Villa Blue (9 page)

Needing to get a grip, he stepped back, tugged a hand through his hair that was still wet from his shower.

“Aiden, I can’t. I’m sorry. I just can’t. I’m… I was married for five years before I came here and I’ve just begun to learn who I am by myself, without distraction.” She shoved at her shirtsleeves, pushing them to her elbows.

“Distraction,” he repeated.

She opened her mouth to speak but he interrupted.

“I’m sorry about earlier today. I really am. Goodnight Ivy,” he said in a low growl then left.

He’d had countless adventures with women, where neither party meant anything beyond the moment to the other, both just in it for the fun. He’d been a distraction for women as much as women had been a distraction for him. The label “distraction” didn’t bother him.

No, it didn’t bother him at all.

He shoved open the front door to Villa Blue, strode through the place in the dark, then headed straight for the shower in his en suite bathroom, releasing the water.

Then he cranked off the water lever when he realized he’d already taken a damn shower.

He really did need to get a grip. This was a business trip. And he was good at turning business trips into adventures. But he wasn’t, he knew, good at dealing with sticky emotions.

And something about Ivy was sticking with him.

So tomorrow he’d stop being a distraction and stop being distracted. He’d explore the island, do his due diligence, then move on to the next place.

And what was his opinion on purchasing Villa Blue? He had no damned idea. He’d gotten off track somehow and it was time to correct that.

Aiden glanced out the window at the silvered moonlight that shined on rippled water. The shimmering surface surrounded like a barrier protecting the island, protecting its peace. It was a place of solitude, a world away from everything else.

So what was Ivy Van Noten hiding from behind that barrier? he wondered as he slipped under the cool covers of the bed. She’d been married for five years but had been on the island for a year. That was news. Though it explained, maybe, why she’d been crying. But she didn’t strike him as the weak and weepy sort, nor did she seem like the type to hide.

Not that it mattered or factored into anything. If his father’s company purchased Villa Blue, she’d have to leave and find somewhere else to live. He knew his father well enough to know the whole place would likely be stripped down, a new luxury hotel would be built in its place, and the prices would be set to accommodate the affluence of the new clientele. Ivy and her studio didn’t fit into that picture. Both would have to go.

Only he didn’t want her to go.

He’d never encountered the idea that he would want to protect a piece of real estate from his father. Was he okay risking an opportunity to ensure that a stranger who thought of him as a distraction had a place where she called home, where she created? But what if he stopped his father from acquiring it then someone else came along and did the same thing his father would’ve done?

Questions filled his mind, more questions than he was comfortable with, and they hovered just above his dreams as he slept.

Ivy stared sleeplessly at the stars through the glass ceiling above her bed. She felt like she’d been riding on a comet, fast energy through the unknown, then had abruptly tumbled into a weightless fall through darkness.

And when the reprieve of dawn came, finally lifting the night away, she kicked off the sheet and climbed out of bed.

Monotony moving her through her morning routine, she brushed her teeth, splashed water on her face followed by a smearing of sunscreen, pulled on leggings and an oversized blue and white striped T, tugged her hair up into a knot on her head, then carted her supplies outside.

Today would be another day of pulling teeth, the pain of each brush stroke being yanked out of her, she knew.

One step forward through the artist’s block, two steps back. But she’d keep inching forward the best she could. She had a gallery show to prepare for and it didn’t matter if yesterday was a day of inspiration and today was already clouded with sleeplessness and a maudlin mind.

So what if a man had kissed her, melting her whole body into a puddle of desires she’d thought had gone dormant? So what if she’d stopped him because she’d been afraid of losing herself just when she’d found herself? And so damn what if her ex was getting married and having a baby?

So. Damn. What.

This was her time and she would do everything in her power to make her life work on her terms. And that meant painting to the point where she forgot all else that hurt or clouded or stung.

She plopped a few colors onto the pallet, added water to the mix, then held her paintbrush up to the paper and stood still for what felt like hours, lifetimes, as she figured out what the hell to paint.

Chapter Five

“Need a hand with that?” Aiden asked Donatella who was crouched down in the dirt with her head in a bush of some kind. “Whatever it is that you’re doing.”

“Of course my drip system went to hell while L.B. and Nicholas are on honeymoon.
Brutto figlio di puttana bastardo
of a drip system.”

Aiden smirked at the string of Italian utterances crossing with accented English. “How about I take a look?”

He gripped the hand she stuck out, righted her to her feet, then adjusted the flimsy brim of her straw hat for her.

“
Grazie
, darling.” Donatella followed the endearment with a kick at the nearest stone that lined the walkway where the drip system spouted and squirted.

“Well, I think I see the problem.”

“The drip system isn’t dripping.
Testa di cazzo.
”

Aiden turned toward the woman near in age to his grandmother. “Please tell me you just called your drip system a dickhead.”

When she peered at him from beneath her wide-brimmed hat, he spotted the flash of sass.

“You did. You called your drip system a dickhead,” he said, now grinning with gratitude for the woman before him. “Went to school with an Italian kid. Bennie Bianchi. Taught us two Italian curses:
testa di cazzo
and
vaffanculo
, which was a personal favorite of mine until my mom found out what it meant.”

