Wild in the Moment Read Online Free PDF

overstuffed recliner and wrapped the blanket around her. God knew why she was talking. Probably because she was too darn tired to think straight. “Instead there was only one thingin my head in high school. Getting out. I couldn’t wait to grow up and leave White Hills and do something exciting. I was never in real trouble—not like trouble with the police. But someone was always calling my mom on me. My skirt was too short. My makeup was too ‘artsy.’ I’d skip English to hang out in the Art Room. I never did anything big wrong, but I can see now it was all just symbolic little stuff to show how trapped I felt in a small town and how much I wanted to leave.”
    â€œYet now you’re back.”
    â€œOnly for a short time. I just need a few weeks to catch my breath before moving on again.” Even though her eyes were drooping, she could hear the ardent tone in her voice. She so definitely wasn’t staying. A few hours back in White Hills, and already she’d been caught up in a blizzard and a guy problem. It was a sign. She should never have tried coming home. Even for a month. Even knowing she’d been pretty darn desperate.
    â€œIf you don’t mind my asking, how did you come to be living in the south of France?”
    Her eyes popped open—at least temporarily. Maybe tiredness had loosened her tongue, but she couldn’t fathom how he’d known she lived in France.
    He explained, “Pretty hard not to know a little about you. You’re one of the exotic citizens of White Hills, after all. Daisy Campbell, the exotic, glamorous, adventurous girl…the one all the other girls wanted to be, who had the guts to leave the country and go play all over France with the rich crowd….”
    â€œOh, yeah, that’s sure me,” she said wryly, and washed a hand over her face. Sometimes it was funny, how you could say a fact, and it really was a fact—yetit didn’t have a lick of truth to it. She hadn’t been playing in a long time. Anywhere. With anyone. “Anyway…I ended up living in France because I fell in love with an artist. Met him at one of his first American shows, which happened to be in Boston. I can’t even remember why I was visiting there…but I remember falling in love in about two seconds flat. Took off and married him right after high school.”
    â€œI take it he was French?”
    â€œYeah, he was French. And he wanted to live in Aix-en-Provence, where Cézanne had studied with Emile Zola. And then Remy-en-Provence, where Van Gogh hung out for a long time. And then the Côte d’Azur—because the light on the water is so pure there, or that’s what all the artists say, that there’s no place like the French Riviera.”
    â€œHmm…so you traveled around a lot. Sounds ritzy and exciting.”
    â€œIt was,” she said, because that’s what she always told everyone back home. They thought she was gloriously happy. They thought she was living a glamorous, always-exciting dream of a life. No one knew otherwise—except probably her mother, and that was only because Margaux had the embarrassing gift of being able to read her daughters’ minds.
    â€œSo…are you still married to this artist?”
    â€œNope. Pretty complicated getting a divorce for two people of different citizenships, but that’s finally done now. And I don’t know exactly what I’m doing after this, but you can take it to the bank, I’m never living anywhere but my own country again.” She opened her eyes. Somehow, even now, she seemed to feel obligated to say something decent about her ex-husband. “My ex really was and is a fine artist. That part was totally thereal thing. He wasn’t one of those artists who have to die to make it. His work’s extraordinary, been recognized all over the world. Jean-Luc Rochard. You might have seen his paintings.”
    â€œNot