“Uh, like forty-point font hard to read? If he could have painted himself onto your skin, he would have.” Through the airwaves I could hear her gulping water. “I’m serious. Do not let that pass you by.”
I made grunts of assent, but there was no way I could commit, considering how little control I had over the situation.
“Fine. If he asks again, I’ll make time.”
“You swear it?”
Please. It was like she thought we were in junior high pinkie swearing to tell a boy I liked him after school behind the bus line. I changed the subject.
“You and Grady Ingliss. How’s that going? He looked better with you on his arm.”
That got her on a less-painful tangent, and after a recitation of Grady’s quirks and perfections, accompanied by a couple of happy sighs, we hung up and I finally got a chance to get back to work. Unfortunately, now my head was full of Aero.
I couldn’t take the suspense anymore. I had to know whether his Grandma Trixie was okay.
I closed up my lists and shut off my laptop. Fifteen minutes later, after popping into a flower shop, I showed up at New Holland Savings with a bouquet of white and yellow daisies with a get well soon card attached. The gatekeeper at the information desk took my name and after only about ten seconds, she called me back.
“He’ll see you now.”
I followed her along a plush blue-carpeted hallway to an office with Danish Modern everything. It looked like a super high-class IKEA had plastered itself into this room: blond wood shelving, glass tabletops, sleek lines on the sofa and the lighting— but no Aero.
Someone else ran at me instead.
“Jilly!” Ryker threw his arms around my neck. “I knew you’d come back to me eventually.” He pulled back and took me by both hands. “The rest of the dimwits in your office— they don’t get me. They think I’m a little crazy. But you and Jantzen totally understand who I am and the direction I need to go and why. It’s for Phoebe, you know. All for her. I’d give up everything, all of it, just to make her happy. Having time with her is the most important thing right now.”
Whoa. If ever there was a recurring theme for a morning, this had to be it.
“I’m not actually here to evaluate contracts for you, Ryker. I’m sorry.”
Ryker’s boyish face fell. He was really quite a handsome kid when happy. I knew the teen girls liked Ryker’s brooding side from his teen vampire films, but I liked happy Ryker, the guy from the horse feed commercials.
“Oh, so you’re here to see Aero Jantzen, then.” He gave a wolf whistle, a loud one, to my shame. “I knew on day one there was something between the two of you. I mean, both of you were so lonely, and then— you saw each other and poof! That whole lonely aura just evaporated like steam in the heat between you.”
Uh … I had to get away from this topic. Not because Ryker had it all wrong, but because I was freaking out that he was completely right— and more so because Aero had seemed to be ghosting me all weekend.
Including, case in point, at this very moment.
“Where is he, anyway?” I looked around the room, at the tidy piles of paperwork on his desk, at the ships-in-a-bottle and other model ships, large and small, dotting the shelves. “Are you waiting for him too?”
“We ride into Old Town together in the mornings. I’m living at his place. It’s too big for two people. After my last agent tried to get me to drum up scandal and blow a bunch of cash on a pricey mansion in Malibu, I dropped her. She didn’t get me, you know?”
“Yeah.” I remembered. Weird how getting him was so important to Ryker.
“Then I came in to do some banking and met with Aero. I liked him. From the bank’s website, I saw he knew about micro-financing, so I came back to see about moving some funds to a micro-loan business so that families, and old people, in places like Bangladesh and struggling countries in Africa, could get some of those great over-the-counter medicines and home remedies for common ailments like … ” He named some ailments common to elderly people— the kinds of ailments cured by the products he’d been dying to endorse. “And Aero figured all that out for me, the financial details of it. Like, did you know I can give someone in Bhutan a one thousand-dollar loan, and he can set up a tent with a pharmacy selling stuff like Midol and help women who have suffered cramps all their lives get some relief?” Hearing a fifteen-year-old boy talk cramps jarred me, but I sat riveted by the barrage of information coming at me, all so unexpected and so passionate and compassionate.
