She rolled her eyes good-naturedly which hopefully covered the mild panic that had started to set in as she mentally examined all the possible meanings of hung the moon. “Sure, sure. Anything for a friend.”
At this point, she was so beleaguered, she couldn’t even care that Havana and Ember might still be in the kitchen. It turned out they weren’t, so she let Tristan cool his heels in the living area and fetched a spare ponytail holder from her room as fast as humanly possible. Then she shooed him on his way so she could have a minor breakdown.
Isaiah did not think she hung the moon, not the way Tristan made it sound, as if he had a thing for her. They were friends, nothing more. Kind of like the way she’d landed with Tristan. Nothing between them and no one got internal butterflies over innocent touches. The almost kiss? Probably complete conjecture on her part. He hadn’t been about to kiss her. She’d made that up because she’d never danced with a man before. Maybe that charged moment at the end was part of dancing.
And if she repeated that to herself a hundred more times, that would make it fact. Right?
But as the day wore on, it got harder and harder to convince herself that she did not want to march right downstairs to Isaiah’s door and demand to know what way he was looking at her that had evoked metaphors like hung the moon. It was ludicrous. The Almighty himself had hung the moon in Genesis, no humans need apply.
The problem was that she couldn’t confront him. If she did, she might blurt out that she had a thing for him too and then she couldn’t take it back. Cassidy would find out that Isaiah had almost kissed Aria last night, and then she’d have to face the horrible reality that she had utterly betrayed her friend.
No. It was better to ignore the butterflies, pretend she wasn’t falling for Isaiah, and let Cassidy have the happiness she deserved. Aria would never forgive herself if she did anything less. Besides, she could never be happy with a man knowing that it was her fault a woman sat alone in the dark, feeling abandoned and betrayed by someone who claimed to love her. That was not pain she’d wish on anyone.
Good thing the bet over Tristan was off. She had a legitimate reason to halt the roof hang outs with Isaiah. She’d send him a note or something to explain—oh, no. She’d just volunteered to help him out with the tourist draw project.
That was an even bigger disaster than the almost-kiss of last night.
Aria bit her lip. She’d have to decline after all, as much as that felt like weaseling out of a promise. Gah, this web had grown too tangled. No matter what she did, someone was going to be hurt or disappointed. She had a bad feeling she’d end up being the one who was both.
Thirteen
With the six-month timetable looming over the town, the barn restoration project could really benefit from some focused attention, but Isaiah slapped a paint brush over the wood without really seeing either one. His mind’s eye was too busy replaying the way Tristan had lifted Aria’s hand to his mouth as if he had every right to kiss the woman.
Isaiah really shouldn’t have stood there watching them this morning. But honestly, he hadn’t expected to stumble over such an intimate scene. He’d tromped up the stairs intending to go to his room, when bam! Voices. Aria’s first in a low murmur he couldn’t catch, then Marchande’s. The stairwell from the first floor lay on the opposite end of the one to the third floor where they were standing, so he’d ducked back into the shadows, easily staying out of sight.
With the entire length of the second floor hallway between them, he couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other but there was nothing wrong with his vision. The image of them together had been burned across his retinas. It hadn’t been so easy to stop himself from bursting out of his hiding place with every intention of taking Marchande apart for breathing the same air as Aria. And his knees still hurt from how long he’d stood with them locked after they’d vanished up the stairwell to the third floor.
Looked like things had worked out between them after all. Great. That was what should have happened when Aria approached a man and laid out her interest. She was amazing and she’d make Marchande really happy, if he bothered to take the time to get to know her. Tristan was his friend, but that didn’t mean Isaiah was blind to his faults, and Marchande went through women pretty fast. Aria was definitely worth changing your stripes for.
The man himself strolled up the dirt path from the road a solid hour after Isaiah had arrived at the barn to start on the task of painting, which had been on their to-do list for a couple of days.
“You’re here early, mon ami,” Tristan commented and held up an apple. “Want one? I stopped by Voodoo on the way. Mavis J says bonjour.”
“No thanks.”
Isaiah kept his eyes trained on the side of the barn, where even the most casual observer might note that the quality of his painting job left a lot to be desired. He’d ha
ve to redo it, which might not be a bad thing. If he was painting, he couldn’t work on ideas for Hardy or dwell on how he’d just talked Aria into helping him with that, which would force him into her orbit again. At the time, it had seemed like a good idea to work with her, but that was before he’d realized that she’d move so fast with Le Torch, who’d certainly lived up to his reputation. Who would have thought she’d blaze ahead after hanging back so long?
“What’s with you, Elmer?” Tristan asked as he bit into his apple.
“Nothing is with me,” he growled and tried to line up his brush strokes so that it didn’t look like a three year old with questionable abilities to stay inside the lines had taken over his body. “What’s with you?”
“I meant with you getting here so early, quoi.” Marchande wandered over to examine the side of the barn where Isaiah had been working, though some air quotes surrounding the term “work” might be appropriate, since he’d spent a lot of time seething instead of painting. “But now that we’re on the subject, why are you trying to take my head off? Are you mad that you’ve been here so long without help?”
“I’m not mad,” he ground out. “I’m painting. See?”
Isaiah swirled the brush around, but he’d forgotten to dip it in the paint can at his feet so the bristles didn’t do much other than streak what he’d already halfheartedly covered.
“I’m sorry anyway,” Tristan said with a laugh that demonstrated he had no clue how close Isaiah was to seeing how his friend looked with a broken nose. “I had to stop by Aria’s to borrow a hair band and we got to talking.”
Was that what the kids were calling it these days? “Lucky you.”
Marchande clapped him on the back with a little more force than was necessary. “Don’t be jealous. I’ll ask her to let you borrow a hair band too.”
“I’m not—” He swallowed the rest because yeah. He was jealous.
Far more than he should be. More than was fair. More than was right. He’d pushed Aria directly into Marchande’s arms on purpose, because he said he’d help her. But knowing that he’d had a hand in it didn’t help ease the sharp thing in his stomach that dug deeper with each passing second as he reimagined Marchande’s mouth molding to the shape of Aria’s hand.