Owned: A Mafia Menage Romance(123)
She shook her head. “Girl, it’s so right on.”
I bounced on my toes. I had taken a real chance, basically obliterating the paintings I owed her and replacing them with something else. Everyone knew me for my carefully controlled still lifes. This was risky. Hugely risky.
“OK, I know you’re trying to figure out if you can sell this. I can start again and give you what I promised if you want. But painting the life out of something right now felt so wrong. Painting life into it, stuffing as much as I could of myself, basically bleeding on the canvas…. That’s what I needed to do. It had felt fucking triumphant at the time, too.”
“Damn right it’s triumphant,” she muttered, not talking her eyes away. “I can see why you had to disappear.”
“But like I said, I can start again…”
“Oh fuck you,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You leave the selling to me. You do… whatever this is. Again. And again.”
“It’s still just a lemon branch,” I said modestly.
“No, seriously, fuck you. It was just a lemon branch. It was just a technical exercise. And don’t get me wrong, babe, you’re the goddamn queen of the technical exercises. But this is… real. This has some fucking balls. And it’s about time.”
“I think it’s great,” came a voice from the door. Jackson’s blue eyes shone brightly.
Bridget whirled around on her stiletto. “Oh no!” she shouted. “Hell no. Grownups are working here. You: out.”
“Excuse me?” he said, raising his eyebrows as though she were joking. I shrugged at him in apology.
Bridget flung her arm out, pointing, and started to walk toward him. Jackson got the threat and left immediately, closing the door behind him.
“Goddamn, this house is overrun with man meat,” she muttered. She wrinkled her nose and stalked back to the easel. “You smell that? It’s like a locker room.”
“Oh shut up, Bridget.”
She folded her arms in front of her chest and stared at the paintings some more, sucking her teeth loudly. “Can I smoke in here?”
“Nope,” I said for the millionth time.
“Fine,” she sighed. “Well I love them. I absolutely fucking love them. It’s the boy toys, isn’t it.”
I shrugged. “I doubt it.”
She cough-barked. “It is, totally. You’re different already. You look different.”
“I feel different,” I admitted.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, I feel like one of those movie vampires. I’m on fire… like all over.”
“Goddamn. I bet.” He heaved another great sigh that ended in a chuckle. “Well, keep doing it, bitch. This is… alive. You’re alive. It’s a nice change. And kudos for the evil plan to humiliate Kevin. I totally approve.”
I flinched and shook my head, rolling my eyes silently and scowling.
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“Oh isn’t it?” she persisted, eyebrows raised. “You didn’t invite him here to ambush him with your new love life?”
“No of course not.”
“Lies,” she accused. “But like I said, I approve.”
“You never cared for Kevin…”
“Damn right,” she agreed.
“So don’t manipulate me, OK? I know you never liked him. It’s over now, just like you wanted.”
“You never liked him,” she corrected.
“Fuck you. I wanted to marry him,” I retorted.
“You wanted to marry some whitebread regional sales leader. You wanted to marry an idea. You didn’t want to marry that guy. I mean, look at him out there. Booooooorrring.”
“I did. I loved the shit out of him,” I protested.
“You loved an idea. You were just grateful someone neatly fit into the puzzle piece you had pre-sculpted for them.”
I reeled. My mouth must have fallen open because my tongue went dry. “That is a truly shitty thing to say.”
She shrugged. “I’m sorry. This isn’t news.”
I glared at her and breathed through my nose but she wasn’t looking at me. Was she right? Some part of me thought she had a point. I had wanted Responsible, Reliable, and Grown-up, and that was precisely what I had got.
And what had I expected from tonight? I thought having him here would have brought back some old feeling, maybe. Maybe if I had still felt something, all that time I spent pining over him would have made some kind of sense. Or maybe I hoped that I would see him as my real life, and maybe wake up from this crazy dream I kept having where I was sleeping with two billionaires and loving every minute of it. But that was definitely not happening. Kevin was the one who didn’t seem real, while Declan and Jackson were as vivid as Technicolor.