For The One(43)

“My house. I own it. I paid off the mortgage last year.”

“Oh…oh, that’s awesome. It’s a nice house. A very nice house, actually. I didn’t know they paid artists so well at Draco.”

As he stared at the cheap print on the wall, I took the opportunity to stare at him. He was wearing jeans tonight and a dark blue t-shirt almost the exact same color. It was a lot of blue, and typically he didn’t match his clothes well, but it was more subdued tonight because pretty much anything matched jeans. Still, he filled those jeans well with his long, muscular legs. And his t-shirt looked damn fine, too, stretched over a solid chest and bulging biceps as he leaned back to continue solemnly studying that poster. I almost sighed and certainly could not stop my eyes from traveling over the thick column of his neck and across his broad shoulders.

Then my eyes shot to his mouth with memories of the taste of his lips. That’s not a goodnight kiss, he’d said. And he was right. Heat invaded my body from my cheeks down my spine, settling in my gut.

I swallowed and forced my eyes away before he caught me ogling like a fool. Like Echo ogling the gorgeous Narcissus until it had become an obsession.

The poster he was currently fascinated with was a print I’d picked up at a flea market. It showed a young woman in a garden at nighttime, her brow crowned with flowers. She was bent over, surveying the party of fairies and other wee folk surrounding her, amidst glowing balls of colorful light. I loved it for its whimsical feel.

“It is the industry standard,” he answered, and it took me a few seconds to realize he was responding to my comment about his artist’s salary. “I wasn’t always paid in money, though. At the start, when there wasn’t a lot of money, Adam paid me with stock in the company.”

My brows shot up. “Holy crap…for real? That must be worth a fortune now.”

He was still staring at the print. I couldn’t tell whether he liked it or was horrified by it. “It changes depending on the day and the value of the stock. I don’t pay much attention to it. The last I heard from my accountant, my portfolio was worth a little more than fifty-six million dollars,” he said as if he were talking hockey scores.

I almost fell off the chair. I knew his cousin had gone from millionaire to billionaire, having started the company on his own, but I had no idea that William himself was a millionaire.

“Uh…wow. Why are you still working?”

He finally pulled his eyes away from the poster and looked at my right shoulder. “What else would I do?”

I laughed. “I don’t know…travel all year round? Sit on a different beach every week and read books? I could think of a lot of things.”

“The colors in that print are extremely faded from what they should be.” Clearly, talking money didn’t interest William, given the way he blew off what I’d just said. “That is a famous painting by E. R. Hughes, an English painter of the pre-Raphaelite tradition,” he said without looking at it again.

“It’s an old poster I bought a few years back. I’m going to give it away when I move.”

“When you leave with the Renaissance Faire?”

I shifted in my chair and crossed my legs. William’s gaze followed the movement, his eyes settling on my exposed calves. I sat there for a moment, watching him watch me. He wasn’t ogling. He was just…studying. Maybe he was memorizing how my legs looked in the shorts so he could draw them on his sketchpad later.

I remembered the drawing he’d shown me at the hockey game—the one of my hand. It was excellent…so realistic. And detailed. Almost lovingly so. I’d never really thought my hand was particularly beautiful, but he’d rendered it beautifully. He’d made it beautiful.

I blinked, wondering where that weird thought had come from.

“I’ve never really lived in one place for a long time. My friend says I have what she calls želja za putovanjem—wanderlust. Nothing can nail me down.”

“Nails? Wouldn’t that hurt?”

I laughed. “Sorry, no. I mean…it’s hard for me to stay in one place. Nothing can keep me still.”

“Nothing? And…no one?”

I frowned, thinking about that for a moment. I considered the hurt in Alex’s eyes when I’d told her I was leaving. And Mia. In fact, most of my friends didn’t understand. The people at the Faire got it though. A lot of them were like me. “I’m going to work the Faire for a while, reading Tarot cards.”

His expression didn’t change. “You believe in that? Fortune-telling?”

“I believe the cards can teach people to follow their own intuition. I’m just there to…help it along. My aunt used to read cards a lot. She taught me before she went back to Bosnia.”