Levi's Blue: A Sexy Southern Romance (3 page)

CHAPTER 3

EVIE

“YOU’RE AWFULLY brave,” a familiar voice says from over my right shoulder.  Goosebumps skitter down my spine, and my skin ripples with pleasure.

I don’t even try to stop my smile.

“I am?”

“You are.”

“And why is that?”

“Drinking while blind.  Ballsy.  Aren’t you afraid of falling?”

I laugh outright.  “That ship has sailed
.
  Gotta give me a better reason than that.  I’ve earned this drink.”

“That you have.  Continually throwing yourself at me has to make you thirsty.”

“Yes, you’re quite…depleting,” I quip good-naturedly.  I hear his soft blow of laughter. “And what about you?  Lugging around that ego has to work up a mighty big thirst.  What are
you
having?”

There’s a long pause followed by a guilty,  “Oh.  I’m having a gimlet.”

I round my mouth, mocking disbelief.  “Did you
actually
just hold up your glass so I could see it?”  I get another pause, a longer one this time, and I laugh again.  “You did!”

“Sorry.  Force of habit.”  His tone is sheepish.

“Are you blushing?”

“I don’t blush.”

“Not ever?”

“Not that I know of.”

“But have you ever insulted a blind woman before?”

“Not
today
, but as you can see, I’ve just rectified the situation.”

“And
still
no blush?”

“I guess we’ll never know.”

“Very true.  Well, at least you met your goals for the day. Now you can rest easy.”

“There’s
one goal
I haven’t met today.”

“And what would that be?  Screaming at a deaf man?”

His chuckle disturbs the air around me, like the flick of a matador’s cape, and wraps me in a velvety blanket.  “No. For some reason, I was thinking I’d get to kiss a half-drunk blind woman with an ass I could bounce a quarter off.”

I burst out laughing. I can’t help myself.  “Wow. I suppose I should thank Cherelyn for choosing these pants then.”

“Where is she? 
I’d
like to thank her, too.”

“I would point her out, but…you know.”

“Right, right.  So, do you always torture men this way?”

“Whenever possible, yes.”

“Good to know.  At least I’ll know what to expect.”

“Expect?”

“Yes.  When I take you to lunch tomorrow.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I can’t. I have other obligations.”

“‘Other obligations’? That sounds an awful lot like a really bad way to blow me off.”

“It does, doesn’t it?”

His voice drops, the tone a little more serious.  “Is it?”

He stepped closer. One small step, but I can feel it.  I can
feel
his closeness. 

My heart thunders along behind my ribs, a bird rapidly beating its wings within the bars of its gilded cage.

“No, it’s not me blowing you off. I, um, I teach a painting class at the Boyd Center.  Art therapy.  It’s for disabled children and people suffering from PTSD.”

“So you’re beautiful
and
kind.  I’m seriously gonna have to up my game.”

He thinks I’m beautiful?

“Yes, you will. I’m formidable.  Highly skilled in the ways of society, as you can plainly see from my flawless entrance and stunning speech earlier.”

“You’ll never hear me complain that you fell at my feet.”

I smile.  “So do
you
always torture
women
this way?” 

“Maybe. Maybe I’m treating you the way I’d treat any other woman on the planet.” 

My breath catches. 

I know he’s joking, but his words—
my words
from earlier—warm my heart. He listened. He paid attention.

He.

Remembered. 

Most people don’t find me worth remembering at all, but this man…

For some reason, his casual reference lights up a night sky that only I can see on the often dark and lonely canvas of my mind.

“I hope it wasn’t a man who told you to do that.  They give terrible advice about women.”

“God! I hope not, too.  I’ll need a few
dozen
more drinks if that’s the case.”

I think of him being duped by a man dressed as a woman and I giggle at how
that
conversation might go.  “So, does this approach ever work?”

“Depends on the amount of alcohol on board. Which reminds me, can I get you another drink?”

I laugh again, feeling lighter than I have in years.  Maybe even
thirteen
years.

“As tempting as that sounds, I’d probably better make this my last. I’d hate to embarrass myself tonight. Oh, wait…”

“Evie. Can I call you Evie?”

