Page 47 of Scarlett and the Big Bad Billionaire
All the while, the musical soundtrack shifted from haunting to dreamlike to pensive and back to tranquilizing. The total experience was almost impossible to describe.
One thing itwasn’t, was “snooty.”
By the end of the hour-long exhibit, I felt almost like I’d met the artist, who’d died unknown and virtually penniless a hundred years before I was even born.
We walked out into the disconcertingly bright day, blinking against the late afternoon sun.
“That was marvelous,” Vivi declared. “What did you think, Scarlett? A bit better than a puzzle, wasn’t it?”
I nodded. “It was incredible. It was almost like… beinginsideof someone else. Inside their mind and heart.”
“That’s what the best art does,” Gray said. “It gives you a window into someone else’s soul.”
Once again, my eyes wandered to his arms, to his intriguing new tattoos. One was a handsome wolf with piercing green eyes—that one was pretty self-explanatory.
The stories behind the others were more mysterious. I wanted to ask about them, to get a peek intohissoul, but I resisted.
I was here to help Vivi. When that was done, I’d go back to my life, and he’d go back to his.
While I was here in Eastport Bay, I needed to be able to work with him and be civil, but that was it.
There would be no point in getting close to him again.
CHAPTERFIFTEEN
NO ONE IN MY LIFE
Scarlett
From the exhibit, we took a fifteen-minute drive to the next town over, Middletown.
Gray turned off the main street onto a long road dotted with farmhouses and the occasional pocket neighborhood. Eventually he took a left onto a small lane marked by a tall, artificial sunflower.
“We’re going to a farm?” I guessed.
He nodded. “A special one—in keeping with today’s theme.”
The country lane led us past a grove of tall fir trees. Once we passed them, a small building came into view.
And on either side of the road, fields of sunflowers stretched as far as I could see. It was like the sun had fallen from the sky and splattered all over the ground.
“It’s beautiful,” Vivi said. “It’s like his paintings.”
“I thought you’d like it. Van Gogh’s inspiration—the Rhode Island edition.” Gray pulled into a parking spot in the gravel lot and turned off the car.
There had to be thousands of flowers—it looked like several football fields’ worth.
We got out and walked into one of the fields, surrounded by the shoulder-height leafy green plants and their enormous, golden heads.
Their pleasant, light scent was more earthy than sweet. I walked along, touching their leaves lightly. It made me a little sad to know that Minnesota had at least a couple of sunflower festivals I’d never bothered to attend.
I thought about Julianna’s advice to me—go see something new, do some things you’ve never done—and felt a grudging sense of gratitude toward Gray for dragging me out of the rut I’d created for myself and taking off my blinders to simple pleasures like this one.
This was anexperience.
The flowers on the next row must have been planted earlier because their backs were brown instead of green and some of the petals had begun to dry out and fall off.
Gray stepped up to one of them. “These are perfect for eating. You can pull out the seeds and pop them into your mouth whole or crack the shell first and just eat the insides.”
