“Why not?” he said firmly.
I shuddered at his tone, feeling myself getting smaller under his inspection. “Listen, I just have some… personal, uh, work issues I have to work through. I can’t get involved in anything else right now.”
“Sure you can.”
“No, really, I can’t… You wouldn’t understand.”
“Not an issue,” he said with an arrogant purse of his lips.
“Well, it is an issue, to me,” I insisted.
Who the hell does he think he is?
“I’m sure any reservations you have, I can work with.”
“Listen, I’m not like a shipping business or dry cleaner or anything, Declan. You can’t just buy me.”
He shrugged. Again. I was getting a little sick of that.
“So tell me why not.”
I shook my head and sighed through my nose, angling back toward my easel as though I wanted to get back to work.
“Tell me,” he insisted in a growl.
“I just… I need to get a few things finished in a hurry.”
“Not a problem. We won’t be in town more than a couple weeks anyway. It’s not a long-term commitment.”
I cough-laughed at how quickly he batted aside my objection.
“Well I need to work now. As in right now, today.”
“Not a problem. I’ll be out of your hair in a jif.”
“No it is a problem, Declan,” I pushed back. “You know, I’m really not feeling like you’re hearing me. Are we having a translation problem or something?”
“No, I hear you loud and clear. You have reservations, and I am telling you there is nothing we can’t work around.”
Frustration coiled up in my chest. His stubbornness was really starting to get on my nerves and I wanted to fire back something he couldn’t argue with.
“Not everything has a work around, you know? Some things are just problems. Regular people problems. Not problems on your level. I doubt you would understand.”
“Like what?”
“Like I have a job! An actual job I am supposed to be doing at this moment!”
“Fine. Agree and I will leave.”
I snorted. “Wow, you really are accustomed to getting your own way, aren’t you?”
He nodded infuriatingly with a confident grin.
“Well not everybody’s life is like that, you know? Not everybody just has everything handed to them.”
“Oh you don’t seem to be doing so bad,” he shot back, looking around. “You were handed all this, weren’t you? And Bridget handed you two major collectors who handed you a third.”
“Ha!” I blurted out, unable to control myself any longer. “You know what that got me, Declan? NOTHING. Reserving paintings is not selling paintings. It killed the opening night and when I went to Edna, she didn’t even fucking want them.”
I stood there panting, filled with venom. He nodded solemnly.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he admitted. “I didn’t know that part.”
“Oh yeah? Well there’s a lot you don’t know. All of this,” I waved my arms around my head like a crazy person, “will be in my possession for exactly two more days. That’s it. After that, you can find me in my fucking car with everything I own.”
His expression became completely serious.
“What are you talking about,” he said, coming closer to me.
I started to tremble, barely covering up the pressure building up inside me. I was going to scream or cry soon, and I prayed desperately for screaming.
“Fucking taxes,” I yelled out, then wilted as the words echoed back to me. “Stupid fucking taxes on the stupid fucking handed-to-me house.”
“Oh,” he said flatly, waving his hand in the air. “That’s not a problem.”
I wanted to pick up the easel and hit him with it like it was a bat. I saw the entire scene so vividly in my mind, I was almost sure I had started doing it.
“THIS IS A HUGE FUCKING PROBLEM!”
He shook his head.
“It’s not a problem.”
My mouth opened and closed pointlessly. There was no way to make him understand.
“How much is it?”
I snorted and shook my head. “Too much. If I had sold every painting… Well frankly it would have still been too much. It’s over. I just need to deal with that now.”
“How much?”
I shook my head again.
“Thirty thousand?”
I looked down at my bare feet on the low-pile carpet.
“Fifty?”
I shrugged. “Something like that,” I muttered.
He walked closer to me, close enough I could hear the hum of his easy, even breaths.
“See? Was that so hard? You just have to ask for what you want, Margot.”