I lean over the table in my workshop, picking up where I left off on my last sketch. I’m using a different pad from the one Aurora would have seen when she was in here.
I keep erasing what I’ve done and starting over because all I can see on the cream-colored cartridge paper laid out before me is Aurora’s face.
Her beautiful, disappointed, anguished face with a teardrop streaming down the smooth skin of her cheek.
Aurora Wright was pure, raw sin, and I’ll never get the image of her perfect naked body out of my head with those full breasts and sexy curves.
But nothing cut me deeper than watching her cry.
If you play with fire, you will get burned.
Everyone knows that. Even the moth who was drawn to the open flame.
So, why do we play with fire, knowing it could potentially destroy us?
I think it’s the call of adventure, and the thirst to taste the thing you should resist. You crave it even when you know good and well you’ll never be the same again once you touch it.
That’s what happened to me last night when the goddess told me she’d do anything.
Poor lamb. Poor, poor, innocent lamb. She didn’t know better. I take it nobody ever told her she should never offer such things to men like me.
I was already consumed by lust.
When I’m around Aurora, lust seems to supersede everything. It opens the doors to the wide halls of temptation, and like a fool, I run straight inside.
Last night, I don’t know what pushed me over the line, kissing her, acting like a couple for the cameras, or knowing I wasn’t really acting.
When I kissed her, I was really kissing her, and when we got back, all I wanted to do was bury myself balls deep inside her.
I nearly did.
A dark soul like me touching a woman so hallowed and perfect is hardly any different from rubbing tar over Michelangelo’s paintings in the Sistine Chapel.
Like so many things I do, I knew everything I wanted from her was wrong, but I selfishly indulged my desire.
She was ready to give herself to me. It was a twist on my game that she wanted me too.
And now?
Now Aurora truly hates me.
She thought I was playing with her, but I stopped myself from going further because I didn’t want to complicate things any more than they are, or blur lines that need to stay firm between us.
This is business, a game of thrones where kings fight each other to conquer power. Sunset Cove is my ticket to get what I want. Without it, I don’t have Park Avenue, and everything I’ve done over the last two weeks would be for nothing.
With the declaration out there that I’ll be taking over the Park Avenue branch, I can’t afford to slip up and give my father and Bastian the opening they seek to get me out of the picture.
That aside, even if I weren’t selling Sunset Cove, I couldn’t even contemplate giving Aurora a chance to implement her mother’s designs in the renovations because I genuinely loathe the idea of a forties-themed resort.
I completely disagree that we should bank on the history in such a way, and I truly don’t believe it would suit the Hamptons. It needs a French Provincial touch with a cosmopolitan edge to make it trendy. I’ve already contacted my team in France who can make that happen.
There is no room for any other designs or ideas but my own, so it’s better for Aurora to hate me now.
Better for us both, but for me in other ways too.
Awakening my taste for a woman who reminds me of my ghost is not my wisest of moves. The sculptures surrounding me are testament of that. They—all of them—are reminders I must never be that version of myself again.
Definitely not when I can admit that I’ve never lost myself to anyone the way I do when I’m with Aurora.
After what I went through with my ghost, I never expected to meet a woman who could have such an effect on me, and in so little time.
That’s something I don’t want.
When it comes to Aurora, there are also secrets between us that I don’t want to feel guilty for if they were ever to resurface.
Poseidon runs up to me and brushes against my leg, a signal that I’ve been in here for too long and it’s time to go for a walk.
He’s right. I’ve been in here for hours. I went to work today to sign off some contracts, and when I got back, I came straight in here.
Art is my medicine.
Jericho and I inherited the talent from our mother.
Like her, I’ve always been into sculpting, but Jericho loved tattoo design.
He did all the artwork on my back. I did everything else. The two of us had the time of our lives when we had that tattoo parlor, but then we outgrew it, and Grandfather summoned us to the world of Wall Street.
Jericho still does tattoos for the odd client—mostly women who use an excuse to see him again—but I keep my love for art going by showcasing a few pieces every year in my mother’s gallery. I do it for her too. It would break her heart if I ever stopped.
I don’t think either of us ever have to worry about that. I imagine myself old and gray and still finding something to sculpt.
