Read The Art of My Life Online
Authors: Ann Lee Miller
Tags: #romance, #art, #sailing, #jail, #marijuana abuse
The Art of My Life (23 page)
January 1
You can only have goals for
one person in life—yourself—because you are the only person you can
control. You can hope your friends make good choices, but
ultimately, it’s up to them.
Aly at
www.The-Art-Of-My-Life.blogspot.com
Fish glanced at Missy in the glow from
the truck dashboard as they crept along the lumpy dirt road out of
the woods.
She wore the short shorts she’d had on
the night he discovered her sitting on the dock box, a man’s
undershirt, and a sports bra. He’d barely been able to drag his
gaze from her body all day while they worked on Henna’s
garden.
He just had to make it to US 1, and
the lights and traffic would distract him from the itch to touch
her. If he kissed her tonight, chaste wouldn’t describe
it.
He rounded a bend in the road, still a
good mile from pavement.
Missy cleared her throat. “We need to
talk about that kiss last night.”
Just like that,
kiss
in Missy’s
throaty voice snipped the frayed thread of his resolve.
The road forked, and he jerked onto a
path. He maneuvered the truck five hundred yards in and killed the
engine. He stared at the pine trunks, stuck in the sandy dirt like
perpendicular pick-up sticks. His peripheral vision settled on
Missy’s moonlit leg.
The truck crackled in the tension
between them.
A car scooted by on the main dirt
road, Aly or Cal.
Her orange blossom scent mingled with
sweat—his and hers—in the cab. “Please don’t kiss me
again.”
He knew she’d liked last night’s kiss
every bit as much as he had. It was ridiculous for her to cut him
off. He faced her. “Why? Because you didn’t enjoy it? I can fix
that.” His lips captured hers, shutting off her protest.
He drank hungrily. His arm slid across
her back, his fingers clamping around her bare shoulder. He settled
his other hand on the curve of her hip. His thumb roamed for the
skin between her tank top and shorts.
A cricket symphony surrounded them.
Dew-heavy air puffed through the cracked windows. She tasted sugary
like Orange Crush, and he couldn’t get enough.
Missy softened, yielded. He felt her
hands touch down on his ribs. Then, her arms circled him, tugging
him closer.
He moaned, his brittle veneer of
control slipping. The kiss morphed into need. His fingers ran over
the ribbed cotton of her shirt. He ignored the voice that said
maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
The low growl of Cal’s Jeep rumbled in
the distance.
Missy broke the kiss, smacked away his
hand. “Don’t.”
His breath raced in and out of his
lungs. His gaze riveted to the accelerated rise and fall of her
chest, the lingering Braille of his touch.
Missy scooted out of his arms. “I
can’t—I just can’t do this.”
He was a cretin for bringing Missy
down to his level—messing with her innocence. He grabbed the
steering wheel and looked through the cool glass of the windshield.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. You’re a…. You’ve
never….”
“
Technically.” She said
the word so softly, he barely heard it.
Shock, then jealousy one-two punched
him. His head twisted toward her. “What?”
Missy dropped her chin.
Their labored breathing cut the
silence.
His heart still sped as though he’d
run through the woods instead of driven.
Missy licked her lips.
His body came to attention.
She stared at her lap. “After my
eighteenth birthday, I was mad at you. There’s an old song, ‘If
she’s lonely now, she won’t be lonely long.’ ” Missy met his eyes.
“I wasn’t.”
The information snaked through him.
Maybe Missy wasn’t so different from him. God knew he had plenty of
regrets. The last fifteen minutes, for example.
She looked at her hands. “I let God
down. And someday I’m going to have to tell my husband I didn’t
completely wait for him. I’ve been eaten up with guilt for two
years. I’m not doing… anything else till I’m married.”
Her shame radiated out to him, shame
he knew as well as the stink of his own sweat.
He nudged her chin up with a knuckle.
“I’ve done worse.” He sighed from his core, exhaling the desire
from his body. “No, I don’t want to mess with that, Mis. I’m sorry.
It won’t happen again.”
He yanked his eyes from Missy’s skin
that threatened his sanity even now. He shook his head and gave a
dry laugh. “My life would be a whole lot easier if you’d shop at
Burkas R Us.”
