Villa Blue (18 page)

Aiden and Donatella watched her, waiting for some explanation as to what strummed beneath the suddenly cool surface.

“You’re not mad I didn’t tell you?”

Ivy stood, stalked to the end of the pathway, turned, stalked back. “Do you want me to be mad? Is that it? Because, that’s what
normal
people would do? Why can’t I just be me, and express however and whatever I feel like expressing? I’m so tired of people holding on to some idea of what I should or shouldn’t do, say or shouldn’t say. If I’m supposed to go through life and only get mad at things I’m expected to get mad at, deal with things how other people want me to deal with them, then why the hell am I here on this earth? Aren’t I supposed to be here to be myself? To do my best to live a life with some sort of purpose that comes from my heart? I have no interest in being society’s robot, doing and saying what I’ve been programmed to do and say.”

Ivy spread her arms wide, feeling the burn-off of old thoughts that hindered her. “Who the hell comes up with this crap anyway? Some committee who determines how all people should behave? Well, the hell with that. I don’t live my life by committee.”

She fisted her hands as she crossed her arms in front of her chest. “So, no,” she said, the fire settling into a slow burn. “I’m not upset you didn’t tell me. You said you needed to keep your reason for being here confidential. Fine. And I understand this place is probably a lot to take care of,” she turned to Donatella. “Retiring from work is something you’ve earned in spades. I mean, look at this place.”

Ivy scanned the sprawling villa, the boats dotting the harbor below, the sunset reflecting in the expansive sky. “It’s beautiful. It’s home. It’s more of a home for me than the home I came from when I arrived on the island, and it’s more of a home for me than the one I grew up in. It’s my home.”

A couple of stray tears spilled down her face. “I’m so tired of crying today. It’s been a long one, and I don’t want to think about leaving my home. And right now it feels supremely unfortunate that some company… Wait, what kind of company do you work for?” She looked through watery eyes to Aiden.

“My father’s holding company has diverse interests but the arm that I work for is focused on acquisition and development of global luxury hotel investment properties.”

“So basically he owns hotels around the world and he wants to buy Villa Blue and what? Turn it into some luxury resort?”

“Basically. Well, basically, maybe,” he corrected.

“Basically, maybe,” she repeated, her mind and mood deflating. “I think I’m getting tired of letting go. Or maybe I’m tired of being let go of. I don’t really know. I just want something to stick for once, and I love living here so much that I want
home
to be the thing that sticks. Though I suppose it’s a greenhouse and how long can someone live in a greenhouse? The mysterious committee of right and wrong probably has something to say about that.”

She paused in her ramble, pushed at tears. “Why is no one else saying anything?”

“You’re on roll,
bella,
love. I’ve never heard this many words from you all at once.”

Ivy paced, breathing heavily through the emotion. “I don’t like to express myself with words. I paint. I squeeze my heart into my art. I squeeze everything I am and put it on paper. Why do I have to use words to share how I’m feeling? Why can’t someone just accept that I express myself differently? And why does it matter anyway?” she continued, the flames sparking to life again, knowing that she was talking more to her mother who was miles and miles away, than her stunned audience of two. “Aren’t there more important things happening in the world than criticizing or judging me and how I feel or express things? Who the hell cares?”

Donatella rose, stood in Ivy’s path that she wore down with her back and forth. “I’m not going to say anything except that I love you and you’re perfect the way you are.
Perfetto.
” Donatella kissed the pad of her thumb then laid her thumb on Ivy’s forehead. She glanced at Aiden, a passing of the torch, and left.

Once again, Ivy crossed her arms at her chest and looked blankly at the courtyard gardens. She didn’t want to leave her home. Where would she go? Carmel was out of the question. There simply wasn’t anywhere else she wanted to be. Right down to the bees and the lavender, she would miss every piece of Villa Blue.

“When I was in kindergarten,” Aiden started, leaning forward in his chair, his elbows resting on his knees. “First day of school, I skinned both knees playing on the playground doing some stunt. I loved it. Began my tenure as the tough kid, ready to try anything. Then mom picked me up after school, we went to the park, played, then she took me home, where my father’s first reaction was, ‘What will everyone think? A James boy walking around with torn pants and bloody knees.’ I remember he called me a hooligan and I had no idea what that word meant.”

Ivy shifted her gaze from the garden to him.

“Our parents do weird things sometimes, like tell us to be other than who we are to make other people more comfortable in life. We all do it, to a certain extent, change ourselves to fit in. Hell, I’m great at it. I can talk deals with staunch men over scotch and cigars, or I can cruise on a boat in Lake Como with three whimsical sisters, discussing the details of their deceased father’s property.

