“I have, yeah.” A real breeze kicked up for a moment and ruffled his hair. “This probably sounds weird, but every fall when I was a kid, my neighbors would rake their leaves and burn them. There was something about the smell of that smoke that made me want to go on adventures. Pirate adventures, mostly.”
Oh geez, that was adorable. I imagined a little Aidan all decked out to conquer imaginary seas, a tiny version of the confident guy standing in front of me with thumbs through his belt loops, ready to take on the world. I grinned before I could stop myself. “I remember the exact same feeling; that fall smell was in the air, and suddenly, anything seemed possible. What is that? Is it because of Halloween? Or school starting?”
“I have no idea. But is that the kind of restlessness you’re talking about?”
“Yes and no.” I brushed a hand over my blank paper. “Sometimes I need to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. And I get in the car, and I go there. For an hour or a day, even if it’s a drive down to Bryce to soak it in for an hour or two before I turn around. But nothing is right until I get there, and then . . . it is. That’s what painting is like. Something wants to come out, and I don’t feel right until it does.”
“And it’s not coming out right now.” He said it like he understood.
“No. It’s been a long time since I did this. I’m trying to figure out how I used to get it out before.”
“All this for a picture for your neighbor, huh? Lucky neighbor.”
I didn’t respond to his obvious fishing. Not correcting him wasn’t even a lie of omission because I probably would give this to Griff if I could get it to work out. I owed him for the brushes. And besides, I liked him having my work because of the way he’d hurried to hang the first painting I’d done for him when the paint was barely dry. Why had that one been so easy and this one was so impossible?
Aidan abandoned his fishing expedition with a shrug. “This might sound weird, but I worked with this architect once who got stuck trying to work something out. So instead of redrafting it, he got out toothpicks and did it old school. Did you ever have to build a toothpick bridge when you were a kid? It was like that. Anyway, I don’t know what it was, maybe working with his hands or concentrating on the details or using a different kind of creativity, but he came up with this brilliant solution that ended up making his original vision even better.”
“I wish I could paint something different, and yet I don’t. I need to do these.”
I scrubbed my hands through my hair. “That’s a lie. I could do any mountains. But I want to do these mountains. I can’t not do them. They’re my mountains. But I keep trying, and they . . . It’s not working. And I need it to. I need to paint.” My refusal to work after leaving New York had its roots in a lot of things: hurt, anger at Donovan and his parents, disdain for the collectors who had blindly followed their lead. But staring at the blank paper in front of me, the one where I had to put something real and not an easy daffodil for Chloe’s entertainment, I realized the blank white space represented fear.
What if I couldn’t do this? I couldn’t say that to someone like Dani or Griff or Aidan. They’d look at the watercolor of the slope I’d painted for Griff and see that it was so far beyond what they could do that it must be good art. And I couldn’t say it to Victoria because she would point to my three very successful shows in her gallery and the very large checks she’d written me, and say that all of those things proved I could.
But the people who had collected my work had done it largely because of the Beckman stamp of approval. If Donovan’s parents wanted my stuff and said it was good, every friend who had a neighboring vacation home in the Hamptons jumped to own a piece of me too. They bought what other people said to buy and then complimented each other on their excellent taste. Stocks, cars, wives, art. Didn’t matter.
“I could help you try the paint-something-else theory if you want,” he said.
“What are you thinking I should paint?” I asked to humor him. “Chief? A portrait of you?”
“I’d love to see your interpretation of me. Let me guess, a rugged manual laborer swinging a giant sledgehammer John Henry style in a salute to the idealized Western male?”
I blinked at him. “Who’s John Henry?”
He shook his head. “Never mind. The ‘something else’ I thought you could paint would also get you on a hike, and I’ll split my lunch with you so you have a picnic too. You said picnics and hikes are fun, right? Put all three together and maybe painting will actually be fun.”
“Yes to the hike, no thanks to the sandwich.”
“It’s about a mile, mostly up, but it’ll be worth it. You could leave your stuff, and no one will bother it.”
“I pack light to paint outdoors. I’ll leave the easel, if you don’t mind.” He shook his head, and I shouldered my backpack and hitched my thumbs underneath the straps. “You were going to revive my dead muse?”
He laughed and led the way across the meadow. “Is your muse really dead? That sounds like a problem.”
“No, it isn’t dead. I’ve got lots of ideas of what to paint. I just can’t figure out how to paint them.”
“Keep climbing. Perspective is a thing in art, right? We’ll change yours and see what happens.”
We went on for another half hour, steadily ascending. I was glad I had a lot of trail conditioning and a light pack since Aidan was treating the incline like a Sunday stroll. As we hiked what turned out to be the double black diamond run, he explained some of the building challenges they’d run into, his face lighting up as he spoke, and there was a realness in his expression that usually hid behind a flirtatious mask.
At one point, he stopped and pointed to a stump. “That tree didn’t even need to come down, but the rest of them ticked me off so much when we were trying to remove them that I cut it down to make an example of it to the other trees.”
He looked so annoyed that I laughed. He shot me a glare, but that only made it worse. “Sorry,” I said. “But come on. You’ve cut a ton of trees down. You win. Taking that guy out was unsportsmanlike conduct.”
