Persuaded

by Alicia J. Chumney

  “Why’d he have to go there?”

  “He didn’t tell me.”

  However, he didn’t get the chance to tag along with Ava when she went to visit the new tenants. Ed had needed Derek’s assistance with the car when he returned and Derek was covered in oil and grease when Ava had gone across the street.

  Chapter Three

  It didn’t take long before she’d found the perfect place to observe and sketch in her journal. Nestled among the sand dunes she watched people, quickly drawing out the scenes in her book.

  Children building a sand castle.

  A mother applying sunscreen to her six-year-old.

  A game of beach volleyball.

  They were all rough sketches that she’d fill in and color later. Drawing was something she enjoyed doing but finding time to get some drawing, or even reading, it was nearly impossible with her siblings and parents.

  Suddenly a shadow passed over her pad. “That’s pretty good,” a male voice stated from where he was standing behind her. Thankfully he didn’t stand in that spot much longer, the shadow from his body moving off of her drawing.

  “Thanks,” she answered, barely looking over at him even as she could tell that he was moving around to her left side.

  Settling in next to her, he turned and held out a hand, “Derek Worth.”

  “Anne Elliot.”

  “Anne? Is your aunt Cassandra Russell?”

  “Yeah. Why?” The urge to turn back to the young children and their parents playing in the waves was tempting. If he didn’t hurry up and get to the point, her scene would be gone and she’d have to sketch the rest of it from memory, filling in details that may not have really existed. Not that it really mattered, but she’d rather this stretched memory be completely factual.

  It was really difficult with this shirtless male sitting next to her. The attractive guys usually gravitated towards Beth and, on occasion, Mary. It was a new experience for her to not be overlooked in favor of her sisters.

  “She’s renting from my older brother.” Derek narrowed his eyes for a moment, “I think my sister-in-law, Ava, went to visit you last week.”

  “That sounds about right,” Anne smiled, looking down at her paper. Even though Derek was looking at her, she couldn’t look away from her notebook. A flush was forming on her cheeks and it had nothing to do with the sun beating down on her. “My aunt didn’t tell your sister that you needed to hang out with me while we are here, did she?” she ended up asking in a whisper.

  Derek started laughing. “Of course not. I didn’t even know that you were the same person until after you introduced yourself.”

  “Then why did you come over and sit down next to me?”

  Shrugging, he opted to watch her sketching out a dog chasing after a ball – the family she had been drawing had left the area after the youngest started throwing a tantrum – instead of answering her. Anne, opting to ignore this stranger sitting next to her, continued to draw. Although it was difficult ignoring somebody who kept looking over her shoulder as she ran a pencil over the paper.

  They sat like that for over ten minutes before she asked again, “Why did you sit down next to me?”

  “I was curious about what was so interesting. You looked so intense,” he admitted. “I’m not much of an artist, but it is fascinating watching people creating something out of nothing.”

  Anne smiled down at her sketchbook; Derek almost missed it, except he had been watching her carefully.

  “Ahhh!” he grinned, “there it is.”

  Turning pink, Anne keep her eyes down as she bit her lower lip in an attempt to keep her laughter in check. “I have to go,” she whispered, closing up her book and sliding it into the bag next to her.

  “Walk you back?”

  “It’s ten minutes away.”

  “So?” he shrugged. “We’re going in the same direction anyway.”

  Rolling her eyes, Anne agreed. She had a feeling that Derek Worth wasn’t going to be so easy to escape.

  Chapter Four

  Ever since that afternoon, Derek would find Anne drawing some scene somewhere on the beach. It never took him more than fifteen minutes to spot her; it was almost as if she wasn’t hiding from him.

  Day in and day out, he found himself curious about the introverted artist and whatever she had been drawing that day. All it would take for him to leave Anne alone would be for her to tell him to go away. Instead, she would move over and invite him to sit down.

  “These are very good,” he complimented her after looking at a drawing of a beach volleyball game one morning.

  “It’s nothing,” Anne dismissed, trying to snatch the sketchbook from his hands.

  “Be quiet,” he nudged her with his shoulder. “This is excellent work! You managed to capture the motion of the game even in this tableau…”

  “Tableau?” she asked, confused why he’d use that particular word.

  Rolling his eyes, he typed the word into his phone and held up the definition.

  “A group of models or motionless figures representing a scene from a story or from history,” she read aloud with an eye roll. “I know that. My art teacher calls it a living picture. Why didn’t you just call it that?”

  “But it isn’t really a living picture.”

  “But it kind of is,” Anne protested. “I recreated the scene from an actual volleyball game. A player made every single one of these motions. Somebody spiked the ball. Somebody stood there with her hands on her hips as if she really didn’t want to play but was because her friends were. There was the girl that kept trying to get the guys’ attention, but they were all so competitive that they were paying more attention to the…”

  Derek interrupted her by laughing.

  “What?”

  “Those guys knew that somebody was trying to get their attention. They were showing off most likely. How often did somebody spike a ball?”

  “Several times,” she blinked.

