“Griff dropped by with them. Said he had extra from a staff meeting and asked if we wanted them.”
“He said he had store-bought donuts from a staff meeting he held at his high-end restaurant, where they can make anything they want from scratch?”
“Yeah.” She stopped chewing. “Why would he get these? I only eat them because I’m weird. It’s not like they’re real food.”
“Might be interesting to ask him,” I said.
She stared at me like I’d suggested we take up llama farming. “That wouldn’t be interesting at all.”
“You’re right. Watch for falling Veronica Mars references,” I muttered on my way back to my room. I’m sure Griff would find a way to be out on the deck soon, working some Logan versus Duncan questions into the conversation. (As if there was a debate.)
I changed and headed out to the trail, my thoughts racing way ahead of my feet. Out of everything Aidan had done or said since he first began flirting with me for real, the one thing that had gotten to me most was his saying he wouldn’t be coming back into T&R’s. It wasn’t like one of Chloe’s attention-getting threats when I wouldn’t comply with her sudden rule changes in Candyland and she vowed to quit. He’d said it with a tinge of discomfort, like he was facing the fact for the first time that I didn’t want him around, really facing it.
I didn’t get it. For months he’d been handing me lines, trying to make me blush. He’d been cocky when he’d moved in for that first kiss. He’d had hard, angry eyes but soft, tender lips. He was the guy in work boots who read the Times Arts section. He was a multimillionaire who cut down trees to build what he wanted but then turned the felled trees into something good. He was a constant contradiction, now that I thought about it.
If Aidan had been the same guy from the beginning that I’d seen this afternoon, maybe I would have said yes the first time he’d asked for a date. The guy this afternoon was humble and considerate. So which was the real Aidan? And if his player persona was only that—a persona—why? If it got him more women, was it getting him the kind he wanted?
The farther I ran, the more questions I had, and by the time I reached the last quarter mile up the street to home, I was left with the biggest question of all: Was I okay with never knowing the answers? Because that was what Aidan’s good-bye meant.
No.
I wanted the answers, or Aidan would always be this puzzle I never solved, the great What If. What if guys could ruin your life, and I’d made a firm rule about not letting another guy ruin my life. Which meant there was only thing left to do.
Chapter 22
“Where we going?” Chloe asked for the millionth time as we wound up the canyon road.
“To visit my friend,” I said.
“She nice?”
“He’s a boy friend,” I answered and winced as soon as I said it, but Chloe jumped on it before I could rephrase.
“My friend has a boyfriend. He gave her a rock.”
“Not a boyfriend. A boy who is a friend.” I thought about making a pun on how smart guys give rocks to their girlfriends but then decided it would lead to a way longer explanation about diamonds and carbons than I was prepared to make. Although . . . it would distract me from what I was about to do. And that was a good thing.
“You love him?”
“No!” Who loved someone after one date? I had barely even decided I liked him.
“You kiss him?”
“I think I see a mountain goat,” I said, pointing out of the side window. Chloe turned to look at the goat I’d invented, but the half minute she spent searching for it was enough to distract her from questions about kissing.
“He have a dog?” Chloe asked.
“Yes. A nice dog,” I said.
“How long till we get there?”
“Too soon,” I said as the sign for the Pine Peak turnoff appeared. We rumbled over the gravel lot and parked. Aidan’s pickup sat near the trailer office, and I took it as a good sign. I pulled my phone out and dialed his number, trying to figure out the best way to explain I’d crashed his jobsite. He didn’t answer. I called again, and it went straight to voice mail.
Not good. I hadn’t turned the engine off yet, and I considered throwing the car into reverse and abandoning this whole stupid plan. Except I wouldn’t come back again. I knew it. I turned off the car and got Chloe out, keeping a firm grip on her hand so she didn’t bolt off after a butterfly or a ground squirrel.
I poked my head into the office, but the only guy in there was someone I didn’t recognize.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Uh, I’m looking for Aidan.”
“Aidan?”
