Summer Beach Reads 5-Book Bundle: Beachcombers, Heat Wave, Moon Shell Beach, Summer House, Summer Breeze (183 page)

Aaron flushed bright red from his chest, up his neck, to his entire face. “You’re welcome,” he muttered.

“Oh God.” Memories suffused Natalie: all the times artists she’d posed for had hit on her, assuming that her nakedness, her willing arch and arrangement of limbs and torso, constituted some kind of invitation. Assuming that posing was some kind of tacit agreement. “Aaron, I’m sorry. I wasn’t hitting on you, I promise. I’m just excited. Intellectually excited, artistically excited. I would
never
hit on you!”

Aaron was grinning. “You’re assuming my reaction was embarrassment.”

“What else could it—
Oh!
” Now it was Natalie’s turn to blush. “Well, Aaron.” She began to dither. “I’m not saying you’re not, or rather that I couldn’t be, but, come on, you’re practically engaged to Bella!”

“Am I?” Aaron was no longer smiling.

“Aren’t you?”

They stared at each other. Natalie did not feel the urgent chemistry she’d felt with Ben. On the other hand, it was quite possible Ben hadn’t felt the urgent chemistry himself. Certainly he hadn’t called her. He’d had lunch with Morgan! But Bella was a friend. A new friend, but a good friend.

“I don’t know,” Aaron answered. “I was planning to ask Bella to marry me, but frankly, I think she’ll refuse because she doesn’t want to leave this area.”

This was between Bella and Aaron. No place for Natalie to intrude. “Sit down again,” she ordered. “I want to work a bit more.”

Aaron took his position, turning his head away, straining backward. It was impossible for him to talk now, and Natalie was glad. She needed to concentrate on her drawing. Aaron was a classy, good-looking guy. He was strong, confident, kind, easygoing. Bella would be a fool not to marry him.

She worked for another forty-five minutes, allowing Aaron to stretch at intervals.

At last she folded. “That’s it for the day. I might shade in some background tomorrow. Can you give me some time tomorrow?”

“I’ve got lots of time until I hear from San Francisco,” Aaron told her, his voice slightly muffled as he pulled his shirt on over his head.

“Tomorrow after noon?” she asked.

“I’ll be here at one.”

They thumped down the stairs together.

“Would you like a drink?” she asked.

“Not today, thanks.” Aaron leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I’m really proud to be part of this, Natalie. I think you’ve got quite a talent.”

“Thanks, Aaron.” Natalie stood in the doorway, waving at him as he drove away, and she couldn’t stop smiling.

Online, Bella ordered a “Going Out of Business” banner. She placed an ad in all the local papers: the
Daily Amherst Gazette
, the
Valley Advocate
, the
Belchertown Sentinel
, the
PennySaver
. She put an ad on craigslist. She made up flyers on her computer and drove around all the local towns, thumbtacking them up on every bulletin board she could find.

Her father called a friend who was a reporter with the
Gazette
, and suggested he write a hometown story about the closing of Barnaby’s Barn, but Harry Warton was reluctant. The paper was already full of closings; it was depressing. So Dennis suggested he write about a new business taking over the spot where Barnaby’s Barn had been, and Harry thought that was a great idea. He agreed to cover the opening of Bella’s.

Bella dusted each individual item of stock, polished the display cases until they shone, swept and mopped the floor. She was glad to be so busy—first, because this was an enormous change taking place and she was eager to make it happen, to see it
done;
second, because she was driving herself crazy trying not to think about Aaron and Slade. When she did, her mind went around in circles. No, not even circles, more like one of those weird Escher drawings of stairs that went nowhere and led back to themselves.

Plus, she didn’t know what to think about Aaron posing for Natalie.

Natalie had phoned her the first evening he posed. “Come over
after dinner, would you? I’ve got something to show you. Well, you’ve seen it before, of course, but not this way.”

Well,
there
was an intriguing invitation! Aaron was having dinner with some colleagues, old friends from college who were in the area, and Bella was eating dinner at home with her family. She bolted her food and raced across to Natalie’s.

