Painting Kisses

by Melanie Jacobson

  “Fair point.” I looked at Aidan again, searching for some sign that he was softening, but I saw only frustration, and my chest fist tightened instead of loosened. “I’m sorry I ran out of here that first night. I freaked out, and it was wrong to leave without explaining.”

  “What happened? I thought we had it all resolved that as far as rich guys go, I’m not one of the evil ones.”

  “We did. You aren’t. It wasn’t that.” The fear of his wealth upending my life flashed through me again. “That’s a lie. It was that, but not for the reasons you think. I think this is where I need a drink. Or to be hit over the head with a hammer.”

  “I can help you with either,” he said.

  I waved him off. “No. What I need is truth serum and a massive tranquilizer to get me through this.”

  “Can’t help you there.” His voice was still too guarded. I missed the teasing note that was always in his tone.

  I swallowed to dislodge the lump forming in my throat, wishing I could magically summon the teasing, laughing Aidan I’d gotten so used to instead of this distant, analytical version of him. “Eight years ago, I moved away from here and went to art school in New York. It was terrifying. I’d never been outside of Utah before, and it was such a different world that I wasn’t sure I would ever fit in. But I loved it. I loved it as someone outside looking in.” I glanced over at him to see how he was taking this so far.

  “I’m surprised you’ve never mentioned living there before.”

  I nodded. “I know. It’s because in some ways, I’ve been trying to forget. My third year of school, I was invited to participate in this guerrilla art exhibit, I guess you’d call it. Some friends were crashing an empty loft in Chelsea for a one-night-only show, and I showed some pieces. It was the weirdest crowd I’d ever been in.”

  “In New York, that’s saying something.”

  I mustered a smile. “I know. But it was the oddest mix of these middle-aged portfolio managers wearing huge Rolexes and scruffy guys barely in their twenties coming to experience Art, in the capital A sense, as this thing that was more than paintings on the wall. There were young Wall Street guys and Brooklyn hipsters, and somewhere in all of that, I met Donovan.”

  It had been a wild night. Over a dozen artists had shared their work that night, but the energy in the room had all focused on three artists: a sculptor who worked with reclaimed copper, a guy who made incredible mixed media collages, and . . . me. Nothing in Utah had ever prepared me for a room full of people who responded to art like this loft full of them had. “Donovan was this interesting hybrid of the people who talked to me about my work all night. It’s kind of excruciating to stand there when you’re a hardwired introvert like I am. I mean, it’s not as bad as having to make small talk or whatever, but person after person came by wanting me to open my brain for their examination, like I was on display too or something.” It wasn’t cold, but I rubbed my hands up and down my arms for warmth as I remembered standing there, exposed.

  “Here, let’s sit down,” Aidan said, his arms uncrossing for the first time. I followed him to the sofa, and he pulled up a large armchair for himself. He leaned forward with his arms resting on his knees. “Go ahead.”

  “So Donovan talked to me that night. But instead of trying to dissect my brain to understand my work, he charmed me. He made me laugh, made me feel comfortable for the first time all night. He was like this oasis of normalcy in chaos. And he asked me out. And we started dating. His parents weren’t thrilled at first. He’s from an old New England family, and I seriously think they still operate under some caste system where they don’t like their kids marrying outside of their class.”

  “Marrying?” Aidan interjected, his eyes sharp.

  I bit at my bottom lip for a moment. When did it get so dry? Why did Aidan have to stare at me so closely? “Yeah. I’ll get to that. I think Donovan got a kick out of bringing home an artist to meet his mom and dad, especially one with no East Coast roots. I have no idea if they put any direct pressure on him to drop me, but if they did, it didn’t work. We kept dating. And I think”—I wiped my palms on my jeans, hating this part—“I don’t know if he ever loved me or just loved how easy I was to dominate. I’d been drifting for the three years I was in New York, and suddenly, he threw out a tow rope and said, ‘We’re going this way.’ And it felt so good to have a direction that I went.”

  “I can’t imagine you doing that. At all,” Aidan said.

  “I know. I wish it weren’t true. I wish I’d been a better, smarter, stronger, more sure person then. But I wasn’t. And the more it bothered his parents that we were dating, the more Donovan made a point of shoving me in their faces. I mean, this is all stuff I figured out toward the end. They weren’t the kind of people to be overtly rude, but once I figured out how to read them, in hindsight, it was pretty clear they couldn’t stand me.”