“Dat’s her boyfriend,” Chloe offered unhelpfully.
I squeezed her hand to shush her. “I meant Aidan Cormack. Could you radio him?” It came out in an embarrassing stammer.
“I better ask my boss first. I don’t radio Mr. Cormack directly.”
Right. Because one did not call up millionaire bosses and summon them. I’d sort of forgotten about that element of dealing with the rich; they often had many layers protecting them from the regular folk. But . . . Aidan wasn’t like that, I didn’t think.
“Boss? Mr. Cormack has a visitor asking to see him.” The desk guy turned to me. “What’s your name?”
“Tell him it’s the artist.”
“She said to say it’s the artist, Sully.”
He released the button, and static was followed by silence before the radio crackled to life again.
“Send her to the lodge,” Aidan’s voice said.
“Yes, sir.”
I promised the guy I could find it, and with Chloe still firmly in hand, I wound my way up toward the spot where Aidan had first kissed me. Maybe that was why he’d picked it. Chloe chattered all the way there, trying to get away to pick a few flowers, but I didn’t let her go because it would have taken forever to rein her in. “On the way back to the car, sweet pea,” I had to promise her a dozen times.
I paused on the side of the lodge, bracing myself for the first glimpse I got of Aidan. Chloe tugged my hand again, and I rounded the corner to find empty space, the site of the future deck looking as vacant as the first time I’d set up my easel there.
“What we doing?” Chloe asked when I stood for almost a minute trying to decide what to do.
“Good question.” Where was Aidan? And what was I supposed to do until he showed up?
When Chloe tugged on my hand again, I let her go. She ran to the edge of the meadow and crouched to inspect a bluebell. I watched for a while, mixing the colors for the flower in my mind.
“That’s what you were painting the first time you came here.”
Aidan’s voice sent a thrill down my spine, and I whirled to see him standing in front of the lodge door. Chief’s tags jangled from somewhere nearby.
“Hi,” I said for lack of anywhere better to start.
“Hi. You brought company. She yours?” He nodded out at Chloe and sounded curious about the possibility, not concerned, which I had to give him credit for. I couldn’t count the number of times guys had checked me out at the park only to become busy elsewhere when Chloe had run up to me with some find. It always made me want to punch them on Dani’s behalf, but of course, they weren’t even worth the time it would take to swing.
“She’s the niece I babysit, Chloe. We get to hang out a lot.”
He nodded. I waited for him to say something else. He didn’t.
Right. Well, I was the one with the questions. “I was wondering something.”
He pursed his lips, then said, “Okay. Shoot.”
I swallowed and stuck my hands in my back pocket. Wait, that probably looked like I was trying to stick my chest out. I pulled them out and wiped my palms on my thighs instead. “You’re not one thing,” I said. That was a useless statement. “I mean, you change how you act sometimes. I get confused. Got confused,” I corrected myself since I wasn’t sure we would be speaking in anything other than
the past tense ever again. “When you first came into the diner, we didn’t talk at all. Then we had normal conversations. Then you got all . . . I don’t know. Flirty. In your pickup artist way, which I don’t like.”
His eyebrows had lowered, a sure sign that I was making the mess I’d expected to. I eyed the path to the parking lot and wondered if I’d feel stupider for standing here and continuing the conversation or taking the long walk of shame back to my car with his eyes on me the whole way. “Sorry. I’m not explaining this very well.”
“No, I understand you. And you’re explaining yourself honestly, I guess.”
“What I’m trying to say is that if you acted the way you did this morning all the time, I would want to hang out with you. All the time.” My face flamed.
“I’m not sure what to say to that,” he said after a pause so long I could have climbed up the black diamond trail and back again.
“I’m asking why,” I said. “Why do you come on so strong sometimes and other times you’re cool and mellow? Sometimes you seem cocky, and the first time you kissed me you even seemed almost mad. And then suddenly you’re nice again, and it’s a totally different kind of kiss. I don’t get you.”