  “They were being competitive not only because they wanted to win. They wanted to show off. Because they were very much aware that there was a handful of pretty girls among them.” Grinning at her. “Which girl won?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you have the girl standing there pouting,” he pointed to a spot on the drawing. “There’s the girl flirting,” he pointed to another spot. “But right there,” he pointed towards one of the few girls that had been active participants in the game, “is somebody actually playing.”

  “Oh.” Anne pulled back. “I wasn’t paying attention,” she admitted. “I was too busy drawing.”

  Shaking his head, Derek flipped to the next scene in the sketchbook. “Tell me about this one.”

  “Tell me about your sisters,” Derek asked her a few days later as they walked around the beach a few weeks later.

  “What do you want to know about them?”

  “Whatever you want to tell me,” he admitted. “I saw your sketches of them in your book. They can’t really be like that.”

  Smiling sadly, Anne recalled the sketch she had done of Beth in an attempt to calm down after a particularly uncomfortable conversation shortly before she left for the trip. She’d drawn Beth as a Stepford Wife wearing a 50’s style dress and pearls with a mess around her.

  “You would be surprised,” Anne finally commented. “We’re almost stairsteps. Two years and two months apart, except Mary and me. We’re two years and almost four months apart. We had a younger brother, Walter was almost exactly two years younger than Mary.”

  Glancing over at her, Derek gently squeezed her hand.

  Squeezing back, she drew in a slow breath. “He was four years old when he got sick. Cancer. Apparently, it runs in the family on Mama’s side,” she whispered. “Mary took it harder than the rest of us. He was our father’s favorite and Mary was quick to learn that if she hung around Walter then she would get attention as well.”

  “And after Walter…” he couldn’t finish that sentence.
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  “Mary learned that if she had an earache or a stomachache or some other illness, then Mama would get worried and pay attention to her. She’d be cuddled and loved on and… and after Walter,..” Anne struggled to finish that sentence. “She was no longer a middle child and became the baby of the family again. She was doted on way too much.”

  That explained the drawing of Mary she had done where a teenage Mary was throwing a tantrum like a child with broken dishes scattered around her. She had drawn it after Mary had thrown a fit after being asked to put the supper dishes in the empty dishwasher. There may have been some thrown plates as well.

  “And Beth?”

  Shaking her head, Anne tried to figure out where to begin. Finally, “We have a cousin,” she started. “He’s really our adopted cousin. My Uncle Warren and his wife couldn’t have children but really wanted one, so they adopted William Walter as a newborn. Named him after our grandfather and my father. Will…” she struggled to say, “was charming and Beth had the biggest crush on him.”

  “But he’s your cousin.”

  Shrugging, she repeated Beth’s excuse while rolling her eyes. “He’s adopted.”

  Shaking his head, Derek couldn’t figure out if he could accept that reasoning or if it was still weird.

  “It’s weird,” Anne correctly interpreted his look. “Will might not be a blood relation, but legally he is our cousin.” Shrugging the shoulder of the hand he wasn’t holding, she added, “But my sister didn’t care. She enrolled in the same college as him – they are the same age – and kept chasing after him on campus. Last year she found out that he had transferred to a school with a better pre-med program. She dropped out shortly after that and has been living at home ever since.”

  Shaking her head, she admitted, “I could understand it better if she was job hunting, or working from home, but Father let her withdraw her entire college fund and spend it however she wanted. Mother advised him against it, but after our brother died, Elizabeth became Father’s favorite. He…” Anne started to giggle at the absurdity, “…he sees himself in Elizabeth even though she looks more like Mama than she looks like him. But she has a brilliant financial mind. If she had continued with her degree, she could have been a successful investment banker or something like that. Instead, she spends her time in front of the mirror taming her curls and applying make-up thick enough to form a mask that can hide every single one of her external flaws.”

  Derek caught her word usage. “It can’t be that bad.”

  Rolling her eyes, Anne didn’t even look at him as she answered, “We’re all just so different.” Shaking her head, she added, “And I wish they would do more around the house and not just make me and Mama deal with it.”

  “Why do you do it?”

  “Somebody has to. I know that I’m not doing them any favors, but I can’t just sit there and let the dirty dishes pile up when Mama is feeling miserable after a round of chemo.”

  “You do like to get things done,” he pointed out, leaning down to give her a quick kiss on the lips.

  Pulling back, Derek realized Anne might not react very well to his impulsive action. He should have asked first before reacting impulsively. With the apology on his tongue, he was surprised when Anne kissed him back instead of bopping him on the head with her sketchbook.

  After that, the pair were rarely apart.

  Chapter Five

  Derek fidgeted with the key chain in his pocket. He would take it out, play with the key ring by spinning the ring itself around his finger or spin the keys themselves. Then he would put it back in his pocket, rotate the ring with his hand still in his pocket, only to remove the keyring and start all over again.

  “What are you doing?” Anne asked him after ten minutes of this. “Is something the matter?”

  “Do you want to go to the movies with me tomorrow night?” Derek blurted out.

  “The movies?”

  “On a date,” he added just in case Anne wasn’t certain of his intentions.

