He was especially struck by one of a woman who seemed to be waking, reaching up toward the sky with one hand, a sly, knowing look on her face, and the bloom of just unfurling wings on her back.
The bed, a massive four-poster, gleamed bold bronze with tendrils of vines carved into the posts. The spread had a garden of purple flowers sweeping over bright white. Massed with pillows because, in his experience, women had a strange love affair with pillows. The bases of the lamps formed the sort of trees he’d expect to see in some magic woods.
It offered a sitting area with a small sofa covered in a green you might get if you plugged the color into an electric socket, a table supported by a curled dragon—maybe the mate to the one that stood on a stone pedestal and looked ready to breathe fire—and a dresser with curved feet and fairy faces painted on the drawers.
A magic room, he thought as he took a closer look at the dragon, admiring the detail of the scales, the expression of barely banked power in the eyes.
But for all its wonders, the room didn’t hold a candle—whatever that meant—to the view. The bay and out to the ocean, the boats, the rocks, the sky, all as much a part of the room as the magical mix of art and color.
He hadn’t come to the island for adventure, but for the time apart, the time to think, the time to recharge. But in one morning, he’d found the conduit to all of that.
He cleaned up first—she hadn’t stinted on the bathroom, either, but he bypassed the body jets in the shower. His ribs still troubled him.
She’d told him to come down to her studio once he’d settled in, so he walked down on steps painted hot pepper red and around to the matching side door flanked by grinning gargoyles.
She called out, “Come on in,” to his knock. And he entered another wonderland.
It smelled of paint and turpentine and incense—with a hint of weed. Not surprising, since she held a paintbrush in one hand, a joint in the other. She wore a butcher’s apron splattered with paint, and that amazing hair—about the same color as the guest-room walls—was piled up with what looked like jeweled chopsticks.
Art supplies and tools were jumbled together on tall red shelves. A long worktable, as splattered as her apron, held more.
Canvases stood, leaned, hung everywhere.
He really didn’t know much about art, but he knew spectacular when it was slammed in his face.
“Whoa. It’s like … nothing else ever.”
“Just the way I like it. How’s the room?”
“It’s magic.”
She sent him a beam of approval. “That’s just exactly right.”
“Thanks doesn’t cut it. I feel like I—I was going to say walked into the pages of a really cool book, but … What it is? Like I walked into one of these paintings.”
“We’re going to have a really good time here.” She held out the joint, had him half smiling, shaking his head.
“CiCi, I’m a cop.”
“Reed, I’m an old hippie.”
“Not a damn thing old about you.” He wandered over, let his jaw drop. “This is…”
“The Stones, circa 1971. That’s just a print. Mick bought the original. It’s not easy saying no to Mick.”
“I bet. I’m now one degree from the freaking Stones.”
“You’re a fan?”
“Definitely. I know some of these album covers,” he added as he wandered. “And posters. I had this poster of Janis Joplin.”
Intrigued, she drew on her joint. “A little before your time, I’d have thought.”
“She’s timeless.”
“We’re made for each other,” CiCi decided, watching as he admired her work, and rubbed the heel of his hand at his right side.
“Is that where you were shot?” she asked him.
He dropped his hand. “One of them. Ribs are healing up, but they’re still a bitch.”
“Got drugs?”
“I’m giving them a pass for now.”
She wiggled the joint. “Organic.”
“Maybe so, but the couple times I tried it in college, after the high and the insane munchies came the ice-pick headache.”
“That’s a shame. Me, I loved drugs and did them all. I do mean all. You don’t know until you try, right?”
“I know if I jump off the cliff into the ocean I’m going to die.”
She smiled behind a thin haze of smoke. “What if there was a mermaid who pulled you out, nursed you back to health?”
He laughed. “Got me there.”
“In case you’re worried about the cop part, my drugs of choice for the last decade or so have been weed—I’ve got a prescription for it—and alcohol. No illegal substances stashed around.”
“Good to know. I should let you get back to work.”