Chief came lolling out, and Aidan crouched to give him a thorough scratch around the head and ears. I recognized that he was buying time while he figured out his answer, but I felt stupid standing there. The nearby grass rustled, and Chief lunged for it, leaving Aidan nothing to do but straighten and shove his hands into his pockets. He stared into the distance for a minute, then faced me. “I want to point out all the ways you’re confusing too, like kissing me one minute and then tearing out of my house like I was chasing you with a meat cleaver. But I won’t point it out because that would be avoiding your question, and it’s a pretty fair one.”
Chloe shouted then, a happy shout while she pounced on something, and I moved closer so she couldn’t get too much of a head start if she decided to take off. Her shout caught Chief’s attention, and he loped over to sniff her, making her giggle as she held her hand out to him to smell.
Aidan followed me over. “Cute kid.”
“Thanks,” I said, turning so I could track him and Chloe at once. “You were going to explain yourself?” I shut my eyes for a second. “Sorry. I meant that in a non-Spanish Inquisition kind of way.”
“Ever wanted to be famous?”
I’d had a taste of it already. “No.”
“Good. It’s pretty bad. I hate to be a cynic.” He stared into the distance and sighed. “Life has tried to make me one, I think. Coming back here is my way of trying to outrun it, but it’s going to take time. I’m still convinced everyone who meets me wants something from me. Funding, a handout . . . something.”
“I didn’t,” I objected. “I think I only gave you things. Like bacon.”
“Yeah. Which takes me back to something you said earlier. You said we had ‘normal’ conversations at first. But we didn’t. Do you remember the first thing we talked about that wasn’t food related?”
Not really. I hadn’t known I was going to have a wild almost-crush on him, or I would have tracked every interaction we’d ever had so I could analyze it. I shook my head. “Zhaday the tool, I think.”
“I was reading an article on Senegal, and you glanced at it and said that one of your favorite singers was from there. And then you poured me coffee and walked away. And it was cool. Because it wasn’t normal.”
My face heated again. It wasn’t the first time my normal had not been someone else’s normal. I wished I could claim artistic eccentricity and brush off those incidents, but I knew how people perceived me, and it bothered me. Every time.
He touched my arm, bringing me out of the haze of awkward memories. “If someone tells me they like Senegalese music, they’re usually trying to impress me when they’ve never even heard it. I haven’t heard it. But you said it because it’s actually true. You like it. I could tell. Things aren’t usually so simple.”
“They can be. You hang around rich people too much.” I’d said it to make him laugh. He didn’t.
“Probably. And I hang around people who want to use me to join the rich-people ranks. So it was pretty refreshing to hear someone who had no idea who I was state an opinion that was yours and yours alone about something most people don’t pay any attention to. It told me a lot about you right away, and I wanted to know more. So . . .” He stopped and fidgeted, watched Chloe and Chief for a minute. “Is my face as red as yours was a minute ago?”
“No,” I said. My face heated again that he’d noticed the first time.
“I guess I’d just better say this. I’m used to women who want me as a trophy.”
I couldn’t help it. My mouth twitched, and he caught it, even though I pressed my lips together to stop them.
“Laugh,” he said. “I know how it sounds, but it’s true. I know you read the Times. At least, you do over my shoulder.” True. “I’m guessing you never read the society pages?”
I shook my head. That was the province of Hilaire Beckman, who had always pretended a mention on those pages was vulgar but who lived to see her name in conjunction with the elaborate fund-raising soirées she and Creston Beckman had regularly shelled out to attend.
“My name used to show up in those a lot. I got a reputation as a ‘modelizer.’ Do you even know what that is? Because that was an eye-opener for me.” I nodded because I could figure out what it meant. He pushed his hand through his hair. “I had no idea when I hit a certain level of success in the business world that it was going to create so many social obligations, places I had to be to schmooze. I bet you think I’m an awesome schmoozer.”
“Yeah,” I admitted.
