She made some bawk-bawk sounds, and without thinking, he reached out to cover her mouth with his hand.
Her eyes went wide as his palm touched her lips, and he quickly pulled away, but not before he had to acknowledge the bolt of lightning that jolted through him.
Working to focus his attention on the art, he realized that for the first time in a very long time, this tour had made him feel truly excited about something that had nothing to do with work. He’d never sowed wild oats. Instead, he’d gone to college, then to work, built his assets, grown his company. But today, with Lyssa, he felt young and carefree.
“Okay,” he said in a voice he hoped sounded relaxed, “I’ll do it.” Then he teased her. “Although there’s a chance a graffiti chicken who bears a striking resemblance to you might make an appearance…”
She was rolling her eyes with a grin as Delic spoke again. “Let me give you a few basics about making street art. First, nothing is off-limits.” Then he gave them a brief review of street art techniques.
Cal hadn’t realized there were techniques. Though he had to admit that much of the work he’d seen today was true artistry.
With dramatic flair, Delic’s voice boomed out their final instructions. “Now, put on your masks and goggles, grab a spray can, and start painting.”
The beige wall where they were standing had obviously been painted over for the workshop. Lyssa was the first to choose her space on the end.
Cal grabbed the spot next to hers. “What are you going to paint?”
“Word art. Good luck with your Lyssa-faced chicken,” she joked.
As she retrieved a can from the rolling table a couple of paces behind them, Cal stared at his section of blank wall. He was forty-six years old, a businessman who knew spreadsheets and recognized business opportunities. He didn’t actually want to paint a chicken that looked like her, but he had no clue what to paint instead.
As if she saw his dilemma, she murmured, “Remember what Delic said—nothing is off-limits. Just relax.”
If she only knew just how much was completely off-limits, starting and ending with her.
Relax. Lyssa was right. He never relaxed. Except last night, when he’d held her in his arms.
A word suddenly formed on the wall beneath his paint can. That was one of Delic’s techniques: Let your hand spray instead of your mind controlling. Cal’s hand started with yellow. When he’d sprayed the word, he picked up a green can and hit the wall with the same word, off-kilter from the first.
He didn’t forget Lyssa, but he no longer looked at her, allowing his hand to spray while his mind wandered. Next was red, once again off-kilter, the word seeming to slide down the wall.
He thought about his life, which had been all about work from the day he’d graduated from college. He’d long ago thought about being a lawyer like his dad. But that hadn’t happened. He’d once dreamed of having a family. It hadn’t happened either. There’d always been reasons why the time wasn’t right for marriage. Always a way for him to justify that his career was more important.
But was that true? Or was there something else going on? Something that Cal didn’t want to face?
Pushing the questions from his head, he found blue and purple and orange. Color after color, he sprayed the same word until Delic clapped his hands.
“Put down your paint cans. And let’s see what you’ve done.” He made his way down the line of artists, giving kudos, making comments.
At last, Cal stepped back to see what he’d painted.
* * *
Lyssa tilted her head to look at her art. It wasn’t anywhere near the quality they’d seen on the tour, but it said exactly what she’d wanted to say, and she was pleased with her first-ever attempt at street art.
Then she stepped back to view Cal’s art.
“Wow.” She turned to face him, beyond stunned by what he’d produced. “Way to play me like you’re a street art novice.”
“I am a novice. I’ve never even thought about spray paint art until today.” Cal frowned at what he’d done. “Anyway, the colors are all jumbled together. You can barely read the word.”
“Are you crazy? This is a freaking masterpiece. It’s like you threw everything that’s inside you into that word you sprayed on the wall. And turned it into art.”
It was simple yet elegant, the word relax over and over in all the colors of the spectrum, every paint can that had been on the rolling table behind Cal and some of her colors too.
But he didn’t seem as pleased by it as she was. “Do you even know what it says?”
She fished her phone out of her pocket and played the song for him, “Relax” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, feeling its beat in her core. “Your painting has the same kind of beat as the song. It just keeps playing over and over in your head.” She opened her arms to encompass the whole thing. “It’s like those colors were trapped until they spewed out of you onto the wall.”
Though he shrugged, his eyes, usually gray, had softened to silver, and she knew he was pleased by her comment.
“It must be subliminal,” she had to note. “It must be what you really want to do. Relax.”
“It’s nothing more than the last word you said to me. I couldn’t think of anything else to paint.”
She folded her arms and shot him a look. “I don’t believe you.”
He pointed at her painting. “Even though ‘believe’ was the word you sprayed on the wall?”
She glanced at her word art, which she’d done in simple blue and white. “I like what I did. I’ll even probably put a picture of it online. Hashtag HavingFuninLondon and all that. But I was thinking while I put it up there.” She pointed at his art. “You were feeling.”
Something flared in his eyes. He almost seemed to sway into her for one brief moment.
Then, just as quickly, he stepped back. Almost as if he’d been about to commit a crime.
Chapter Six
Relax.
Didn’t she know that song was about sex?
Looking at his crazy, mixed-up piece of the wall, it somehow symbolized all his crazy, mixed-up feelings about her.
“It’s garbage.” He was embarrassed by how he’d let himself go. Bending down, he grabbed the first can of paint he could reach. Orange.
Lyssa, guessing his intention, threw herself in front of the wall. “You are not going to paint over that.”
Seeing her spread-eagled against the wall, all he could think about was that song again. And sex. And Lyssa in that position, in a bed, naked.
Damn it! He needed to erase that vision from his brain and never, ever think anything like it again.
“If you don’t get out of the way,” he said, “I’ll have to paint over you too.”
Laughter bubbled out of her. “I dare you.”
Again, he didn’t think before acting, even though that kept getting him into trouble with Lyssa. Before she could leap away, he aimed for her stomach and painted her white T-shirt orange.
She looked down at herself, clearly stunned. “I can’t believe you did that.”
Despite his inner war over his completely unauthorized feelings for her, he couldn’t hold back his grin. “I warned you.”