Read Between The Lines: Business of Love 6 Read online

  “Five more minutes, Aayla,” I told her as I narrowed my focus to the detail of her ring finger.

  Aayla, a true model of professionalism and class, didn’t move when she spoke. “I am so looking forward to a cup of coffee.” She had a Jamaican accent but the last ten years living in New York City had stolen some of it away from her.

  A smile tugged at my lips as I glanced up over the top of the canvas at her. “What’s your poison?”

  “As in flavor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Caffeine.”

  I chuckled. “Likewise. Sit tight. You’ll be on your way soon.”

  Aayla drew a deep breath. Her breasts rose and fell, her dark nipples facing the ceiling for a brief moment. All of the models I painted were in the nude. My work, all of which had afforded me a more luxurious lifestyle than I ever could have imagined due to how highly sought after they’d become, were all of naked women. The female form was, in my humble opinion, the most beautiful shape on this planet, and the best part was how different each woman was. My models offered endless inspiration for me to create unique renderings of their likeness. Some turned out like portraits where it was easy to recognize the woman on the canvas as the woman in the flesh. Others were more obscure when I played with shadows and textures.

  Like Aayla’s.

  In the picture she’d emailed me in her application, she’d been wearing a shimmering gold on her eyelids and sparkly gold diamonds in her ears. Immediately, I’d liked the contrast with her skin, and when she showed up for her first appointment, my gold paint was close at hand. In our final appointment, I knew I’d be applying some gold flakes to bring it to life and make parts of it stand up off the page.

  Hopefully, she’d like it when it was done. As of now, it was still only coming together.

  The final five minutes passed us by and I finished the delicate tip of her fingernail before telling her she could get up, dress, and stretch. I offered her a glass of water, which she drank greedily, and invited her to come see how the painting was progressing.

  She stood before me as she buttoned the top button of her white blouse and cocked her head to the side. A soft sound in the back of her throat made me worried she didn’t like it.

  “It doesn’t really look like me,” she said. “Not completely.”

  “Some of my pieces are exact renderings, and others, mostly when the model is as good of a muse as you, sort of take on a life of their own. Besides, I might be a little cocky, but I’d never be so brazen to assume I could capture you completely. A painting could never be as beautiful as the real thing.”

  Aayla gave me a showstopping white smile. “Do you always try to butter up your models?”

  “Chalk it up to sleep deprivation.”

  She laughed and shook her head at me. By our third appointment, we’d spent enough time together to share some easy laughs and the occasional joke. During our first appointment, I’d cracked some one liners that had either gone right over her head or she’d been too uncomfortable to laugh at—due to her nudity and my lack thereof.

  I saw Aayla to my studio door and let her out. She passed through my adjoining gallery, where behind the marble slab desk my assistant Briar was setting down her purse.

  Briar looked up and smiled at Aayla. “Have a good rest of your day, Miss Rose. We’ll see you next Monday.”

  Aayla smiled over her shoulder and thanked my assistant. Her gaze slid back to where I lingered in the doorway to my studio. “See you soon, Walker.” She pushed through the front door and stopped at the crosswalk outside to wait for her chance to cross over to the café across the street.

  Briar, not only my assistant but my best friend’s girl, leaned one hip on the counter and crossed her arms. Her dark red hair hung in front of her eyes and she shook the strands away from her face. “How’d it go?”

  “Quite well,” I said. “I have a couple of things I want to add. Give me half an hour and I’ll be out front with you.”

  She waved me off. “Half an hour? Please. See you at lunch.”

  I grinned like the shit-eating liar I was. She and I both knew that when I had the itch to paint, chances were high I’d be in my own little world for more than thirty minutes. I slipped back into my studio, cranked my music (rock or nothing), and set to work adding flourishes and details to the canvas. There were things I could do to the piece without the model present like working on her eyelashes, darkening the shadows in the background, adding more contrast, and focusing on the luster of her skin by playing and highlighting certain points of the body like the shoulders, breasts, nose, forehead, chin, hip, and shins.

  Hours passed.

  I didn’t emerge from my painting studio until close to noon, as Briar estimated, and when I did, it was with an empty stomach and a mild headache.

  Briar must have seen it written on my face because she picked up the studio phone with an expectant arched eyebrow. “Shall I order us sushi or burritos?”

  “Those are my two options?”

  “Those are what I feel for, so yes, those are your only options.”

  “Sushi, it is.”

  “Yam rolls? California rolls? Tempura?”

  “Why do you ask when I don’t have a say in the matter?”

  Briar smiled. “I don’t know.”

  I rested my elbows on the marble top of the desk while she placed our sushi order.

  After she’d placed the order and given the restaurant our address here at the gallery, she hung up and nodded out at the street where Aayla had crossed to the other side and into the café. “She seemed interested in you.”

  “What? No she doesn’t.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says me.”

  “And what do you know about the female gaze?”

