Owned: A Mafia Menage Romance(109)

I sighed and turned back to the easel, trying to find hope in it. The painting was a still life: a complicated branch of a lemon tree with abundant leaves and heavy, over-ripe fruit. I had torn it from the tree on the south side of the garden, then hung it from a nail on the wall with twine and snapped dozens of photos of it to get the digital resources I needed.

That was last year. Now the photo resource I had selected and refined in Photoshop was on my computer screen, next to the easel. The linen panel had light chalk outlines of each curling leaf and fat fruit. All I had to do was simply color my own custom-made coloring page. I had already done all the hard work.

But suddenly I really didn’t want to. The branch was long since dead, even though no one but me would ever know that, or care.

I squinted at the drawing. It did absolutely nothing.

I groaned dramatically and stretched my arms over my head, bellowing in frustration at the ceiling like an insolent toddler.

“Are you OK?” came a voice from the door. I flinched and spun around, instantly embarrassed.

“I was just… I’m working. This is where I work,” I stammered stupidly. My hands flapped out in the direction of the paintings on the wall.

Smooth, Margot, I scolded myself. You make this artist gig look pretty chic.

Declan nodded and strolled in like he had been invited.

“Yeah, I got that from the ‘Studio Entrance’ sign on the door,” he sighed. I always forgot that was there. In theory, collectors could come through the side entrance to visit me while I worked, but no one ever had. I tried to remind myself this was not an invasion of my space. Bridget had introduced us as patron and artist, after all. I was supposed to act professional.

You’re doing awesome so far, lady.

He wandered from painting to painting around the perimeter of the room. There were shelves set up at shoulder height with various sketches, framed and unframed, and a few gallery commissions that were nearly ready to go out. Some of the pieces were really old, back to the beginning of my career. They were not very good and I don’t know why I had them there where anyone could see them. His apparent inspection left me feeling a little exposed. I fought the urge to make excuses for the old paintings, the unfinished paintings, and everything Edna had said to me. I felt like I wanted to take them all and drop them in the pool.

Perching myself back on the stool in front of the easel, I grumpily watched him cruise from painting to painting. He really did seem to be looking at them thoroughly, not just giving them a polite once-over. Was that supposed to impress me?

When he got to the sliding glass doors, Marnie suddenly jumped off the board into the pool, flipping in the air with her hands holding her knees to her chest. Declan whooped and clapped.

“She can’t hear you,” I said automatically.

He turned around to look at me. Just an inch or so taller than Jackson, he had almost the same longish haircut in a dark blonde shade, and the same sky blue eyes. They could almost have been twins.

Yes, let’s try to make this more weird.

“What?” he said.

I pointed at the pool. “The glass: it’s UV tinted, triple pane. That’s Roger, the handyman, and his daughter, Marnie. They can’t hear us. Or see us,” I added, and instantly wondered I had said that.

He nodded and smiled surreptitiously. I could tell he was holding back a flood of smartass remarks. That was the main difference between them, I thought. Jackson was earnest and reserved, and Declan was bold and arrogant but a little childish. He still had a lot of boy left in him, I could tell.

But without his brazen advance on me, pulling my legs open, nothing would have ever happened at the gallery.

My breath caught suddenly in my throat as my belly twinged at the intense memory. He heard me and smiled broadly.

“What are you thinking about?”

I blinked at his forwardness. “Nothing, just a chill from the AC,” I lied.

“Ah,” he nodded. His sky blue eyes met mine in a sort of challenge, but when I didn’t blink, blush, or turn away, eventually he gave a little shrug and looked toward the paintings.

“I really like these,” he said.

He stood in front of a group of small, casual sketches. They were just simple paintings of common objects but with dramatic lighting.

“Oh really?” I asked, walking up beside him but not too close. Well, Edna didn’t, I answered bitterly in my mind. But the scent of his expensive cologne crept into my lungs anyway and started calling my name.

“Hm, yes,” he said. “They’re humble. But intimate.”

I smiled despite myself. “Well. Yeah, totally. That’s it.”

A doorway opened up in my heart. He may have been a fan of the Tilt-A-Skull, but he also seemed to understand some wordless thing that most people didn’t. The humble paintings were definitely intimate. They were about how a person gets accustomed, even attached to little things in their lives. And that’s your home: a collection of small but immensely important things that only you know the value of.