Aries and Artemis join us, and the three dogs circle me like they’re putting on a show.
“Alright, guys, I hear you.” I give them a pat each on their furry heads.
Poseidon pads to the bowl of doggie biscuits and barks at it.
When he looks at me, I realize it’s not the biscuit he wants. It’s the person who gave him the last one—the girl.
Aurora.
I was told she spent the entire morning with my dogs. They seem to like her.
“She’s not coming back tonight, mon ami.”
His eyes turn sad, lacking understanding, then he looks across at the last sculpture I did of Giselle and barks at it the same way he did for the biscuits.
Sorrow cuts into me, another emotion I’ve pushed away.
It’s amazing how these emotions resurface after years of slumber. Like old friends you don’t speak to anymore. I’ve had my reasons for keeping them at bay.
“She’s not coming back either. Sorry.” I look at the sculpture and remember the first time I had to tell the dogs their owner was never coming back.
That was one of many hard days to follow.
I remember the day when I finished that particular sculpture. Getting the rose petals to look like they were falling from Giselle’s hands was such a task, but I did it.
She loved it.
That sculpture was the last piece of my work she saw before she got really sick.
The sculpture I’m currently working on is the last of the collection. I started it months before Giselle died, and I haven’t been able to finish it. Sometimes I wonder if I’m not supposed to. I stopped working on it when it became clear I was going to lose her.
I’ve done many pieces since, all featured in my mother’s gallery, but this one is a real mystery. I’ve only ever been able to get as far as the base. That’s it.
I redid the design a few times, thinking something fresh might help, but it’s all been to no avail.
The sketch I was doing is today’s attempt, but it’s looking like another no-go.
The curves I’ve drawn for the structure look way off the mark, and I’ll have to erase them again.
Honestly, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to finish it in time for the show.
I’m only working on it because I hate leaving anything incomplete, but with this, I can’t see the finished product in my mind anymore. Maybe that’s because I was in a different place in my life when I first had the vision.
Most artists and creative people will agree that they always see the end result of their product before they even begin. I’ve always been like that.
This might just have to be one time I bend my rules.
I close the sketch pad and lift my chin at the dogs when they sit. “Come on guys, let’s go. A walk on the beach might do us all some good.”
I need some of the crisp night air and the calm of the sea.
We leave the workshop and head out down the path leading to the beach.
The beach and extensive grounds were the main features that made me purchase this property. The house itself needed work after being damaged in a fire. I used it as a passion project and restructured the entire thing myself.
I get that part from my grandfather.
He’s a man who always believed he should be out in the field with his team. If they had to work from sunup until sundown, he would be there right beside them.
His work ethic and zest for success are what has made Grayson Inc. so successful.
It’s only in recent years, as he got older, that he stopped working so hard, but he still does what he can.
I know I shocked Aurora the other day when she saw me working with the contractors, but that’s what I do, and the reasons I’m so successful.
When I get down to the bottom of the garden, I stop at the sight of the woman I rejected almost twenty-four hours ago. She’s sitting under the willow tree writing in a little notebook.
The moon shines down on her, turning her hair silver and reminding me of one of those lustrous foil paintings.
She’s so engrossed in what she’s doing, she doesn’t see me. I’m not that far away, but as it’s dark and I’m wearing black, it would be difficult to spot me.
I doubt she’d want to see me anyway. Even if I don’t believe she would have heeded my warning to drop her request for Sunset Cove. I don’t expect her to forget something so important. I understand more than most that feeling of doing something because you want to honor a person. But for her, it’s her mother.
As I would do anything in the universe for mine, I expect Aurora to regroup, but it will just be another fight between us.
A fight that will end up where?
Lust is the driver of those fights of ours. Raw, primal, carnal lust.
It’s stirring in my soul again, willing me to go to her. Get a closer look.
Get another taste.
But I do the thing I should have always done and push temptation away.
Business has to be business when it comes to us, so I need to leave her alone.
She’ll only be my wife on paper until she’s not, then it won’t matter how either of us feels.
At that point, when we say goodbye, it will be like none of this ever happened, and she’ll become another ghost to me.
With that reasoning, I walk away.
