“So, we’re here.”

“Well, thanks for the tour.” Remi grinned. “Would you mind some company while you do your thing?”

“I don’t know,” Julianne teased. “The element of surprise has really become the hallmark of hanging out with you. I don’t know if I could do without it.” As she was finishing her sentence, Remi turned and started walking away. “Hey! Where are you going?” Julianne called to his back. Just as suddenly as he’d walked away, Remi turned around and strolled over to Julianne’s easel.

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“Fancy meeting you here,” Remi started again, feigning shock. “Do you come here often?” He arched his eyebrows, clearly amused with himself.

Julianne met his line and raised him a cliché. “Sure, I come here all the time, just hoping to run into someone tall, dark, and clumsy.”

“Run into, eh? Didn’t your sister say the same thing the other night?” Remi cocked his head toward her and squinted, as if hoping she wouldn’t vanish into thin air if he blinked. Julianne knew that look—she was wearing the same one.

“Probably. It’s the Kahn sense of humor. Gives us away every time. I think it’s the by-product of seventeen years spent in a very small space together—eventually we’ll turn into the same person. Me, my dad, and Chloe will all morph into one huge Mega-Kahn.” She absentmindedly picked at the stickers covering her water bottle, peeling the edges away so that the Nalgene logo was visible for the first time in several summers.

“Sort of like Transformers?” Remi grinned, his big eyes fixed right on her.

“Oh, totally,” Julianne continued. “But none of that turning-into-a-big-robot crap. We’d have really practical powers. Like the ability to obliterate an entire gallon of ice cream in a single sitting. Or to steal the arts section out of the Sunday paper with lightning speed. Additional arms for the pottery wheel so we could make multiple 42

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vases at once. You know, the basics.” She giggled. She’d almost peeled a border all the way around her Decem-berists sticker.

“I won’t lie, that’s pretty sweet. If my family had crazy powers we’d probably just sort our laundry into whites and darks telekinetically. Or teleport ourselves back to work from the dinner table to get a few more hours in.”

“Nothing like really utilitarian powers, I guess.” Jules unscrewed the cap of her Nalgene and took a huge gulp before offering it to Remi.

He shook his head, but his eyes lingered on the spot on the rim of the water bottle where Jules’s lips had just been. “I mean, it’s not as boring as it sounds,” Remi continued. “My family’s actually really great. We’re just not that, um, original. We’re more Leave It to Beaver, I guess.

You know?”

Julianne didn’t really know what he meant, and said so. “Not really, now that you mention it. My family’s always had a sort of free-form, go-with-the-flow way of approaching everything.” Even Chloe’s compulsive volunteering and studying were organic; they were things she did because they made her feel alive. Jules tilted her head toward Remi thoughtfully. “I can’t really imagine a family being structured any other way. My family’s a little bit ‘follow your bliss,’ if you know what I mean. As long as Chloe and I are doing the best we can and doing it for 43

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the right reasons, our dad is pretty much happy with whatever.”

“What does your mom think about that?” Remi looked at her as if she were describing a totally different world.

Julianne paused, setting her water bottle down at the base of her easel. “Not much. She’s actually dead.” Remi’s jaw dropped like someone had released a little lever inside of his face. “I’m . . . I’m . . . sorry,” he stammered.

Jules wiped a bead of sweat from in between her blue eyes and shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. Sorry to be so blunt, but you didn’t say anything wrong.” Remi reached out and touched her wrist, then sheepishly shoved his hands into his back pockets.

“So, what are you doing on this beach?” Julianne asked, feeling a familiar blush starting to creep up her neck. “I mean, other than looking for more innocent vic-tims to terrorize with your demolition derby moves?”

“I think you’re safe for now—there isn’t a keg in sight.” Remi laughed a deep, rich laugh. “I was surfing with some guys I met down at the boardwalk earlier, and then I was just exploring the beach, really. You saw my brief attempt at a second run in the water. I haven’t been in town long; I don’t know where anything is, but I really love this beach. What are you doing down here?” He laughed again, gesturing at Julianne’s easel. “I mean, 44

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obviously I know what you’re doing right now. But what’s your usual beach routine?”

“I live down there.” Julianne gestured vaguely over her shoulder, toward her family’s small cottage. “But I come here to paint. I’m starting my summer job next week, so I won’t have access to afternoon painting light much longer.”

“Can I see what you’re working on? Or are you one of those super-secretive artists?” Remi asked with a sly wink.

“Oh, super-secretive. Definitely. That’s why I would never in a million years work in the middle of a public beach where everyone could see me.” Julianne laughed.

She took Remi’s hand and led him back around the easel, where her landscape was still sitting deserted and unfinished.

Remi was silent for a minute, looking at the easel and squinting his eyes. He even crouched down to take in Julianne’s painting from a different angle. Then he took a few steps back and squinted at it again.

“It’s not anywhere near finished,” Jules started. “I’m having a lot of trouble with the light. The highlights on the water, especially. I don’t know what my problem is; I’m usually not this—”

Remi cut her off midsentence. “This is good. Like, really good. Julianne, you’re really good.” He crossed his arms over his chest, impressed, and stepped back to view 45

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the painting again from a distance. Julianne noticed that for a skinny guy, he was in no way lacking in muscle definition. She felt a little bit embarrassed at her blatant check-out but, really, that’s what he got for standing there and being so unapologetically attractive.

“I bet you say that to all the girls . . .” She smirked, her eyebrows arched.

“Not all the girls.” His eyes twinkled as he countered her teasing. He walked back around the easel and plopped down in the sand, staring at the waves in front of him. “So, will you tell me about it?” Julianne walked over and slid down in the sand next to him, hugging her knees to her chest. “Tell you about what? How good I am? I mean, clearly I’m fantastic.” She rolled her eyes playfully.

“Well, duh,” Remi replied, a smile creeping across his face. “And I’d love to hear about just how much you completely rock some other time. Maybe over coffee or something? But I was actually referring to your painting.”

“Oh.” Julianne’s breath leaked out of her slowly. She was sitting barefoot on her beautiful beach, splattered in paint, with a gorgeous guy who genuinely wanted to talk about her work. And she was ninety-eight point nine percent sure that he had just asked her out. She took a deep breath and started to talk about her painting.

“So, you know I told you about my mom?” Remi 46

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cocked his head and nodded. “Well, she was an artist. A really incredible artist. She showed her work all over the country—and in pretty much every gallery in Southern California. She also lectured at all these different universities and illustrated all of my dad’s children’s books.

There was really nothing she couldn’t do. When she first got sick, she still went outside and painted every single day. I mean, every day. But when she died, there were six paintings she never had a chance to finish. I’ve finished up three of them—I made two of them into multimedia things, that’s more my style. That and photography. But this one I’m trying to re-create as if she’d had the chance to finish it. Her paint, her light, the whole nine.” Julianne felt herself getting antsy—she had a hard time sitting still when she was talking about her mom—so she circled back around the easel and walked a few feet down the beach, picking up seashell fragments. “One of the other pictures is this really bright portrait of our house in November. The light is really ethereal and the beach is all vacant—it’s really cool. So I expanded it on a larger canvas and intercut some of my photography, prints, and etchings with it.”