“Sportsmanship . . . Good word. Because I turned it into a trophy.”
“Explain?” I asked, imagining a bronzed tree somewhere over the next crest, captured and frozen like the White Witch’s marble garden in Narnia.
“This resort is about being in the middle of the mountains and soaking it all in. Everything about it should reflect the setting, should feel like being a part of this place and not like we came in and put a human fingerprint all over it. So I took that tree out, but then we found someone to turn it into a super rustic dining table in the main lodge. And three coffee tables in the lounge.”
I watched him closely, noticing the way his intensity changed his face. If I sculpted, this is what I would want to capture, the hard planes and angles his cheeks and chin took on in his determination, coupled with the excitement in the tiny crinkles fanning from his eyes that turned his face from a study in austerity to a portrait of barely leashed energy.
He caught me staring, and he brushed his hands through his hair. “Sorry. I get carried away sometimes.”
“You love what you do. Don’t apologize. But . . . exactly what’s your job here?”
“I oversee stuff.”
“You can use technical terms like ‘foreman’ and ‘contractor’ if you want. I know I was guilty of assuming you were kind of entry level, and I’m sorry.”
“Why? Would there have been anything wrong with that?” His voice was tight again.
“Yes and no. Someone who is entry level and always stays that way is someone who doesn’t love their job. And I don’t relate. If you love your job, I think you rise through ranks no matter what. It’s not about being ambitious; it’s about caring about what you do. I can relate better to someone like that than I can to someone who shows up to punch a clock.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “I can understand that. And I’m not using technical terms because there isn’t one for wh
at I do. It’s pretty fluid. So to say I oversee things is the most accurate way to explain it.”
“Like which parts though? You seem to know a lot about all of it. The slopes, the lodge, the interiors.”
“Yeah, I kind of get shuffled all over the place. It’s good. Keeps me from getting bored.” He paused and stared up the slope. “Have you looked behind us yet? Don’t,” he said when I started to turn my head. He put his hand across the small of my back to keep me still. If anything, the instant heat made me want to jump out of my skin.“We’re almost to the point I want to show you, and I want you to be surprised.”
“Then I’ll keep my eyes straight ahead, captain.” It was a pretty view too, with more of the ski run stretching in front of us, lined by the trees that had survived Aidan’s wrath.
“Smart aleck.”
“Guilty.”
He dropped his hand, and we climbed a bit farther while he entertained me with the saga of Chief’s losing battle with the local chipmunk population, who had formed a united front to taunt the dog. Finally, Aidan glanced over his shoulder and touched my arm to stop me. Heat again, a flare straight up to my shoulder.
“This should do it. But before you look, can we try something? It’s this goofy game my niece plays with me, but maybe it could help.”
“I keep telling you, I’m not a game player,” I said, deadpan. “You’ve got the wrong girl.”
“Hilarious. You want help or not?”
“Sure.” I doubted he’d come up with anything that would make a difference, but it could be entertaining.
He moved in front of me, and I took a step back so the navy T-shirt stretched across his broad chest didn’t fill my whole view. “No laughing, or I push you down the mountain.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Go ahead. Break my creative block.”
“Close your eyes.”
“No way.”
“I gave you an order, soldier.”
“It’s a stupid order. Or rather, it’s an order you’d only give to me if you thought I was stupid.”
“Why would you think that?”
I crossed my arms. “This is a dumb idea for two reasons. First, painting is a visual medium. How does closing my eyes solve the problem?”
“You’re going to have to trust me.”
“Ha!”
“You said you weren’t going to laugh,” he said, his eyebrows rising.
“I said I wouldn’t laugh at your game. I can laugh all I want at the idea of trusting you.”
He sighed. “Maybe I’m going to throw you down the mountain anyway.”
“Very trustworthy.”
“What reason have I given you to think I’m not trustworthy?”
“For one, I don’t know you.”
“You’ve known me for months. You know Sully even less, but I’d bet you say he’s trustworthy.”
“Yeah, but—”
He cut me off by clicking on his radio. “Sully? It’s Aidan. Would you say I’m a trustworthy guy?”
A long pause met that, and he held up his finger to keep me from breaking in. The radio crackled. “I’d say that all day long, b—”
He released the radio button. “See?”
“But Sully hasn’t tried to kiss me. Call it paranoia, but I think if I close my eyes, you will.”
He blinked at me and did his slow smile, his devilish, knee-weakening slow smile.“You think I go around stealing kisses? This isn’t seventh grade. I don’t take anything that isn’t freely given. But tell yourself whatever makes you feel better about how that all went down last time.”
Heat climbed up my neck, and I prayed it didn’t show too obviously in my cheeks. No, he wouldn’t need to steal anyone’s kisses. “I never lie to myself. I know what happened last time. I own that. I’m more concerned about what will happen this time.”
“This time you’re going to close your eyes, and I’m going to ask you some ridiculous questions, and they might help you, or they might make both of us feel stupid. But you can trust that the stupid part would not be on purpose. So you ready to give this a shot?”
