Color Me Pretty: A Father's Best Friend Romance

“Did you talk to your professor about it?”

No, I hadn’t. I knew what Professor Ambrose would say. It was the same thing she told everybody. You’re blocked. But that didn’t help figure out why. What was causing me to lose the one thing I got to control? The one thing I was able to do to take my mind off everything else? I didn’t need to run, bike, dance, or exercise my thoughts away. I could do that with paint, and it was like my mind was setting me up to walk down the only other path I knew to take when I needed an escape.

“I’ll take that as a no,” he said.

“She would have told me to meditate or do yoga or something,” I grumbled, sitting up. I brushed some grass shavings off my arm. “Which, I am. I joined yoga again and it has relaxed me. I just need to find inspiration.”

“How can I help?”

His question shouldn’t have thrown me, but it did. I stared at him in all his genuine six-foot-five glory and acted like he’d never offered me help before. It was a ridiculous reaction considering all the times he’d done just that, but he limited those moment now.

“Uh…I’m not sure.”

Head cocking, he watched me carefully before his eyes went back to Ramsay. The dog was laying in the middle of the yard like he’d run himself right out of energy. Maybe he’d take a long nap so I could go home and try working on my project, which would equal hours of staring blankly at a canvas and screaming into a pillow afterward in defeat when the image that came into my head didn’t transfer onto the canvas.

It was always the same one. A ballerina whose body was too little, too brittle, too…dead.

“Come on.” He stood, offering me his hand again. That time, I took it. It was hesitant, but I was curious as to what he was doing.

I followed him inside, with Ramsay close behind us when Theo whistled for him and walked up the stairs to a room I hadn’t been in, in a long time. It looked like storage now, but once it had housed his ex-wife’s art collection from over the years.

“What are we doing in here?”

He ignored me and opened a closet, rifling through something before pulling out a covered canvas. Setting it against the wall, he carefully pulled the sheet off and stepped back. I stared at the colored lines and paint splattered piece with parted lips. My eyes went to the corner to see a signature. MM was etched into the bottom right, pinching my brows.

I hadn’t gone to many exhibits with her, but usually I knew which pieces she had in her collection because she let me study them. She loved an artist from further upstate, River Tucker, who I became obsessed with as well. It was how we bonded because I knew that was important to Theo. He’d always said he wanted his two favorite women to get along. Maybe it was how he referenced me as a woman and not a little girl that made the tingles shoot down my arms or the flutters settle into my stomach, but it made me want to please him. It wasn’t hard to do considering Mariska wasn’t that bad of a person. Her personality wasn’t the friendliest, but she didn’t set out to be mean on purpose, least of all to me. Then again, she probably knew Theo would never allow it.

“Who is MM?”

“Mariska Maase,” he answered calmly.

My brows went up.

“Her maiden name,” he explained, fingering the edge of the painting. “She commissioned these under that even after our wedding. That alone should have been enough of a clue that it wouldn’t last. Wishful thinking, I suppose.”

I stared harder at the painting knowing she’d created it, in awe over the harsh brushstrokes, long lines, and darker colors. It was moody, like she was trying to set the tone. Was it about how she felt? There was no date like some artists put next to their initials, which meant I couldn’t be sure if it was during the rough patch of their marriage. It wasn’t exactly something I could ask Theo considering there had to be ill feelings toward the subject matter. From what I remembered, it wasn’t a drama-packed separation. They both seemed to want it, but they still had years of history between them.

“It’s beautiful.” It wasn’t a lie. Mariska had talent and I’d known it from the start. I rarely saw paintings she made, but she would sometimes share tips and tricks with me on my own if she were around when I worked on my pieces.

“It is.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and cocked his head. “She told me to keep it and I could never figure out why until I stared at it for a solid hour one night. It’s us. Or, who we became. Dark. Distant. Angry. I was never good at reading paintings like you two could, but she wouldn’t have given it to me if she didn’t want to make a point. We became strangers in our own home, and she told me the only way she could.”

I swallowed, sad for him but knowing words wouldn’t help. We both stared at the painting, and I could see it. The lines were in dark blue and black, distanced but nearly touching. They could easily be silhouettes of people, a couple. The somber mood certainly called for what he analyzed, so I couldn’t argue with his summary.

All I said was, “I’m sorry, Theo.” But I wasn’t sure what I was sorry for. For Mariska leaving? For her giving him this? Both of those things? It was hard to tell. I cared for Theo, that much was sure. I didn’t want to see him hurt, and even though he looked fine now, he had to have felt a certain way about it.

As expected, he gave me a terse shrug. “I didn’t show you for pity. But I thought maybe it would spark something. She used her experience, her feelings, to make something that told a story. So, what’s yours?”

I blinked. “My story?”

A nod.

“I…” I nibbled my lip. My story wasn’t pretty, certainly not beautiful. Mariska had the kind of ability to turn something sad gorgeous. A lot of artists did. But what would mine turn out to be? A black canvas. White paint? That was what my world had become. Black and white. Nothing more or less—nothing technicolor and hopeful like I wanted. “I don’t think I have one worth channeling. Not one I’d want people to critique any more than they already have.”

My past was no secret. In fact, it was broadcasted for everybody to see. It took my father dying brutally in prison before the media decided to act like they felt bad about what had happened rather than insisting me and my family deserved the kind of pain that we’d all suffered since the scandal broke.

“Bullshit.”

I drew back. “What?”