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Chapter Two
“Now, you let me know if you need anything, sweetie,” Tanith insisted from the door of the for-rent studio room.
Alani Kealoha glanced up from her spot behind the potter’s wheel with a smile, pleased that she’d found such a genuine, nice woman to rent space from. Most gallery owners were incredibly pretentious. Angel Fire’s resident artist extraordinaire was unlike any she’d met before, and Alani had met her fair share of ridiculous artsy people.
“It’s perfect,” Alani assured her. “Thank you.”
“Looking forward to seeing your newest piece,” Tanith said with a wink. And then she was gone in a flash of purple hair, her various bracelets and bangles jingling as she carried on down the hall.
With a deep inhale, Alani looked down at the potter’s wheel, a fresh bucket of clay at her side, and got to work.
She’d moved to New Mexico from Hawaii about a month ago, and had spent most of the time shopping around for studio space. Everything had felt so stifling lately—and her creative muse was in desperate need of a calm, relaxing atmosphere to express itself in. All the big cities were just too noisy, too crowded. They made her yearn for her house back on the island—but she knew getting anything close to that was just a pipe dream. She’d been resigned to working in a space that didn’t quite suit her before she found Tanith Ravenna’s ad online.
One look at the studio and Alani paid her first four months’ worth of rent on the spot. That was how long her semester was this term—just four long months away from her twins, five-year-old darlings Kai and Leila. The distance between her and her babies killed her just a little bit, each and every day, but getting her education completed at last would only help her family in the future.
Because that was the reason she was even in New Mexico, so far from her girls and the ocean—the two great loves of her life. Now that her girls were starting school, she had the time to finish her arts degree that she’d put on hold to have them in the first place. While she wasn’t required to stay on the Albuquerque campus, she had to be in-state for exams and showings.
Angel Fire was a decent drive from her small arts college, but the moment she stepped foot in it, she’d known it would be worth the commute. Peaceful, quiet, beautiful—the small town had everything she wanted, nestled at the base of a towering mountain range. If she couldn’t have her beaches and volcanoes and everything in between, Alani would settle for rolling hills and glittering white mountains over towering skyscrapers and traffic any day.
On most days making pottery was like a form of meditation for Alani. She could center herself; taking deep, even breaths as the electronic wheel beneath her clay spun. Slowly but surely, she’d drift off into her own little world; mind wandering from one place to another, always pleasant, always soothing.
When she’d return, she’d find a gorgeous piece of art waiting for her. But that was when she was making art for fun—or for herself. Now that she knew she’d be graded on each piece she made, the pressure was on to show why she had earned a spot in her competitive grad program.
Most of the general public thought art was this breezy degree that required no real work at all. On the contrary, any art student could tell you that their schoolwork required many late nights in the studio, crafting and molding and striving for perfection, only to have that piece of your soul put on display and compared or ranked beside everyone else’s.
Art was competitive, but Alani couldn’t see herself doing anything different in life. She had big dreams of selling her beautiful pieces, rife with designs inspired by her native Hawaii, then eventually opening a gallery like Tanith. She wanted to see art grow in this world—a world so overtaken by technology and busy day-to-day lives where people forgot to stop and appreciate the beauty.
Along with opening a gallery, Alani had some interest in teaching art, preferably to children. But that would require another degree and more time away from her kids. So, for now, she’d focus on the one and get to the other when time—and money—allowed.
The clay had started to take shape beneath her fingers. She leaned over the wheel; thick black eyebrows furrowed as she watched the shaping of her pot with a more intense concentration than she was used to.
Money. Everything today required you had it to get anywhere in life, and Alani only had it because she fell for the wrong man. Before she had met him, her life had been simpler, but certainly poorer. Warren Bentley, a big-shot movie director straight out of Hollywood, had been filming an action thriller on her island. They’d met at a bar, and Alani hadn’t known who he was.
Back then, he wooed her in a night and took her to his bed the next night. She thought she’d been in love. Their affair had been passionate—earth-shattering, unlike anything she had ever experienced before. Her paintings had been stunning, full of lustrous color and expressive detail, a reflection of their lovemaking.
Only Warren Bentley didn’t quite feel the same. He left when he finished his movie, kissing her goodbye and never looking back. Heartbroken, she’d returned to her mother’s house where she still lived in her childhood bedroom to nurse her wounded heart.
Three months later, Alani had realized she was pregnant. Six months after that, she gave birth to twin girls who immediately fixed any lingering holes in her heart, brightening her world unlike any man had ever done before.
While her mother, and her meager salary from her waitressing jobs at a hotel and a local café, had been enough to support her during her pregnancy, pay for visits to the doctor, and whatever supplements she needed to stay healthy, Alani couldn’t afford twins, not even with her mother’s ceaseless generosity. So she had called up Warren Bentley to ask for a little help.
And he gave it. The hotshot director wanted nothing to do with their daughters, but he saw no reason why they should live in poverty. He’d sent her a lump sum to cover the first year—much, much more than Alani had initially asked for—and then offered to settle for a yearly amount until the girls were eighteen. She’d signed some documents, and suddenly Kai and Leila could have whatever they wanted.
Not that Alani spoiled them unnecessarily. She lived comfortably and was able to buy a bigger house for her mother and her girls to live in with the “salary” her Hollywood lover provided.
Now, five years later, he hadn’t missed a payment—it arrived the first day of January every year, but she and Warren hadn’t talked since. He didn’t want cards or pictures or updates on the girls. His lack of interest threatened to destroy her; Kai and Leila were the lights of her life, and he was an idiot for not knowing them. So Alani showered her girls in more love than any child could ever want for, rather than material goods.
Leaving for New Mexico had been a decision she spent a year making, and as Alani thought back to it, the memories brought tears to her eyes as she worked. Time and time again she had explained to the twins that she wasn’t leaving for good.
“You know how you are going to school now?” she’d asked them, both girls on her lap in the hammock hanging in their backyard. They’d nodded, watching her with Warren’s bright blue eyes and Alani’s thick lips—they had her hair too: wild and unruly. “Well,” Alani had continued, “Mommy is going to go to school too for a little while, but she has to go a long way away to do it. Is that okay?”
She still wasn’t sure just how much her daughters grasped, even at five years of age, but she hoped they knew she hadn’t abandoned them. Their phone call that morning had been lovely, though, in typical kid fashion—both were more interested in getting back to TV time than talking to Mom. Go figure.
Caught up in the moment, with classical music tinkling out from the nearby stereo’s speakers and thoughts of her girls dancing in her head, Alani jumped nearly a foot at the sound of someone stomping around overhead. Tanith had told her that the apartments above the studio were rented out, but Alani hadn’t expected them to be noisy. The scare forced her hands to slip, which in turn totally threw her pot into a wonky, awful shape. Frowning, Alani attacked it again, trying to block out the stomping of the inconsiderate person upstairs.
Only to find she couldn’t block it out. Not for long anyway. She needed a gentle, peaceful atmosphere to craft her art—and this was absolutely not peaceful.
Groaning, she scrapped her current piece, preferring to tackle it again later when she could dedicate her full concentration. With a scowl, she wrapped the wet clay and set it aside, intending on getting back to it when she’d dealt with this absurd noise problem.
Heart pounding, Alani washed up and wiped down the wheel, not wanting Tanith to think she’d rented her studio space to a slob, then headed for the staircase at the back of the gallery. After some hesitation—confrontation was so not her style, but getting her assignments done properly was very important—Alani took a deep breath and climbed up the dimly lit stairwell, ready to get to the bottom of this quickly so she could get back to work.
