Page 6 of Art of Sin

I do my best not to think about Gideon watching a woman with a man’s face between her legs. “No,” I tell Trent. “I don’t dislike him—I don’t even know him. But as much as I hate to admit it, Maxwell is right. Gideon is unpredictable, and that’s not good for business.”

I push back my chair and stand. The little diner we frequent for lunch is almost empty, our brainstorming session lasting well past reasonable lunch hours. As I pass Trent, I touch his shoulder. He looks up, caramel eyes soft on mine.

“No matter my personal feelings, I always get the job done. Don’t update your résumé just yet.”

His warm hand covers mine. “I know. But I’d rather lose my job than have you sacrifice your morals.” His fingers curl around mine. “Hear me? You’re not Skylar.”

It’s common knowledge that Skylar’s definition of pitching a client is seducing them.

I attempt a smile. “That won’t be a problem.”

“I hope not.”

The seriousness of his voice, coupled with our impromptu touching and eye contact, turns the conversation in a direction I had no idea existed.

Carefully withdrawing my hand from his shoulder, I frown at him. “I’m too old for you, Trent.”

He doesn’t smile. “You’re four years older than me. That’s nothing.”

Maybe he’s right in a general sense, but I’m not a typical twenty-nine-year-old woman. Sometimes I wonder if I was born middle-aged, or if my early childhood merely leeched all the innocence out of me. The person in my mirror looks young, but in my case, looks are deceiving.

“I’m flattered, but you know I don’t—”

“Mix business with pleasure,” he finishes with a resigned sigh.

It’s my standard excuse for avoiding everything from work parties to happy hours, and I’ve used it a lot.

I’m relieved he doesn’t look rejected or worse, angry. Just disappointed. In a few years, he’ll look back on this moment and laugh, knowing as I do now that it isn’t really me he wants, but the put-together, tough-as-nails woman I pretend to be.

“I’ll see you in the morning?” I ask softly.

He nods. “You got it, boss.”

I’m halfway out the door when he calls, “Don’t forget to buy some jogging clothes!”

* * *

Curledon my couch that evening with a glass of wine, I scroll through a backlog of articles about Gideon Masters. Much of what I read is subjective, a good portion likely fabricated. It’s well known that Gideon rarely grants interviews, and when he does, he’s usually taciturn or tightlipped. While details about his divorce from popular fashion designer Lucy Linn abound, those regarding his personal life are scarce.

Born and raised in San Francisco. Mother died in a car accident when he was twelve, after which his father relocated them—and a small-fry D&M Dynamics—to Los Angeles to be close to his sister’s family. Attended private high school in Bel Air. Harvard for undergraduate, majoring in philosophy of all things.

After graduating, he took off to Europe for five years to do whatever young men do in foreign countries. Backpack across the continent, join a punk band in Paris, whatever.

He returned to Los Angeles at twenty-seven for no discernible reason and met his wife shortly thereafter. They were married for four years with no children or pets. A year before their very public split, a dinner guest—who happened to be a mover and shaker in the art community—saw one of Gideon’s paintings and flipped. Yadda yadda. Fame and fortune.

More fame and fortune, anyway.

Pulling up a recent image of him, I give his face the attention it deserves. Having met his father, I can only guess that he favors his mother. He looks wild. Untamed. Hard but undeniably sensuous. The light sprinkling of freckles across his tanned skin give him a softness I doubt he’s earned. As does the golden-red hair with a natural, soft wave. In most of his photographs, including one from last week, it’s shoulder length, either drawn into a ponytail or rioting like a lion’s mane.

Last night, though, it was drastically shorter. Almost completely shaved on the sides with varying lengths up top. It looked like he got drunk and took an electric razor to his head. Though he just as easily could have paid four hundred dollars to be butchered at a salon.

I distinctly remember—and wish I didn’t—the curl of bright hair that fell periodically over his brow. How his elegant fingers swept it back just as often, an automatic gesture speaking to long habit. I remember, too, the dark circles under his eyes. The hollows beneath his cheekbones and the stark line of his jaw.

Gideon Masters is a man on the edge, and it’s now my job to bring him back to safe ground. Here, in the privacy of my own home, I can admit I have no idea how to do that.

Trent doesn’t want me to sacrifice my morals, which would be funny if it weren’t so depressing. If he knew half the shit I’d done and seen in my life, he’d start going to church.

I spent my formative years with an abusive drunk of a mother and a drug-dealer father. While learning how to steal, handle a knife and a gun, and distribute tiny crystals into plastic bags, I cheated and manipulated my way through school. And all that was before I left home at fourteen.

Trent’s respect for me and my so-called morals is merely a reflection of what a good liar I am. And the implication I might be tempted to use sex to get Gideon’s signature on the dotted line just pisses me off.

A woman with loose morals is a whore, while a man with loose morals is a rouge. Fuck that.

I don’t despise Skylar because she sleeps with people to get ahead in life. I couldn’t care less what she does with her vagina. I despise her because she doesn’t have an original thought in her head and almost beat me out for a promotion because her daddy is a big-shot studio executive.

Besides, morality is like God. Everyone sees or believes something different. And no one can truly understand morality unless they’ve walked across those amorphous lines of choice.

Only looking back can you see what you’ve lost.

---