Submersed (29 page)

             
“Close.
Grief
.”

             
“It’s very moving. They all are.” She stood back and surveyed the collection. “Wow, Olivia. These pieces are extraordinary. You have the unique gift to say with a canvas what most people wouldn’t be able to say in an entire book.”

             
I touched a hand to my heart. “Thank you
Elaine
.”

             
“You have a magnificent collection here. I’d be honored to show your work.
In fact, I‘d like to begin planning an exhibition right away.”

             
“I don’t know what to say,” I stuttered. It was all happening too fast, but I preferred it that way after waiting for so many years. I was going to shock myself into being normal if I had to.

             
Elaine smiled. “You don’t have to say anything. It’s all right here on your canvases.”

             
As we started to walk out of my studio and back into the living room, Elaine stopped in front of the easel where my unfinished painting of Dillon on the beach at
Bel
Ange
sat.

             
“Ooh, isn’t he remarkable?”

             
I felt myself blush. “It’s not quite finished yet.”

             
“This is extraordinary.
So vibrant.
It represents a new chapter in your life.”

             
So, now everyone was proving to me that I was more transparent than I originally thought. First, Dillon saw right through me and now Elaine. This was indeed a new chapter in my life.

             
I marveled at how my life had changed in the last few weeks.

             
“I can assure you, my recent work is much more colorful,” I told Elaine in the foyer.

             
As a matter of fact, I’d already chosen a new them for my next collection. It would be a vibrant collection of tropical fish, colorful birds and palm trees. I’d call it
Bel
Ange
.

             
“I can’t wait to see it.” Elaine reached for the door, hesitated and then turned back to me. “May I ask what made you change your mind? About displaying your work?”

             
“Well…” I thought about it for a few seconds. There were so many different things that had changed my mind it was difficult to pick just one. “Those pieces came after a very difficult time in my life and…I’m hoping it will be…therapeutic to show them.”

             
She grasped my hands and gave them a squeeze. “There’s no better way to move on from something than to release it out into the world.”

             
As soon as the door shut behind Elaine, I picked up the phone. Frank answered on his customary first ring. “Good afternoon, Miss Sharpe.”

             
Speaking of things changing.
Over the past few months, I think Frank’s tone changed a little bit too. He’d gone from sounding as if he pitied me almost to being much more approving. Frank would snip off his Windsor knot before he’d admit it, but I knew it was the truth.

             
“Hi Frank. Can I have my car brought up?”

             
“Certainly.”

             
“Thank you,” I said and hung up.

             
The knock at the door startled me. Not in the way it used to, but because it already seemed I’d run out of people to see in one day.

             
“Oh, hey Michelle.
Come in.”

             
“Thanks. It’s good to see you,” she said, wheeling her cart inside. “Frank said you were out of town.”

             
“Yeah.
It was sort of a last minute thing. Listen, Michelle, I was just on my way out.”

             
Michelle raised an eyebrow and a huge grin spread across her face. “Okay,
well
have fun!”

             
I gave her a friendly wave goodbye, grabbed my new keys and my purse and stepped into the elevator.

             
When I stepped out of the hotel lobby, the summer heat hit me like an oven. On the curb, the valet smiled and held
my car’s
driver
’
s side door open for me.

             
That old familiar flutter surfaced in my stomach and I pushed it back down. Nerves would probably always plague me in some way or another but at least now I was more prepared to battle them.

             
Besides me, there were six billion other people out there in this crazy world and I doubted they could all stare and me and laugh at once. And even if they did, I’d let them and ignore it because I had a lot of living to do. There was no time to indulge in their ludicrousness.
Or my own.

             
I heard laughter behind me and my spine tingled. When I turned around, I saw a group of teenage girls laughing at something on one of their cell phones. I exhaled and smoothed my blouse. There was no need to panic. I could do this. Life was full of risks.

             
I looked around at the people bustling around me at the hotel entrance. None of them were looking at me. Not a single one. A frazzled middle-aged couple wearing Hawaiian shirts
wrangled
their three young children through the hotel doors.
A young couple by the wall were
so engrossed in each other that they didn’t even know anyone was around them.
And t
o my left, a group of middle-aged women hustled inside to escape the heat.

             
After taking a deep breath, I walked to the valet, gave him a smile and slipped him a generous tip. Then I slid behind the wheel of my new
car
, shifted into Drive and I drove.

About the Author

Rachelle Vaughn has been writing ever since she was old enough to sneak paperback romance novels under her pillow. She loves reading all genres of romance, attending rock concerts and watchin
g entirely too much television.

She live
s
in California where she is at work on her next novel.

Visit her website at rachellevaughn.com
.