“As long as you didn’t say it
to
her.” Donatella told him, brushing dirt off the knees of the white cotton pants she wore.

“Wouldn’t dare. You’d like her, actually. And she’d like you, she’d like it here.”

“I bet I would like her then. You bring her here,” she ordered heartily.

“Deal. So where’s the nozzle for this dickhead drip system of yours? We should get it turned off.”

She led the way to the side of the tool shed, lowered to crank off the faucet, then gave it one last sneer before standing with her hands fisted at her hips. “You fix this, I’m going to get the sauce for dinner simmering. Keeping with a simple
Bolognese
since the boys are gone. Too many other things to do.”

“Just tell me what else you need, I’ll help.”

Donatella removed her hat, fanned it at her heated face as she considered, then turned and sauntered back toward the villa. “I’ll think about that.
Grazi, tesoro
,” she called over her shoulder then replaced her hat and wandered inside.

One hell of a woman to know, he decided as he began his inspection of the lines of leaky hoses that snaked through the courtyard gardens.

One hell of a pair of women, he corrected as he drove the golf cart down the hill to the harbor town in search of a hardware store. Ivy and Donatella. From one angle, they were nothing alike—for Ivy’s calm, creative nature, Donatella was fiery and sassy. But, from a different angle, they both were vividly expressive—one just did it with a brush and paint, and the other, he thought, amused, did it through a series of colorful words.

By the time he located the store, found the part he needed, and returned to the villa to make the fix, the springtime sun was high and hot overhead.

Sweetly scented flowers and salty breezes from the sea mingled, creating a heady mix that made him think his mother really would love it there, maybe more than Lake Como. She loved the outdoors, the life it breathed, and would enjoy the collection of flowers planted prettily around the courtyard.

Using tools he’d purchased at the hardware store, he made clean cuts in the half-inch piping, removed the damaged section and laid in a new section of the same piping, then screwed in two perma-loc hose couplers, all per the instruction of the guy he’d found behind the counter in the outdoor section. He twisted the locking nuts into place and hoped to hell it would work, given that he had no real experience fixing drip systems.

He walked back to the water spigot, turned it on, and gave a satisfied nod when the fix held. He’d damn well fixed it.

And when he heard a whistle of water spouting elsewhere in the garden, he located the culprit and smiled. Something else to fix.

And after a few hours spent in the sun, working with his hands, fixing whatever he found to be broken—which, it turned out, was a lot—he stood in the center of the courtyard and admired that the whole of it was in better working order than when he’d started.

It was sweaty, tangible work that he saw through from start to finish within a few hours. The work he did at his father’s company—inquiring about potential acquisitions and negotiating deals—was work he thrived with, but something about completing work that was right in front of him was somehow satisfying in ways he hadn’t imagined.

He glanced toward Ivy’s studio, thought about tugging her out to show her the work he’d done. But that made him feel like a little boy, eager to show his buddy some cool new shiny thing, so he decided against it. He’d just let her be for now.

The days that followed pulled the belt of pressure a few notches tighter—with no relief in sight.

The first excruciatingly long day, Ivy had stared at the blank cold press paper, unsure of what to paint. She’d studied the way the clouds puttered through the sky, just as golf carts puttered below along the curves of the harbor, and she hadn’t found any of the movement interesting. The birds, bees, planes, boats, carts, breeze, it was all just noise through the filter of her crappy mood.

The day after that, she’d decided to paint Villa Blue but had only gotten as far as the archways—one after another—before she’d gotten bored with the repetition.

And on the morning of day three of trying to paint her way through the harsh case of the blahs, she’d listened from behind her easel as two golf carts filled with loud, happy girls arrived—the bachelorette party, she figured. In response, she’d stayed clear of the villa, avoiding cheerful vacationers and, if she felt like being honest, avoiding Aiden.

She’d cleared her head of everything but the blank paper that stared at her expectantly. And that was precisely the issue. The blank paper was silently kicking her ass. She was void of perspective on anything and, no matter how open she attempted to be, no particular feeling besides frustration flowed through. But even the frustration was dulled which was, well, frustrating.

She let out a low sound of annoyance at the downward spiral of thoughts.

The colors of the sky began to settle into a splendid swath of pinks, purples, and oranges, gently coaxing the day’s end along. It was why tourists flocked there, why romantics arrived hand-in-hand, why the quaint town was filled with little shops that sold art and trinkets and flip-flops. Parpadeo Island was a place of beauty, especially at the famous time of romance—sunset.

Ivy scowled at the sky.

Days ago she’d been connected, painting from the unknown place where she felt alive. And now, surrounded by beauty that she was annoyingly uninterested in—artistically speaking—she tossed out her jar of unused water and carted away her supplies. Another unproductive, disconnected day that gnawed at her insides.

She wanted to be productive, craved it, and wanted nothing more. But nothing was what came. It was like waiting at a station in Texas for a train that was busy flying in circles around the moon.