  “On a date?”

  “Yes?”

  Anne looked at him with her head tilted to the side. He had already kissed her; she had kissed him back. There was no real reason to be this nervous about something that was a given. “Is this why you’ve been so nervous for the past ten minutes?”

  Nodding his head, he wasn’t certain that he’d be able to speak without nerves strangling his voice. Why wouldn’t she just answer the question already?

  “I can’t tomorrow night,” Anne answered him, finally. “Aunt Cassandra is dragging me to some business dinner. I’m supposed to talk to some man’s teenage son,” she replied with an eye roll, “and play nice while my aunt butters up his father and gets him to sign some deal.”

  “Seriously?” Derek mumbled.

  Anne wondered what was going on in his brain. Finally, she asked, “What about Saturday?”

  “What about Saturday?”

  “We can go to the movies then,” Anne stated. “It’ll probably be less crowded since everybody else will be at the beach.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Derek nodded his head.

  Laughing, Anne shook her head. “Wanna go to the boardwalk and get some cheese sticks? I might even be willing to share.”

  “Cheese sticks are not something you share,” he answered her. Getting up and holding out his hand, Derek helped Anne to her feet.

  “Well, we’ll just have to get two orders then. You can have my marinara sauce,” she grinned as she dropped her pencils into her bag behind her sketchbook.

  What she never mentioned was that Anne did like marinara sauce with her fried cheese sticks. She just gave them to Derek because she was amused by the way he would lick the inside of the containers once he had used the cheese sticks to get most of it up.

  After picking Anne up, Derek led her to his truck. “How did dinner last night go,” he fished.

  Rolling her eyes, she carefully answered him, knowing full well that he was fishing. “I was bored out of my mind. Gregory, the son, only talked about football and how he’s this great quarterback back home. His father hung all over my aunt. I swear he was literally drooling at one point. So, I sat there smiling pretty while Aunt Cassandra pretended to fawn all over Gregory Senior.”

  “Did he at least sign whatever it was your aunt wanted him to sign?” he asked as he opened the door for her.

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Yes, I did,” he replied as soon as she had entered the cab.

  Crossing over to the front, he slid into the driver’s seat and asked again, “Did you aunt get him to sign?”

  “No,” Anne sighed, shaking her head. “He wants to think about it a little longer and will let her know on Monday.”

  “That’s unfortunate.” Changing the subject, he asked her what movie she wanted to watch.

  Freezing in place, Anne shook her head. “I haven’t been paying attention to what’s in theaters.”

  “There’s that new movie with the wizards out,” Derek supplied.

  “There’s also the one with the superheroes, the sappy romance, the romantic comedy, the drama that may or may not be a tearjerker, and some animated thing. And probably something with animals.”

  Derek glanced over at her for a moment. “I thought you didn’t know what was playing.”

  “Derek,” she sighed dramatically, “there is always one of those playing.”

  “There isn’t always…” he trailed off, thinking. “Oh. Right. There is.”

  Anne nodded her head sharply in victory. “I’m not caught up on the superhero movies; I’m about four movies behind and this one won’t make sense until I’m caught up.”

  “I’d rather not watch something that will make you cry.”

  “There are a time and place for those types of movies,” she pointed out. “But you’re right. Not tonight. Any clue what the cartoon is?”

  “None,” he replied. “And my sister pulled my brother to watch the romantic comedy last week and said it
sucked.”

  “Movie about wizards it is.”

  “Did you see the previous one?”

  “When it was in theaters before. My best friend, Robin, and I went and it was crazy. There were kids dressed in costumes and were carrying wands and…”

  “Really?” Derek interjected.

  “Well, there was a small handful. Maybe three or four. They looked like they were part of a birthday party.”

  “Too bad I didn’t buy us any wands,” Derek mused.

  “You couldn’t guarantee that we’d go see the wizard movie.”

  “I could have been prepared. Stashed them in the console,” he pointed towards the storage space dividing them. After a moment he asked, “Do you think we’ll see any kids with wands?”

  “Who knows,” Anne smiled at him. “Besides, you can’t pick my wand for me. The wand does the picking.”

  Derek’s face lit up as he realized that Anne was just as much into the franchise as he was. They’d have to discuss it later.

  Shaking her head, Anne couldn’t help but laugh at the energy Derek expelled arguing that the book was better than the movie. She couldn’t argue with him that the movies lacked something that the popular book series had in spades.

  “And then that fight scene,” he threw up his hands. “They completely ruined it!”

  “I’m not disagreeing with you, but it’s been a while since I’ve reread that book.”

  Then he went on a rambling trip where he described the scene perfectly, stating that he had to put down the book and reread the scene several times to grasp the full impact that fight scene had left on him. “My dad thought that I was going crazy,” he admitted. “I was pacing and then I’d sit down and pick the book back up and put it down and start pacing again.”

  Shaking her head, Anne could almost see the scene in her head even though she had never met Derek’s father. She had never even seen a photo of the man. But she could see it based on the way Derek was currently pacing as he told her his story.