Natalie was over the moon about this new drawing. “Look!” she demanded, gesturing toward the paper on the easel, as if Bella could do anything
but
look. “My God, Bella, the musculature that man has, the vigorous lines of his torso, the power just
shouting
from his biceps! It’s almost mythic. What a beautiful human being.”

Bella had swallowed. She’d never thought of Aaron as
beautiful
. Certainly he was handsome, but he was short, stocky, hairy-chested, and kind of … “Primitive,” she whispered.

“
Primitive
,” Natalie echoed. “You’re right.” Stepping forward, she picked up a piece of charcoal and lightly shaded an area. “I don’t know why I suggested this pose. It was spontaneous. I knew at once what I wanted as soon as he took his shirt off. Do you see the line here, his sternomastoid? It’s thick. Pure.”

Bella hugged herself with her arms as she listened to Natalie praise the anatomical parts of her lover’s body. It was one of the odder experiences of her life. Natalie spoke so freely, so openly.
I knew at once what I wanted as soon as he took his shirt off
. What?

“Why don’t you draw Slade?” Bella asked. She was really curious.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Slade is nothing but bones,” Natalie responded contemptuously. She jerked to a stop and pivoted suddenly to face Bella. “Bella! You’re absolutely right! Why didn’t I think of it myself?” Almost lunging forward, she grabbed Bella in a hug. “You’re a genius!”

Surprised and confused, Bella could only ask, “Really?”

“I should draw Slade! In the same pose! Think of it!” Natalie was almost levitating.

Bella thought of it. Slade, with his shirt off, his neck twisted away, his arms raised, his chest bare …

“The difference will be stunning!” Natalie burbled on. “Slade is
long and lean, and if he has any muscles, they’ll be like threads compared to Aaron’s.”

“That’s not a nice thing to say,” Bella told Natalie.

Natalie laughed. “For heaven’s sake, Slade’s my
brother
. That’s hardly the worst thing I’ve said about him.” She paced around her paper, jabbing forward now and then with her eraser, touching the tip to a line, a shadow. “I’ll have to phone Slade, ask him to come stay for a few days.”

That night, Bella slept at her parents’. Aaron phoned her as he was driving home from dinner with his old friends. He told her about them—both were married and already had children—and asked about her day.

“I saw Natalie’s drawing of you,” Bella told him. It was late. She was alone in her old childhood bedroom, in her twin bed with the pink sheets.

“What did you think? She’s good, isn’t she?” Aaron answered.

“She’s really good,” Bella agreed. She kind of wanted to pick a fight, to accuse him of something, but really, what could she accuse him of? It wasn’t like he’d been totally naked in front of Natalie.

And if he had been, should she have cared?

“She thinks you’re beautiful.” Bella opted to be pleasant, complimentary, and why not, that was what Natalie had said.

Aaron laughed, a deep grumbling in his throat. “Honey, men aren’t beautiful. She’s just an artist, and they perceive stuff differently. If she was painting, oh, I don’t know, a mushroom, she’d think it was beautiful.”

“Oh, Aaron.” Bella smiled. Her heart was touched by Aaron’s instinctive protection of her feelings. As if he didn’t want there to be any chance at all that she’d be jealous, that she’d think Natalie was hitting on him, that she’d wonder whether something happened between Natalie and Aaron up in that studio, something not overtly physical, not so much as a kiss … and she found herself thinking of the way Slade kissed her before she got out of the van. And there she was, talking to Aaron and melting all over about Slade.

• • •

So it was a good thing, a saving grace, that she had so much to do to close her mother’s shop and start Bella’s.

On the second Saturday in July, Bella pulled on a sundress, grabbed a cup of coffee, and drove to Barnaby’s Barn. Ben met her there as he’d promised. They’d already hung the Going Out of Business banner at the beginning of the week, and it had drawn some people in and moved some inventory out, as well it should have, at seventy-five percent off.

