by Isla Dean
“Well you sure do sell it, don’t you? You must be an excellent businessman. See, Ivy?”
“See what?”
“Business is a perfectly acceptable career since you’re no longer married. It affords you the opportunity to visit tourist places like this then return to a proper home.”
“I am home. And I’m sorry, Mom, I know it’s confusing for you, but I’m not interested in being a business person, or an admin at dad’s hospital, or a housewife like you wanted me to be.”
Aiden watched as Helen’s otherwise flawless face scowled. “Ivy Van Noten, you watch your tongue. There’s nothing wrong with being a housewife. I am the CEO of the household you grew up in, young lady.”
Ivy’s hand tugged from Aiden’s and her spine straightened. Though her voice remained calm, there was a hiss snarling at the edge. “Of course there’s nothing wrong with whatever profession you choose. Just like there’s nothing wrong with the profession I’m choosing.”
The wine arrived and the cork popped before any further frustrations could be pitched across the table like weapons.
Helen sampled the test pour, approved, then silently stared at her eldest daughter as the waiter filled their glasses.
Aiden held up his glass in cheers, figuring that he better do something before there was a bar brawl between the blondes. “To being the luckiest man on the island, surrounded by three beautiful women.” Then he held his glass to Ivy’s, remembering why they’d gone to celebrate, and said quietly, “And to you.”
Helen watched with mild interest—was her daughter capable of landing a polished businessman such as Aiden James? She’d been bred with the capability, that much was true. But some wires had crossed somewhere, short-circuiting her otherwise agreeable, disciplined daughter. Her girl was sowing some wild oats, which was normal enough after a divorce. But one year was enough. And enough was enough.
“Are you married, Aiden?”
“Not married.”
“Ever been?”
“Mom,” Ivy interrupted, scolding.
“I’m just asking. That’s what people do when they share a bottle of wine. They get to know each other. There’s no harm in asking questions. He’s a grown man and doesn’t have to answer if he doesn’t want to.”
“It’s all right,” he offered. “No, never been married.”
“That’s a shame. Such a decent man should have a woman by his side.”
Helen heard Ivy sigh heavily and snubbed it with the usual sneering disregard. “Iris here is dating a boy in school studying to be a dental surgeon. He’s a good man, a solid man, but he’ll be a better man with Iris at the helm of his home life.”
“Thanks, Mom. This wine is delicious, by the way. Great choice.” Iris chimed in to the peace, ducking from all else, as she was prone to doing.
“Thanks, sweetie.” Helen patted the table in front of Iris in an act of affection.
Ivy massaged her temples, took a drink, feeling the fuse of calm conformity getting shorter by the minute. “Can we please just speak straight so that I understand? What really brings you both here? Neither of you like Parpadeo.”
“Your imagination really is quite a puzzle. It’s a wonderful island, and as such, we’ve come to see what you’re up to. A whimsical weekend.”
Right, Ivy thought. Her mother didn’t take whimsical weekends, nor had she asked Ivy even once what she’d been up to. Everything her mother did had a purpose. “Are you staying at Villa Blue?”
“Of course. Where else would we stay?”
Ivy did her best to keep her face even. “I wish you would’ve told me. I have a lot going on this weekend. Getting ready for my show in—”
“I left you voicemails and sent you texts but you didn’t respond. For all I knew, you’d dropped off the earth.”
In response to Helen’s choice of words, Aiden and Ivy shared a small, private glance of amusement. They had dropped off the earth together—into the ocean while holding hands.
“Ivy, don’t be rude. Drink your wine.”
Happy to oblige her mother in the latter instruction, she did exactly that then stood after the fast gulp. “Thank you for the wine, Mom. I trust you two rented a cart to get up to the villa? Do you need help getting up there?”
“It’s easy enough. We’ve already checked in,” Helen speared back. “We’ll find our way just fine together, won’t we Iris?”
Iris’s head bobbed in agreement.
“Then you’ll excuse me. I have to get back to work.” At her mother’s silent scoff, Ivy excused herself and walked out without another word, with Aiden following behind.
The cool night air was reprieve from the long-fingered hold her mother had on the air in the wine bar. Helen Van Noten had a way of sucking up all the oxygen, Ivy thought to herself, breathing deep as she made a quick getaway.
“You okay?” Aiden strode faster to catch up.
“Yes. Or I will be.”
She sped along at a steady pace then stopped short, turned to Aiden, and pressed her fingers to her eyes, wishing she could return to flying through the air. “My mother’s here.”
“I noticed.”
“Hard not to. I’m sorry about that.”
“Don’t be. We’ve all got family we deal with.”
Her fingers moved to her forehead where she massaged, then her hands fell by her sides and she looked at him. “I don’t think my family even likes me very much. I don’t know why they insist on trying to convince me to live how they want me to live. I’m just not as forceful as they are. I’m not like them and that confuses the hell out of them. I’m twenty-six, for Christ’s sake. You’d think they’d have given up by now.”
She hummed out a sound of frustration. “My mother’s here.”
He stepped in, laid his lips gently on her forehead in a soft kiss. “That can’t be the only place around here with champagne. What about that bar and grill? Or that dive bar at the other end of town?”