Missy looked down at herself. “Oh. Oh.
Sorry. I didn’t think….” She reached for her sweatshirt on the
seat, pulled it on, and zipped it to her chin.
He reached for the ignition and
cranked the truck. As it rumbled to life, awe dawned out of the sea
of emotions inside him. She’d trusted him with her worst
secret.
He scooped an arm around Missy and
tugged her to his side. “Just sit beside me.”
Cal glanced out the porthole. Six p.m.
and it was already black out. Aly typed on her laptop working on
her Internet blog business, oblivious to the
Escape’s
sway
beneath them.
He’d bled paint every day in the month
since torching Henna’s garden till the picture on canvas finally
matched the one stuck in his head. It was his crowning work, yet it
was more. The vision had kept him sober. True. But pieces of his
life had wrestled into place as he painted.
It was already January twenty-sixth.
He missed another probation meeting yesterday—would have tested
dirty, twenty-four days since he’d smoked, six days shy of testing
clean. He was maybe hours from his getting picked up by the police.
Even if the inside of his life was starting to make sense, the
outside sucked.
He let his eyes wander over Aly,
confident she was so engrossed in her work, she’d never notice.
White computer light bathed her face. Van Gogh curled at her feet,
his eyes rolled back in his head as Aly stroked his coat with her
foot. Doggie heaven. Yeah, he knew the feeling—adoring
Aly.
He wanted to memorize every detail.
This might be the last time he ever saw her.
She wore no make-up. A blonde strand
of hair fell across her face and she raked it back, a graceful
movement—so common, so intimate. Her right eyebrow arched higher
than her left, the eye appearing slightly larger than the other. He
could almost smell her forest scent through the old cushion, fuel,
and damp salt smell of the boat.
His gaze slipped to her tangerine
sweatshirt. His memory was photographic, at least in one
instance—he saw Aly dripping wet in filmy azure bra and panties
standing in the head. A beauty he could never recreate with
oils.
His gaze traced the curve of her
jean-clad leg, her sock-covered toes now burrowing for warmth under
Van Gogh’s belly. This is what forever could have looked
like.
Showing Aly his tattoo had told her he
loved her, but things hadn’t really changed between them. He still
didn’t know how she felt. He’d like to know before he said his last
good-bye. Any minute now, she’d realize she’d worked through supper
and head out.
She looked up, and his breath caught.
This was it.
“
How long have you been
sitting there staring at me?”
His lips stretched into a bittersweet
smile. “A while.”
“
Without a
sketchpad?”
“
Some beauty can’t be
captured.”
“
Very funny.”
“
I’m not
laughing.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “You think… I’m
beautiful?”
Cal sighed and stepped across the
cabin to where she sat. He rested a hand on the bench at her
shoulder and one on the desk. “Yeah, I do.” He bent and met her
lips with his, beauty that tasted like cocoa on a rainy
day.
When he lifted his head, Aly’s eyes
pulsed with what had to be love for him. Love he’d kill a second
time—no matter whether he chose tonight to run or go to jail. Never
more than now did he wish he’d had the balls to stay
clean.
He scooped her into his arms and held
her against his heart. “Oh, Aly.” The seconds ticked by, and he
knew he had to tell her everything. She deserved to hear it from
him, not to come to the marina tomorrow and find the
Escape
gone, him gone, with no explanation. He leaned back.
“I—”
Someone banged on the outside of the
hatch.
Fish paused in the shadows of
Zeke’s Ambition
and watched the barrel-chested stranger
stride down the dock. A duffle bag big enough for a body hiked over
one shoulder. The guy turned at Cal’s boat and walked aboard as
though he’d been there before.
Fish wasn’t Cal’s keeper. He didn’t
know every one of Cal’s acquaintances and business contacts. Fish
shook off the chill that crawled under the collar of his coat. It
wasn’t his job to worry about Cal.
Fish glanced back toward Cal’s boat
one more time. Some habits weren’t breakable. He buried his hands
in his pockets and headed down the dock to grab a Big Gulp from the
7-Eleven. He needed some serious caffeine to get through studying
for the first Spanish exam of the semester. What he really wanted
was to hang with Missy, but since the night of the weed fire, she’d
stonewalled him, but good.
