Page 45 of Painted in Love

“Do you think you’d mind,” she said, as if she were musing, “if I sold your work for you?”

“Don’t you mean try to sell it?”

She caressed the photo on the mobile’s screen. “Your work will sell itself. All I have to do is get it shown.”

He barked a laugh. “That’s not what people thought ten years ago.”

“Obviously, none of them had a decent brain cell to work with.” She stared him down for a long moment. The muscles of his face tensed as if he were grinding his teeth. “Please. Allow me to represent you. I can make us both a lot of money.”

“I make a lot already,” he shot back.

She didn’t give up. “But I can make you a lot more doing what you love.”

He swallowed, and she watched his Adam’s apple bob. There was something about his body’s tension that said he wanted to jump out of his seat and punch the air. Maybe he’d been waiting ten years for someone to tell him this. Maybe he hadn’t been able to listen to Clay because Clay was his best friend.

She was an agent. So he believed her.

“Shall I draw up a contract?” she asked. “Or will you?”

The past week of Clay’s life had been incredible. Filled with seven days and eight nights of passionate lovemaking the likes of which he’d never known.

He was counting the days because he was afraid it would end. Even if he believed Saskia loved all they did together. He could make her come for a minute. And more than once. Over and over. He’d never been like this with any other woman, and he was afraid he never would be again.

This was special. She was special.

But they still lived their lives. Saskia did her thing during the day. In fact, yesterday, after signing the contract, she’d been off assistanting the entire afternoon, coming to his apartment only after eight that night. She’d looked drawn, as if she hadn’t eaten all day, and he’d fed her immediately.

She’d been with San Holo, who’d probably grilled her for every detail. Clay had signed the contract, agreed to anonymity, but he would keep working on Saskia to get her to talk San Holo into meeting Dylan.

Now, as they ate a late breakfast in the kitchen, they discussed the practicalities of how he would guarantee San’s anonymity, such as a movable tent that could be rolled around the building.

Before a bite of eggs, Clay said, “If you let me meet the man, there’d be no need for all this secrecy.”

She laughed and poked him in the chest. “What about all the other people walking around San Francisco? We’d still need a tent to keep everyone out. And security.”

He had yet to let Dylan know the commission was a reality. The kid hadn’t even come to his studio yesterday. But Clay would still tell Dylan that somehow, some way, he would arrange a meet between the great man and the up-and-coming street artist. He’d never even considered that he’d have to back down.

Even as they ate scrambled eggs on toast—the way Saskia liked them and he was beginning to like them too—he had a brilliant idea. “I know how we can do it.”

She waited for his brainchild.

“I don’t have to meet the man. Because it’s about Dylan. You can talk him into meeting with only Dylan. We’d find a completely private place where they can talk for hours. Then San Holo melts away again without Dylan ever knowing his real name.”

She immediately shut him down. “No way. Even if I could get San to agree, there’d be a leak. Someone would find out.”

He wanted to smack his fist into his palm. It was a brilliant idea. But he smiled instead. He’d keep working on her, and eventually Dylan would worm his way into her heart, and she’d get San Holo to agree.

A clamor started downstairs, the noise carrying through the thick walls of his apartment. They’d both risen to their feet when footsteps hammered on the stairs. His gut wrenched as he imagined vandalism or, worse, one of the artists needing an ambulance.

He opened the door just as Otto raised a fist to pound on it, barely missing Clay’s face.

“You must get down there,” Otto said in his accented English. “It is Dylan. The scum of the earth have spray-painted hateful things all over Dylan’s wall, saying it is total crap. Things like, ‘Who does this guy think he is? What the hell is this, we can’t even tell.’”

The man’s face crumpled in on itself with the pain of Dylan’s trashing. Because every artist in his warehouse had been there. They all knew.

A tear opened up in Clay’s heart.

He didn’t even ask what wall. He knew. He’d encouraged Dylan to put his precious art out there, and Dylan had finally done it. Only to have it trashed.

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