I nod, struck temporarily speechless at the way it sounds when he says my name.  His voice has this hoarse, smoky quality to it.  It’s both exotic and sexy, like sensuous black silk.

“Evie, you didn’t embarrass yourself. You charmed everyone here. Just like you charmed me.”

In my response, I try to sound breezy and unaffected, even though my stomach is doing happy somersaults.  “Oh, well, all in a night’s work.”

Before he can respond, the bartender interrupts, “What can I get for you, sir?”

“Are you sure you won’t have anything?” the tempting stranger asks.

“No, but thank you.”

“A gimlet and a champagne,” he tells the bartender.

A gimlet and a champagne.

Two drinks.

In that one sentence, my hopes plummet.  More than I’d like to admit. 

He’s with someone. 

I don’t ask him about it, mainly because I don’t want to know.  This man’s attentions have been nice.

Very nice.

But they’re obviously a diversion for him, nothing more.

It’s
never
anything more. 

I’m blind. It’s a turn-off. End of story.

It didn’t take me long during college to realize that relationships don’t work for me.  Dating a woman with special needs isn’t easy, and most men just aren’t up for the challenge.  I’ve come to accept it, and most of the time I’m okay with my lot in life, with the prospect of being alone.

But every now and then, it stings.

Like
now
.

I don’t want to know who this man is with because I don’t want to have to picture a beautiful
sighted
woman on his arm. I don’t want to have to picture what he might look like when he smiles down at her.  I don’t want to imagine what it sounds like when he says
her
name in that smoky voice of his.

But, maybe most of all, I don’t want to have to acknowledge that he’s been interacting with me out of pity.  Throwing the blind girl a bone.

So I don’t.

I don’t ask. I don’t imagine.  I don’t
think.

I have to take this for what it was, nothing more and nothing less. 

And now it’s over.

“Well, thank you again for your help tonight.  I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening.”

With that, I do my best to walk away with dignity.  Well, as much dignity as a woman walking with a cane at a snail’s pace can muster. 

I walk away and leave him behind. 

CHAPTER 4

LEVI

I’M ONLY in town for a few days.  There are a number of things I
should be
doing today, and not one of them entailed attending a painting class for kids with disabilities and people with PTSD.

And yet here I am.

In a classroom full of just such people.

I’m guessing I’m the only one here for the singular reason of stalking Evian de Champlain, though.

I’m sandwiched between a sweet little girl with no hands and a teenage boy with only one eye. We all sit quietly, waiting.

It wasn’t hard to get into the class once I told them who I am.  They were more than happy to give me any information I asked of them.  Probably even some they shouldn’t have.

“Do you know how to paint, mister?” the little girl to my left asks me, scratching her nose with the nub of her wrist, the skin puckered around the place where her hand used to be. Her eyes are wide and blue, her face sweet and innocent. She looks like a small, blonde angel. 

It hits me hard to look at her.  I might’ve had a child that looked like her if only…

Rachel.

My gut clenches at the thought of her.

“No, I don’t, but I hear I’m in a good place to learn. Is that right?”

She grins and nods her head enthusiastically.  “Ms. Evie taught me to paint with my feet,” she says, demonstrating her dexterity by waving the paintbrush held in the sure grip of her tiny toes.

“That’s great! I can’t wait to see what you paint today.”

“Imma paint some flowers. Yellow ones.  What are you gonna paint?”

“Maybe I’ll paint some flowers, too.”

Her smile is thousand watt, and it burns me all the way through, in places I try not to think about anymore.  They’re locked away. 

Forever.

The door in the front corner of the room opens with a squeak, and both the little girl and I turn in that direction. I see a red-tipped white cane poke through the opening, followed by speckled white ballerina slippers and shapely calves.  Slowly, Evie makes her way into the room. 

Today, she’s wearing a pair of white shorts and a hot pink shirt with Reebok scrawled across the front, both of which are liberally splattered and smudged with paint.  Her hair is pulled back into a simple ponytail, and her eyes are hidden behind sunglasses.  Maybe it’s because of the bright ribbons of sunshine streaming through the windows to my right, or maybe she usually wears them and just didn’t during the opening, for aesthetics.  Hell if I know. I only know that she’s as beautiful today as she was last night.

