only a few feet away from one of the most amazing guys she’d ever met.
As if on cue, Remi popped his head out into the 160
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courtyard. His sneak attacks had lost their effect now that he and Julianne knew each other well enough to anticipate the other’s next move.
“Hey!” he called up the ladder. “How’s the painting going?”
“Why don’t you come up here and tell me?” Julianne called back down. Remi shimmied up the ladder two rungs at a time, until his face was almost level with Julianne’s. “So, what do you think?” she asked, tilting her head down toward him.
“Brilliant,” Remi assured her, his dark eyes darting from wall to wall, surveying Julianne’s work. Julianne could tell from the way his eyes brightened as he looked around the courtyard that he liked what he saw.
“Wherever can I find the gentleman who discovered such sparkling local talent? Clearly he’s a genius with discriminating taste.” He looked up at Jules and grinned.
She had never met anyone who grinned like that. It made her feel dizzy and warm.
Julianne arched her eyebrows and shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s going to be pretty hard to track him down. I heard he used to be a project manager around here, but they had to let him go because he was always slacking off and hanging around with his girlfriend.”
“Poor guy,” Remi said quietly, looking down the ladder.
“I know,” Julianne answered wryly. “But, for what it’s 161
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worth, I heard that the girlfriend was totally hot, if that makes you feel any better.”
“You know, oddly enough, it does. Actually, I heard that, too.” Remi ran his fingers over Julianne’s cheekbone. “She was gorgeous. And insanely talented.” Julianne laughed and rolled her eyes. “I’m sure this guy must have had something going for him, to get together with her.”
“Not much. Mainly, he was charming.” Remi laughed. Then he reached up, rested his hand on the back of Julianne’s head, and kissed her. As soon as their lips touched, Julianne heard a noise in the doorway.
Remi quickly hopped up another rung on the ladder and leaned over Jules’s shoulder, pretending to admire the detail work on a section of the painting.
Julianne peered down around Remi to see who’d come into the courtyard. Bill Cullen was standing at the bottom of the ladder, looking bemused. “What are you guys up to?” he asked.
“Bill, have you seen the detail work on Julianne’s painting here?” Remi asked thoughtfully. “It’s . . . very impressive. The client is going to be really thrilled.” He climbed down a few rungs of the ladder before turning his eyes back to Julianne. “Keep up the great work,” he said as neutrally as possible. He hopped off the ladder and turned back to Bill again. “It’s really . . . just great.” Bill raised one graying eyebrow. “Jules is great. That’s 162
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not news to me,” he said matter-of-factly. Then he turned and headed out of the courtyard, calling over his shoulder, “Lunch break’s at one-thirty today. If you want pizza, it’s three bucks.”
It wasn’t until Bill had left that Julianne felt the heat leave her face and noticed the green paint smeared on Remi’s shirt. They exchanged a quick, panicked look and Remi mouthed, “Do you think he knows?” Julianne shrugged and whispered, “Maybe?” The near miss was enough to put them both on edge.
Remi shifted his weight from one foot to the other while Julianne twisted the same piece of hair around her finger over and over again.
“Um, well, okay. ’Bye,” Remi blurted, dashing out of the courtyard.
“Yeah, ’bye,” Julianne replied, but even as he hurried away, she couldn’t take her eyes off him.
163
Chapter Seventeen
!
Julianne couldn’t believe she was finally putting the finishing touches on her mom’s painting. And just in time. After a week of beautiful weather, a patch of clouds was rolling in over the Palisades, bringing an unusual gray with it. Julianne dabbed a few final highlights of gold on the canvas, just to make the beach come that much more alive. Ever since that night she spent out on the beach listening for her mom a few weeks earlier, it was like all the pieces of her painting had suddenly started falling into place. The light was just right, and her colors had become richer, deeper, and more complex, somehow. It was like Hannah Kahn was out there somewhere, telling Jules to take her gifts and run with them, and if Jules just listened closely enough, 164
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she’d know what she was supposed to do. Grinning at her finished painting, Julianne practically hugged herself with delight over her accomplishment. She grabbed the painting off its easel and rushed it inside and up to her bedroom, where it could dry without the threat of sudden raindrops.
When Julianne woke up the next morning, the gray skies were still in full effect, and the gloom wouldn’t dis-sipate. That whole weekend—the weekend of the anniversary of Hannah Kahn’s death—it was unusually dark and drizzly for summertime in LA. Julianne, Chloe, and Dad sat around the living room in equally gray moods. They had watched old family videos and played three consecutive games of Trivial Pursuit (at which Chloe had thoroughly schooled Julianne and her father, three consecutive times), but the prevailing mood in the Kahn household was still listing toward melancholy.
“Who starred in the eponymous show about a news-caster in Minneapolis?” Chloe asked, yawning.
“Oh, even I know this one,” muttered Dad. “Mary Tyler Moore.”
“Chloe, do we really have to go through the additional cards?” Julianne whined. “We already played the game.”
“Do you have any better recreational suggestions?” Chloe countered, probably not meaning to sound quite so snippy. “Shall we do dramatic readings from the latest 165
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Publishers Weekly?” Chloe drawled, holding up a copy of their dad’s magazine. “Or should we watch another movie that we’ve all seen five times? Now that would be fun.”
Julianne looked at her sister and yawned. She curled her feet under her on the oversize couch and flopped back, peeling a split end in her hair. “I could always make popcorn. Or we could play Pictionary.”
“No Pictionary,” her father pleaded. “I’ve already been humiliated on the board game battlefield by one daughter today. I’m not going back for seconds.” Unable to reach consensus, they drifted to separate parts of the house. Dad went into his studio and Chloe clomped upstairs, while Julianne stayed put in the living room.
Julianne kept watch out the window for a break in the unseasonably dreary weather. She had wrapped her painting in butcher paper and hidden it under her bed.
She’d been hoping to give it to Dad and Chloe today, but her grand plan required sunshine. So she remained at her post in the window seat, looking out over the beach with a book in her lap.
At the first hint of sun, Jules jumped at her chance.
“Daaaad! Chloe! Come in here!” She knew her dad was getting things together for a meeting with his editor in New York next week, and Chloe was talking on the phone with one of her sorority sisters, but time was of the essence.
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Julianne dashed upstairs, skipping every other step, and bounded into Chloe’s room, not caring in the slightest if she was interrupting an important phone call.
“Chloe Elise Kahn, you have five minutes to get your butt downstairs and out onto the back deck!” Chloe put her hand over the receiver and looked at Julianne, her hazel eyes questioning and mildly annoyed. “What’s wrong?” she mouthed.
“Nothing’s wrong, but it’s important.” Julianne wheedled.
“Now?” Chloe mouthed. “Really?”
“Really! Now go. Go, go, go! And get Dad on your way out.” Julianne pivoted on her heel and burst toward the hallway.