Текст книги "Forbidden Boy"
Автор книги: Hailey Abbott
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Forbidden Boy
the dreamy melodies until she fully gave into conscious-ness. With one last sleepy sigh, she pushed herself upright and swung her legs off the side of the bed. Julianne stood up and stretched, raising her hands over her head and arching her back, trying to shake the sleep from her joints.
Remi had been in every single one of her dreams, and each had been sweeter and more romantic than the last.
Julianne wrapped her arms around herself, as though her cozy room somehow had a chill without Remi in it. She walked over to her closet and pulled a shrunken UCLA hoodie over her head. Shaking out the curls that caught in the hood, Julianne crossed the room again, sat down at her desk, and glanced at her perpetually-on MacBook. Quickly, she dashed off a MySpace message to Kat in Spain.
K—
Met a guy! Ridiculously hot, seriously funny. This is a biggie, I can just tell. Keep your fingers crossed for me! Waves have been amazing all week—wish you were here. Send pictures from Madrid as soon as you have
’em. Oh, and Hunter says hey . . .
xoxo
—J
Julianne got up from her desk and pushed the gauzy curtains back from the bay window door that led out to 23
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her balcony. She slipped on her flip-flops, unlocked the door, and padded outside. Before her eyes even adjusted to the light, Jules felt the sun beating down on her, making her sweatshirt unnecessary, and heard the lapping of the waves up against the shoreline. She walked over to the railing and leaned against it, watching the waves swell and crash. She allowed herself to drift into a few more moments of morning reverie before looking down onto the beach, which was practically glowing in the late-morning sunshine. Specks of shells caught the light and reflected like tiny prisms, casting even more light across the sand. A few sunbathers dotted the thin strip of sand directly in front of the water. People were scattered in beach chairs and on blankets, thumbing through newspa-pers or glossy paperback novels under the shade of palm trees.
Jules stared out across the beach and wondered if Remi was sitting on the beach somewhere. She wondered what sort of books he read, what he did for fun, where he hung out. She imagined sitting next to Remi on a towel, him glancing over her shoulder as she sketched fellow beachgoers. Just imagining the closeness made Julianne blush—and she hadn’t even gotten around to picturing him in his bathing suit yet!
Three distant but sharp beeps snapped her out of her daydream and she looked up, annoyed. Three hundred yards away she could see a yellow bulldozer moving 24
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around at the Moores’ place. Did these people have to ruin everything? Julianne shook her head and turned her attention back to the ocean, allowing herself to be soothed by the light sparkling off the waves. Then her father’s voice drifted up from the deck below, so she headed back inside to get ready for her day.
After a quick change, Julianne was sitting with her father and Chloe downstairs. “Excuse me, miss. Can I get a refill?” Dad pushed his empty lemonade glass across the glass patio table toward his daughters.
Julianne rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. “First you want sunblock, then you want the umbrella down.” She pointed to the oversize blue-and-yellow umbrella jutting out of the middle of the table like a Technicolor palm tree. “And now you want refills? I bet you’re not even going to tip. . . .”
Refilling her father’s glass from a huge, blown-glass pitcher, she turned her eyes back to the beach in front of her. It was a perfect early-summer afternoon—hot without being humid, the sun the color of butter.
“I’ve got a tip for you—don’t quit your day job.” Edward Kahn chuckled softly to himself, pulling Jules’s attention back. “You have many talents, Julianna Banana, but waitressing isn’t one of them.” Chloe reached across Julianne, grabbing a piece of corn on the cob. “Good thing you decided not to fill out that singing-waitress application at Nifty Fifties then, 25
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huh?” she teased.
Julianne practically wrapped herself around the umbrella post in pursuit of the potato salad and sloppily scooped a helping onto her neon plastic plate. “Alas, no roller skates and poodle skirts for me this summer. Just fresh air and building things.”
Chloe sat up straight in her chair and squinted through her giant gold-rimmed sunglasses. “Speaking of building things, what’s going on over there?” She jerked her thumb toward the construction equipment gathered around the new neighbors’ property. All sorts of destructive-looking vehicles were lined up around the house.
Julianne followed her sister’s gaze with one eye while monitoring her dad’s face with the other. “Beats me. I heard some construction noise when I was out on the balcony before, but that’s it. Dad?”
“Nuuhmuh.” Dad shrugged between mouthfuls of fruit salad.
“Come again?” Chloe asked.
