He searched my face. “I believe you deserve more than that
.”
“Do I?”
“Yes. You deserve the opportunity to make your beautiful paintings. To create in the light. To capture it, like only you can.”
His praise took me back to the first time we’d ever met. It’d been at my first showing at Yume. I vividly recalled how I’d stood there next to Evan Halifax, trembling in the expensive heels I’d borrowed from Ellen Higoshi, as he inspected my paintings.
It’d felt like a stranger was studying me while I was naked… and I thrillingly allowed it.
He stared at the painting for what was likely seconds, but felt like an hour.
“It’s like it is a nature painting, but it’s not… like you’re painting a tree, but a tree seen from a different world.” My lungs burned upon seeing for the first time that small, sexy smile that occasionally shaped his mouth. He flashed a glance at me. “The view from fairyland,” he murmured, his gaze lingering on my face.
“Are you calling my paintings supernatural?” I joked, trying to diminish the effect of his quiet, deep, voice. But his smile had vanished as he’d returned his attention to the painting.
“Maybe. What you did with the light on this one is extraordinary. It’s so soft. But your precise technique gives the trees an almost photographic quality.”
“Thanks. That’s what I was going for. This is part of a series I did in Muir Woods.” I waved in the direction of other paintings. Evan’s attention was caught by the next piece. I followed him when he moved toward it. We paused, and again I experienced his total focus as he studied my work. He was the most handsome, confident man I’d ever met. There was no way I could capture the attention of a guy like him, but apparently, my paintings could. It felt illicit, somehow. Exciting. I searched for something to say to fill the sucking void of silence.
“Tommy told me once that there are certain words in Japanese that have no equivalent in English. There’s this one word: komorebi,” I said. He gave me a sideways questioning glance. “It means sunlight filtering through trees. You know, that soft, luminous quality it gets? Almost as if it’s alive?” I waved at the canvas. “I wanted to capture that contrast: that intangible glow alongside those hard, enduring trees with roots that go so deep… ”
I faded off, realizing too late I’d started to ramble.
“I think maybe you’re like that, aren’t you?”
I’d blinked in surprise at his quiet question. “Like what? The sequoias?”
“No. Like the paintings. Soft and hard at once. You may look like cotton candy on the outside, but there’s steel underneath. Isn’t there?”
“You can’t paint when you’re holed up every day inside the museum or the gallery,” Evan was saying, his voice pulling me soundly back to the present.
“I find time to paint.”
“You paint at night. In the darkness, Anna. Are you saying that you wouldn’t rather paint in the daylight hours, when you can capture your favorite subject?”
“Of course I would, if I had the time.”
“Why don’t you let me give that to you?”
“What?”
“Time. I’ll give you all the time you want. All the light, as well. All the beauty you could ever hope to put on your canvases.”
“I’m not used to hearing you talk so poetically,” I told him wryly to cover my confusion.
“I’m not being poetic,” he stated bluntly. “I’ve decided to move back to Tahoe. I’m asking you to come there with me. Take some time off. It’s the most beautiful place in the world, and the light is extraordinary. You’d be in heaven there. You could paint from dawn to dusk, if you wanted.”
My incredulous laugh was cut short when I noticed that his expression remained solemn, his eyes searching.
“Seriously? You’re asking me to go to Lake Tahoe with you?”
“Yes. I think I mentioned I had a home there.”
You mentioned your wife did.
I pushed aside the poison thought.