’s gallery? We can time the announcement just right, and it’ll put Red Drape back in the news again. They do say no press is bad press. I might not be the young, fresh thing I was fifty years ago, but that’ll be another reason to get the Red Drape in the news, letting know-nothings speculate as to my decline. Which I couldn’t care less about, trust me.” She leaned toward Aero with this comment. “This is about Jilly now. Am I right?” She dropped this entire series of bombs so casually, I could hardly believe she was the same woman who’d gone into cardiac arrest when she’d first seen the painting. Maybe being around Mars again had given her a sense of security. It did seem that way to me.
“So … you’re saying you don’t want it removed from the Red Drape Gallery after all?” Aero rubbed the back of his neck, as if still processing all of it.
“Mars tells me I’ve aged well. I have nothing to be ashamed of and no reason not to own up to the idea that I was a beautiful young woman.” No question, she had been a stunning young woman. She wasn’t bad now, either, by any stretch. “It’s not vain of me to admit that, is it? At least the portrait makes it seem like I was.”
“You were breathtaking,” Mars said. “Still are.” He lowered his voice. “After you left, all my brushes could create were snowscapes. Bleak, stark, solitary.”
Wow. I suddenly saw something: that even in separation, Mars had measured his inspiration, or lack of it, by Trixie.
My face warmed for her. He admired her so openly, his face just gazed at her with glowing approval. It occurred to me that according to the research I’d done, Mars Yuber had never married, and it wasn’t my place to ask why, but I now formed my own little speculation party as to why while I watched the sparks flare between the two of them.
“Do I need to remind you, as delicately as possible, Grandma, that the painting is a nude?”
“It’s art,” she said with a flick of the wrist that said pshaw. “The human body is God’s most exquisite and intricately scientific form of art.”
“Who are you and what have you done with my Grandma Trixie?”
“Oh, pshaw,” her mouth now said, in echo of her earlier wrist-flick. She giggled next, and it sounded so sweet and youthful and delightful. Then Trixie turned to me, saying, “Jilly, I’m sorry for putting you through that stress a couple of weeks ago. I apologize for that from the bottom of my heart. When I saw the painting, I had a little crisis. Everything went through my head, all manner of overreactions. I even considered having this removed to hide the evidence.”
She tugged at the neck of her blouse and exposed a dark red swatch of color at her collarbone. Its shape exactly matched what I’d seen in the painting: Eye of Horus. With all my will, I tore my eyes away from its validating appearance.
“Now I’m so glad I didn’t. Mars always told me it was his favorite part of my skin. Ooh, is that too much information? Sorry, dear.”
She patted Aero’s arm, who obviously thought it was too much information, the way he’d grimaced, and then she gave him a little squeeze on his upper arm before turning back to speak to me.
“I shouldn’t have pressured Aero to take the painting away from you. But it represented such an intimate moment between Mars and me, and I wished to keep the world out of what we’d shared. You can understand, I’m sure. Or if not, you will— soon.” A big wink followed, and she and the pseudo-resurrected artist left us in the dusty wake of their whirlwind romance.
“Holy smokes.” Aero exhaled like he’d just run a three-mile race. “I never—” He didn’t finish his sentence, but he didn’t have to.
We linked hands and walked toward the European art gallery at the Huntington. I’d been here a hundred times and knew every room on both floors, but always alone. As we walked I didn’t speak, knowing he’d have to process things for a bit.
Going through the gallery, with its Dutch and French and British masterpieces, not once did we pause long enough in front of any one painting to look like we were there to appreciate the art. Finally, when we got to the long gallery featuring The Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough, Aero let out a long, shuddering breath.
“You okay?”
“With the fact that my grandma is going to be known as a famous nude? I don’t know. Not exactly.” He gazed on me with those ice-blue eyes, even bluer than The Blue Boy’s Little Lord Fauntleroy suit, and shook his head like he had no choice but to accept whatever craziness this life threw at him. “But with the idea of her finding someone to spend time with who makes her happy? More than okay. Old Yuber is all right, isn’t he?”
He needed reassurance here. I gave it as well as I could.
“He seems good. And he seems like he will cherish her, and that he’d never stop doing so.”
We left The Blue Boy and meandered toward some busts of the rich and famous of long ago.
“Look,” I said, pointing at a plaster bust of a man’s head sporting a floppy rag cap. “It’s Handel. You know, the one who wrote The Messiah.” Among other things, like operas, oratorios, and concertos, I could have added. We both simultaneously hummed the “The Hallelujah Chorus” and then looked at each other. “Jinx,” we both said at the same time and then gave each other a courtesy laugh.
I looked around the elegant, long room, plastered with the works of great masters. “Red Drape Gallery doesn’t even aspire to be like this, its new resident Van Gogh notwithstanding.” I took Aero’s arm in both of mine, clinging to his side, and looking up at his beautiful face. “But it still has its place. It might not be the grandest thing, but it’s a good thing.”
Being a good thing was good enough. Red Drape might not become world famous. It might not even become California famous, even on its fame of hosting famous actors-turned-artists. Mindi Dresser may or may not decide to tell everyone she was the creator of the pretty botanical drawings. Her decision to go public would come in her own time. Or not. She’d have to grow into it.