“I said, ‘Nothing much,’” their father repeated. “It’s the same thing that always happens. People move here for a summer kingdom and start building their castle.
They’ll get bored and go back home soon enough.” He leaned over the side of his chair to pick up a grape that had escaped his grasp and wedged itself between the wood slats of the deck.
“The bulldozers don’t strike me as a sign of bore-26
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dom,” Chloe started, shaking her head.
“They showed up last month, immediately dug a foundation, and erected this crazy greenhouse-looking thing. It looks like they’re trying to expand down toward the beach now.” Julianne glanced over at the mess of Tonka trucks come alive. From a few hundred yards away they almost looked like a bunch of mechanical bees swarming around a big glass hive.
“Can they do that? Just keep going and going like that?” Julianne wondered out loud.
“Yeah,” Chloe added incredulously. “If they keep moving at this rate, they’re going to plow that whole stretch of beach right under.”
“In a few weeks, they’ll decide it’s all more trouble than it’s worth and sell the property for twice what they paid for it. Just wait. Don’t lose any sleep over it, girls.
It’ll be fine,” their father assured them. “But, speaking of sleep, it was nice of you to wake up and join us for lunch, Julianne . . .” he continued slyly.
In the distance, Julianne could hear kids laughing as they rushed up to the water’s edge and dashed away, squealing, as soon as the tide approached. Wow, I can’t believe he noticed . . . she thought.
Chloe said as much out loud. “Gosh, Jules, you must have been out cold to make Dad notice you snoozing the morning away. He’s been in his studio all day. Way to make your absence known. Hmm . . . I 27
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wonder what you possibly could have been dreaming about until almost noon . . .” Julianne could hear the slightest shade of glee coloring her sister’s voice. She was right, though. Their father, a children’s book author, was pretty single-minded writing. Mom had always joked that if she hadn’t illustrated his books, her husband would have forgotten who she was entirely while he was writing.
Abruptly changing the subject, Chloe burst out with,
“Hey, didn’t the Moores come over with their surveyor practically first thing when they moved in?”
“Chloe, don’t get all worked up over nothing,” Dad said. “Both of you girls worry too much. The neighborhood might be changing, but it doesn’t mean much for us.
Well, except for longer, meaner lines in the supermarket,” he added, winking. “The Moores aren’t going to win any conservation awards for building up all that ground, but their crazy glass mansion won’t really affect us.” Well, if Dad isn’t worried, I won’t worry, Julianne thought to herself. She glanced over at Chloe and saw her sister’s shoulders starting to ease their way down toward their typical relaxed height. “Nothing to worry about,” Julianne said softly, right as something went whizzing through her sight line, smacking Chloe directly on the forehead. Julianne and Chloe whipped their heads toward the opposite side of the table, where their father was chuckling quietly, fingers still poised from 28
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flicking a particularly round grape at Chloe’s head.
“Now there’s something to worry about,” he declared before the table broke out into an all-out grape-shooting gallery.
Julianne shook her head, grinning, and reached for her camera just in time to catch a few great shots of her crazy family in action.
“No, here’s something to worry about—the invasion of the hot summer guys! It looks like our Jules is already halfway to being beamed up.” Chloe giggled.
“Not even a little,” Julianne fibbed gamely. “It’s only June. A girl needs to keep her summer options open until the Fourth of July, at least.” She enjoyed keeping the excitement of a new romance quiet for a little while—
it made it even more special.
“I like that rule.” Chloe nodded thoughtfully.
“Saving your fireworks until after the fireworks. Very classy. Besides, you’re going to be working at cute-guy headquarters this summer. And you’re going to be the only girl there. We’ll need some sort of complex rating system to sort through all your options.”
“My little girls are growing up. I don’t think I like this,” Dad muttered pitifully. “One day it’s tea parties and art classes, the next it’s boys, boys, and more boys.”
“Oh, Daaad!” Julianne and Chloe groaned in unison, rolling their eyes.
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“Jules, sweetie, I don’t know how you’re going to hold down a job if you’re in the habit of sleeping until noon,” Dad teased.
“I wouldn’t say that sleeping in once constitutes a habit,” Julianne protested.
“Not a habit, per se.” Chloe smirked. “At least not yet. Wait until you run into that guy again; then we can start predicting recurrences.”
“Thank you, Captain Statistical Analysis,” Julianne shot back. “After that, maybe you can set up a formal experiment. I can be your very own live-in lab rat.
