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“Times are different,” she said.
“Not different enough. I don’t want a call like the one my parents got and have you end up in a chair like this. Your mother and I weren’t smart. Always remember that.”
All she had to do was look at the man she loved to remember.
“I will,” she said. She leaned down and kissed him. “Will you be here when I’m done unloading everything?”
She could tell he wanted to take off, but he said, “I’ll be at the hotel. There is too much traffic here and I’m in the way.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Mom and Stewart are going to talk to you about it. We’ll all go to dinner tonight. I won’t leave without saying goodbye, I promise.”
“You better keep that promise,” she said, leaning down to kiss him on the cheek.
She’d keep her tears in place and hoped he did keep his word and was there tonight when so many other times he said he’d be somewhere and wasn’t. That something came up.
Her father held her stare. She meant business and he knew.
“Dinner tonight.”
But hours later, her father chartered a private plane to go home for an emergency at work. Just as she expected.
Laine tried not to be disappointed while her mother and Stewart cheered her up. She put on a happy face as she’d done most of her life.
Her father couldn’t help who he was and she had to stop hoping for more.
1
LITTLE MISHAP
Fifteen Years Later
Laine crankedup the music in the studio at her home.
She’d closed her business at eight tonight. She’d had a wine and paint party and the group of ten ladies was having a ball on this August Saturday night.
No one was producing much more than good times at those parties and that was what she wanted.
But at eleven thirty she was in the little studio in her craftsman home on Amore Island up on a cliff looking down at the waves crashing below. There was a storm brewing and she loved that the best.
She stood back to look at the canvas in front of her she’d been working on for hours.
Stormy Night. That was what she was going to call this.
The moon was peeking through the clouds and she’d tried to capture this before the night ended and she lost her mojo.
Angling her head side to side, she was almost done. At least to the point where she could stop and finish up the next day.She’d snapped a few pictures with her camera when the storm was at the peak she was trying to replicate to look back on.
After the last finishing touch, Beyoncé’s“Put a Ring On It” piped through the ceiling speaker.
“Now you’re talking my language, Beyoncé. Best way to end the night.”
Laine broke out in a dance. She had the imaginary microphone in front of her, singing along, her horrible off-key voice echoing off the walls.
She was voguing, switched off into the running man, found herself halfway across the room, then broke off into a head whip, her hair swirling around her, the sweat dribbling down her back.
When the chorus ended, she switched it to the floss. Big mistake!