“It’s better to be good than grand,” Aero said. “I’m pretty sure of that.”
I couldn’t disagree.
Aero led me out of that long room of marble and portraits and onto the back patio of the building, with its overlook of the subtropical gardens, Huntington had commissioned. They stretched beside long, rolling lawns graced by every tree that could possibly grow in California’s excellent growing climate.
“Our hopes and dreams don’t have to be for grandeur,” Aero said, his mind obviously still pondering that subject.
“Hopes and dreams,” I whispered. I’d found some of mine, but since spending time with Aero, they’d shifted. No, they’d expanded.
“There’s something I need to ask you,” I said, my mind scampering through half-offered proposals and amethysts and refusals and regrets on the brick-paved plaza at Old Town. The question burning in me was even more important now that the sale of the painting was off the table. “Or … I mean, tell you.” My awkwardness dial cranked to ten, and my heart was pounding like it might break a rib.
“Let me say something first?” Aero rescued me again.
I nodded assent, still trembling with what I’d soon have to ask— or admit.
Words changed things. Conversations made situations and relationships and trust and hope grow or shrivel. I was on the verge of either creating or destroying something powerful, and there was no wonder I could hardly keep my knees from shaking.
Aero pulled away from me— but only for a second. He reached into his pocket, but he didn’t bring anything out. He just left his hand there. My face burned with a fervent heat.
“The other day, when I threw big numbers at you in the plaza in Old Town to try to get y
ou to sell the painting, I—”
“Yes?” It came out as only a breath. Once again, Aero and I had been thinking the same thing, just like when we’d both sung the Handel song a minute ago, or when we’d simultaneously answered Ryker’s questions the other day. Our minds had synched at some point, possibly during one of our mind-blowing kisses.
Maybe the mind-blowing had actually been mind-melding.
“I was in such a state of desperation, that I threw more than numbers at you.”
“Desperation. For your Grandma Trixie’s reputation.” That I could understand, finally. I’d never fault him for it, not for a second.
“Yes, desperation for her. And—” he visibly gulped “— for you.” He looked so deeply into my eyes I could see tomorrow and the next day and the next in his. “Dang it, Jilly. Ever since that first ridiculous day we got forced to go together through the tunnel of love by that teenage brat, I haven’t been able to concentrate on anything else. I’ve lost five pounds because I forget to eat. You’re all I can manage to think about.”
“Really?” I barely managed a single-word in response, too taken back by their import.
“You were so open. I could talk to you about real things. You listened. You treated me like I was wise, and you made me feel like I could be, should be. I wanted you. I had to have you, but you were so out of my league.”
Me! Out of his league!
“Aero—”
“No, seriously. You’re so strong and independent. You studied your dream topic at college, but then you parlayed it into a high LSAT score, breezed through law school—”
Uh, nobody breezed through law school. Although, yeah. I had, in fact, liked it. It fascinated me.
“And then you jumped from there directly into the top entertainment law firm in Hollywood. You were climbing the ladder when you saw a prize you wanted more, one you knew would make your life happier. Did you hem and haw in wishy-washy indecision? Not even for a moment. Without anyone’s permission or guff, you reached for it. And you claimed it. Look at what you’ve done.”
“I mean—” If he’d known the careful thought I’d put into how to enact my dream, he wouldn’t be saying all of this.
“Jilly, you’re amazing. You did it. All on your own.” He laughed. “In fact, I kept waiting for you to show up asking me for advice. Or at least money. Everyone asks me for money at the bank. When you didn’t, my respect for you multiplied. You’re independent and capable and … astounding.”
I’d never looked at it that way. I’d seen my whole scheme as risky, starting up Red Drape. But I’d never for a moment thought it would fail, not really. The idea was inherently too good— and I had Aero to thank for coming up with it all. He’d been the vision behind my engine of change.
“It was all your idea, you know.”
He went on, undeterred by the praise I’d tried to throw at him. “When I was leaving home to go meet you for lunch at Gateaux de Gaul that day, my thoughts scattered. I knew I had the mission of getting that painting off the wall of Red Drape, but I also couldn’t really focus on it, because my bigger mission was to get you into my life.”
“Aero.” I nudged closer to him, the autumn breeze pushing me toward his chest. My whole body danced with desire for him. “I was feeling the same.”
A smile as if of surprise made him pause a moment, and the worry line between his eyebrows disappeared.
“So when I left that day, I took with me my nebulous plan for offering you more money for the painting of my grandmother— and I grabbed my mother’s ring. I’d been saving it for the real girl, as you called her, the one I could picture forever with. I knew it was fast moving. I knew it was probably a fool’s errand, too— since I was muddying the water with the other thing of trying to wrest the painting away from you. I got all flustered and did it wrong.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong. You were perfect.” Aero might not be perfect in everything, but he sure seemed like it in this moment, with his earnest admissions and his professions of how he’d been feeling. He was validating everything I myself couldn’t push back inside myself anymore than I could have held back an avalanche in the Sierra Nevadas.