“Before you do, tell me what you think.” She gestured to the canvas on the easel in front of her.
He stepped over and his heart gave three hard thuds.
The woman stood in some sort of glade full of flowers and butterflies and sunlight. She looked at him over her left shoulder, a half smile on her lips, in her golden eyes.
A sinuous vine grew up the center of her back, spread its arms over her shoulder blades.
Light and color saturated her, but it was that look in her eyes that made him wish he could step into the canvas and go with her.
Anywhere.
“She’s … beautiful’s not strong enough. Compelling?”
“It’s a fine word.”
“You wonder who she’s waiting for, who she’s looking at, and what the hell’s taking them so long. Because who in their right mind wouldn’t want to walk down that path with her?”
“No matter where it leads?”
“No matter. Who is she?”
“In this portrait? Temptation. In reality, my granddaughter. Simone.”
“I have a photo of her in my files, but…” It hadn’t struck him, not like this. “She looks like you. She has your eyes.”
“That’s a fine compliment, to both of us. That’s Natalie, my younger granddaughter.” She gestured to another canvas.
Softer colors here, he noted, edging toward pastels to complement a different sort of beauty, a different sort of mood. Fairy princess, he decided, with the jeweled tiara over the gold halo of hair. Eyes of quiet blue in a lovely face that radiated happiness rather than power, and the slim frame draped in a long white gown thin enough to hint at the body beneath.
“She’s lovely, and looking at someone who makes her happy.”
“Very good. That would be Handsome Harry, her fiancé. I’m going to give this to him for Christmas. She’d never let him hang it if I’d done a nude, so I compromised.”
“You love them a lot. It shows.”
“My greatest treasures. I’m going to want you to pose for me.”
“Ah, well, hmm.”
“I’ll ease you into it. It’s hard to say no to Mick. Just as hard to say no to CiCi.”
“I bet,” he said, stepping back. “I’ll get out of your way.”
“What do you say to cocktails at five?”
“I say I’m there.”
*
She didn’t bring up the posing business over the next couple of days—a relief. When he came back, worn out, from physical therapy, she had her acupuncturist waiting. He balked—needles, for God’s sake—but she’d spoken truth.
It was hard to say no to CiCi.
He concluded he’d fallen asleep during the acupuncturing because the PT wore him out and not because of weird-ass needles and aromatherapy candles.
She roped him into sunset yoga on the beach with a group of others. He felt stupid, awkward, stiff—and nearly drifted off during shavasana.
He couldn’t deny he felt stronger and clearer of mind after his first week, but that’s what he’d come to the island for. He didn’t argue about the next acupuncture session, especially after neither his physical therapist nor his beloved Tinette dismissed it as hooey, which he’d counted on.
When CiCi talked him into a bike ride, his ribs and shoulder cursed him, but not as loudly as they had.
Fall had long since peaked, but he liked the Halloween look of the denuded trees, the way they rattled in the wind. He spotted pumpkins in gardens, and others already carved on porches. The air carried that spicy scent the earth sent out before it went to sleep for the winter.
CiCi stopped her bike in front of the other house he’d admired as a child.
All those rooflines, he mused, and the fussy trim, the spreads of glass leading out to odd little decks, and those double porches. All topped by the ridiculous charm of a widow’s walk.
“The silvery gray works,” CiCi declared. “And when the lupines and the rest of the garden blooms, it’s the perfect backdrop for them. Me? I’d paint those porches orchid.”
“Orchid?”
“But that’s just me. Cody painted them and the trim that dark gray because it’s safer for selling. Can’t blame them. Anyway, they’re expecting us.”
“They are?”
“I called Barbara Ellen yesterday.”
He studied the house, yearned. Shook his head. “CiCi, I can’t buy a house on the island. Cops have to live where they work.”
“But you want to see it, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I really do. I just don’t want to put them out.”
“Cody’s had his mother nipping at his heels for weeks now. They could both use the distraction.” Once they parked their bikes, she took his hand, tugged him along a flagstone walk.