“My point is that you’re more courageous than you know. People think you have to have a hard, unyielding personality to be strong. But you’ve got them all fooled. You’re braver than they are because you know who you are and you don’t force it on anyone. Grace,” he said to her, thinking also of his mother. “You have a lot of grace and it takes bravery to maintain grace in the face of forcefulness.”

Ivy dropped into the chair Donatella had vacated. “I don’t know how you understand me. You barely know me. It’s…disconcerting.”

“I know you because I’ve seen your paintings, I’ve seen you paint. Hell, I’ve bought two of them already.”

The man did have a way with words, she thought, her heart fumbling to feel their way through them. “Yes you did.”

“You’ve had quite a day haven’t you?”

She frowned in response. “I don’t think I’m finished hearing about all of this yet. So your father’s company is making an offer? Has Donatella accepted?”

“No offer yet.” It was his turn to get up and as he did, he pushed out a breath then walked along the worn path to the edge of the meandering line of stone. This time he imagined how Ivy saw it, how she would paint the jagged tree line, the serrated cliffs, the sherbet-colored homes, the expanse of sea.

Ivy joined him, looking out to the shades of color—dark, light, hazy, shimmering. “There’s something else, isn’t there? Something churning that you’re not saying.”

“A developer from New York—Warren Townsend—has thrown a wrench in the works. My father informed me about it, which is his way of telling me I’m not doing my job. And he’s right.”

“Warren Townsend. That sounds familiar...” Ivy continued her study of the sky as she considered. “I think I stepped on his business card the day I came to meet you at the ferry. It was all black with only his name on it,” she told him, recalling the image. “Didn’t think too much about it at the time, but it seems kind of pompous now that I’m thinking about it.”

“That’s Townsend, all right.”

“So what does this mean for you and for Villa Blue?”

He wondered the same and found her hand close to his so he felt for the warmth of it, folding their fingers together. He wasn’t entirely sure, and that was new for him.

“Well this explains why the hell you’ve gone insubordinate.”

The sound of his father’s voice was a hard punch in the gut. Aiden grit his teeth as he turned to face the man feared by many, hated by some, and revered by most.

Chapter Thirteen

“Father.”

“Aiden.”

At the frigid, formal tones, Ivy eyed the two men who each had that tall, strong build, those sharp green eyes that sliced through. But while Aiden’s hair was a mass of dark brown, his father’s hair was a rare streak of dark silver.

For all their similarities, they still looked like lions sniffing out each other’s territory.

“Why are you here?”

“The better question is why are you here? You were supposed to be on that plane by now. I’d hoped you’d come to your senses, but clearly you’ve been thinking with other senses.”

Ivy felt the focus of Aiden’s father train on her as he put her in his crosshairs.

Feeling the fast need to flee, she decided to escape before blood was shed. “Mr. James, hello. I’m Ivy Van Noten. I’m just going to let the two of you talk.”

Concluding that it was an odd day for parental dealings, she slinked back, wandered to her studio. And while her mind wanted to mull over the news of Donatella’s consideration to sell Villa Blue, sell the one spot in the world Ivy considered home, she would let those thoughts be for another time.

She was brimming full—of sadness, satisfaction, and sex. Yes, incredible, toe-curling sex that melted her body just thinking about it. But she’d felt enough emotion for one day. Too much, perhaps. The questions and considerations could wait.

Instead of cozying into her bed as she may have liked, done in from the rollercoaster of the day, she decided she may as well put those feelings to use. Retrieving a sheet of cold press paper from her stash, she clipped it to a board then placed it on the easel in preparation to paint.

After pulling her hair up and securing it with a pencil she had nearby in a stockpile of supplies, she got to work.

Aiden reviewed the options he’d been thinking through for his father. And, as he was well adept at bringing his father’s temper down to a more easily maneuvered size, he used the weapons he kept at his disposal: logic and business sense.

He reviewed the case scenarios and the possibilities that stemmed from each. He summarized his thoughts without adding commentary or color. And he appealed to his father’s shrewd sensibilities by explaining that he’d done some quick digging after reading his father’s email and had discovered that Warren Townsend told his investors that he’d made offers on the two other hotels in the harbor town but that they’d each been rejected. At least so far.

Aiden decided to keep the idea of running Villa Blue on his own to himself for the time being. His father would’ve seen right through him and transparency with Eliot James meant that it could and would be used against him.

“Fine. You do good work. Even when you ignore orders which we’ll discuss later. Now gather your belongings so we can leave this God forsaken island. The plane is waiting.”