Anyway, I’m going to be spending the entire summer number one, painting, and number two, surrounded by the aforementioned hot guys. I think I’ll find it in my heart to pull myself out of bed and get to work somehow.” Julianne pulled her oversize sunglasses down her nose and cast a dramatic look at her older sister.
“Point taken,” Chloe admitted, laughing. “Honestly, Jules, I can’t think of anyone else who could make working on a construction site sound so . . . appealing.”
“Are you kidding me? It’s going to be fantastic!
Sunshine, boys, making things and then painting them?
I can’t wait to start!” Jules gushed.
“And I,” Chloe cut in, not-so-subtly redirecting the conversation, “can’t wait to hear more about this guy you met last night. Tell me everything already!” Julianne felt her cheeks turning red, in a physical 30
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flashback to the night before.
“Chloe, stop picking on your sister,” Dad interceded halfheartedly.
“Daaaaa-aad!” Chloe practically squealed. “Don’t even!
You know you want to know almost as much as I do!” Chuckling, their father admitted, “You know, I’m not sure that’s true. It’s just that I’ll lose my parenting license if I don’t tell you to cut it out at least twice a day. Carry on, then.” He smiled, picked up his plate, and headed back into the house.
Chloe lazily swatted at a seagull that was flying per-ilously close to her plate. His bird buddies squawked overhead, egging him on to fight. Glad of the distraction, Julianne reached under her seat and came back up with her camera—a huge old Nikon SLR. She loved adjusting the lenses and checking the light meter. She snapped away as Chloe took off a flip-flop and threatened to bat at the renegade bird, muttering, “Rats with wings. They’re just big rats with wings.” As the seagulls scattered, Chloe turned her attention back to the still-blushing Julianne. “Are you going to spill or not?”
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” Julianne replied tartly, putting her camera down and lobbing a look of wide-eyed innocence at her sister.
“Oh my God. You’re totally gone for this guy!” Chloe was now in full squealing mode. “Jules has a boyfriend!
Jules has a boyfriend!”
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“Um, excuse me?” Jules interjected. “Which one of us has the hot dinner date with her hot lab partner tonight?
Boyfriend, what?”
“Seriously, though, Jules. Things looked pretty intense last night. I haven’t seen you click with a guy like that in . . . welll. . . ever,” Chloe prompted, her voice more serious.
Julianne smiled to herself, remembering the electrified kiss on the beach, and gave up being vague. “I know.
It’s true. Talking to him just seemed so natural, Chloe.
Like everything fit.”
“He was pretty cute.” Chloe nodded, popping another grape into her mouth.
“And not just that,” Julianne continued, her pace quickening. “He was completely hilarious and nice and smart. He was just . . .” Her voice trailed off as she searched for the words. “He was perfect.” Chloe slid her sunglasses off of her face and smiled, her eyes twinkling as she lifted her lemonade glass in a toast. “Well, then, here’s to a perfect summer.”
“Here, here!” Julianne chimed in.
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Chapter Three
!
Julianne felt like she was being baked alive. The three o’clock sun was beating down, and she could feel it sizzling behind her dark curls. Even with her hair back in a messy bun, tied away from her face with a bandana, she could feel the heat sinking into her skull. She fanned herself with her hand and waited for a burst of cool breeze to come up off the ocean. Two feet away, her black Reef flip-flops lay messily where she had kicked them off, and she sank her toes farther into the sand. She had been out on the beach painting for the last hour, and still had a couple hours to go. Her mother had come out to the beach every day in the summers from two to five—at least until she got too sick to leave the house—to catch the sun on its way back down from 33
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the middle of the sky. Hannah Kahn had always said that her greatest pleasure as an artist was to catch the sun on its descent toward the horizon. The shadows were better. There was more depth, more variation. She never wore sunglasses when she painted, because she wanted to see the light in as pure a way as possible. Despite their many similarities, today Jules was definitely not feeling her mom’s artistic process. It was a gorgeous day, and all she could think about was getting in the water.
Usually, making art chilled Julianne out, but today she was surprisingly distracted. The anniversary of her mother’s death was coming up, and Julianne really wanted to have this painting finished by the time it rolled around. It was a challenge for her to paint in her mother’s lush, representational style, though. Julianne’s work was generally more abstract. She usually loved working in mixed media, but she felt compelled to do this painting her mom’s way—to experience the way her mom ticked as an artist. Trying to channel her mom’s method was a huge struggle for her, but Julianne desperately wanted to make this painting work.
