Forbidden Boy (3 page)

Remi had been in every single one of her dreams, and each had been sweeter and more romantic than the last.

Julianne wrapped her arms around herself, as though her cozy room somehow had a chill without Remi in it. She walked over to her closet and pulled a shrunken UCLA hoodie over her head. Shaking out the curls that caught in the hood, Julianne crossed the room again, sat down at her desk, and glanced at her perpetually-on MacBook. Quickly, she dashed off a MySpace message to Kat in Spain.

K—

Met a guy! Ridiculously hot, seriously
funny. This is a biggie, I can just tell. Keep
your fingers crossed for me! Waves have been
amazing all week—wish you were here. Send
pictures from Madrid as soon as you have

’em. Oh, and Hunter says hey …

xoxo

—J

Julianne got up from her desk and pushed the gauzy curtains back from the bay window door that led out to her balcony. She slipped on her flip-flops, unlocked the door, and padded outside. Before her eyes even adjusted to the light, Jules felt the sun beating down on her, making her sweatshirt unnecessary, and heard the lapping of the waves up against the shoreline. She walked over to the railing and leaned against it, watching the waves swell and crash. She allowed herself to drift into a few more moments of morning reverie before looking down onto the beach, which was practically glowing in the late-morning sunshine. Specks of shells caught the light and reflected like tiny prisms, casting even more light across the sand. A few sunbathers dotted the thin strip of sand directly in front of the water. People were scattered in beach chairs and on blankets, thumbing through newspa-pers or glossy paperback novels under the shade of palm trees.

Jules stared out across the beach and wondered if Remi was sitting on the beach somewhere. She wondered what sort of books he read, what he did for fun, where he hung out. She imagined sitting next to Remi on a towel, him glancing over her shoulder as she sketched fellow beachgoers. Just imagining the closeness made Julianne blush—and she hadn’t even gotten around to picturing him in his bathing suit yet!

Three distant but sharp beeps snapped her out of her daydream and she looked up, annoyed. Three hundred yards away she could see a yellow bulldozer moving around at the Moores’ place. Did these people have to ruin everything? Julianne shook her head and turned her attention back to the ocean, allowing herself to be soothed by the light sparkling off the waves. Then her father’s voice drifted up from the deck below, so she headed back inside to get ready for her day.

After a quick change, Julianne was sitting with her father and Chloe downstairs. “Excuse me, miss. Can I get a refill?” Dad pushed his empty lemonade glass across the glass patio table toward his daughters.

Julianne rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. “First you want sunblock, then you want the umbrella down.”

She pointed to the oversize blue-and-yellow umbrella jutting out of the middle of the table like a Technicolor palm tree. “And now you want refills? I bet you’re not even going to tip… .”

Refilling her father’s glass from a huge, blown-glass pitcher, she turned her eyes back to the beach in front of her. It was a perfect early-summer afternoon—hot without being humid, the sun the color of butter.

“I’ve got a tip for you—don’t quit your day job.”

Edward Kahn chuckled softly to himself, pulling Jules’s attention back. “You have many talents, Julianna Banana, but waitressing isn’t one of them.”

Chloe reached across Julianne, grabbing a piece of corn on the cob. “Good thing you decided not to fill out that singing-waitress application at Nifty Fifties then, huh?” she teased.

Julianne practically wrapped herself around the umbrella post in pursuit of the potato salad and sloppily scooped a helping onto her neon plastic plate. “Alas, no roller skates and poodle skirts for me this summer. Just fresh air and building things.”

Chloe sat up straight in her chair and squinted through her giant gold-rimmed sunglasses. “Speaking of building things, what’s going on over there?” She jerked her thumb toward the construction equipment gathered around the new neighbors’ property. All sorts of destructive-looking vehicles were lined up around the house.

Julianne followed her sister’s gaze with one eye while monitoring her dad’s face with the other. “Beats me. I heard some construction noise when I was out on the balcony before, but that’s it. Dad?”

“Nuuhmuh.” Dad shrugged between mouthfuls of fruit salad.

“Come again?” Chloe asked.

“I said, ‘Nothing much,’” their father repeated. “It’s the same thing that always happens. People move here for a summer kingdom and start building their castle.

They’ll get bored and go back home soon enough.” He leaned over the side of his chair to pick up a grape that had escaped his grasp and wedged itself between the wood slats of the deck.