“Never liked resort locations, did you?”

His father gave a noncommittal grunt. “Positive profit margins if run right, but personally I don’t see what the draw is.”

“The beauty,” Aiden said, aware of what he was starting. But something in him wanted to protect Villa Blue, just like he’d wanted to protect Ivy from the strikes her mother had sent her way. “There’s a glimpse of nature everywhere you look. The sea, the terrain, the birds, fish, crickets at night. People come here because it’s beautiful, not because it’s profitable.”

Eliot bared his teeth and bit. “Since when do you get soft after spending a week with some girl?”

“She’s not some girl. She’s
a
girl, a girl with a name.” With blood drawn and the shark circling, Aiden figured he might as well die the death honorably. “Her name is Ivy Van Noten and she’s a girl that I care about.”

Eliot leaned toward Aiden, dominating. “You get your shit together before we get back on that plane, son.”

“My shit is together, Father. I inherited that from you.”

“I didn’t teach you to let your dick make business decisions, nor did I teach you to let your emotions run off like a fool chasing something that doesn’t exist.”

Aiden watched his father like prey eyed its predator. “What do you mean, doesn’t exist?”

“Love is a fucking invention, son. You think cavemen fell in love? No, the women needed protection and the men needed someone to breed the next generation and keep the fire burning. Now we have artificial insemination, alarm systems, and heaters to take care of those things. Love was fabricated for the mind to make it easier for cultures to carry on. Be smart, son. Get your shit together. We’re leaving.”

“I feel sorry for you,” Aiden told him, realizing that he’d lived his life trying to please a man who would never be pleased. Not in ways that counted. “But mostly I feel sorry for Mom, because she loves you.”

“Your mother doesn’t love me, I’m an asshole. She puts up with me because I give her credit cards and a home where she can host dinner parties that raise money for endangered tribes in Africa and lost children in Nepal.”

At a loss for words, Aiden knew that if he continued the life he was living, he’d end up as calloused as his father. And that was too far off from who he was on the inside, who he’d become on the inside since he’d been at Villa Blue. He couldn’t carry on his father’s legacy of success at the cost of losing the ability to feel the textures of life, to feel love—not that he knew a damn thing about what that felt like.

Had he taken on his father’s perspective? Had he somehow become his father, believing that there was no such thing as love? How had he never seen that before? Hours earlier he’d felt sad for Ivy that she was so misunderstood by her family, and now his own father had shown up, scowling and sleek in his suit, representing what he didn’t want to become—a man who didn’t understand anything outside of his purview. And right then, Aiden felt millions of miles and many eons outside of his father’s purview.

“I can’t work for you anymore.”

The incredulous look his father gave him was the best gift he’d ever been given. In that moment, like a sword cutting silk, he no longer had to worry about what his father thought of him and the realization of that was laced with an inherent freedom.

He’d always sought outward freedom, but this was a kind of inward freedom he hadn’t realized he needed.

“What the fuck are you going to do, son? Put on that pair of filthy gloves,” Eliot asked, looking disdainfully at Donatella’s discarded gloves, “and be the damn gardener around here, all because of a girl?”

“No.” With a sense of purpose, Aiden scanned the courtyard where he’d spent time fixing the drip system, studied the land around the estate, the old blue villa, seeing it in a new light.

“Oh, I get it. You think you’re going to buy this place. You have some romantic notion of living here, running it. You’re as bad as your mother. But there are several flaws in that kind of thinking, one of them being that you can’t afford this place on your own.”

“I know that.”

The worn crease between Eliot’s brows deepened. “You think you’ll make enough money being a gardener here that you can work up to buying the place? Not before Townsend takes over. Prick has been greedy since boarding school and I will not have you becoming a gardener on an island he owns. He’d have a fucking field day with that. Now I’ll give you one more chance. You forget all this, and you get on the damn plane with me. Need a raise? Done. Take it and go clear your head for a few weeks in the South of France or Sydney or wherever the hell you want to go, but for God’s sake, get your ass on that plane. You have ten minutes to collect yourself. I’ll be in the driveway. I won’t wait.”

He watched his father stride coolly out of the garden with his hands in the pockets of his black trousers. The man was unflappable in his pursuits and managed not to hear a word Aiden had said.

Well his father had heard the words, he decided, but not the meaning. Not truly.

Aiden pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed his brothers, conferencing them together.

“I’ve got a proposition for you two,” he started, feeling the gears begin to turn. “It’s an investment opportunity and it’s going to piss off dad. You in?”