Today, however, as sweat beaded across her forehead and Lily Allen’s voice bounced out of her iPod, Jules felt like she was fighting a losing battle. She just couldn’t focus. Her mind kept floating across the beach. When the breeze came up off the water, she was in heaven. She stuck the end of her paintbrush in her messy bun for 34
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safekeeping and walked around the canvas, first clockwise, then counterclockwise. She picked up her easel and shuffled a few feet to the left, then to the right again.
Julianne wiped her paint-covered hands on the front of her Bermuda shorts and sighed. It felt so much more natural to just take a photo—everything was captured instantly, beautifully, looking exactly like what it was, only better. The water looked perfectly crisp and invit-ing, and the surfer guys dotting the waves didn’t look half bad either. Julianne quickly pulled off her shorts and tank top, revealing her new green Betsey Johnson bikini. She tossed her clothes and bandana on top of her Reefs, set her paintbrush down on her easel, and ran for the water.
The second Jules’s toes hit the salt water, she felt her good mood come rushing back to her. She walked in up to her waist, then ducked down, letting the waves rush up to her shoulders, cooling her down instantly. She swam out a few feet and bobbed around, surveying the scene. Some guys from town were tossing a football by the edge of the water, trying not to take out the occasional low-flying seagull. On either side of her, surfers were flexing their strong arms and pushing up onto their boards before gracefully gliding to shore. Mixed in with the boys, Julianne was happy to see some girls represent-ing out on the waves. Maybe this will be the summer I step up my own surf skill s , Julianne thought. Chloe had always 35
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been more the swimmer and surfer in the family, while Julianne spent most of her time on the beach running or sketching. She was a strong enough swimmer and, more often than not, she was able to push up, stay up, and ride in on her board. But Jules knew she’d never really spent the time it takes to get really good at surfing. Kat, who was an amazing surfer, always said it was a shame Julianne didn’t spend more time on her board; she swore the cutest guys were always surfers. The group laughing and shouting to Jules’s left served as proof. If she could up her skills by the time Kat returned from Madrid, her best friend would be so impressed. Julianne made a mental note to add some surfing time to her summer to-do list.
Beyond the cluster of hot surfers, Julianne noticed a red ponytail whipping behind a girl on a longboard. Jules only knew one person in the Palisades with that fiery hair.
“Lucy!” She called out to her friend, but the crashing of a wave swallowed her voice. Julianne’s mind flashed back to her search for Lucy and her lost negatives at the party the other night. As much as she’d been hoping to find her friend, Julianne didn’t regret what she’d done instead one bit. I wonder if Remi surfs, she thought dreamily.
Julianne laughed at herself, dunking her head underwater. Why couldn’t she stop thinking about Remi? He had been in her head constantly since he’d hurtled into Chloe at high speed. Jules had never felt something click 36
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like that so instantly. And the way he’d looked at her right before she ran off . . . Her stomach twisted into a million pretzels just thinking about it. He had looked at her the way she looked through her camera at a perfect shot—transfixed, amazed, like he could suddenly see everything clearly. Talking to Remi was the most fun she’d had in months—and she liked to think that she had a pretty awesome time, generally speaking. Their banter had been so breezy and electric. And now all she wanted was to pick up where they’d left off.
Well, Julianne figured, no point in trying to avoid reality.
She shook her head to herself. Although the realization made her vaguely sick, she couldn’t deny that seeing Remi might have been a one-time deal. Refusing to sulk on such a beautiful day, she paddled back into the crowd of laughing surfers and swimmers, feeling the sun warming her back through the water. Her muscles already loose from her swim, Jules stretched her arms as far as they could go, reaching out for the perfect slicing stroke and shooting through the water. About twenty yards out, she stopped swimming and bobbed up in the cool surf, waiting for the swell of waves behind her. Since she didn’t have a surfboard with her, she figured she would just ride waves toward the shore for a while, then ask to borrow someone’s board once she got the hang of it. As she heard the familiar roll of an approaching wave, Julianne began stroking forward, gaining speed as the 37
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wave did. The growing wall of water caught up to her back and pushed her toward the beach. As the white bubbles of the breaking wave crashed over and around her, Julianne shot back up into the sunshine, exhilarated.
Grinning, she swam out into the deeper water to wait for another run.
Bobbing under the water from time to time as she swam out, Julianne was so immersed in the adrenaline rush that she barely felt her body collide with the board of another surfer waiting for a wave.