I set my bag on the ground. “Tell me what I’m doing again.”
“Close your eyes.”
I gave him one last challenging stare before I did as he asked. Nothing happened for several seconds except that his work boots scuffed over the graded slope, paused, and scuffed back.
I didn’t like the silence. “Is this the thing I’m supposed to be doing? Standing here?”
“Yeah. But now think of a couple things that aren’t what they should be. Like, for example, I’m going to hold a flower under your nose. Tell me what it smells like.”
A petal brushed my nose, making me twitch, but I sniffed and exhaled. “It smells sweet, I guess?”
“Yes. Now what does it sound like?”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. What does the flower sound like?”
I frowned, and he cleared his throat. “When my niece made me play this, I figured out that stars sound like breaking glass and the sound of a violin tastes like dark chocolate.”
I frowned harder. “That’s ridiculous. Cello sounds taste like dark chocolate. Violins are gourmet butterscotch.”
A soft laugh met that. “So you get the point here?”
“I get the point.”
“Good. Now what sound does this flower make?”
I squeezed my eyes even tighter, concentrating on how to translate the smell to a different sense. “It sounds like . . . when little kids do an orchestra and someone’s in charge of the triangle and you get this one semi-random bright note.”
“Open your eyes.”
He stood a couple feet away with a cluster of white blossoms in his hand. “This is a mock orange. Were you right?”
I laughed. “Yes. Mock oranges definitely sound like amateur triangle players.”
“Ready for another one?”
I nodded.
“Close your eyes.”
I did and heard the boot scuffing again, but this time he stayed close. A moment later he picked up my hand and turned it over to place a large pebble in it. “What does this taste like?”
“I guess you don’t want me to lick it.”
“Nope. Tell me what your imagination says it tastes like.”
I turned it over, letting its flattest part rest on my palm while I explored it with the fingers on my other hand. It wasn’t perfectly symmetrical, but it was smooth, except for small dips and rises. Sun-warm and dense, it reassured me. There was something about the solidness of it, the thereness that stabilized my insides for the first time since Aidan had called down the slope to me. “This would taste like a roasted beet salad.”
“That’s a good thing?”
“That’s a perfect thing.”
“Look at it.”
I did and found a rock in my hand that looked exactly like what I had imagined. “I think I might be getting the point now.”
His expression changed from watchful to pleased. “Good. Then let’s try the big one. Close your eyes again and do a half turn around, but then listen and smell for a long time. No looking, okay?”
I did as he asked and channeled my inner ballroom dancer as his hand touched my elbow to balance me on the uneven ground. Heat. Again. I followed his lead, and he kept his hand in place until he was sure I was firmly planted and facing the new direction.
“You good?” he asked. I nodded. “Then I’m not going to say anything for a while. When you’ve done whatever sensual things you need to do, you tell me. And by sensual, I mean using your senses. Like sniffing the wind.”
Laughter lurked in his voice, and I refrained from punching him only because I didn’t want to look stupid flailing at him with my eyes closed.
A breeze kicked up and blew my annoyance away as simply as that. I let it wash over me and breathed deeply, taking it all in. When the wind stilled, I listened to what it left behind, in no rush to finish the experiment. Water shushed nearby, glacier
runoff in a creek I hadn’t realized was there. Birds sang. Much smaller things than Aidan’s boots scurried over the grass. Something buzzed by near enough for me to hear it but not close enough for me to flinch when I recognized the hum of a bee. Wherever we were, it was full of sounds. But it was the first moment of true quiet I’d found in myself since I’d gotten the itch to paint the daffodils.
“I’ve got it.” I spoke like I might in a chapel. It demanded reverence somehow.
“Okay. How does the wind taste?”
“Like root beer. The kind with licorice in it.”
“And what color is the sound of the stream?”
I thought about it, about how the noise felt and what color also felt that way. “Yellow.”
“And when it freezes?”
“Silver.”
He asked me a few more, and each time, I found the answer easily. The sound of the birdcalls tasted like Skittles, and the brush of the breeze smelled like Zest bar soap. That one made him laugh, and that sound, right next to me, would have tasted like caramel.
I frowned at him. “I’m a painter, not a writer.”
“I laughed because as soon as you said it, it sounded exactly right.”
“Can I look yet?”
“Almost. One more.”
Before I could ask what it was, a touch softer than the mock orange’s petals brushed against my lips, but the current that shot through me, the warmth radiating from Aidan’s sudden nearness, told me he’d done what he promised not to. The force of the urge to lean in farther to his air-light kiss and drink up more of him startled me, and I jerked back, my eyes flying open. “You said you wouldn’t do that.”
“No, I didn’t. I asked you if you thought I was the type who would. It’s not my fault you assumed the wrong thing.”
He gave up trying to keep a straight face, inviting me to share his amusement, but my insides quaked like the aspens bouncing behind him in the breeze. Someone else might have said they looked cheerful. I thought they looked disturbed. I didn’t like that kind of intangible upset happening in my chest and guts. I pivoted and scooped up my bag.
“Whoa. Where are you going?”
“Back. I have to work.”
Painting Kisses Page 10