“I am. But I hate it. It bores me stupid. And one thing I had to figure out quick was that it was always better to bring a date of my choice so I didn’t have a dozen women trying to stick to me the whole night.”
“Only a half a dozen.”
“Make fun, but I’m not even exaggerating. I always saw it for what it was, by the way. And it was never about me. It was about the money. It was one of the best things about selling the company and coming back here.”
“To hide?”
“No. To reenter reality.”
That’s what I’d done. “I get that.”
His eyes searched mine for a long moment. “You don’t drop a lot of clues about yourself, but they’re always pretty fascinating when you do.”
“Don’t try to figure me out,” I begged. “I’m not that interesting.”
“False. But I’ll let that go. Anyway, I still haven’t had a ton of time to date while I get this place running, but I want to. And not because I’m a party guy either,” he said, his tone warning me not suggest it. “It’s because I’m hanging out with my brothers and sisters and their kids, and I remembered that’s how I always thought things would go for me, but I forgot how to get there. I’m not playing, Lia. And if I am, it’s for keeps.”
The words warmed me. I didn’t think I’d ever want marriage again, and right then, Chloe was enough kid for me, but she and Dani wouldn’t live with me forever, and the thought of their absence created an echoing hole inside of me. Eventually I’d want a kid or two of my own, and I was traditional enough to want to do that the old-fashioned way. And here was a beautiful guy telling me he wanted the same things. But I still had questions.
“I respect all that. But if you wanted something real, why were you so . . . not real with me sometimes? Why did Aidan, guy on the prowl, keep showing up?”
He groaned. “It’s because I’m an idiot. Prowling is a habit. Before I sold the company, I’d get in these high-stakes business situations, and everything was adrenaline fueled. It’s stupid. I ran at full bore all the time, and it didn’t switch off when business was over and it was time to date. Even women trying to snag their trophy liked to play hard to get, and I had to win them. It’s all so messed up. It’s just how I was used to talking to women,” he said, pressing the heels
of his hands into his eyes. “I was interested in you because you were so different from other women I’d known, and I should have met real with real. I thought I was getting better at that lately.”
“You’re pretty Tarzan-y,” I muttered, flashing back to his deliberate invasion of my personal space when he’d cornered me in the diner storeroom. And the first time he’d kissed me.
“Yeah. But I’m not always a jerk.”
“What was that about?”
“We’re talking about the first time I kissed you, right here?” he asked, pointing at the ground.
I nodded.
“Old habits again. You’d been standoffish, and then Mike walks up to me and suddenly you figured out that I’m not a wage slave, and you warm right up. I knew you had no idea I was Ted Cormack, but I thought you were still status-hunting on a smaller scale because you figured I was foreman or something.”
“I think I might be offended,” I said slowly. He’d thought I was a gold digger. It was almost—but not quite—funny how wrong he was. “I was nicer to you because you were kind to that Mike guy, and it surprised me, not because I suddenly thought you were a big shot.”
“It’s a reflex, and it’s one that stinks. It felt like I was being used again, like you were going to be nice to me because I was suddenly worth your time if I made good money. I decided to use you back, and since I wanted a kiss, I took it instead of earning it.”
I flinched. That was brutal and ugly.
“I know. When you still refused to go out with me and kicked me off the mountain so you could paint, I realized I might have it all wrong. And the way you treat Mr. Benny? That shows real kindness, and that’s not something I see every day. So I decided even if you were kind of opportunistic, there was still something good and real in you that was worth putting up with.”
Worth putting up with? How swoony. “I kind of want to hit you right now.”
“Can’t blame you.”
Still, I had to give him credit. He was far more self-aware than Donovan, and I always respected honesty. I’d run away to find it again, to find the real. It spoke volumes that Aidan had done the same thing. In his own way, he was a bigger mess than I was. We’d both been damaged by the life wealth and fast-paced living could confuse people into believing was the end-all of everything. But both of us had made the conscious choice to quit letting it define us.
Painting Kisses Page 20