“The bulldozers don’t strike me as a sign of bore-dom,” Chloe started, shaking her head.

“They showed up last month, immediately dug a foundation, and erected this crazy greenhouse-looking thing. It looks like they’re trying to expand down toward the beach now.” Julianne glanced over at the mess of Tonka trucks come alive. From a few hundred yards away they almost looked like a bunch of mechanical bees swarming around a big glass hive.

“Can they do that? Just keep going and going like that?” Julianne wondered out loud.

“Yeah,” Chloe added incredulously. “If they keep moving at this rate, they’re going to plow that whole stretch of beach right under.”

“In a few weeks, they’ll decide it’s all more trouble than it’s worth and sell the property for twice what they paid for it. Just wait. Don’t lose any sleep over it, girls.

It’ll be fine,” their father assured them. “But, speaking of sleep, it was nice of you to wake up and join us for lunch, Julianne …” he continued slyly.

In the distance, Julianne could hear kids laughing as they rushed up to the water’s edge and dashed away, squealing, as soon as the tide approached.
Wow, I can’t
believe he noticed …
she thought.

Chloe said as much out loud. “Gosh, Jules, you must have been out cold to make
Dad
notice you snoozing the morning away. He’s been in his studio all day. Way to make your absence known. Hmm … I
wonder
what you possibly could have been dreaming about until almost noon …” Julianne could hear the slightest shade of glee coloring her sister’s voice. She was right, though. Their father, a children’s book author, was pretty single-minded writing. Mom had always joked that if she hadn’t illustrated his books, her husband would have forgotten who she was entirely while he was writing.

Abruptly changing the subject, Chloe burst out with,

“Hey, didn’t the Moores come over with their surveyor practically first thing when they moved in?”

“Chloe, don’t get all worked up over nothing,” Dad said. “Both of you girls worry too much. The neighborhood might be changing, but it doesn’t mean much for us.

Well, except for longer, meaner lines in the supermarket,”

he added, winking. “The Moores aren’t going to win any conservation awards for building up all that ground, but their crazy glass mansion won’t really affect us.”

Well, if Dad isn’t worried, I won’t worry,
Julianne thought to herself. She glanced over at Chloe and saw her sister’s shoulders starting to ease their way down toward their typical relaxed height. “Nothing to worry about,” Julianne said softly, right as something went whizzing through her sight line, smacking Chloe directly on the forehead. Julianne and Chloe whipped their heads toward the opposite side of the table, where their father was chuckling quietly, fingers still poised from flicking a particularly round grape at Chloe’s head.

“Now
there’s
something to worry about,” he declared before the table broke out into an all-out grape-shooting gallery.

Julianne shook her head, grinning, and reached for her camera just in time to catch a few great shots of her crazy family in action.

“No, here’s something to worry about—the invasion of the hot summer guys! It looks like our Jules is already halfway to being beamed up.” Chloe giggled.

“Not even a little,” Julianne fibbed gamely. “It’s only June. A girl needs to keep her summer options open until the Fourth of July, at least.” She enjoyed keeping the excitement of a new romance quiet for a little while—

it made it even more special.

“I like that rule.” Chloe nodded thoughtfully.

“Saving your fireworks until after the fireworks. Very classy. Besides, you’re going to be working at cute-guy headquarters this summer. And you’re going to be the only girl there. We’ll need some sort of complex rating system to sort through all your options.”

“My little girls are growing up. I don’t think I like this,” Dad muttered pitifully. “One day it’s tea parties and art classes, the next it’s boys, boys, and more boys.”

“Oh,
Daaad
!” Julianne and Chloe groaned in unison, rolling their eyes.

“Jules, sweetie, I don’t know how you’re going to hold down a job if you’re in the habit of sleeping until noon,” Dad teased.

“I wouldn’t say that sleeping in once constitutes a habit,” Julianne protested.

“Not a habit, per se.” Chloe smirked. “At least not yet. Wait until you run into that guy again; then we can start predicting recurrences.”

“Thank you, Captain Statistical Analysis,” Julianne shot back. “After that, maybe you can set up a formal experiment. I can be your very own live-in lab rat.