This morning Ben helped her carry Jim Harrington’s furniture out to the drive in front of the store. Low-to-the-ground, handmade wooden cradles for real babies, as if mothers still rocked them with their feet while they worked their spinning wheels. Cradles for dolls. High chairs, stools, and cupboards carved with hearts and flowers. Some items Louise had taken on commission, and those Jim had already collected. Some Louise had paid for years ago. At seventy-five percent off, she would be taking a huge loss, but Bella knew that if someone didn’t buy them, they’d be given away for free to preschools in the area at the end of the day.

Around ten, Bella’s parents arrived. Dennis took out his digital camera and snapped shots of Louise in front of Barnaby’s Barn, and inside Barnaby’s Barn, near several of the displays.

“Gosh,” Louise exclaimed. “I’d forgotten this was here! Oh, honey, have I been living in the dusty old past!” She tilted her face up to Dennis’s. He took her hand. Their faces shone with pleasure. “Definitely time for a change!”

Very few people came by. At noon, Aaron arrived with bags of sandwiches and drinks for everyone. They sat at the table under the shade of the tree and chatted, ready to jump up if anyone came, but no one did. In the early afternoon, it clouded up, driving a few families away from other activities, and for about an hour Barnaby’s Barn had a minirush of business. The hand-smocked children’s clothing went to a woman with a victorious glint in her eye. She probably owned a specialty clothing store in someplace like Nantucket where she could sell handmade garments at enormous markups—but fine, Bella thought, more power to her.

Shauna Webb stopped by around four with some boxes and
newspaper and packed up the Cow Jumped over the Moon pottery that hadn’t sold.

“I’m into bellies now anyway,” she told Louise and Bella.

“Excuse me?” Louise asked.

“Porcelain bellies. Or thighs. Breasts. Whatever you want. For your coffee table.”

Bella cleared her throat. “People buy porcelain body parts for their coffee tables?”

“You’d be surprised at how well I’m doing. It’s the rage.”

Bella supposed Natalie would understand what Shauna meant, but she couldn’t imagine have a belly or thigh just lying there in her living room. But this was an artisty area, with a lot of interchange with New York and Boston, and body parts were certainly edgier than children’s tea sets.

At five, it was obvious that no one else was coming. They packed the remaining inventory into the back of Dennis’s Volvo and Louise’s SUV, ready to take to the various preschools Monday morning. Louise surprised them all by nodding at Dennis, who brought out a bottle of champagne and their crystal stemware.

“Good-bye to Barnaby’s Barn!” Dennis toasted. “Hello to Bella’s!”

Bella was emotionally choked up. When she took a big sip of champagne, the bubbles went right up her nose and she physically choked up, too. A piece of her history, her childhood, was ending. But her mother laughed, holding her husband’s hand and acting like a woman who’d just had a mountain removed from her shoulders.

The Barnabys drove home. Aaron followed in his car. Ben ordered pizza and they all ate while watching baseball on television for a while, catching up on the Red Sox. Bella put together a platter of grapes, strawberries, and melon slices and set it on the coffee table next to a platter of cookies.

“Now,” her father said. He clicked the remote and the TV went blank. “Your mother and I want to chat just a bit.”

Bella sucked in a breath. Why did this “chat” send her anxiety level soaring? She wondered if it had anything to do with Brady, who was over at Zack’s for the weekend.

“Your mother and I have been talking,” Dennis announced.

“Okay,” Bella said.

Louise said, “I don’t feel old. Your father doesn’t feel old. We are in good health. But Dennis is going to be sixty, and he wants to retire. We’ve decided that while we’re both in good health, we want to buy an RV and explore the United States.”

“So we need to think about this house. Our house,” Dennis added. “We might want to rent it.”

“This isn’t about money. It’s about our lives.” Louise raised her hands, as if holding an explanation they could see lying right there, like a scarf or a picture. “We love this house, but perhaps we’ll want to sell it eventually. It’s big for two older people.”

Stunned, Bella asked, “What about Brady?”

“Brady has another year of high school. It’s going to take us at least a year to get this house in order for a renter. We’ve got to go through all the stuff in the basement, attics, bedrooms, the shed.…”