“Oops. Sorry about that, I’m a newbie,” Julianne apologized, laughing at her awkward collision and wiping water out of her eyes as she looked up. When she saw the face of the board’s owner, her jaw dropped.
“Oh my God!” It couldn’t be. It was just too surreal.
She’d met this guy for five perfect minutes at a party, and now he was popping up again the next day? These things only happened to Cinderella.
Remi’s eyes were the size of silver dollars and his eyebrows were knitted together in confusion. He was wearing board shorts, and his hair was still damp from his last dunk. He sat astride his surfboard with his bare calves dangling into the water, and his fingers absentmindedly drumming on the board’s surface. Jules realized with a shock of adrenaline that he’d been in the pack of surfers she’d been admiring earlier. He kept opening his mouth mechanically but no sounds came out.
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“Um. Wow. Um. Just . . . um . . . wow. What are you doing here?” Julianne stammered.
Remi opened and closed his mouth a few more times. He looked like a goldfish reaching for his fishy-flakes. A particularly hot goldfish.
“Are you okay? Are you lost? Are you suffering from sunstroke?” she went on, half-laughing, and fully hoping that she wasn’t hallucinating from the sun herself.
“I’m, uh, fine. Totally fine. Just . . . surprised.” Remi recovered quickly, running his fingers through his dark hair. Even squinting into the sun, his eyes were huge and liquid.
“Yeah, me too. If I remember correctly, you don’t usually make your big entrances upright.” Jules laughed, trying to play it cool even though her heart and her stomach were tumbling over each other and leapfrogging up into her throat.
Remi blushed, which of course made Julianne blush.
He looked slightly off his game—antsy and utterly unac-customed to the sun after a long, gray, Seattle spring.
Even in the bone-melting heat, Julianne felt a chill run up her spine.
“Were you . . . ?” Remi’s voice trailed off, but Julianne followed his eyes toward the shore and knew what he was asking.
“Yeah, actually. Do you . . . ?” She laughed and tipped her head back toward the beach.
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“Sure.” Remi beamed, sliding off his board and back into the cool water.
As they swam toward the sand, Julianne was delighted that talking to Remi still came just as easily as it had at the Malibu party.
“The waves were awesome today,” Remi noted happily.
“They’ve been beautiful so far this summer,” Jules agreed. “It’s a good sign.”
“Is there some sort of Palisades folklore about what you can learn from a summer of good waves? Some sort of Southern Californian old wives tale?” Remi teased.
“Oh, yeah, definitely.” Julianne played along. “See how the waves are more rounded today?” Remi stopped paddling and looked to either side of him before nodding. “That means there’s only a fifty percent chance of a shark attack,” Julianne intoned dramatically before making a sudden grab for his arm. Startled, Remi let out a yelp. “Gotcha!” Julianne winked.
Remi laughed and splashed Julianne with an armful of water. “You learn something new every day around here.” He winked back before hefting himself onto his board and beginning to paddle. “Race you to shore!” As Julianne and Remi walked out of the ocean and onto the beach, seawater trailing from their hair down their backs, Julianne pointed out some of the Palisades beach highlights. “Over there is where the Labor Day carnival used to be held every summer.” She pointed to 40
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a pier about a hundred yards down the beach. “Now it’s held on the boardwalk by the Fishtail. Have you been to the Fishtail yet?” Remi shook his head. “Oh, you definitely have to check it out. Everyone hangs out there in the summer. They have awesome live music. Let me know if you want to check out a show or something,” she finished shyly, casting her eyes toward the sand under her feet. “Oh! And over there . . .” Julianne started the tour back up again, her enthusiasm for the beach and for her town overwhelming any awkwardness. She pointed up the beach toward a cliff, under which a bunch of younger kids were playing Ultimate Frisbee.
“When we were in elementary school, we would have our ‘girls-only club’ meetings in the rocks under those cliffs. The ‘boys-only club’ was, like, three feet away.” She grinned and shrugged as they approached her easel.
“So, we’re here.”
“Well, thanks for the tour.” Remi grinned. “Would you mind some company while you do your thing?”
“I don’t know,” Julianne teased. “The element of surprise has really become the hallmark of hanging out with you. I don’t know if I could do without it.” As she was finishing her sentence, Remi turned and started walking away. “Hey! Where are you going?” Julianne called to his back. Just as suddenly as he’d walked away, Remi turned around and strolled over to Julianne’s easel.