Ivy heard her door click open so she turned away from her painting. “Don’t look, please, I don’t want—” She stopped short after seeing Aiden’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“I quit my job. Come with me.”

“What? Where?”

“Come with me to the wine bar, the dive bar, anywhere. I need a drink. And I need to talk some things through with you. No wait,” he paused, breathed. And when he exhaled, his face changed. But this time when it changed, it looked enlivened.

“That’s not right. What I want is to share with you.” He moved to her, closing the distance between them. “I want to share some ideas with you that I discussed with my brothers. I want Emmett, Logan, and I to buy Villa Blue, and I want to talk it over with you. But I really need that drink first.”

Her eyes, a wide, unblinking blue, stared. “You and your brothers are going to buy Villa Blue? Not your father’s company?”

He grinned a little wildly, kissed her on the mouth. “We’re going to damn well try.”

She breathed out slowly. “To be honest, I’m not sure what to make of this. What will you do with Villa Blue?”

“I’m not sure what to make of it either. Come with me, let’s get that drink.”

Wrapping his arms around her, he picked her up off the floor, held on tight. And out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of the painting she was working on.

It was a mixture of intensity and luminosity, a grid of lines mapped over his face, almost like a checkerboard with each square a slightly different color, each a different shade and emotion. And his face filled the paper—a close-up was what he would’ve called it. His eyes, just as he’d seen in her previous paintings of him, reflected more of him than he’d ever seen in himself.

Slowly, he set her down. “Ivy, this is…”

“You like it? I’m calling it
Many Shades of Man
. It’s not finished yet. A bit more…” she tilted her head and intuitively knew what needed to be done but had no clue how to verbalize it.

“I’m speechless. It’s incredible. And I’m also impressed you haven’t killed me yet for seeing it unfinished.”

“You have a free pass today.” She examined the real life version of what she’d been painting. His face revealed more than the drifts of mystery she’d seen before and was now intensified with astonishing complexity. “Given the circumstances,” she told him, her words weighted, attuned to what churned beneath.

He turned to her, his face showing sharp solemnity. “This isn’t going to be easy. I can’t believe I quit my job, quit my father’s company. I’m not completely sure how I’m going to do this.”

“One brush stroke at a time,” she told him, eyes soft.

“I’ve never met anyone like you.”

“Thank God for that.” She lifted up to her toes, pressed a kiss onto his lips. “I think it’s a good thing my mom left the island. My mom and your dad on Parpadeo at the same time might make the place spontaneously combust. Or maybe
we’d
just spontaneously combust.”

Watching his lip twitch, she laid another kiss on his inviting mouth.

When her door burst open, she startled, whipped toward the sound.

“I’m not looking. I’m not looking, I swear I’m not looking.”

“We’re not naked, Donatella,” Ivy told the lively woman who had a hand firmly clamped across her eyes.

“Then there’s something wrong with you. You’re young, you two should be naked.” Disappointed, Donatella lowered her hand. “But I’m glad you’re both here.” Her attention flashed toward Ivy’s latest painting. “You’re not murdering me for seeing your work in progress. And can I just say, whoa. Stunning. Encompassing.” She held her fingertips to her lips and kissed them in a quick, noisy gesture. “Breathtaking.”

“Thank you.” Ivy’s heart that’d been rubbed raw by her mother’s harsh words, swelled with a million drops of gratitude.

“I see you getting mushy over there.” Donatella sent Ivy a compassionate wink. “But before you do, there’s something you need to see.” She lifted up a bank check.

Aiden didn’t have to ask, he knew. “From my father, isn’t it?”

“Handed it to me before he left. Stated his offer, named the price, then before I said anything he wrote out a check and told me that if I accept the offer, I could deposit it and there’d be another one four times this amount.
Four times
this amount. That’s a whole lot more than I thought I’d ever get for this place.”

“He knows I want to buy it.” Aiden raked a hand through his hair then tugged at the ends. “My father really is a bastard.”

“That’s what I was worried about. I didn’t know if you were working together or against each other on this. I suppose that answers that.”

He turned to her, hints of determination competing with the dark flecks of green in his eyes. “Give me two weeks, Donatella. I’m asking you, not because you should or because it’s the best business decision for you. I’m asking because I want Villa Blue. It means something to me and I want to buy it with my brothers. Just give me two weeks before you cash it to see what I can do. By then, if I haven’t pulled an offer together, then you should deposit it. But I will warn you that, because my father wrote that check out of temper, if you don’t deposit it right now, he could cancel it. It’s a risk, and I’m asking you to trust that I’m going to try to see this through.”