  “They sound like—”

  “Whatever bad word you’re about to say, yes, they were that times ten. But I think they got scared that their golden child was about to marry some bohemian street artist, so they decided to do damage control. They were pretty well-respected art collectors themselves, which is how I think Donovan ended up at the guerrilla show that night. He was always trying to be like them, even when he thought he wasn’t. Anyway, his parents had connections, amazing connections, and before I knew it, the Van Exel gallery had displayed a couple of my pieces.”

  His eyebrows shot up again. “That’s big league. I’ve bought work from there before.”

  Yeah, like the two massively expensive paintings hanging on the walls a floor above us.

  “It’s the major leagues, yeah. And those two paintings sold fast. If Victoria puts her stamp of approval on it, people line up to buy it. Within a year, I had my own show there, and suddenly, I was this wunderkind exploding onto the art scene.”

  “I have several questions about this, but I’m going to start with the most distracting one. That gallery usually deals with large-scale oils, but you do watercolors.”

  “I do both, which I’ll get to.” I could already see the wheels spinning for him. He’d put this together soon if I didn’t hurry and do it for him on my terms.

  “Getting that first show must have been what the Beckmans needed to make me palatable or whatever, because six months after that, Donovan and I were married.”

  “Are you still married?” Aidan asked, the tension back in his jaw and shoulders.

  “No. Smashed that all to bits a few years ago.” He relaxed a fraction. Not much. “The in-between isn’t important other than it took me two years of marriage to figure out that Donovan saw me as a pawn, not an equal. He treated me the way his parents treated him—as a showpiece, like I was the prize he’d won. ‘Look, I married an acclaimed artist. I win.’ You weren’t the only trophy,” I said, lacing my fingers together. The next part was easier to tell because it was the part where things finally got clear. “I saw person after person spend sick amounts on my work because they saw other people spend sick amounts of money on my work. It happened because the Beckmans made it happen. And that is never what I wanted my art to be about.”

  I dropped my head into my hands and stared at the carpet. “It made me sick that I’d been painting everything inside of me because of the pressure of my in-laws and the insane pace that Victoria wanted me to produce at, all to put my work in front of people who were in this weird bloodlust to own it without any interest at all in understanding it. On top of everything else, Donovan was working as an investment banker and the stress got so intense for him that he ended up with an addiction to prescription painkillers. It took me almost a year to figure out that his wild mood swings weren’t about me.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Aidan said, his voice quiet.

  I didn’t look up. “It’s okay. I tried to get him into rehab, but I couldn’t pay for it because he’d cleaned out my accounts. I tried going to his parents to get him help, but they didn’t believe he had a problem. They said
I was being dramatic. And after another month of trying to talk to him about it, he’d had it. He hit me.”

  Aidan bit out a curse, and I glanced up to see his hands tightened into fists on his thighs.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I mean, not that he did that. But it woke me up enough to realize I had to leave. I hated that my art had become this commodity with no soul. There was no reason for Donovan and me to be together anymore. I made his parents pay back some of what he’d stolen, and I came back here to be with my sister and help with Chloe. The money was enough to put a generous down payment on a condo and let me get away with working in the diner. I had enough to cover the basic bills and make sure one of us is always with my niece.”

  I straightened and scooted back against the couch, pulling my feet up and tucking them beneath me. Talking about Donovan always took so much out of me that it was all I could do not to curl up right then and close my eyes and dream it all away. Instead, I stayed still and waited for Aidan to speak.

  “What name did you paint under?” he asked, his voice still quiet.

  I stared down at my hands. As usual, I had paint smudged on my fingers. Now was the final step, the one I could never, ever take back. I looked up at Aidan, at his worried eyes and the tiny wrinkles beginning to fan from them that became grooves when he smiled. I loved the character they added to his face.

  Instead of answering, I climbed off the sofa and crouched in front of one of the paintings I’d brought, my fingers working at the twine. Aidan stayed quiet, but the weight of his stare rested like a feather touch at the nape of my neck. I pulled the second piece of twine off and peeled back the cardboard. When I turned to face him, I kept the back of the first painting toward him. “Do you remember the watercolor you saw me doing at the lodge?”

  He nodded.

  “You’ll be getting the larger version you commissioned soon, I guess. If you still want it. Victoria arranged the shipping several days ago.”

  I turned it around, and I couldn’t have looked away from his face even if someone had set my hair on fire. He studied the canvas, and it took less than thirty seconds for recognition to flicker in his expression. I’d redone the watercolor as the smaller oil version of his commission piece I intended to tackle next.

  He blinked, reached out like he wanted to touch it, then dropped his hand away. It was the look of someone who was registering that he’d been shoved off a cliff. Disbelief, an intellectual understanding of what had happened without fully comprehending what it meant yet.