Ryker went on— and suddenly I realized that Ryker had been wrong about me. I’d never gotten him either. Not before today. And now I recognized that I got only a sliver of him.
But Aero did.
“Hey, there.” Aero came in, his eyes on a file in hand, not looking up. “It looks like we are a go for the tent pharmacy in Ivory Coast. Come sign.” He set the paperwork on his desk, and then as he looked up his eyes fell on me.
“Jilly.” His voice lit up. “Did you get my message?”
Uh, no?
It took willpower, but I resisted the urge to tug out my phone that very second.
“I came to see how your grandma is.” I handed him the flowers, holding my breath and praying he wouldn’t say she’d had an extended hospital stay— or worse.
“Thank you. She’ll love these. How did you know daisies were her favorite?”
“Luck?”
“I’ll just take these papers down the hall to check them over and sign them.” Ryker snapped up the pile from the desktop and scooted to the door. “You two clearly need to be alone.”
Oh, please. Matchmaking wasn’t in the wheelhouse of fifteen-year-old boys for a reason. Setting people up required subtlety, and Ryker had none.
When the door shut, I accepted Aero’s offer of a seat on the couch. He came and sat beside me, a lot closer than I would’ve expected, considering the last few days of radio silence from him. His knee touched mine, and I let it rest there. If he had dumped me or wished I’d remove myself to the far side of the universe to keep me from harming his grandma, so far the vibes were not saying so.
“I’ve been so worried about your grandma.” I rested my hand on his, which was on his knee. He put his other hand on top of mine, putting my fingers in an Aero hand sandwich. Touching him took me soaring, but I managed to still speak a cohesive sentence. “She has heart problems, you said?”
“The hospital treated and released her. Luckily, they said the episode was anxiety rather than a heart attack.”
What could have triggered the anxiety? I tried to shuffle through events leading up to the bad moment, but I couldn’t think of anything I’d done or anything else traumatizing. Maybe she’d had a conversation with another patron wherein she was given bad news? The tube dress woman hadn’t said something disturbing, had she?
Chances were, I’d never know— besides the fact it was none of my business.
“I felt bad she didn’t get to really appreciate Woman Draped in Red, especially after she’d said how much she admired Mars Yuber’s landscapes. I’d be glad to arrange a special showing, even outside of business hours to make up for that. Unless you think it would be too traumatic to go back to a place where she … ” Nearly coded? There was no soft way of saying it.
“Actually, that was what I sent you the message about. I’m glad you got it.”
“But I didn’t.” I pulled out my phone and looked again. Suddenly I saw a little red dot on my voice mail icon. “Oh. Look.” I felt stupid. “Let me listen to it. I’m sorry.” I started dialing into the system, but he made me set it down. When he’d said message, I’d assumed he meant a text.
“I just called to let you know Grandma Trixie was all right, and to tell you I found a buyer for one of your paintings. It’s an extremely generous offer. But there’s a catch.”
“An offer? You didn’t have to do that, Aero.”
“It’s a generous one, like I said.” He pressed my hand between his, and heat rose up through my ar
ms. It probably raised the temperature of the heat in my face. No question, the chemical reaction when I came in contact with Aero Jantzen resulted in heat. If I could have remembered anything from high school chemistry at that point, I would’ve known what that was called.
But all my brain could conjure was Aero, what nice teeth you have.
I bit my lip, to keep it from kissing his, and pulled another sentence or two out of the air.
“I mean, after everything else you’ve done for me, I never expected you to drum up sales, too. Generous ones, least of all.” I wanted to ask how much, and for which painting. There was a tiny chance someone had divined Mindi’s identity from a microscopic signature on one of her botanical pieces while I wasn’t looking. A magnifying glass could possibly have aided a patron, and …
“First, the amount— one-point-two million.”
I staggered. “Wh-what?” My ankle wobbled, and my foot fell sideways off my wedge sandal. “Dollars?”
“Not pesos.”
