The Art of My Life

Oh, and to respond to a question I had yesterday—one that comes up every so often—the paintings on The Art of My Life are not my work. I’m more of an art lover than an artist. A friend did the paintings; but for reasons I’m not up for sharing, he shall remain anonymous.

Cal slammed the door of his Jeep and pocketed his keys. Driving again fueled his optimism about inviting Aly to stop by the dock after work. He had thirty-five cents to his name after swinging by Winn Dixie for pumpernickel bread and Chunky Monkey. He could kiss Missy for washing his car and leaving him with a full tank of gas.

He pushed open the dock gate and glanced at the darkening sky. If the storm would just hold off until he had a chance to show Aly the Escape’s refitting, feed her some supper, and enlist her help before she freaked out about the weather.

Storms had terrified Aly since she was a little girl in Miami and a tree crashed through their roof during a hurricane. He could still feel Aly shaking in his arms when they holed up under her desk in the camp office during a waterspout the summer she interned at the camp. She’d curled up in a fetal position and buried her face in his chest for the duration. He smiled. Sometimes he liked her fear of storms.

Cal’s head popped up. Evie, the last person he wanted to see right now. The last person Aly needed to see. “I’m kind of in a hurry. I’ll catch you later.”

Evie jogged up the pier beside her boat in her daisy dukes and came alongside him as he walked up the dock. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Fish step out of his cabin.

“You lonely anchored out there all by yourself?” Evie said. “I could keep you company.”

Cal set his bag of groceries in the stern of his dinghy, climbed into the boat, and untied the painter from the dock. “I don’t need any company.”

Aly, in a mint pant suit, walked along the sidewalk toward the pier. She hadn’t seen him yet.

The tinge of hysteria in her voice clenched Cal’s stomach. He had to get rid of Evie before Aly saw them talking. Just Evie’s presence on the dock could sabotage everything.

Aly picked her way up the pier, careful not to catch her high heels between the boards of the dock.

“Evie, we haven’t gone out in at least six months. You don’t have any claim on me.”

Cal’s eyes welded to Aly as she neared the Escape’s vacant slip. She spotted Evie first, and her pale complexion whitened another shade. Then, Aly’s eyes dropped to him where he bounced in the dinghy, chest-level with the dock.

“I bet you want some of this.” She smacked her backside and the frayed edge of her shorts. “News flash. Ain’t happenin’. My heart belongs to Cal.”

“A dose of truth is just what the doctor ordered.” Evie flounced off toward her boat.

Cal caught Aly with his eyes. “I’m sorry about the drama. Come on, let me take you out to the Escape.” He held his breath as she towered over him, her jaw clenched.

Finally, she wilted to the edge of the finger pier, sat down, and kicked her shoes off. They clunked into the bottom of the boat one at a time. “It’s been over two years. Maybe I can be adult about this, and we can be friends. Maybe not best friends, but more than we have been lately,” Aly said.

The breath rushed out of his lungs. “Okay then.” He gripped the dock and reached a hand toward Aly.

Her fingers closed around his, and she slipped into the boat. Heat fanned through his body. Whoa. He’d touched Aly a thousand times and never felt this way.

Aly’s hand detached from his, and she scooted onto the stern bench in the back of the boat. Her gaze searched the billowing clouds.

Cal stared at Aly’s stocking-covered toes as he rowed. He looked up and caught Aly watching him.

He sucked up his courage. “I know it’s time to call in the loan next week. I should have contacted you sooner. I kept thinking things would turn around.”

“There’s not much I can do at this point. It’s out of my hands. If you’d kept in touch with the bank, they might have given you some leeway, but….”

Aly’s eyes went soft, her voice gentle. “You taught me to sail on the Escape. I’ve been on her a dozen times over the years. I know what she looks like.”

Van Gogh barked from the deck and raced from one end of the boat to the other at the sight of Aly.

Cal swung them alongside the Escape, and Van Gogh went into a seizure of delight when Aly scooted aboard, hugged him and scratched his ears. At least he and his dog were in agreement. But, to be fair, Cal couldn’t remember anyone who didn’t enrapture the dog.

“I hope you’re hungry because I’m grilling grouper I caught this afternoon.”

He handed her the grocery bag. “Warm up the beans, put the Chunky Monkey on ice, and I’ll get the hibachi going.”

Thirty minutes later he passed Aly a plate of food—a quartered pumpernickel fish sandwich, perfect half-moon of black beans with a dollop of salsa on top.

Aly grinned and shook her head. “You could always get a job at Riverview Charlie’s as a plater.”

Cal slid into the dining nook at a right angle from her. “I’m an artist. It’s what I do. It’s all about color—chalk-white fish, obsidian bread and beans, garnet salsa.”

Cal took a bite of the canned beans Henna had given him. “What did you do to these? They’re incredible.”

Aly arched her brows. “Maybe it’s all about taste. I used the tail end of the onion that was about to go, found some garlic salt that hadn’t turned to rock, a pinch of red pepper.”