  “The female gaze?” I asked skeptically. “There’s no such thing. There’s the male gaze, and that’s problematic as hell, but—”

  “She was checking you out when she looked back at you before she left.” Briar’s tone was matter-of-fact. She had an uncanny knack for making me feel like I was out of my depth whenever we had these kinds of conversations. “You didn’t notice the way her eyes went up and down your body? Head to toe and then back up? Classic.”

  “I suppose I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “You should ask her out.”

  I laughed and straightened up from the desk. “I know where that road leads. I’m not interested in dating a model.”

  “She’s not a model,” Briar insisted. “She’s studying to get her realty license. You know that. She just happened to hear that a prestigious artist paid young women well who were willing to pose nude for him and jumped at the chance to pay off some of her debts. Don’t twist it to avoid a date with a perfectly nice girl.”

  “I’m not twisting anything. I have a bad track record.”

  Briar rolled her eyes. “You’re just as skeptical as Wes used to be.”

  Wes, my best friend and her boyfriend, was a world-famous bestselling author who’d dated plenty of women who were only with him because of his money. I’d had several of the same kind of experiences and each and every one of them ended with me having feelings for a woman who was closed off, shut down, and only in it for a cut of the wealth.

  “Skepticism has its place,” I said.

  “Sure, it does, but look what happened when Wes put his guard down.” She gestured at herself.

  I chuckled. “Yeah, he ended up with the likes of you, a woman who’s somehow always telling me what to do.”

  “Someone has to.” Briar smirked.

  Chapter 3

  Nora

  I didn’t wake up on Monday until well past noon. Even then, I still felt groggy and jetlagged after flying in from Prague the evening before. I had a grumbling stomach and a dry mouth, and I rolled over in bed to reach for the cup of water on my nightstand. It tasted stale but I drank it anyway, ignoring the way it sat in my stomach like a heavy rock. With a contented sigh, I rolled onto my back an
d gazed lazily up at my bedroom ceiling.

  The room was awash in sunlight streaming through the cracks in the blinds. My bedroom was perfect for plants and had been filled with them before I started traveling. Now it was devoid of any life except for my own since I hadn’t been here to take care of them.

  If I wasn’t so damn broke, I’d have been going to a nearby nursery to pick up some new plant babies to take care of. But alas, there was only about four hundred and fifty dollars left in my bank account and somehow I was going to have to make that number much bigger in the next three weeks before my first rent installment was due.

  “Job hunting,” I groaned. “Yay.”

  A good half hour passed as I lay in bed procrastinating the inevitable. Sooner or later I’d have to get up and get started. I told myself a cup of coffee was all I needed to get myself going. And maybe some eggs. And a nice stroll through my old neighborhood in the sunshine.

  But I’d slept in so late that if I did all those things it would be two o’clock before I got around to job hunting, and at that point, was there even any merit to starting today? I could just take the day off and lounge around and reset.

  I could justify any reason to avoid doing something I didn’t want to do.

  I’d just about talked myself into getting up when a soft knock came at my door.

  “Come in,” I called.

  Grace opened my door a crack. She came in the rest of the way and sat on the edge of my bed to extend a piping-hot cup of coffee to me.

  I looked from her to the coffee. “Is this a no strings attached nice gesture or did you come up here to tell me there’s another roommate I don’t know about living in the laundry room?”

  Grace snickered. “No, I just thought I’d come see if you were alive. It’s almost one.”

  A pointed glance at my alarm clock said I know that, I’m just a lazy piece of garbage.

  Grace patted my leg. “Are you getting up or what?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Well, you have to eventually.”

  “Give me fifteen more minutes.”

  Grace’s critical look reminded me of the way my mother used to look at me when I was a teenager and attempted to sleep in past nine on a Sunday. I grew up in one of those households where sleeping in wasn’t tolerated and general laziness, or what normal people might simply call rest, was for the weak. Normally, this kind of parenting style raised children to be over-productive adults who suffered from severe restlessness and an inability to sit down and do nothing for any length of time, even just fifteen minutes.

  But for me?

  I’d leaned completely the other way. The incessant need to be busy and productive as a teen, and therefore worthy of attention and affection, made me push against those expectations as I got older, to the point of self-detriment.

  I’d once neglected to clean the dishes in my sink for thirteen days. It was horrific, yes, and the smell was similar to what you might catch a whiff of walking past a New York City dumpster after six consecutive days of rain, but the point was there was nobody there to tell me to do it.

  So I didn’t.

  When Grace and I moved in together, those bad habits of mine had changed. I didn’t want to be the worst roommate of all time, so I’d stepped up my game. However, things like sleeping in, leaving my hair unwashed for days, and never putting on makeup or dressing presentably had never gone away. It made for an easy traveling lifestyle at the very least.

  I was what most would call low maintenance. Sure, I liked to dress up and feel pretty every now and then, but only when I wanted to and not ever because I felt like I had to.

  All of this made me the polar opposite of our new roommate, Juliette Emerson.

  I’d met her last night when she came home from work and we all sat down to inhale the delicious perogies Grace had made. The marriage counselor seemed nice enough, if not a little uptight in her dark gray skirt, matching blazer, and all-the-way buttoned up teal blouse. Her makeup was flawless and so was her perfectly straight shoulder-length blonde hair. She had a curvy figure, manicured nude nails, hazel eyes, and wore dainty jewelry, all of which looked like it had sentimental value to her.