Once back in her studio, she dunked herself under the cool spray of the shower then dressed and headed down the hill, the dusky sky still irritatingly lovely.

She needed ice cream. Maybe a double scoop. Hell, Ivy thought, make it a triple.

A woman on a mission, she marched through the muddle of merry tourists, veered around a laughing couple attempting a selfie, and took a shortcut through an alley where the mouths of two teenagers were fused together.

She made it to the brightly lit ice cream parlor like it was her salvation. “I want a scoop of pistachio and a scoop of mocha almond fudge. No wait,” she said to the boy behind the counter. “Those don’t go well together. I’ll go with butter pecan and mint chocolate chip. No, that sounds terrible.” She heaved out another sound of annoyance. “Just give me a damn scoop of vanilla.”

“I’ll have a damn scoop of vanilla too.”

Ivy spun at the voice behind her and found Aiden managing to look stoic and carefree at the same time. And sexy, she noted. Very, very sexy.

A hot buzz hummed through her. Well, she thought, after days of numb nothingness, she felt that. And it infuriated her that she couldn’t generate that feeling on her own—that it was a man she barely knew that got her humming with elusive creative energy. She was an independent woman, dammit. She didn’t need a man to help her do her job.

“Two damn scoops of vanilla coming up. Plain cones?” the boy with the ice cream scoop in hand asked.

Aiden looked knowingly to Ivy.

“Sugar cones,” she hissed out of spite then moved down the counter to the cash register.

What did she say to Aiden, the man she’d shared a kiss with then hadn’t seen for days afterward? Nothing, she decided. She was in a “nothing” mood, so it was fitting to have nothing to say.

Aiden reached over Ivy with money, handed it to the cashier and told him to keep the change.

“You didn’t need to buy my ice cream.”

“But I did anyway. Walk?”

She took the ice cream cone that was handed to her. “I’m not very good company right now.”

“Why’s that?” he asked as they both started down the pedestrian walk toward the beach. A line of streetlamps featured ribbons of white twinkle lights strung between them, the serene glow illuminating the way.

She shrugged, licked at her ice cream. “I’m just not.”

“I really am sorry for, well, I’m just sorry, I guess.”

She laid a hand on his arm, stopped him from continuing. “I heard you apologize already. And I have other things to worry about than feeling…” she waved her hand through the air, searching for the word, “…rebuffed by you. You apologized and it’s over,” she told him as his eyebrow raised in question.

“It’s over?”

“I’m not really one to hold grudges.”

“Ah. Practical,” he decided.

“I’d rather understand than hold a grudge, even if I disagree.”

“Also practical.”

“That’s such a boring word, isn’t it?” She licked at the vanilla, letting it linger on her tongue, then swallowed. “Told you I wouldn’t be very good company. Anyway, I’m not mad at anyone but myself,” she continued. “The one thing I want is the one thing that’s eluding me right now and it’s frustrating as hell.”

“Are we back to talking about five orgasms? I’m happy to help with that.”

“Ha-ha,” she said sarcastically then smiled, continued walking along the edge of the shore as the stars began to sparkle overhead. “I’ve never experienced artist’s block like this. It’s maddening.”

He wondered, briefly, if he had anything to compare it to in his own life and came up short. But then again, he was an adventurer. If something didn’t work for him, he fixed it or moved on to the next adventure. “Well, as your official muse, I feel it is my duty to help.”

“It’s a kind offer but I don’t believe in muses. I show up and I paint. That’s my job.”

“You work a lot.”

“Seven days a week. I show up then do my best to be open to the flow. But the flow just isn’t flowing and I have a show at the Lemieux Gallery in San Francisco. I think I mentioned that. It’s coming up and if that doesn’t work out, or worse, if I can’t even deliver enough paintings to
try
for it to work out, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“When’s the show?”

“In just over two extremely short weeks away.”

“How many more paintings do you need to finish for the show?”

She lapped at her ice cream, wishing she’d chosen something with an ingredient to chew on. She needed the crunch. “The gallery agreed to show fifteen paintings, which is huge. Well, it’s a big deal for me. A lot of local galleries—on Parpadeo and on the mainland—have pieces of mine here and there. They’re popular with tourists because they end up being a memento from their trip. Most of my paintings are landscapes of the island, and the central and southern coasts of California,” she explained as they strolled down the steps to the beach, kicked off their shoes and left them by the stairs. “I have a lot to do. I should be doing it,” she finished absently to herself.

“How many paintings do you have left to do?” he asked again, putting a steadying hand at her back when she stopped to brush something off of her foot that had poked at it.

“I have eight so far, framed and at the gallery ahead of schedule. And the one from the other day that I think I’ll show. That’s nine, so six more. Jesus, I need to get to work.” She kept walking, swiped at stray hairs from her topknot that breezed into her face. “I have a few more that I could use but, I don’t know, they’re just not right for a show in the city. I’ll have them for backup if I need them, but no, they’re just not right. But it feels better to have them just in case, but they’re just not—”

“Right for the show,” he finished.

“I’m talking in circles and I know it.”