Chapter Eleven
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Maple
I have not.
I groan and swipe my wrist across my forehead, sliding loose waves out of my eyes and hopefully wiping away my newfound inability to art correctly.
“It’s not that hard,” I mutter to myself. “You’ve painted people a thousand times. You’ve painted scenes a million. You can figure this out.”
Despite my pep talk, the solution does not present itself with a lightbulb and a pretty bow.
I sigh.
The room phone rings at the same time as my cell phone goes off, and the cacophony of tones grates against my talentless skull.
I stride to the suite’s living room and pick up the phone there, ignoring my cell phone. It’s in the depths of… somewhere, and I’m pretty sure I know who’s calling, anyway. He can wait. “Hello?” I say into the hotel phone.
“Your husband is here,” Etta greets. “Pacing the lobby, muttering things about how his credit card is paying for your rooms and how our hotel policies are trash and blah, blah, blah. It’s rather melodramatic for a full-grown man.
Personally, I think you should make him wait a little while before you come down. ”
I like Etta, I remember quite acutely. Sure, she can be a little prickly, but she’s got a certain quality to her that I can really appreciate. Pettiness.
“I just might do that,” I tell her. “Can you let him know I’ll be right down?”
“Of course, Mrs. Swallow,” she replies, all things prim and proper. “I’ll make sure he knows your appearance is imminent.”
I grin. “Perfect. See you in twenty.”
We hang up, and a second later my cell phone’s caterwauling cuts off.
I spend the next twenty minutes meticulously cleaning up my makeshift studio and scrubbing flecks of blue, gold, brown, and white from the skin of my hands and forearms. I briefly consider changing out of my paint-splattered dress, but Iverson did say to dress casually, so I decide to leave it.
Chances are high that whatever food we eat will join the colorful drops, and there’s no use in dirtying a second dress when my access to a washer and dryer is nil at the moment.
Besides, it’s Ivy. If I can wear clothes dirtied by paint around anyone, it’s him.
With nothing else to delay me, I sigh and slip my feet into a pair of brown leather boots.
Charms dangle from the laces as I tie them, souvenirs from trips or particularly good days I wanted to take with me everywhere for the rest of my life.
A crow, a bolt of lightning, and a little mouse tangle together in my bow, and I give them a good luck flick before rising to face the door.
My stomach imitates the charms, tying itself in a knot.
“There’s nothing to be nervous about,” I tell myself. “It’s just dinner with Ivy. You’ve had dinner with Ivy a million times.” Nevermind that none of those million times have involved him trying to woo me. “You can do this.” I have to do this. I said that I would, and so I am. Right now. Doing it.
I gulp, and my shoes jingle when I shake out the anxious energy, wiggling my entire body until the cluster in my stomach loosens enough for me to open the door without falling into a panic attack.
I make it down the hallway and into the elevator without further incident until, quite suddenly, I’m in the lobby, face to face with my husband.
His sparkling green eyes alight on me, and his mouth stretches into a smile.
I frown.
He’s wearing his make-me-blush shirt, the no-good cad.
The offending garment is loose, linen, and shows way more of his chest than could ever possibly be appropriate in literally any circumstance.
The brown complements his skin so well that it’s inspired me more than once to put him, in this shirt, on sketch paper and canvas alike.
I’ve dedicated ages to documenting the pairing in different mediums—watercolor, acrylic, gouache.
If I could mix the medium to make just the correct shade, I did, and I filled pages up with the soft brown against his pale complexion.
It’s a shirt as scandalous as it is beautiful, and he’s paired it with my favorite green linen trousers that he so rarely wears.
A double whammy, this outfit. My eyes follow the line of his trousers down to his shoes, and my breath leaves me in one loud, painful woosh.
His boots are a replica of mine, but more masculine. They’re worn in different places than mine are, but no less sentimental for it. His own charms dangle from them.
Iverson Swallow has not come to play, it seems.
As my cheeks lose their battle against a blooming blush, Ivy’s eyes soften. “We match,” he says.
I blink. “We… do?”
A quick glance down confirms that yes, indeed we do. I knew I was wearing this, an off-the-shoulder green dress hemmed with ivy vined embroidery. I looked at it not even five minutes ago when I was considering the merits of changing. I don’t know how I could have possibly forgotten.
I glance back up at my husband, and it becomes very clear how I could have forgotten what I’m wearing. I’m lucky I haven’t forgotten my own name.
Maybe I should redub the make-me-blush shirt as the make-me-lose-all-thoughts-and-intelligence-and-memory shirt. Goodness.
“We should take a picture together,” he declares. “To commemorate our first date as husband and wife.”
Still under the effects of Iverson’s exposed chest, I allow myself to be tucked into his side while Mary comes around the reception desk—where she and Etta have been openly gawking at us—and takes his offered phone.
My brain melts further as Ivy’s maplewood scent washes over me.
Goodness gracious, he has not come to play.
“You smell good,” he murmurs, looking at me instead of the camera. “Like vanilla and paint.”
“Say cheese!” Mary calls.
I smile woodenly, keeping my face firmly forward. “Cheese,” I say.
