Forbidden Boy by Abbott, Hailey (the false prince series txt) 📕

And just in time. After a week of beautiful weather, a patch of clouds was rolling in over the Palisades, bringing an unusual gray with it. Julianne dabbed a few final highlights of gold on the canvas, just to make the beach come that much more alive. Ever since that night she spent out on the beach listening for her mom a few weeks earlier, it was like all the pieces of her painting had suddenly started falling into place. The light was just right, and her colors had become richer, deeper, and more complex, somehow. It was like Hannah Kahn was out there somewhere, telling Jules to take her gifts and run with them, and if Jules just listened closely enough, she’d know what she was supposed to do. Grinning at her finished painting, Julianne practically hugged herself with delight over her accomplishment. She grabbed the painting off its easel and rushed it inside and up to her bedroom, where it could dry without the threat of sudden raindrops.

When Julianne woke up the next morning, the gray skies were still in full effect, and the gloom wouldn’t dis-sipate. That whole weekend—the weekend of the anniversary of Hannah Kahn’s death—it was unusually dark and drizzly for summertime in LA. Julianne, Chloe, and Dad sat around the living room in equally gray moods. They had watched old family videos and played three consecutive games of Trivial Pursuit (at which Chloe had thoroughly schooled Julianne and her father, three consecutive times), but the prevailing mood in the Kahn household was still listing toward melancholy.

“Who starred in the eponymous show about a news-caster in Minneapolis?” Chloe asked, yawning.

“Oh, even I know this one,” muttered Dad. “Mary Tyler Moore.”

“Chloe, do we really have to go through the additional cards?” Julianne whined. “We already played the game.”

“Do you have any better recreational suggestions?”

Chloe countered, probably not meaning to sound quite so snippy. “Shall we do dramatic readings from the latest Publishers Weekly?” Chloe drawled, holding up a copy of their dad’s magazine. “Or should we watch another movie that we’ve all seen five times? Now that would be fun.”

Julianne looked at her sister and yawned. She curled her feet under her on the oversize couch and flopped back, peeling a split end in her hair. “I could always make popcorn. Or we could play Pictionary.”

“No Pictionary,” her father pleaded. “I’ve already been humiliated on the board game battlefield by one daughter today. I’m not going back for seconds.”

Unable to reach consensus, they drifted to separate parts of the house. Dad went into his studio and Chloe clomped upstairs, while Julianne stayed put in the living room.

Julianne kept watch out the window for a break in the unseasonably dreary weather. She had wrapped her painting in butcher paper and hidden it under her bed.

She’d been hoping to give it to Dad and Chloe today, but her grand plan required sunshine. So she remained at her post in the window seat, looking out over the beach with a book in her lap.

At the first hint of sun, Jules jumped at her chance.

“Daaaad! Chloe! Come in here!” She knew her dad was getting things together for a meeting with his editor in New York next week, and Chloe was talking on the phone with one of her sorority sisters, but time was of the essence.

Julianne dashed upstairs, skipping every other step, and bounded into Chloe’s room, not caring in the slightest if she was interrupting an important phone call.

“Chloe Elise Kahn, you have five minutes to get your butt downstairs and out onto the back deck!”

Chloe put her hand over the receiver and looked at Julianne, her hazel eyes questioning and mildly annoyed. “What’s wrong?” she mouthed.

“Nothing’s wrong, but it’s important.” Julianne wheedled.

“Now?” Chloe mouthed. “Really?”

“Really! Now go. Go, go, go! And get Dad on your way out.” Julianne pivoted on her heel and burst toward the hallway.

Before Chloe had a chance to argue, Julianne ran into her room and closed the door behind her. She got down on her hands and knees and wedged herself under her bed, reaching for the wrapped canvas. She finally got her hands around it and gently wiggled it out. Then she walked over to her white wicker bookshelves.

Sharing space with dozens of art books and a complete collection of her dad’s children’s books were a half-dozen framed family photos. Julianne took her favorite down from the shelf. It was beginning to yellow and fold up around the edges with age. It was a shot of Julianne and her mother on the beach by their house, when Julianne was two or three. They had matching mother/daughter easels. Hannah had started a beautiful beachscape on hers, and Julianne’s easel was smeared with finger-paint—not to mention the paint all over her face, streaked on her bathing suit, and splashed on her little tod-dler bonnet. Her mother looked stunning—she was wearing a floppy hat and oversize sunglasses, with a paintbrush clenched between her teeth—and she was chasing after little Jules, who was about to make a mad dash for the water.

Julianne spent a minute with the photo, looking at herself, looking at her mom, before placing it gently back on the shelf. She picked up her canvas and headed downstairs.

When Julianne stepped outside, the sun was still shining and her father and sister were looking at her like she’d gone completely bonkers.

“Sweetie, are you all right?” her father said, breaking the ice.

Julianne looked back and forth between her father and Chloe. “I’m sorry for being such a drama queen, but I have something for you guys, and it is really important that I show it to you while the sun is still shining, or it just wouldn’t be right.”

She handed the wrapped canvas to her father, who took a seat next to Chloe on the deck. As Dad and Chloe unwrapped the brown paper together, Julianne watched the corners of her father’s mouth curl up in a sad smile. Chloe was grinning from ear to