Villa Blue Read Online Free Page B

“Kindness. I was nice to the guy and he was nice back.”
    “Kindness.” Ivy frowned as she repeated the word. “You bought me a sweatshirt with kindness?” Puzzled by the experience, or, more aptly, the man, she pulled it over her head and was immediately grateful for what felt like a cozy blanket against her icy skin.
    “You looked cold,” he pointed out then tugged on his own sweatshirt. “So I asked for them. You don’t get what you don’t ask for.”
    She supposed he was right but as her mind processed what he said, she began to question when last she’d asked for something she wanted. She’d asked for a few of the art pieces collected during her marriage, that was something. But that was a physical thing, and her mind wanted to search for a comparison that dove deeper, a time when she’d expressed what she needed as a human, a woman, an artist. And she couldn’t think of one single time. It didn’t mean she’d never asked for what she wanted, but rather she couldn’t remember when last she had.
    Frowning through the introspection, Ivy sat on the vinyl bench seat in the cart and absently reached for whatever she’d sat on. Pulling out the drowned phone from her back pocket, she cursed.
    “What’s wrong?”
    Amidst the cheerful shouts of Frisbee-throwing tourists, she held up the black device and let it drain of seawater.
    As Aiden was now zooming the cart up the neatly paved road, his glance was quick. “Just a phone, right? Easily replaceable.”
    Ivy thought of all the texts with her ex as they worked through the terms of their divorce, the texts from her mom and sister asking when she was going to do the “right thing” and return to Carmel. The frayed ends of her former life had been in that phone.
    “Pull over.” She pointed to a slim turnout along the harbor. “Right there.”
    “You can try to soak the water out by putting it in a bowl of dehydrated rice,” Aiden suggested. “Never seen it work but I’ve seen it tried by one of my brothers. Of course I’ve also seen him sink a fishing boat so take the advice for what it’s worth.”
    When the cart came to a stop, she stepped out without a word, walked barefoot to the edge, and heaved her phone out into the blue abyss, got back in the cart, then said, “Okay. We can go now.”
    Instead of pulling back onto the path, he stared at her. “You know, I didn’t know you an hour ago but I thought I had you figured out. Yet, you keep surprising me.”
    On a shrug, she said, “I paint and sleep.” She wanted to hiss at the idea she wasn’t doing either very successfully, but instead she let out a slow, steady breath of annoyance. She could’ve done without the news from her failed marriage that her ex was happily remarrying. It was petty, she knew, but her own happiness—her art—was on the verge of failing and the contrast was lowering. “I’m not terribly surprising.”
    “Yeah, you are,” he told her as he pressed on the pedal and zipped off. “People don’t generally surprise me, but you do. I like it.”
    Who was this man? she wondered, eyeing him. Everything about her day—including him, especially him—had been unexpected. She’d woken up and anticipated to drudge through her usual eight hours of painting, ten if she was starting to crack through the artist’s block. Then a string of details had strung her afternoon into a knot that tightened and tugged in her stomach. And this man, this strange, handsome man had done little more than take one thread with his attention and had managed to loosen the snarl.
    “Our stuff isn’t too much further,” she told him, still examining the streaks of sun and shadow that crossed his face. “Just head up that road to the right.”
    He did exactly that with what she could only think of as affluent ease. He looked like he belonged everywhere in the world and nowhere in particular. “What brings you to Parpadeo Island?” she asked then paused. “Is that a stupid thing to ask