Ivy dips his chin to rest his face against my hair. “Vanilla, paint, and beauty,” he whispers. “You smell like my favorite things and my best memories. Like my past, my present, and my future.”
“I smell like my studio and soap,” I tell him, stepping away as Mary lowers the phone. “Thank you, Mary, for the photo.”
She hands Iverson his phone and nods to me before scuttling to the employee side of the lobby counter to continue her observation of the scene with wide, curious eyes.
“Thank you, rosy Maple,” Ivy says, drawing my attention. He stands with his head bowed over his phone, smiling softly at the screen. “These are perfect.”
Curiosity overcomes me, and I re-enter the danger zone to peer at the digital us.
Huh.
We look… cuddly. His arm is around me, and tiny him is gazing at tiny me like she hung the moon in the sky, then speckled the stars around it, just for him. Tiny me looks like she regrets ever getting into space decoration.
“I’m going to frame this,” he declares. “And put it on the mini fridge in my office in one of those magnet frames you made me last Christmas.”
Oh. Perfect. We can live in perpetuity next to his string cheese and fizzy water.
“Are you ready to go?” I ask, turning my face from the photo.
“I am always ready to go anywhere with you,” he answers. “I brought the Porsche.”
“Of course you brought the Porsche,” I say wryly. “It’s the only car you own.”
Despite his many, many dollars, Ivy isn’t usually one to spend in excess, and most of his spending has historically centered around the comfort and needs of his loved ones.
He told me once that if he didn’t drive me so often, he would’ve gotten a much different vehicle.
His SUV is safe, though, and about as comfortable as a car can get.
Iverson leads the way outside to where he’s illegally parked in front of the hotel, guiding me with a hand on the small of my back. I shiver and walk quicker to avoid the casually intimate touch, but his long strides give me no room for escape.
“Your steed, my princess.” He opens the passenger door with a bow and a sweep of his arm. His shirt gapes, giving me a clear view straight down his chest to his trim stomach.
I hurry into the vehicle.
Ivy rounds to the driver’s side and climbs in, shooting me a smile that blends bashful excitement and pure heat.
Neither emotion is one I’m used to dealing with from him, and I’m left floating in my uncertainty at how to respond.
Thankfully, before I have to figure it out, he focuses his attention on the road and gets us moving to…
Oh.
I don’t know.
“Where are we going?” I ask, shifting my gaze out the window for a clue.
“It’s a surprise,” he replies. “I can tell you, of course, if that’s what you really want, but you did give my leash lots of slack, and I’d prefer if you let me play in it for now.
” His lips quirk ruefully. “I am hopeful that this goes better than my last surprise. You know about it this time, at least. That’s growth? ”
I… guess? Kind of. “Is it another wedding?” I side eye him, twisting away from the window.
“No,” he says. “The next wedding we have, you’ll be planning in its entirety.” He flicks his blinker on, and it echoes the flutter of my lashes as I stare at him.
“Did you just say the next wedding?”
“Yes. The one we’ll have after you’ve been properly wooed.”
Good gracious, he’s serious. He thinks that all he needs to do is woo me, and then we can have a do-over wedding, and then we’ll ride off into the sunset in a fairytale happily ever after montage while romantic music plays and birds chirp and flowers grow in our wake.
I need to set this abundantly straight. Immediately.
“Ivy, I don’t think–”
“We’re here!” he interrupts, squinting merrily out the windshield.
“Let’s talk about it inside, yes?” He’s out of the car in an instant, and I sit with my mouth agape until he opens my door to help me out of my plush leather seat.
“From your steed to your grand romantic gesture,” he says.
His arm flies wide, indicating a huge square block of a building.
The ability to speak leaves me. Flees. Goes absolutely AWOL. The structure is just so…
Ugly.
Dead freaking ugly.
It’s the ugliest building I’ve ever laid eyes on.
It isn’t old, or decrepit, or vandalized, or marred by any outside force to push its particular horrendousness.
It’s just ugly. A singular gray block sat amongst brick factories that aren’t exactly cute, but they’re not this.
This is an affront to architects everywhere, not to mention artists.
I have never been so repulsed by potential background scenery in my life.
“Come on.” Ivy tugs at my hand, his palm clammy against mine. “You’re going to love this.”
I pause, offended at the very idea of stepping foot into such a boring, plain, gray building.
Then I remember that I agreed to this. I said that Ivy could woo me, and I said that he could have the freedom to plan the actual wooing.
Sure, I said it in the hopes that through his attempts he’ll come to realize what the actual problem is—that he can’t just take what he wants without asking, particularly when what he wants is a whole human woman.
But… still. I agreed to this, and I have to see it through.
For Ivy, for myself, and for the future of our relationship, whatever that might look like.
Nose wrinkled, I sigh.
I have to see it through, yes, but nobody said I had to have a good attitude about it.
Shoulders tensing, Ivy tugs again. “Trust me,” he pleads softly. “You’re going to love it once we get inside. I promise.”
Jade green sparkles with hesitant hope, and I sigh again. “Okay, Ivy,” I mutter, resigned. “I’ll go inside.”