The wind whistled outside the cabin and swung the boat west. Sun coming through the portholes dimmed, and Cal turned on the marine battery-powered light. “We make a good team.”

“I wish I would have asked for your help at the beginning,” he said. “You always wanted to run your own business. You’ve got the aptitude for it. I have the boat, the seven hundred and twenty sailing hours for my Coast Guard captain’s license.”

He gave her the rundown on the repairs, catalogued the fourteen customers he’d had in three months of operation. “Help me, Al. Talk to your boss. Buy me some time. Think about taking over the business end of things. You could make the business fly. I know you could.”

He picked up on her unease. “It’s just rain—no lightening. I can take you back. I’ve got a rain poncho.”

“No. What if it started storming when we were half way between the Escape and the marina?”

He could point out that land was less than five hundred yards away, but he didn’t want her to leave.

Aly launched from her seat and gripped the bulkhead, wild-eyed. Before the sound dissipated from the cabin, the color drained from her face.

He crossed the two steps between them and pried her fingers from the bulkhead, slipping the blanket around her, pulling her close. “It’s just a squall. It’ll blow over.”

A wave smacked against the hull, lurching the boat to one side and pitching them off balance. They fell onto the bunk in a tangle of limbs.

Aly’s arms snaked around him in a death grip, pinning him to the bunk. “It’s not funny.”

Cal pushed the hair out of her eyes. “The thing that looks like a wire brush on top of the mast is a lightening arrestor. You’re as safe here as you would be in your condo.”

Cal stuffed pillows under their heads and repositioned the blanket over her. He rubbed circles on her back. “It’ll be okay.”

The boat rocked in the wind. A shudder passed through Aly’s body with every clap of thunder.

Cal shoved him down. “No, you big sissy. If I let you up here once, you’ll think you get to sleep here every night. Besides, if it’s between you and Aly in my bed, she’s going to win every time.”

The storm sounded like an all-night rain and not a squall that would rumble through in half an hour. Maybe that was wishful thinking.

Now that Aly was in his arms, he didn’t want to let her go. With the exception of his short-lived infatuation with Raine, he’d probably always wanted permanence with Aly. Only now, time was running out. Aly probably dated some guy now. She was always seeing someone. But at twenty-three, people didn’t just go out. They got engaged. She could marry the guy in months.

He closed the space between them and filled his lungs with the scent of mint growing in the forest. He needed Aly to rescue his business, his self-worth, so he’d have something to offer her. It was humiliating to ask. But he was out of options.

The thunder subsided, but rain continued to assault the boat and his optimism. Aly had said the bank was past the point of giving him more time. She was too smart to sign on to a sinking business. He needed to prepare himself for her no.

Aly’s breathing eased into a normal cadence, and his body warmed against hers. He’d made some pretty stupid decisions in the past, but having sex with Aly tonight would go into the hall of fame. He put air between them.

Light from the main cabin spilled across her sleeping eyes. Every fiber in him wanted her.

Mascara coated her almost colorless lashes. He picked up a white-blonde tendril from the hair pooling on the bunk around her face and rubbed it between his fingers. He hadn’t gotten the color right the first time he painted her when she was fifteen. In Sleepy Aly, he’d painted to stay sober after Raine dumped him; the color had been better, but still not exact. When he painted Aly again, he’d take his time and get it perfect.

He propped his head on his hand and studied her thin brows, exactly proportioned nose. The asymmetrical quality of her eyes, the left larger than the right, wasn’t detectable to most people. She’d always hated her “lopsided” eyes and used makeup to minimize the difference. But Cal loved the contrast. He’d drawn and painted her enough to know it wasn’t so much a matter of size, but of one eye appearing wide open and the other heavy-lidded. He ran the back of his finger against the blush of her cheek. It would be a challenge, but he knew he could capture the silkiness of her skin on canvas.

The shadowed gap between her blouse and chest teased him. Aly had offered to comfort him with her body when he’d been reeling from Raine. He’d turned her down, one of the few good decisions he’d made during that dark time. He’d get that chance to make it with Aly if he had anything to say about it.

That depended on Aly’s answer to his plea for help. And it didn’t look like he would get a reply in the next five minutes. He could think of worse ways to wait.

Panic jetted through Aly as she gained consciousness. A heart thumped under her right ear. Male scent filled her nostrils. She’d woken up in some guy’s arms—something she promised two years ago she’d never do again. Her tongue ran across the roof of her mouth and tasted morning breath and remorse.

A dog whimpered in his sleep. Van Gogh. Cal. Her head rested on Cal’s chest. An underwire dug into her ribs. Fully dressed. Relief filtered through her. Thank God, it was Cal. Then, she remembered the storm, the feeling of safety in Cal’s arms. How she always felt with Cal. But the feeling was a lie. Cal had snapped her heart in two.

The rain had stopped. The Escape rocked softly, water slapping contentment against the hull. She closed her eyes to savor the quiet whistle at the end of Cal’s breaths as he slept—intimate and foreign.

