(Captive Art #1)
Publication date: July 3rd 2013
Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Young Adult
Synopsis
Sixteen-year-old Libby Tanner’s art comes to
life. Her painted skies turn from day to night, leaves rustle on trees, and
sometimes, a mystery boy appears.
While attending England’s Aldridge Art
Academy, Libby meets charming Brent Henderson, a performing arts student who
showers her with attention. But his rival, gorgeous Dean James, is the one who
occupies her mind, even though he’s very much attached to his current
girlfriend.
Libby soon learns there’s more to both Brent
and Dean than she ever imagined. In order to save her future and the boy who’s
captured her heart, she must unlock the secrets behind her art by entering the
most dangerous place of all… the world within her paintings.
But once she steps into the canvas, she risks
being trapped forever.
CHAPTER
ONE
I paced my studio floor as evening descended
on the field in my painting. The sparse oak trees cast lengthening shadows on
the acorn-littered ground, where the grass was more golden brown than green.
The sunny sky became a star-filled night, and the field turned murky as the
shadows faded into the black oblivion... just like my mystery boy.
He’d vanished. Again. So did the rush of him
appearing in my finished work, my joy squelched by the expression on his face.
Usually he wore a smile—a sad one, but still a smile. That night, he’d just
looked miserable.
I stopped pacing and stared at the canvas,
reaching out to the spot where I’d last seen him. Maybe if I could touch him or
knew where he went when he disappeared, I wouldn’t feel so hollow from his
absence.
An icy trail ran down my arm a moment before
my fingers grazed the wet paint. I pulled away, checking to make sure I hadn’t
smeared the field. It was the first time he’d appeared since I’d arrived at
Aldridge, and I didn’t want to ruin whatever connection I had to him. My hands
shook as I picked at my nails, which were coated in splatters of color from
painting all day. A glimpse of him, sad or not, had been enough to keep me
working, hoping to see him again. I’d picked my fingers mostly clean when a
knock came from the door to the adjoining room.
Please go away.
The knock came again, more urgent.
If you’re here, he won’t come back.
He wouldn’t anyway, though. He never came to
the same painting twice.
“Libby, if you don’t open this door, I’m
going to break it down.” Travis sounded more concerned than angry.
I sighed heavily as I dragged myself across
my studio and into my bedroom, kicking a path through my discarded clothes to
open the door. “This is solid walnut and has a steel lock. You’d only hurt
yourself trying to break it down.”
“Hmm... good point.” His eyebrows knitted as
he gave me a once-over. “Did you forget, or are you wearing that to dinner?”
I glanced down at my paint-covered T-shirt and
jeans. “This is what I always wear to dinner.”
“Right. Surprise, surprise. Olivia Tanner
forgot.” He breezed past me, patting my shoulder on his way to my bathroom
where my closet and dresser were located. “You’re lucky you have me as your
social director,” he said, ducking behind the door.
He wasn’t joking. If not for Travis, I’d
probably never leave my private suite. We’d met two weeks ago, on my first day
at Aldridge Art Academy. He’d enrolled several months before me and was
assigned as my student liaison, a job he took very seriously. We were both from
the States and had clicked right away—probably because he was the only person
I’d ever met who liked Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall movies as much as I
did.
Travis emerged from my bathroom, holding up
my red dress. “You’re also lucky you have me as a fashion consultant.”
I hadn’t been paying attention to what he was
wearing, but as he stood waving the gossamer fabric between us, I noticed his
white shirt, black coat, slacks, and tie. His usually tousled blond hair was
combed neatly, and he wasn’t covered in bits of clay from sculpting all day.
“Oh, crap. I forgot.”
“Yep, we’ve established that.” He thrust the
dress at me. “I know you’d rather stay locked in your room like an old maid and
sniff paint fumes all night, but trust me, you do not want to miss this.”
I grabbed the dress and glared at him. “I
don’t sniff the fumes. My studio is well ventilated. And if you’re telling me I
don’t want to miss a fluffy dinner where a bunch of teenage girls ogle over a
bunch of teenage boys, sorry. Not for me.”
“See, that is something an old maid would
say, and you are a teenage girl.” He shook his finger at me. “Or did you lie about
being sixteen?”
“No, I didn’t lie. I’m sixteen going on seventeen,
not seventy.”
“Anyway...” He waved me off.. “I hear there’s
a fresh batch of cute guys, and you haven’t met any of the performing arts
students yet. Most of them are great people.” “Most of them?” I put one hand on
my hip, the other still clutching my dress.
“Well, I don’t know all of them. Yet.” He
waggled his eyebrows. “But the point is, you have to come out of your studio,
and this dinner is mandatory.”
Huffing at him, I flung the dress over my
shoulder and stomped into the bathroom. After an impressively fast shower, I
pulled my chestnut hair into a bun and fastened it with bobby pins, allowing a
few curls to fall around my neck. I stepped into my dress, glad I’d shaved
recently, and tugged at the hem. The style reminded me of the famous Marilyn
Monroe image, the one with her skirt billowing up around her. Mine had the same
plunging neckline and gathered waist.
I’d thought I brought a simple black dress,
the one I always wore to gallery showings. But sometime after I’d packed my
garment bag, my mom swapped it for this one, with a note that read, “Saw this
and thought of you. For a girl who sees the world in such vivid colors, you
should dress that way, too. Wish I could see you in it. You always look
beautiful in red. Love, Mom.” I sucked in a deep breath, willing away my
thoughts of home as I tugged at the hem again.