Maybe even more so.

“Good morning, everybody,” she says in her clear voice as she makes her way to the stool at the front of the class. It’s positioned beside a blank canvas set on an easel. A table holding paints and brushes and a palette rests to the left of that.

“Good morning, Ms. Evie,” the class says in unison.

It’s obvious that everyone here is happy to see her.  I see it in their expressions, hear it in their voices.

I stick out like a sore thumb, but there’s a part of me that feels like I belong here. 

Among the wounded. 

I glance around the room again, at the peace and joy so evident on these faces, and I realize that these kids aren’t
wounded.
They’re healing.

This is where people come to
heal.
 

I just wish, for my sake, forgiveness could be learned here. Or taught.

“Do we have any new painters with us today?” Evie asks as she settles her cane against the table and perches a hip on the stool.

No one speaks up, but the little girl beside me nudges my arm.  “Tell her you’re new,” she says in a loud whisper.

I’d hoped to conceal my presence until the end of the class, but that’s out of the question now.  I’m sure Evie will recognize my voice.

“I am,” I announce.

Evie turns slightly in my direction, her smile widening welcomingly.  “Well, hello.  What’s your name?”

I clear my throat.  “Levi.”

I see the faint shadow of a frown crease her forehead, but it disappears quickly, like ripples fading from a pond.  “Welcome, Levi.  We’re glad you’re here, aren’t we, guys?”

The kids clap and stomp their feet in a rowdy greeting that would bring a smile to the coldest of faces.

“Thank you,” I reply to the dozen or so others in the room.

“Who wants to show Levi how we do things around here?”

“I will!” the little angel beside me yells.

“That sounds like Alana.”

“It is, it is!” she replies, her whole body jumping happily as she squirms with excitement.

It must seem like a magic trick to someone her age—that a blind woman could identify her so easily.  Of course, it might seem like a magic trick to
anyone
of
any
age.  Evian de Champlain sure feels like magic
to me
right now. 

It occurs to me again that I must be out of my mind to have sought her out this way.  It’s ludicrous.

But I’ll be damned if I could help myself. 

Something about her draws me.  Like gravity or a magnet.  Or the warmth of a fire on a cold winter’s night.  It’s cliché as hell, and I never would’ve thought myself capable of being taken with
any
woman so quickly—or maybe even
at all
after Rachel—but here I am.

Taken.

I watch as Evie straightens from the stool and feels her way to the cabinet along the wall at the front of the room.  There, she takes out several things and piles them in her arms.  When she turns, she’s smiling again.

“Okay, y’all, help me get back there to him.”

She starts slowly forward, and the kids tell her which way to go to avoid obstacles in her path.  By obeying their commands and directions, she weaves her way between easels and chairs without incident.  I can’t help but admire all that she’s teaching them in such a seemingly innocuous, mostly fun way.

She’s showing them the importance of trust, the value of friendship, and how to be brave in the face of adversity.

What she’s showing
me
is that she’s even more amazing than I’d first thought.

But also that she’s someone I could never deserve.

I push that thought out of my head when she arrives at my easel, bending enough that I can take the items from her arms.

“Here you go, Levi.”

There is no familiarity in her expression, no indication that I’m anything other than Average Joe who came to her class to learn or heal, or both.  That’s when it occurs to me that maybe she
doesn’t
recognize my voice. 

It shouldn’t bother me that she doesn’t. We only met last night.  What the hell was I expecting? That she’s thought of little other than
me
, like I’ve thought of little other than
her
? That she went to bed with me on her mind and woke up with me on her mind?

Maybe I
was
hoping for that.  Maybe I was hoping she was feeling this insane pull, too. 

Either way, it
does
bother me.

A lot.

I haven’t forgotten a single detail about her.  Not one damn thing. Yet it seems she put me completely out of her mind.

“Thank you, but I could’ve come up there to get this.”

“No, this is how we do things around here.”  She lowers her voice the tiniest bit before she says, conspiratorially,  “I’m just treating you just like I would any other man on the planet.”

When her words sink in, words that reflect our conversation last night, I’m more relieved than I care to admit. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it makes me
damn happy.