“I should get back to work.” She started back toward the villa
In response, he took her hand and trekked up the trail with her, neither saying another word.
And while she led them on a narrow dirt footpath under the moonlight, amid the shrubs and wildflowers, up the hill toward Villa Blue, she tried not to let it mean something—his presence, his comfort—to her heart that yearned to protect itself from the possibility of any further hurt.
Only, his presence did mean something, just as the comfort she felt in that presence did.
Her mind was a jumble—it’d gone from being blank to being fogged over with desire, to being overwhelmed by Chanel No 5 and the mannered manipulation she’d forever associate with that scent, the scent of her mother. As she churned over old conversations, old arguments about her duty to be a good wife, to overlook her husband’s—ex-husband’s—indiscretions, that being an artist wasn’t really a career, she stomped upward.
“You’ve been great,” she told Aiden when she finally felt like speaking again. “Really, you have. And thank you so much for the night zip lining. It was amazing of you to arrange.” There was a hint of sadness in her words that she hadn’t meant to share, so she kept quiet the rest of the way up.
They reached her studio that was black except for a pearly reflection of the crescent moon on the glass.
This time it was Aiden’s voice that broke the silence. “My father is a mean son of a bitch a lot of the time.”
Ivy looked up to Aiden’s eyes that were dark from the night. He was providing comfort through camaraderie, that much she saw clearly on a day when everything else had been murky. “Is he?”
“He’s successful and has built his life from nothing. But when he’s not busy making money, he’s busy being a tyrant. It’s who he is,” Aiden told her. “We do our best to be whoever we are despite, and maybe a little because of, who our parents are.”
It just wasn’t fair that the man was confident, genuinely sexy, and found a way to understand what hurt her most. It wasn�
��t fair that a man could be all of those things because it was making her want for things she’d long since let go of. “You’re right. That’s a good way of putting it. I really am sorry about tonight.”
“The only thing I’m sorry about is that we didn’t get that champagne.”
“We didn’t, did we? I’m sorry,” she said then let out an exhausted, breathy laugh. “That was the last apology. And thank you for sharing about your father.”
“Sweet dreams, Ivy.” His hands skimmed up her waist and his head dipped down, meeting her lips with his. The kiss was slow at first, lingering, gentle, then when the kiss deepened, he felt her surrender to it.
Swallowed by the shadowed night, two people on the top of a hill shared a breath, a kiss. Tongues tasted, mouths moving together in a moment that lit them from the inside, lit them with life and desire, forgetting all else.
When he pulled back—and God, did that take effort—he laid one more kiss on her lips then looked at her, into her, waiting for even the slightest hint of a smile.
When it came, he returned the smile, nodded once then walked off through the darkness toward Villa Blue.
With the frayed edges of her mind soothed by Aiden, Ivy felt somewhat bad about the less than stellar reaction to her mother and sister’s presence on Parpadeo.
So she waited in the dark for them at the main entrance of Villa Blue and while she did, she felt the buzzing memory of Aiden’s lips on hers, tasted him, still, on her tongue, and again imagined what it would feel like to be with him. Would it be a wild rush? A steady roll of thunder? A hot and sweaty ride?
Admittedly, she was intrigued. He’d left her intrigued, she realized, appreciating that she understood, not bothering to hide her enjoyment of that fact.
Helen and Iris appeared hours later and a little bit toasted from a lot of wine. When they arrived, her mother barely uttered more than snide pleasantries, and her sister trotted toward their mother through the villa that was quiet with sleep.
Iris’s loyalty had always been with Helen—they’d been inseparable since Iris’s birth. Ivy, on the other hand, had always flittered between being who she is on the inside, and who her family wanted her to be, then later, who her husband wanted her to be, on the outside.
But that wasn’t entirely true, Ivy knew. She wasn’t a puppet. She was an adult who’d understood what people she cared for wanted from her, and she’d given it to them for many years. Her choice, she reminded herself.
But something had happened after she’d found the crack in the façade, the affair her husband was having. She’d become a brand new version of herself through that chasm and it was uncomfortable for those around her.
She no longer needed to sacrifice who she was in order to console others. They were all adults now too and could take responsibility for their own comfort and perspective. And if they didn’t appreciate her for who she was, that had to be okay too. She was making the choice to simply be herself regardless of whether or not it was understood.
And knowing that, she felt better, less weighted by expectations she could never live up to, and more importantly, had never really wanted to live up to.
She strode through the courtyard, breathing in the quiet scents of sleeping flowers that blossomed covertly through the dark like a pretty array of little secrets.
And she bloomed to life with an idea.
Instead of returning to her studio, she strolled back into the villa’s kitchen that was lit only by the cool LED nightlight, pulled a bottle of champagne from the wine fridge, then scribbled a note that she’d taken it and would replace it. After a quick check of the guest log for Aiden’s room number, she floated up the stairs and down the length of the hallway.
When she reached his door, she knocked calmly and with clear intention, followed by a fast flutter in her belly.
And there stood a man—bare chest, easy eyes, and raw strength.