Anyway, I’m going to be spending the entire summer number one, painting, and number two, surrounded by the aforementioned hot guys. I think I’ll find it in my heart to pull myself out of bed and get to work somehow.” Julianne pulled her oversize sunglasses down her nose and cast a dramatic look at her older sister.

“Point taken,” Chloe admitted, laughing. “Honestly, Jules, I can’t think of anyone else who could make working on a construction site sound so … appealing.”

“Are you kidding me? It’s going to be fantastic!

Sunshine, boys, making things and then painting them?

I can’t wait to start!” Jules gushed.

“And I,” Chloe cut in, not-so-subtly redirecting the conversation, “can’t wait to hear more about this guy you met last night. Tell me everything already!”

Julianne felt her cheeks turning red, in a physical flashback to the night before.

“Chloe, stop picking on your sister,” Dad interceded halfheartedly.

“Daaaaa-aad!” Chloe practically squealed. “Don’t even!

You know you want to know almost as much as I do!”

Chuckling, their father admitted, “You know, I’m not sure that’s true. It’s just that I’ll lose my parenting license if I don’t tell you to cut it out at least twice a day. Carry on, then.” He smiled, picked up his plate, and headed back into the house.

Chloe lazily swatted at a seagull that was flying per-ilously close to her plate. His bird buddies squawked overhead, egging him on to fight. Glad of the distraction, Julianne reached under her seat and came back up with her camera—a huge old Nikon SLR. She loved adjusting the lenses and checking the light meter. She snapped away as Chloe took off a flip-flop and threatened to bat at the renegade bird, muttering, “Rats with wings. They’re just big rats with wings.”

As the seagulls scattered, Chloe turned her attention back to the still-blushing Julianne. “Are you going to spill or not?”

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,”

Julianne replied tartly, putting her camera down and lobbing a look of wide-eyed innocence at her sister.

“Oh my God. You’re totally gone for this guy!” Chloe was now in full squealing mode. “Jules has a boyfriend!

Jules has a boyfriend!”

“Um, excuse me?” Jules interjected. “Which one of us has the hot dinner date with her hot lab partner tonight?

Boyfriend,
what
?”

“Seriously, though, Jules. Things looked pretty intense last night. I haven’t seen you click with a guy like that in … well …
ever
,” Chloe prompted, her voice more serious.

Julianne smiled to herself, remembering the electrified kiss on the beach, and gave up being vague. “I know.

It’s true. Talking to him just seemed so natural, Chloe.

Like everything fit.”

“He
was
pretty cute.” Chloe nodded, popping another grape into her mouth.

“And not just that,” Julianne continued, her pace quickening. “He was completely hilarious and nice and smart. He was just …” Her voice trailed off as she searched for the words. “He was perfect.”

Chloe slid her sunglasses off of her face and smiled, her eyes twinkling as she lifted her lemonade glass in a toast. “Well, then, here’s to a perfect summer.”

“Here, here!” Julianne chimed in.

Julianne felt like she was being baked alive. The three o’clock sun was beating down, and she could feel it sizzling behind her dark curls. Even with her hair back in a messy bun, tied away from her face with a bandana, she could feel the heat sinking into her skull. She fanned herself with her hand and waited for a burst of cool breeze to come up off the ocean. Two feet away, her black Reef flip-flops lay messily where she had kicked them off, and she sank her toes farther into the sand. She had been out on the beach painting for the last hour, and still had a couple hours to go. Her mother had come out to the beach every day in the summers from two to five—at least until she got too sick to leave the house—to catch the sun on its way back down from the middle of the sky. Hannah Kahn had always said that her greatest pleasure as an artist was to catch the sun on its descent toward the horizon. The shadows were better. There was more depth, more variation. She never wore sunglasses when she painted, because she wanted to see the light in as pure a way as possible. Despite their many similarities, today Jules was definitely not
feeling
her mom’s artistic process. It was a gorgeous day, and all she could think about was getting in the water.

Usually, making art chilled Julianne out, but today she was surprisingly distracted. The anniversary of her mother’s death was coming up, and Julianne really wanted to have this painting finished by the time it rolled around. It was a challenge for her to paint in her mother’s lush, representational style, though. Julianne’s work was generally more abstract. She usually loved working in mixed media, but she felt compelled to do this painting her mom’s way—to experience the way her mom ticked as an artist. Trying to channel her mom’s method was a huge struggle for her, but Julianne desperately wanted to make this painting work.