"Lawson? What the fuck are you doing here?" As if on cue, Kelso's voice booms through the cavernous entranceway.
In a natural movement, I release Skye and leave her behind as I move to Kelso.
"Just helping your artist pick up her dropped paints."
He glares at Skye and says, "That better not stain my floor, Ms Simmons."
I position my body between Kelso and Skye, shielding her from his glare.
"It won't," Skye snaps.
My breath pauses at her reaction, prompting me to smile broadly at Kelso.
"I've come to discuss the lawsuit. Shall we?" I offer, my left hand on Kelso's arm and my right pointing down his hallway.
Stunned, Kelso looks around before he turns and leads me deeper into his half-finished house.
"You're wasting your time," he says.
"And you're wasting your money. Do us both a favor and drop this legal crap. It's straightforward enough to carve off your part of the business. We've always treated it as a separate division. You have no claim over the hotel side."
"I built them."
"Anyone could've built them. Why do you keep deluding yourself otherwise? It's only your money you'll end up losing, not mine."
"If that's the case, then why do you care? Why bother coming here at all?"
"Because you're being a pain in the ass. I'm tired of wasting my time with it."
Kelso leads me into his office, the first room in the house that's finished. I'll have to remember to point that out to him.
I hit Kelso with all the legal points I've spent the past two days going over with Julie. It's a no brainer and even he must see that. But he has such a big ego, I have to be careful to give him a way of saving face or else he'll dig his heels in and fight to the end.
Forty five minutes later, I stroll out of his office, confident he's seen the light. Kelso doesn't bother getting off his ass to see me out, and that's fine, I'll let him lick his wounds.
When I get back to the entrance hall, Skye has a paintbrush in her hand and a serious look of concentration on her face. She's so focused on her painting, she doesn't notice me.
I creep over, and stand beside her.
"Looking good," I say.
"I've just done the roughing in, you can't even see anything yet."
I shrug. "It's still better than anything I could do."
Skye tilts her head, examining her work. "Come back in a few days and judge it."
"I don't want you to be here in a few days. Kelso is dangerous. If you really must do these paintings, then paint them somewhere else and drop them off to him."
"I need the light of the room they'll hang in. Besides, one of his conditions was that the paintings are painted on-site."
"Who cares about conditions, you need to paint them elsewhere." My teeth are gritted.
Skye turns and squares her shoulders, and immediately I regret the way I worded everything. "How dare you just come in here and tell me what to do? Just because you wear a fancy suit, you think you can order me around?"
I sigh. "Skye, I'm telling you this … "
She interrupts, "I'm sorry, weren't you just leaving?"
"Not without convincing you."
"Then you'd better get a sleeping bag. I'm not going anywhere."
"Get the fuck out of my house," Kelso snaps from behind us, making me jump. I hadn't realized he'd left his home office. Guess he finally managed to move after the blow I delivered him.
I look at Skye, but she turns away and messes around with her paints. Kelso moves towards me. The last thing I want him to realize is there's any connection between me and Skye, so all I can do is glare at him, and exit the house.
Chapter Eleven
Craving (Skye)
"How do you know that asshole?" Kelso snaps at me, his eyes flaring.
My heart pounding, I say, "I don't, he just came in and started talking to me about my painting."
He stares at me, his breath huffing and his brow somehow sweaty once again. I hold his stare, daring him to call me a liar but praying to God he doesn't.
"Get back to work," he says and goes back down the hall.
My heart is pounding against my ribs. There's no way I can paint right now, my hands are shaking too much. I sit on the floor and grab my water bottle.
The water fills my mouth and I let it swirl around while I reflect on what just happened.
Hot tattooed guy is Lawson Heywood. The Lawson Heywood. Never saw that coming.
What do I do now? I can't get involved with some billionaire. I don't belong in his world any more than he belongs in mine.
But when he looks at me, my insides melt. And when he touches me, my body sets alight with flames fiercer than I ever knew existed.
Frustrated, I gather myself enough to get back to my work. The sooner I get it finished, the sooner I get the money and get away from creepy Kelso.
I work on the base of the temple in the painting, blending it in with the grass and bushes around its stones. It's not meshing the way I want and I decide to take a break from it.
With my sketchbook and pencil in hand, I decide to get some ideas for the other rooms. I head down the hallway, intending to reach the family room at the back of the property. At least I think it's the back; it's difficult to tell in such a big, maze-like house.
I take a wrong turn and up in a short hallway by an ajar door. Kelso and another man's voices spill out of the room and I turn to flee before Kelso sees me. Before I take a step, Kelso's voice becomes clear.
"This lawsuit is killing me. I'm going to have to cut my costs everywhere I can."
"Florida is your best bet," the other man says.
"Agreed. I'm flying out there tonight."
My eyes widen. Shit, am I one of those costs? I hurry away, though my feet are heavy and it's a struggle to be silent.
There's no point in trying to generate new ideas right now, my head is swimming. I find my way back to the entrance and carry on with my destroyed temple. This painting might turn out to be more prophetic than I thought.
Now there's an even greater sense of urgency to get these pieces finished. I have to collect my money from Kelso before he runs out of it.
I bite the end of my brush, trying to decide where the line is between quality and speed. Is anyone other than Kelso ever going to see these paintings? What if I sign them with a different name?
The minute the natural light drops too much to work, I grab my things and get out of there. Thankfully Kelso didn't make another appearance that day. After what I heard, I don't think I could look him in his beady eyes.
Besides, he might fire me on the spot. If I can finish, he will at least owe me for the work completed.
When I get home, I head straight for my studio. Since the Kelso job, my salvation, might fall through, I want to finish other pieces to try and sell them through Gordon.
I finish the evening dress on the beach painting. It's the first of the three in that series that I've finished.
It's after eleven. Exhausted, I brush my teeth and flop into bed. The events of the day churn in my head.
Lawson Heywood. The man whose touch fuels the desire within me. The man who I'm supposed to be going to dinner with on Friday. The man who put on a suit and turned into a rich bastard.
How dare he think he can tell me what to do like that?
I try clearing my mind by thinking of the temple, and what stage I need to get it to tomorrow so I can be finished by early next week. My mind runs.
From the ruined temple, to Kelso and his lawsuit. Hold on. He's going to Florida tonight. He didn't say when he'd be back. But with him gone, this is definitely the time to paint his bedroom erotica.
My biggest nightmare would be him walking in while I'm in there painting it.
If he made all those disgusting comments just talking about it, I can't imagine what would he do if he found me actually painting it. My skin crawls just thinking about it.
Lawson would never behave like Kelso.
Not in that way, anyway. But he's still a billionaire, and still against everything that I've ever stood for.
The man would make me a sellout. I think. I should ask Ava what she thinks. She'll know what I should do.
In the morning, I lay my completed painting in the trunk of my car, wrapped and protected by dust sheets. I'll drop it to Gordon after I leave Kelso's this evening.
My plan had been to save it for the gallery show Kelso is funding, but now that I know about his money problems, I need to secure any income I can get.
It'll just mean working late every night to create enough paintings for my show.
I dig the sketchbook with the full frontal image out of my bottom drawer, chuck it on the passenger seat and leave for Kelso's.
The plan is to finish it as fast as I can. Even if it means the quality suffers. I can always claim any rushed brush strokes are artistic license. Really, I hope that the painting will be ruined in a fire. No one can ever see it, or know that I painted it.
The sketch is transferred to the canvas in record time. If I hurry, I should be able to finish in a couple of days.
My easel is alongside Kelso's round bed. The canvas is only a few feet from where it will hang. In amongst all the animal print.