“Grab a blanket and let’s go outside and drink this? I know a perfect spot.”
Aiden needed no more an invitation. He tugged blankets off the bed, slipped on a pair of shoes, and followed Ivy through the quiet villa, out into the serenity of night.
Chapter Eight
In that small slice of life between what was and what would be, between the years up until that moment and the years that would follow, Ivy settled onto the square of soft fleece that Aiden brought from his room. Together they sat beneath the stars, the open sky, still hearing the songs of crickets in the distance.
Soon Aiden would leave for wherever his travels took him, as Donatella had reminded her, and soon she would have her first major gallery show in San Francisco. They both had their own lives, their own directions.
And knowing that there were no expectations beyond the moment, she let go of any shreds of fear that her life could change. She liked it just the way it was—living at Villa Blue, painting, eating ice cream whenever she felt like it, not leaving her studio if she didn’t feel like it. She was free to be herself, which she hadn’t truly felt before moving to Parpadeo.
And wasn’t it fascinating that, while she’d been afraid of losing that freedom, Aiden really had only ever been beside her—interested and interesting, kind and guiding, confident and very, very talented with his mouth. Around him, she felt like a sensual woman who was liable to purr whenever he touched her.
And she was damn well free to do so.
He poured champagne into the paper cups she’d thought to grab as they’d strolled through the sleeping villa. The bachelorette party girls, the couples, her mother and sister, Donatella, all had been asleep, or at least they’d dimmed their volume for the evening.
And in the dark, underneath the textured white of the moon, she smiled.
“Cold?” Aiden asked, handing her both of their now full cups so he could toss the other blanket he’d grabbed over their legs.
She’d shivered, but less because of the chill in the air, and more because of the unexpected thrill that pulsed through her. She handed one of the cups back to him and pulled up the blanket he offered. “Better, thanks.”
She sipped champagne, feeling the bubbles play in her mouth as she let her mind play with the idea that she was under a domed and starry sky, in between blankets with a half-naked man she barely knew. “I think I’m a late bloomer,” she announced, continuing on the streak of sharing her inner world.
His laugh was subtle but quick. “Yeah?”
“I guess you weren’t in my mind so there wasn’t much of a segue, was there?”
“I’ll keep up.”
“I was just thinking that I got married when I was barely twenty, married five years, now I’m divorced. But it’s funny because I kind of feel like a kid again, like I’m figuring things out from a new perspective. Or maybe I’m just having a midlife crisis. Well, not a crisis, a good crisis. A midlife awakening.”
“You’re hardly midlife,” he pointed out.
“If it were an image, it would be two worlds that bleed together—like a cityscape and a field of flowers—and I’d be that line in the middle that is both the tops of buildings and the roots of flowers. Or maybe I’m just being dramatic.”
“Who’s to judge?”
A full smile filled her face. “Who’s to judge, I like that.”
When a lazy call of an island bird crooned in the distance, it caught their quiet attention.
Time moved to a different rhythm in the dark, she decided. Like a different drummer took over the beat of things. Usually she loved losing track of time, as it was a sign that she was lost in a creative zone, lost in her passion. But now, somehow, time mattered. “How much longer are you on the island for?”
“Couple days,” he told her, taking a drink. “Then back to New York, then on to somewhere else.”
“You don’t know where?”
Something in his face changed. Even as the moon dipped behind a drifting cloud that mellowed the light, she saw it.
“Maybe London. Not sure. My father’s been lookin
g at a property in London so that’s my guess.”
“Do you like working with your father?”
He scratched at the stubble that covered his face like a shadow. “I get paid well to travel around and pretty much do what I want, what I’m good at.”
“But it’s complicated?” she added, wondering.
He made a noncommittal sound, set down the paper cup he’d drained of champagne. “I’m not much for complicated. I just leave and do my own thing when things with him get complicated.”
“And with women? Same thing?”
Dead center, he thought. “You’re an insightful woman, Ivy Van Noten. Insightful and brave.”
“Brave?”
“Not very many people have the fortitude to start over, to do it with so much grace. And to do it in a place like this, away from where most people live.”
Now her head leaned back as she laughed, the blond waves of her hair swaying with the movement. “I get your company, a cup of champagne, and your compliments? If you’re trying to feed me charm, you don’t need to bother.”
“I’m not feeding you anything. You have a full life here, Ivy. It’s oddly appealing.”
“Oddly?”
“Odd for me to think so,” he corrected. “You have a good thing going here.”
“I do.” She scanned the island that slept around her, the sea that shimmered silver. “I’d never felt a true sense of home before I moved here.”
“Home,” he repeated. “Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. You seem very at home here.”
“Your face keeps changing. Even in the dark I can see it but it’s hard to describe. Why is that?”
“Why is it hard to describe?”
“Why does it keep changing?” she asked again. “But you knew that’s what I was asking.”
“I did.”
She set her cup down then laid back, pulled the covers up to her chest, waited for his response while she sniffed at the ocean breeze and studied the sweet scattering of stars.
He scooted down as well, took in the same view. “I guess I’m wondering what it’s like to feel a strong sense of home. I’ve never really craved that, or, hell, never even wondered about it.”