“You almost done?” Travis called from the
other room. “We’re going to be late.”
“I still can’t believe they make us do this.”
I applied some foundation, wishing I were painting a canvas instead of my face.
“You mean independent study and no one enforcing
a ridiculous curfew isn’t enough freedom for you? Wait. Don’t answer that. If
your parents had any idea how loose they actually are with the rules around
here, they would yank you out so fast it would make my head spin. Oh, the
scandal! Teenagers sneaking in and out of each other’s rooms under the cover of
night. Anyway, think of it like an assembly, England’s Emily Aldridge Academy
of Arts’ special brand of torture.”
I laughed at his horrible attempt at a British
accent as he uttered our prep school’s original name. “I thought you said no
cell phones and blocked social media sites were their own special brand of
torture?”
“Yes, well, they want us to be free-spirited,
just not over the Internet.” He sighed. “At least tonight is better than one of
my parents’ stupid dinner parties. I have to pretend to be someone I’m not at
those.”
“I’ll let you be whomever you want if you let
me skip tonight.” I dabbed my lips with a tissue then picked up my jewelry from
the counter. “I’m going to lose several hours of painting time, and I’ll
probably be out of the mood when dinner is over.”
“Even you don’t believe that. You’re never
out of the mood to paint. But sure, I’ll let you skip tonight. You can skip out
the door, down the hall, and all the way to the dining room. Though if your
goal is to not draw attention to yourself, I’d suggest walking.”
I didn’t respond as I fumbled with my
necklace. The delicate silver chain held a single teardrop-shaped topaz, my
birthstone. Eventually, I gave up trying to get it on and opened the bathroom
door.
“Whoa!” His sky-blue eyes grew to the size of
saucers. I glanced down at myself. “Too much?” He stood up from my desk chair
and circled around me. “No, but I’m seriously questioning my sexuality right
now.”
I rolled my eyes and dangled the necklace in front of him. “I need help
with this.” “I’m serious, Libby. You’re...” He took the chain and fastened the
clasp with ease before his gaze wandered down to my plunging neckline. “Eyes up
here,” I said.
His lips spread in a wide Cheshire cat grin.
“Sorry, even I can appreciate a nice rack.” “Well, don’t get used to it.” I
smoothed down my skirt.
“I won’t. But this”—he waved his hand at me—“is not the
way to avoid attention.” “That’s it.” I gritted my teeth, realizing my rack would
soon be on display for the whole student body. “I’m chang—”
“Oh no, you don’t.” He grabbed my hand.
“We’re late, and besides, in my opinion, not even your cleavage beats a
well-defined six-pack on Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome.”
“You win.” I pulled my hand from his grasp.
“Let’s go.” I slipped on my black heels and made my way to the door. “You
coming?”
“Yep, just enjoying the view.” He shut the
door to my suite behind us. “Committing it to memory actually. It may never happen
again.”
I glanced over my shoulder, almost wishing
I’d let him try to break down the door. I didn’t want him to get hurt, but I
would’ve had more time to paint.
Purchase
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Guest Post
Hello
readers! I thought I’d step away from the normal guest blog post about writing
or how I got published and tell you a story about my very precocious daughter. She’s
much funnier than I am and makes me laugh every day. She’s constantly making up
stories or songs and when she speaks, I have to remind myself she’s only eight.
We
have about a twenty-minute drive to school each day and one of her favorite
things is to play car games like I Spy, Hangman, Alphabet, etc. One day, we
were playing Guess the Animal. The rules are pretty simple, you get four to
five yes or no questions like does it have fur, does it have a tail, does it
live in the ocean, and then four to five guesses (or more depending on how long she
wants to play) as to what the animal is. Now, my daughter likes you to be very
specific, for example, if you say bear, she wants to know what kind of bear.
On
this particular morning, I have it down to a goat, but she wants me to figure
out what kind of goat. Does anyone out there really know all the different
kinds of goats? I don’t, but I tried to guess anyway, pigmy goat, mountain goat,
and so on until we finally get to school and my time is up. She grabs her
backpack and opens the car door, but I still don’t know what kind of goat she
wanted me to guess. So I ask her, “Sweetheart, aren’t you going to tell me what
kind of goat it was?”
“Oh,
a three-legged one. It’s a thing. I saw it.” Then she hops out of the car and
runs off to meet her friends.
A
three legged goat! How is that a thing?
Yes,
I admit there have been times I’ve let her cheat to win a board game or
purposely run slow in a race to the swings, but this was different. Though, as
I sat there trying to think of the best way to explain to her later about
playing by the rules, I decided it just wasn’t worth it. The game wasn’t really
about following rules, it was about giving her my attention and not turning on
the radio or talking on the phone to someone else, which is what she’ll
remember, that I spent time with her, whether or not the three-legged goat
exists.
Besides,
it’s better than the time she expected my mom to guess the title of a song
she’d just made up, or the time I lost hangman because she decided to spell a
word her own way. One thing is for sure, she has no lack of imagination (just
like her mother).
AUTHOR
BIO
Laura M. Kolar lives with her husband and
daughter in a one-stop-light town in northern-lower Michigan. Though she
didn't discover her love of books until she turned thirty, as a
self-declared hopeless romantic, she has spent the past few years reading
and writing stories with mostly happy endings. If not at her day-job
or with her family, you will find her sipping a cup of chai latte while
sitting in her favorite rocking chair, hunched over her laptop
writing or spending entirely too much time on Twitter.
Author Links
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