Free Villa Blue by Isla Dean Page B

She’d felt vibrant and had shared that vibrancy with a stranger. And what he gave her in return was a thick stone wall. It didn’t matter; she didn’t want it to matter. But inside, it felt like she’d stripped off her clothes to dance naked in a rainstorm and the person next to her had pulled on a trench coat.
    Stupid was how she felt but she fought it as she climbed into the golf cart, ready to retreat.
    The cart started forward and they putted up the hill, one switchback after another, with the dark blue of the harbor stretching further and further away.
    Without warning, the cart whipped into a dirt turnout and created a dust cloud as it came to an abrupt stop. She looked over to Aiden in question as she gripped the metal bar beside the seat, bracing.
    “You’re right that I was being vague, and I’m sorry. I work for my father’s company in New York, and one of the perks is that I get to travel the world looking at investment opportunities. That’s what I’m doing here on Parpadeo. And I’m here by myself because that’s how I like to travel.”
    “Does that mean you have a wife or girlfriend—or both—at home that you prefer to travel without?” she asked, wondering how her ex would’ve answered that question while they’d been married. “Not that it matters, of course. I’m just asking to see how you answer, I suppose.” Her tone as flat as the look on her face, she waited for an answer.
    “Neither.”
    “And what are you looking to invest in on Parpadeo?”
    When he didn’t respond immediately, she glanced up the hill toward her artist’s studio that she longed to be in by herself—no mysterious men to deal with, no vague strangers.
    A spring breeze crept up the canyon bringing cool air with it—a signal of the impending end of the afternoon.
    “Unfortunately the nature of that is confidential.”
    She waited for him to say something more, anything that didn’t leave their conversation at that. But he didn’t. “If you say so. Take me home now, please. I really need to get back.”
     
    Surrounded by tall leafy houseplants she’d lined around the glass walls of her studio—she preferred the dracaenas, ficus plants, and palms to lifeless window treatments—Ivy painted. She shoved thoughts and questions from her mind and channeled all her energy into finishing the painting she’d started that morning, without the possibility of being distracted outside.
    She’d propped the painting on the easel inside her studio and used the dimming edge of evening light that shined through the top of the greenhouse to mix bold combinations of colors. She’d punched it up, there was no denying that. The lines she’d painted that morning had served as a starting point, a foundation for the emotion that followed.
    As dusk settled into night and stars began to blink through, she kept on. Small confident strokes, deepening lines, brightening colors, clarifying perspectives. Ivy felt alive, and lived for that feeling, wanting to stretch it into forever. It was the only place she felt truly awake.
    Interactions, relationships, anything involving other people just ended up being disappointing.
    She’d tried, she thought. She’d opened up, hadn’t she? She’d shared, she’d talked, she’d spoken honestly about how she saw things. And then she’d bumped up against a brick wall and where was the fun in that? She may as well talk to an actual wall than Aiden James.
    The world she came from, her life in Carmel, had been a steady, temperate shade of beige—not too dark, not too light, not too cold, not too warm. Not too anything. And now that she was getting her sea legs, living life as she wanted rather than according to what others wanted for her, she recognized that she really was one of those innately reclusive artists who kept their colors private, communicating only through art. She was unashamedly introverted to her core.
    And that was okay, because it was more fun than forcing herself to be