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“Fancy meeting you here,” Remi started again, feigning shock. “Do you come here often?” He arched his eyebrows, clearly amused with himself.
Julianne met his line and raised him a cliché. “Sure, I come here all the time, just hoping to run into someone tall, dark, and clumsy.”
“Run into, eh? Didn’t your sister say the same thing the other night?” Remi cocked his head toward her and squinted, as if hoping she wouldn’t vanish into thin air if he blinked. Julianne knew that look—she was wearing the same one.
“Probably. It’s the Kahn sense of humor. Gives us away every time. I think it’s the by-product of seventeen years spent in a very small space together—eventually we’ll turn into the same person. Me, my dad, and Chloe will all morph into one huge Mega-Kahn.” She absentmindedly picked at the stickers covering her water bottle, peeling the edges away so that the Nalgene logo was visible for the first time in several summers.
“Sort of like Transformers?” Remi grinned, his big eyes fixed right on her.
“Oh, totally,” Julianne continued. “But none of that turning-into-a-big-robot crap. We’d have really practical powers. Like the ability to obliterate an entire gallon of ice cream in a single sitting. Or to steal the arts section out of the Sunday paper with lightning speed. Additional arms for the pottery wheel so we could make multiple 42
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vases at once. You know, the basics.” She giggled. She’d almost peeled a border all the way around her Decem-berists sticker.
“I won’t lie, that’s pretty sweet. If my family had crazy powers we’d probably just sort our laundry into whites and darks telekinetically. Or teleport ourselves back to work from the dinner table to get a few more hours in.”
“Nothing like really utilitarian powers, I guess.” Jules unscrewed the cap of her Nalgene and took a huge gulp before offering it to Remi.
He shook his head, but his eyes lingered on the spot on the rim of the water bottle where Jules’s lips had just been. “I mean, it’s not as boring as it sounds,” Remi continued. “My family’s actually really great. We’re just not that, um, original. We’re more Leave It to Beaver, I guess.
You know?”
Julianne didn’t really know what he meant, and said so. “Not really, now that you mention it. My family’s always had a sort of free-form, go-with-the-flow way of approaching everything.” Even Chloe’s compulsive volunteering and studying were organic; they were things she did because they made her feel alive. Jules tilted her head toward Remi thoughtfully. “I can’t really imagine a family being structured any other way. My family’s a little bit ‘follow your bliss,’ if you know what I mean. As long as Chloe and I are doing the best we can and doing it for 43
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the right reasons, our dad is pretty much happy with whatever.”
“What does your mom think about that?” Remi looked at her as if she were describing a totally different world.
Julianne paused, setting her water bottle down at the base of her easel. “Not much. She’s actually dead.” Remi’s jaw dropped like someone had released a little lever inside of his face. “I’m . . . I’m . . . sorry,” he stammered.
Jules wiped a bead of sweat from in between her blue eyes and shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. Sorry to be so blunt, but you didn’t say anything wrong.” Remi reached out and touched her wrist, then sheepishly shoved his hands into his back pockets.
“So, what are you doing on this beach?” Julianne asked, feeling a familiar blush starting to creep up her neck. “I mean, other than looking for more innocent vic-tims to terrorize with your demolition derby moves?”
“I think you’re safe for now—there isn’t a keg in sight.” Remi laughed a deep, rich laugh. “I was surfing with some guys I met down at the boardwalk earlier, and then I was just exploring the beach, really. You saw my brief attempt at a second run in the water. I haven’t been in town long; I don’t know where anything is, but I really love this beach. What are you doing down here?” He laughed again, gesturing at Julianne’s easel. “I mean, 44
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obviously I know what you’re doing right now. But what’s your usual beach routine?”
“I live down there.” Julianne gestured vaguely over her shoulder, toward her family’s small cottage. “But I come here to paint. I’m starting my summer job next week, so I won’t have access to afternoon painting light much longer.”
“Can I see what you’re working on? Or are you one of those super-secretive artists?” Remi asked with a sly wink.
“Oh, super-secretive. Definitely. That’s why I would never in a million years work in the middle of a public beach where everyone could see me.” Julianne laughed.
She took Remi’s hand and led him back around the easel, where her landscape was still sitting deserted and unfinished.
Remi was silent for a minute, looking at the easel and squinting his eyes. He even crouched down to take in Julianne’s painting from a different angle. Then he took a few steps back and squinted at it again.