If they’d been together since she was fifteen, Cal would have put a ring on her finger a long time ago. Their firstborn would sleep in the bow berth. And when Aly woke up at dawn, her hands would explore the map of Cal’s body—one she’d know as well as her own. It was just this kind of useless daydreaming that would set her up for a second heartbreak.

Cal shifted in his sleep and tightened his arms around her. A sense of being loved washed over her—did he know it was her in his sleep?—and subsided.

Regardless of her vow, if Cal woke up and wanted her, she didn’t know if she had the strength to say no. She hadn’t had sex in two years—which probably accounted for the near-starvation she felt for Cal’s touch. If she gave in, she couldn’t feel more guilt than she already felt.

She could see her sister plopping her hands on her hips and saying, “Don’t do it. You’ll be sorry. You know you will.” Easy for Kallie to say. She’d held onto her virginity with a vise grip until her honeymoon.

Cal and Kallie thought she slept with guys because she was looking for Daddy’s love. They were probably right. Kallie had convinced her that just because she responded to Daddy’s defection differently didn’t mean she was any better than Aly. But knowing why she slept with her boyfriends didn’t make the guilt go away. The nuns had always made it perfectly clear that sex was only permitted in marriage. Her drive to be loved had always trumped doing the right thing.

And she was sick of trying to get Daddy to care about her. The back child support Mom had sued him for could rot before she’d spend it. Blood money—money that came from Daddy’s bloodline running through her body, not from his love.

She’d already learned the hard way that Cal was a bad risk, no matter how safe he felt. He’d chosen Evie over her before. And Evie’s one-act last night proved she was still in the picture.

She eased herself out of Cal’s grasp and sat up, tugging the blanket with her.

Cal’s jean-clad knee poked out when she disturbed the covers.

Dawn warmed the cabin, the stubble on Cal’s face. His lips slightly parted. Sea-softened, kinky hair sprawled across his pillow. Warm brown eyes blinked open. He looked disoriented, then his expression cleared and he lumbered up. “I must have fallen asleep.” Gravel roughened his voice.

“Yeah. It’s morning.”

He leaned forward, hesitated.

Her pulse sped and her breath hitched.

Cal smiled and planted a kiss on her cheek and the corner of her mouth. A second stretched into eternity, and the kiss ended. “Thanks for coming. For hearing me out.”

Her brain scrambled for something intelligible to say. “For going psycho.”

Cal grinned. “Do I look like I’m complaining?”

She mumbled something about needing to wash her face and shut herself into the head.

Everything changed with that kiss, and nothing changed. It was a perfect kiss—not steamy or platonic. The impact felt small, like a punctuation mark at the end of a sentence or a capital letter at the beginning of the next. But it wasn’t.

She rubbed toothpaste on her teeth, swished water around her mouth, and spit.

She could resign from the world’s most boring job at the bank. Other than socking money away, she wasn’t getting any closer to her goal of owning her own business before she turned twenty-five. She’d always thought she’d open a gallery, but the type of business was less important than running it.

Aly splashed cold water on her face and toweled it dry. Goose bumps rose on her bare arms. She grabbed the sweatshirt that hung on the back of the door and pulled it over her head, inhaling Cal. She could run his business. She knew she could.

Cal sliced pumpernickel toast into eight triangles dotted with butter. They chased the toast with a Dr. Pepper they split. No weirdness crept in.

She huddled in the back of Cal’s dinghy trying to capture all the ideas for his business pop-corning into her brain as they neared the dock.

In the distance Evie climbed out of her hatch.

Aly snapped back into sanity and the sting of reality. Cal and Evie had to be still going out. Things seemed strained between them yesterday. But she’d swear to it that Evie was the only one Cal had ever slept with.

Aly touched her lips. This morning he’d kissed her. Maybe it was just a thank-you kiss from his perspective. But it didn’t matter. She’d have to be a masochist to face Evie or the possibility of seeing Cal and Evie together every day. No contact with Cal was the least painful option. And the smartest.

Like a slo-mo DVD, Aly watched Evie’s chin navigate toward the parking lot, then angle to where she and Cal sat in the dinghy. Evie slammed her hatch and marched in their direction.

Aly sucked in a shaky breath of salt-laden air as Cal grabbed hold of the dock. She squinted at him in the morning sun—needing to spit the words out before Evie descended on them. “My boss is going to call in your loan no matter what I say. I-I want to help you, Cal. You have to believe that. But I can’t. I just can’t.” Her voice broke.

She couldn’t read his expression with the sun in her eyes, but she heard him fill and empty his lungs. “It’s your call, Al.” His voice was heavy, resigned. He held out his hand to help her up the ladder to the pier and her grip closed around his thick fingers, the calluses on his palm. She could almost feel herself rip in two.

Evie glared down at them. “Isn’t this cozy. Seven-thirty a.m. Yesterday’s clothes.”

Chapter 6