That was going to change.
Cal stepped back from Aly. “It’s
open,” he called, feeling like he was getting a reprieve from
spilling to Aly.
“
You!” He stared,
disbelieving, at Vic Franco’s dark eyes as he came through the
companionway.
Van Gogh growled, the fur standing up
along his back.
Aly’s hand latched onto his like a
vise.
“
I need another trip to
Grand Bahama.”
Cal shook his head. “You’re crazy. No
way. Get off my boat.” He glanced back at Aly.
The color drained from her face as she
stared past him at Vic. Cal spun around.
Vic pointed a sawed-off shotgun at his
chest. “We’re sailing for Grand Bahama whether you like it or
not.”
He stepped between Vic and Aly. “You
don’t need her. Just take me.”
“
So she can tattle? You’re
both going.”
“
We need to
refuel.”
“
You only used the motor
in the Intercoastal.”
“
What about food and
water?”
“
We’re going, and we’re
going now. You get us out of the marina, through the Intercoastal,
and into the ocean. I’ll keep an eye on the girl. Do anything
stupid and I’ll shoot.”
Cal picked up Van Gogh. “I’m leaving
the dog. You don’t have to worry about him saying anything.” Cal
climbed up the companionway without waiting for an answer. He held
his breath.
“
Wait!” Franco’s voice
boomed behind him.
He whipped his gaze back to Franco’s,
afraid he’d make Van Gogh stay on board.
“
Give me your cell
phone.”
Cal stepped into the cockpit, not
releasing the dog. He dug his phone out of his jeans pocket and
tossed it through the hatch to Franco’s waiting hand.
When the guy reached for Aly’s phone,
Cal set Van Gogh on the gangplank and turned his back to the open
hatch. “Fish,” he commanded the dog.
Van Gogh scrambled across the
gangplank and raced down the dock toward Fish’s boat.
Good
doggy.
Aly shut her laptop and stowed it.
There’d be no blog post tonight. Her eyes never left the barrel of
Vic’s shotgun. Her chest quivered. Her fingernails dug into her
palms. She had to find a way to talk him out of harming
them.
Vic’s attention strayed to Cal in the
cockpit.
Her mind ricocheted around the
cabin—from the cigarette smell that clung to him, the impossibility
of bolting through the hatch before he could get a shot off, to his
craggy face which made him look menacing. But his dark eyes, though
cool, were more shuttered than ruthless—like businessmen she’d
faced across her desk at the bank.
The guy had so creeped her out on the
first trip, she’d barely looked at him. Now, she studied his
features.
With a Hispanic name, dark skin and
hair, he was likely Cuban, second generation American, probably
Bahamian, since he had no accent and carried Scotiabank
checks.
If she were negotiating a loan, she’d
have a bottom line in mind. Life. She and Cal had to get out of
here alive.
His eyes darted to her and she looked
away. He seemed on edge, not like a guy who terrorized people for
sport. She’d been good at sizing people up. Cal’s was the only loan
that came close to defaulting.
She breathed in a prayer for courage
and cleared her throat. She made eye contact like she’d learned to
do in banking. “Look, Cal just got out of jail for weed possession.
We’re not the kind of people who will turn you in. We’ll get you to
Grand Bahama. You let us go. We’ll keep our mouths
shut.”
His eyes narrowed. “There’s only one
way to make sure you don’t blab to the authorities.”
She felt the blood drain from her
face. “Drop us off on Bimini. Keep the
Escape
. We won’t go
looking for the boat. Our charter business bellied up,
anyway.”
His gaze skimmed down her body. “There
are worse things than dying.”
A chill crawled over her skin that had
nothing to do with temperature. She tasted blood and realized she’d
punctured the inside of her cheek. She swallowed.
His eyes had lingered on her when they
met, but not in a you’re-starring-in-my-personal-porn-video kind of
way.
She took a chance that he was just
trying to scare her. “I don’t know what you do, but I peg you as a
businessman. Going to jail is bad for business. I’m offering you no
jail.”
“
Funny. I’m not offering
you a choice.”