“What I meant to do when I gave you the ring was to separate it from the offer for the painting. I think in my mind I had this warped idea that if we were married, we’d be family and some kind of community property law, including intellectual property, would kick in, and I could tell you about her in the painting without any guilt, and then we could decide together how best to protect Grandma.”
Ultimately, that was what happened— just not in the way he probably envisioned.
“I would never let anything hurt her. She’s far too—” No single adjective fit here.
“Isn’t she?” He tugged a half-grin. “What’s so funny?” He must have seen my own grin breaking out.
“I was just imagining what Ryker would say if he could hear us now.”
“He’d claim full credit.”
“Let’s be like school teachers and give partial credit.” I inched closer to him.
“I like it.” He took me in his arms. “But what I like most is you. And me when I’m with you. Us.”
“Us,” I whispered as he placed a kiss on my mouth that eclipsed all the previous kisses of my life— even the ones from Aero himself. The stars in the sky all fell down around me with great streaking trails of light, even though we were kissing in the middle of the afternoon on a sunny California day. He took me to over that top sweep of the Ferris wheel, and to church, and to the door of that secret place inside myself I hardly ever admitted existed.
“I love you, Aero.” The admission came bursting out of the door inside me, unstoppable. “I can’t imagine a day from now on without seeing you.”
He opened his closed hand in front of my face and revealed the beautiful amethyst and diamond ring once again in all its splendor. It fit this setting of elegance to perfection.
“If it’s not moving too fast, I’d like to give this to you.” He slid it onto my finger, which was eager to wear it. “I want this to mean something— something big. For us. For the future.”
“It’s not too fast,” I said, my breath coming thick in my whispered, emotion-laden response. I tilted my hand back and forth letting the facets of the gems catch the afternoon light. I’d seen a lot of relationships develop fast lately, and I had to laugh a little. “My best friend from work got engaged last week after only dating a couple of months and is getting married at Christmas.”
“This Christmas?”
Exactly my response. We were of one mind.
“And then there’s Ryker,” I said, pointing out the obvious, “who’s sixteen and dying to propose or elope because he knows he’s found his forever.”
“When it’s right, you know it.”
“That’s just what my friend Tyanne said.” And she’d been so right.
I kissed him again, more tenderly, with even greater balloons of hope floating my soul into the air above Huntington Gardens. Not just little grocery store helium balloons. Not even weather balloons. These were the Goodyear Blimps of hope.
“Your friends knew early on when they’d found the right person.” Aero looked down into my eyes. Our lips were a breath apart. I couldn’t wait to taste his lips again.
“Like me.”
“Like you?” He shouldn’t look so surprised.
In response, I spun a little tale for him, of amusement parks and tunnels of love. “There we were, sailing through Swept Away, talking about my hopes and dreams, my senses going all haywire with attraction for you. You caught me, body and soul.”
“Body and soul, eh?” This time his grin was wry, like he’d relive that moment again in a heartbeat. Oh, he could— as soon as I’d finished my yarn here.
“Then, at the very the second your lips touched mine with that mind-bending kiss, I knew I’d never be able to kiss another man with any measure of satisfaction ever again. You’d ruined me for life. From tha
t moment, you either defined my hopes and dreams or you decimated them— if you chose to either love me or to never kiss me again.”
“I choose this.” Aero closed his eyes and pulled me into a solid embrace, one that said he’d taken me for his own and never intended to let me go. Then, with a tenderness, he placed his lips on my forehead, moving soon to my cheekbones, along the right side of my jaw, and then down to my neck. I sighed with ecstasy, aching for this moment to slow down and to last until the stars grew cold. “I choose us.”
The noonday sun warmed my face, almost as much as his kiss had. We caught our breath, and I gazed down at the amethyst ring on my finger, feeling its meaning and its importance in a wave of combined bliss and anticipation for what lay ahead for both of us together— in everything.
“Grandma is going to come back soon.” Aero traced my palm with his thumb as we ambled toward a shady bench. It electrified me, making me think we should consider a Christmas wedding— this year, that was. “We’ll have to tell her.”
“What exactly do you think we should tell her?”
“Considering the combustible chemistry between us,” he said, echoing my thoughts, “I’d say we should tell her we’re considering a Thanksgiving wedding.”
“Thanksgiving! That’s next week.”
“I’ve never been one to hesitate when I see a good investment opportunity. Neither are you, Jilly.”
With Red Drape Gallery as evidence, I could see why he’d say that, and my imagination went dreamy for a second.
“I’d go for an elopement to the beautiful grounds at Holland House, if that’s what you’re thinking. Just add a few hundred twinkle lights, a wedding dress, family, and the priest.”
“I like how you think.” He kissed me again, softly. I liked how he thought, too. “But we can’t omit Ryker.”
Oh, right. Ryker and Phoebe would have to be on the guest list. And Mars Yuber, unless he’d already made himself family with an even quicker elopement by Thanksgiving. I wouldn’t put it past him and Trixie. And we’d invite Tyanne and Grady Ingliss. Tyanne would die when she found out my wedding was happening before hers.
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