“I mean— whoazy. Are you serious? The botanicals are beautiful, but considering the artist is otherwise unknown, I can’t believe it would be for one of them. And the other stuff, let’s face it, is amateur quality, even if some of the artists are famous for being on a soap opera or a car-chase movie. Seriously.” I pressed the back of my hand to my forehead. “There are some crazed fans out there.”
Aero looked at his lap. “It’s not a crazed fan. And it’s not for the celebrity art.”
Hot lava filled my stomach.
“The Mars Yuber isn’t for sale.” Hadn’t I been explicit about that on all the literature and signage at the museum? Maybe I hadn’t told Aero directly before now, but surely from the name of the gallery and the whole discussion he and I had covered in Swept Away, he had to know I needed one big piece of artwork as a draw. “I really can’t sell it. It’s the cornerstone of the whole gallery.”
“I know. But the price. You could buy something incredible to replace it. Hey, you could buy five incredible things to replace it.”
“No doubt, but the whole business is built around the lore of the ‘Lost Yuber.’ Specifically of Woman Draped in Red.”
Aero sat unfazed. “The buyer is in earnest. In fact, the buyer wants it enough that there was talk of upping the offer, possibly to double.”
Double! That was two-point-four million dollars. Not pesos. My heart clutched at the sheer magnitude of the numbers. I could shutter the shop and live comfortably for quite a while on that amount.
But— no. That wasn’t the point.
“If I sold it, then the rest of my gallery wouldn’t make sense. The gallery’s name alone—” But my protests didn’t dampen his resolve, which I saw gleaming clear as day in those ice-blue eyes.
“There’s no reason to change the name of the gallery. With over two million dollars, you could buy a red drape and replace the green one in the feature room. Voilá, problem solved.”
That wasn’t the point.
“Seriously, it’s off the table. Not an option.” Compulsion to explain pushed me onward, as well as competing fear of disappointing him. I knew that by telling him this, I risked having him pull away from me, and now that I’d felt his touch again, I couldn’t bear to let it stop. “Art World magazine is running with the story as its cover in two weeks, headlining how I stumbled across the painting at the rummage sale, the negotiation process, the authentication.”
“Art World!”
“See? It’s a big deal. If I don’t have the painting anymore, or if it goes into private hands, the gallery becomes obsolete.” It was a huge deal for Woman Draped in Red and for Red Drape Gallery, but I had a hunch it stood to be a career-making article for Grady Ingliss. He’d be big news in New York, Paris, Amsterdam. He’d done so much for me, no way could I undercut his reward at this point. “There are artists I’ve made commitments to. It’s not just my own hopes and dreams tied up in Red Drape Gallery anymore.
As I spoke it aloud, I knew that what I said was true. Mindi had put her heart on the line for this chance, and the others possibly even more so, by not hiding their artistic identities. They’d sacrificed anonymity and been courageous to put their art out there. I knew that had taken a lot. And it meant a lot to me. Real lovers of art would come— and had come. They’d appreciate Woman Draped in Red, and they’d perhaps have their heartstrings pulled by the other works, the ones for sale.
In fact, besides the six Mindi Dresser pieces that had sold so far, five other pieces by various artists had received offers.
“I’m sorry. You’ll have to tell the person making the offer it can’t be done.”
Worst fears realized, Aero pulled his hands and his knee away from mine, and a chill set in without his touch. I ached to reach for his hand again, but I couldn’t.
“The buyer is very serious.”
“I wish I could accommodate him or her, but I really can’t.” While I already knew my answer without any doubt, this discussion left me with a thousand questions. Wasn’t there any other painting or artwork that would satisfy? I mean, why this painting? Why was his buyer so adamant?
Actually, I didn’t have to ask that. This Mars Yuber was definitely a one-of-a-kind, a powerful work.