She knows
exactly
who I am. 

Her lips curve into a mischievous grin, and mine twitch up into an answering one. 

It’s crazy as shit that I want to drag her into my arms and kiss that smiling mouth of hers, but that’s precisely what I want to do.

I lower my voice, too, leaning slightly toward her.  “You left before I could achieve my goal last night.”

“You can’t really achieve goals like those when you’ve got another…companion.”

Julianne.

Damn. 

“That wasn’t what you think. She’s an old friend.
Just
an old friend.”  And that’s true, even though Julianne has never tried to hide the fact that she wants it to be more.

“Oh.”  I swear I hear relief in that one syllable.  Or maybe it’s just that I
want
her to be relieved.  “Well, you could always try your luck at lunch then.”

Back to last night, when I’d asked her to lunch today.

“I thought you had a previous engagement.”

She laughs softly, a sound that I’m pretty sure could make a dead man hard if he listened to it a few times.  “So did I, but…”  She shrugs.  “Things change.”

“I wouldn’t want to interrupt.”

“You wouldn’t?  Then why are you here?” Her question is pointed, but her expression is playful. 

She nailed me.  Saw right through me, even though she can’t see a thing.

A high-pitched giggle divides my attention, and the girl to my left leans in and whispers in her baby doll voice, “Did you just get in trouble?”

I wink and admit to her in a tone of exaggerated seriousness, “I think I just got busted.”

She giggles again, and I reach over to tweak her adorable nose.

“Alana,” Evie says, turning to address the child as well, “will you please explain to Levi how we paint?”

Alana nods and turns to me, her cute little voice carrying clearly throughout the whole room.  “‘We paint what we feel with
what
we feel.  Fingers, toes, nose, or brushes.’  Darwin even paints with his
teeth,
” she exclaims in awe. She uses the place where her hand should be to point to a boy at the back of the room.  He has no arms, his T-shirt sleeves dangling emptily down his sides, but he’s holding a paintbrush between his teeth, working it over the canvas with enviable finesse and a brooding intensity.

Alana leans closer to me, her words hushed, “He already started. He never waits for Ms. Evie to get here.”

Evie hasn’t stopped smiling.  “But that’s okay, isn’t it, Alana?”

Alana nods, grinning enough to show her tiny, white teeth.

“And if you want to paint like me, what do we do?” Evie asks.

“You get blindfoldeeeddd,” Alana supplies with glee.

“So, how would you like to paint today, Levi?  Would you like to be blindfolded?”

I know she doesn’t mean it in a sexual way—or maybe she
does
—but part of me doesn’t seem to understand that.  A very
specific
part of me. 

I shift in my seat.  “No, no blindfold.  I think I’d rather be able to watch you. You know,
to learn
and all
.
”

“But this is art therapy.  You need to
feel
the paint, not watch me.”

“I don’t know if I can do that.” I don’t mean paint, although I’m about as artistic as an oak tree. I mean not watch her. I don’t think I can
not
watch her.

“Sure you can. You just have to try.”

“Can you help me do that?  Can you show me?”

Her pause is long before she answers quietly, “Yes, I can show you.”  Her demeanor is softer now. Less playful.  Almost…sad. 

She takes a single step back, one that seems to be an
emotional
step back as much as a
physical
one.

I don’t know what I said to cause the change, but obviously I touched a nerve.  Or insinuated myself into a space she doesn’t allow people into.

“Tell me what to do.” Not just about the painting, but to fix this. I feel like I stepped into a steaming pile of shit that I didn’t see and don’t know how to get out of.

I didn’t come here to antagonize her. I came here because, for whatever reason, I wanted to see her.  More than I wanted to do or see
anything else
today.

“Bring your things up to the front. We can work on my canvas. Together.”

She turns and makes her way back through the easels with an ease and competence that belies her perceptive limitations. She doesn’t need help.  She didn’t when she walked back here.  She was having the kids guide her not because
she
needed it, but because
they
did.

Once again, I’m amazed by her.

I take up the load of stuff she just brought me, and I follow her to the front.

“You can set your things here,” she says, indicating the table where her supplies are laid out.