  She seemed too perfect to me—like she belonged in a movie or something.

  “So,” I started, “what’s Julie’s deal?”

  Grace cocked her head. “Her deal?”

  “Yeah.” I sipped my coffee and leaned back against my pillows. “How long has she been here? How long is she staying? Is she around all the time or does she have an active social life?”

  “She’s around most of the time.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, yes,” Grace said slowly. “She lives here.”

  I pouted. “You know it used to be perfect when it was just the two of us. We each got a corner of the sofa on movie nights, there was always the right amount of glasses in the cupboard, and we each had our own bathtub if we wanted to have a soak at the same time.”

  Maybe I could guilt her into realizing how good we’d had it and she could tactfully evict Julie. A woman like her who had her life so together would have an easy time finding a new place. Who wouldn’t want to live with her?

  Besides me, of course.

  “Nora,” Grace said with an amused smile lingering on her lips. “You’re the one who went looking for greener pastures, not me. If you hadn’t left, Julie wouldn’t be here. But you did leave, and I harbor no resentment over that because I know how valuable this past year was for you. But I had to keep living my life here and Julie fit into my picture.”

  “But I’m back now.”

  “Yes, you are, and we have plenty of room for a third person. Give her a bit more time. I really think you’ll grow to like her.”

  “That’s what my parents said about dentistry, and here I am, a raging disappointment to them and their nuclear family values.”

  Grace rolled her eyes. “This is not the same thing.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “You’re just being difficult.”

  “Maybe.”

  Grace patted my leg one more time. “Get out of bed and meet me downstairs. We’ll job hunt together.”

  I sighed as Grace left my bedroom and closed the door behind her.

  There wasn’t much I wouldn’t have traded to be back in Prague or literally anywhere that wasn’t here. My travel bug hadn’t been satiated by the full year of exploring. I craved more. I’d argue I wanted to travel more now than I had last year when I was really only using travel as an excuse to get away from the pressure of my life here.

  You have obligations, I told myself. Not looking for work was unfair to Grace. In three weeks, I owed her a thousand dollars. This townhouse wasn’t cheap but that was the cost of living in this part of Manhattan. If I didn’t have a paycheck by then, I’d be in trouble. She ran a successful business managing three private daycares she owned and did most of her work from the fourth bedroom, which had been converted into her office. Grace paid more rent than me because she used more of the house, and financially, I knew she’d be able to cover me if things didn’t work out, but I didn’t want to let it get to that.

  Not when I had ample time to get my shit together.

  With a disgruntled groan, I extracted myself from bed, threw on a comfy robe, and made my way downstairs to the kitchen with my empty coffee mug in hand. I helped myself to another cup from the pot.

  Grace sat at the kitchen island on her laptop. She already had a job listing website open and was scrolling through. “So what are you thinking you want to do?”

  I shrugged. “Get paid to lounge around all day?”

  “There is other work I could be doing today, Nora.”

  Guilt tickled my insides. I sighed, padded around the island, and settled down on the stool beside her. “I wouldn’t mind working with plants, I suppose. Or books.”

  “Okay, that’s a start. What else?”

  I chewed the inside of my cheek. Grace waited patiently.<
br />
  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  “Okay,” Grace said thoughtfully as she scrolled through the listings. “That’s fine. At least we have somewhere to start. I’ll read some aloud and you tell me if anything piques your interest.”

  I sipped my coffee and nodded.

  Grace proceeded to scroll. “Hair salon receptionist?”

  “Pass.”

  “Barista?”

  “I hate the public and food service brings out the absolute worst in people.”

  “You’re not wrong,” Grace muttered. “Oh, how about this one? It’s at a florist shop. Looking for a full-time associate with a green thumb to keep the plants, make arrangements per customer requests, and keep the shop clean. Hours are Thursday to Monday, eight till four.”

  “Not terrible,” I said. “Let’s add them to the list.”

  Grace opened the listing in a new tab and kept scrolling through the other options. As the minutes passed, we added more job openings to the list of viable places I could apply to. None of them made me particularly excited or enthusiastic, but all of them promised a paycheck, and that was all I was really after.

  It was just one more step toward my next trip abroad.

  Chapter 4

  Walker

  I drummed my fingers on the bar as I cast my gaze toward the front door. Wes was late, fifteen minutes to be exact, and he’d abandoned me to be the asshole taking two stools at an overcrowded bar. Over the past five minutes, I’d had three separate groups of attractive women come and try to sit and I’d had to politely turn them away.

  It wasn’t easy.

  Eager for a distraction, I looked to my phone and opened my dating app. Before swiping through, I cast a wary glance around to make sure nobody was looking over my shoulder and judging me for being superficial.

  Because I was.

  Although one might argue everyone who used a swiping style dating app was superficial and shallow. All judgments and requirements were based on a snapshot first impression which was, ninety percent of the time, a misrepresentation of the person.