Unbidden, the biggest question sailed out of my mouth. “Who is the buyer?” It came out before I could realize how inappropriate it was. Four months out of my lawyer jacket and I’d forgotten all my training. Geez. There were professional courtesies and ethics I shouldn’t have been breaching by asking.
“I’m sorry, I apologize for asking that. You have clients, and there are boundaries. I didn’t mean to cross one.”
“Oh, you didn’t.”
I exhaled. A glance at him told me he wasn’t holding hard feelings for my error. In fact, he reached out for me again, tenderly resting a hand on my leg just above my knee.
“The buyer is me.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Aero! The buyer was Aero?
“But— why?” I swallowed all shock to let these words through my blocked throat. “I saw you look at it, and unless you have the best poker face in the world, I would have said the painting didn’t mean anything to you. Certainly not two million dollars worth of reasons.”
“Two-point-four million.” Now he wore a mask perfect not only for poker, but also for dating an unsuspecting girl who didn’t know he had no real feelings for her, or any other bluffing situation. “I have my own reasons for wanting it.”
“Well, what are they?” In my opinion, he should bust those out so I could understand why he wanted to undercut all the work I’d done.
“I’ll tell you someday, but for now, please consider my offer.”
Shaking with dismay, I stood up, pulling away from his tender touch, and felt myself dying inside. He was the one who’d insisted I start this whole venture. Now he wanted to halt it?
“I can’t, unless … are you willing to be the owner and let it remain on display in Red Drape Gallery? In that case, we can talk. I’d be glad to list you on the placard, ‘On generous loan from Aero Jantzen.’ We could even list New Holland Savings, if you like, and—”
“No. It needs to … be cleaned.”
What the heck was he talking about? I’d had it professionally cleaned before even starting to look for gallery rental space. I’d paid good money to get it into top condition. In fact, the soul-piercing stare was at least twice as penetrating now that I’d restored it to its original coloring, hard as it might be to believe.
“I’d love to help you out, Aero.” A rift widened between us. Why had he asked me for this impossible thing? It was tearing me apart, and pulling me from him as sure as a bear tearing its prey limb from limb. Why? The rift opened inside me as well, filled with the chill of his withdrawn touch. “But I really can’t.”
I inched toward the door, put my hand on the handle, sure that if I walked away from this negotiation, I was also walking away from any chance I’d ever have with Aero Jantzen ever again. My inner fabri
c tore as I turned aside from the first man in my adult life I’d seen as a Possibility.
“Please reconsider,” he said.
I couldn’t. I rested my hand on the door, let the handle slide downward, inched my toes across the threshold.
Aero’s voice stopped me. “I’m not going to give up. Come to dinner with me tonight.”
Dinner sounded great. In fact, my mind shot back to his dangling offer of the foot rub, left unfulfilled, of the little bubble of hope I’d let inflate inside me over the weeks since I’d met him— and I despised myself for waiting too long to act on it, and for now being stuck without a way to give him what he wanted, since he wanted the impossible.
Ryker came to the door, edging past me in the doorway and backing me into the room again. “Did I give the two of you long enough for a good make-out on the couch? Your hair isn’t messed up enough, Jilly.” He pointed at my hair, which I’d worn down, post-lawyer-style, and then turned to Aero. “You’re not doing it right if her hair still looks coiffed. Come on, man. You’re the one who’s thirty— twice my age. I shouldn’t have to give you pointers on women.”
“Go to dinner with me,” Aero said, ignoring Ryker.
“I won’t have a different answer for you.”
“Still. I’ll pick you up at eight.”
“Say yes, Jilly. He wants you.” Ryker the Pill struck again. “He wants you so much.”
Maybe, but he wanted to sink my dream even more. “My answer won’t change.”
______
I honestly didn’t think Aero would show up at eight. I’d already slid into my swimsuit to go take advantage of the hot tub at my apartments, one the other patrons almost never took time to use— just like Lawyer Jillian over the past however long because I was always working and never doing things that all my work made it potentially possible for me to enjoy— if I could have just stopped working long enough to do so.
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