The Girl in the Painting

I laugh at the absurdity of a famous, incredibly talented artist acting like anyone can paint. “Ah, see,” I say with a snap of my fingers, “that’s where you’re going wrong. You’re forgetting that I know nothing about art.”

“Just think of all the paintings inside the Met—” he begins to say, but I cut him off.

“I’ve never been to the Met.”

Ansel’s brown eyes widen in shock. “You’re kidding me, right?”

I shake my head and suck my bottom lip between my teeth. “I told you I don’t know anything about art!”

He rubs an agitated hand across the top of his head and barks a laugh. “You did. I just assumed that meant you didn’t know anything current. Everyone should go to the Met.”

I blush and shrug again.

“Okay, so don’t try to picture the Met,” he says through a soft laugh. “Do you know who Jackson Pollock is?”

I’m pretty sure I do. “The guy who did those drip paintings?”

“That’s him.” Ansel grins and nods at the same time. He’s proud again, like maybe I’m not a total lost cause. I decide not to tell him I only know about Jackson Pollock from that movie with Ben Affleck, The Accountant. “Think about his paintings and compare them to a painting like the Mona Lisa.”

“Okay…”

“Well, just because da Vinci painted a portrait of an actual female and Pollock didn’t, doesn’t mean Pollock didn’t have a muse that inspired him. It doesn’t mean he wasn’t actually painting a subject.”

I glance back and forth between the canvas and the handsome man on the couch.

I have no idea what I’m doing here. Hell, I don’t even know if I should be here.

But here I am, standing inside Ansel Bray’s private studio, and I’m so fucking intrigued by him, so damn curious about this man, that I don’t think about anything else.

Eventually, my brain absorbs all of his advice and guidance, and an idea takes over.

I take off my coat and set it and my purse at the top of the stairs, sit down in front of the canvas, and while I choose my paints, Ansel picks up a remote from a wooden table beside the couch. With one small click, the exact piece of music I played for him on the subway starts to echo inside the room—“Comptine d’un autre été.”

It’s already halfway through the composition, and I look up to meet his gaze. “Did you play this on purpose or…?”

“Do you want the truth or a sugar-coated lie?”

What is that supposed to mean?

“The truth, obviously.”

“This was the last song I was listening to when I was in here painting the other day.”

My heart kicks up a rhythm inside my chest, and I have to inhale a deep breath just to make the damn thing relax.

What is it between us? Why do the two of us, people I wouldn’t have thought would cross paths in a million years, have so much in common?

“That’s…” Crazy. Weird. Makes me feel nearly drunk I’m so consumed.

“Yeah.” A secret smile kisses his mouth. “I agree with that.” He doesn’t need me to finish the statement to know what I’m saying. He feels it too. “Tell me, Indy, why do you like this piece of music?”

“For a few reasons, I think,” I answer honestly as I try to wrap my brain around what it is about Yann Tiersen’s composition that touches me the most. “For one, it’s on the soundtrack of one of my favorite movies…”

“Amélie,” he provides, and I nod. Once again, we’re so in sync it scares me.

“And, mostly,” I continue, “I like it because when a piano composition is done right, it is nearly painful how beautiful it is.”

“Music is a passion of yours.”

“It has been since I was a little girl.” A wistful smile kisses my lips. “My dad is a talented jazz musician and always had music playing in the house. I’m pretty sure he’s on a lifelong mission to hear everything that’s ever been created.”

Ansel chuckles. “That reminds me of my friend Nigel. But only, his mission involves every piece of beautiful art.”

“Whatever I’m about to create right now—” I point the tip of my brush at him to emphasize my threat “—your friend Nigel doesn’t need to see.”

He grins at me and crosses an X over his heart. I focus my gaze back on the canvas. Maybe if I just take an abstract approach, I might come up with something that’s not entirely embarrassing?

Fingers crossed.

The music switches over to something with a soothing beat, while a woman with a pretty voice sings softly in Spanish. My head sways back and forth to the relaxing lull, and my fingers guide the bristles of the brush across the stark-white canvas.

Blue turns to gray turns to yellow turns to splashes of gold and brown.

Occasionally, I glance at Ansel, but mostly I just focus on the canvas.