  “I have another painting to show you. I worked on this all last week. It’s the truest thing I’ve ever done.” I pushed myself up from the floor and set the second painting on the sofa, forcing myself to sit near it and keep watching his face. It was the glacier lilies that had made Dani cry. “I’ve done a bad job of explaining myself with words, so I gave up and did this. Every time I ever told you to go away was a lie. This is the truth.”

  He didn’t move from where he sat, only stared at the new painting with a look I couldn’t interpret. His eyes brightened and narrowed slightly in concentration, but otherwise, he showed no expression. “You’re her,” he said, his voice sure. “You’re Leandra Tate.”

  “I was,” I corrected him. “That’s my full first name and middle name. But Lia Carswell painted this for you.”

  As the confirmation of who I was sank in, his gaze traveled over my face, studying it the way he had the painting, as if he was examining all the colors and angles I was made of, missing nothing. He stood and crossed to crouch in front of me.

  “The first time I ever saw your work, it took my breath away,” he said, and hope finally flickered to life for me. “It was like looking at the inside of my head laid out for everyone to see. I’d never felt so understood. You got it. You got what it was like to be from here and live there and try to make it all make sense.”

  He gathered my hands in his, carefully, like he was afraid a sudden movement would make me bolt. “I tried to buy it right on the spot, but the guy wouldn’t sell. He did tell me where he got it, though, and I immediately called my assistant and told her to track down your work. She figured out that the Van Exel gallery was the exclusive dealer for your work, so I made a point of wandering through it from time to time, looking for another piece like the one in the Hamptons, a piece that reflected all the conflicts inside me.” He studied me closely. “I looked you up online. I wanted to know who was behind the art. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you.”

  “I looked different. And besides, it’s not like you had any reason to make that connection.” I’d grown out the severe dark brunette bob I’d thought fit so well in the artsy crowd, let it go back to its natural color and grow slightly untamed. And I used to be a scrawny, pale thing, always in my studio. All my outdoor running had still left me scrawny, but I had a peachy tone now.

  He squeezed my hands. “I guess it’s time for another confession. Don’t hate me.”

  It didn’t seem possible to hate him for any reason, ever.

  “I always bought your work anonymously because I didn’t want the price shooting up when Victoria realized I was the buyer. I feel like I need to confess that, but I want you to know I’d have paid any price to get it.”

  The fist in my chest unclenched, and the relief wanted to come out as laughter. “I won’t hold it against you.”

  “Good. I love what you do,” he said, and his serious eyes met mine and searched inside them for a response.

  I tugged on his hands until he eased up next to me on the sofa, and then I twined my arms around his neck. I pulled his head toward mine and pressed my lips against his, but he took over, wrapping his arms around my waist to pull me closer, sending heat flaring between us. There would never be such a thing as close enough. His mouth traveled to mine for another kiss that made my insides thrum with the same energy that had surrounded us on the mountain.

  For hours or maybe days, we explored that kiss, but when I finally drew back, the sun was still in the middle of setting. I rested my forehead against his and smiled. “I’m always going to be sorry I ran away from you that night,” I said. “I’ll never be able to get back the last two weeks where I could have been doing a lot more of this.” I leaned back and brushed my hands over his face, gently tracing the planes and angles. “I’m sorry I misunderstood you. I’ll be better.”

  He reached up and pulled my hands down but kept them between his, warm and safe. “I get why you ran. But I want you to know, I understand you. You. Lia. Not you as an artist. You as an everything.” He turned his head slightly to look at the framed canvas of the glacier lilies, and since his forehead was still resting against mine, I turned to look too. “I understand that painting. How did you know?” he asked, his face now lit with a soft smile.

  “Know what?”

  “How did you know that’s how it feels to be with you?”

  I looked at my heart spread out on that canvas, then brought my lips up to meet his. “Because that’s how it feels for me too.”

  And this time his kiss tasted the way happiness felt.

  About the Author

  Melanie Bennett Jacobson buys a lot of books and shoes. She eats a lot of chocolate and french fries and watches a lot of chick flicks. She kills a lot of houseplants. She says “a lot” a lot. She is happily married and living in Southern California with her growing family and more doomed plants. Melanie is a former English teacher, who loves to laugh and make others laugh. In her downtime (ha!), she writes romantic comedies and cracks stupid jokes on Twitter. She is the author of five previous novels from Covenant.

  Other Books By Melanie Jacobson

  The List

  Not My Type

  Twitterpated

  Smart Move

  Second Chances

 

 

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