Page 93 of For the Love of Art

“You know where to find me.”

He winked and then answered his phone as I left his office.

“Enjoy your painting.” I handed a woman her wrapped canvas.

She offered me a quick thank you before leaving.

I smiled as I looked around the gallery. Victoria’s paintings were slowly starting to leave after her wildly successful opening. New York’s elite loved her, and it was well-deserved love. Just like an author pours their soul into novels, so much so that you can see pieces of them in the writing, the same was easily said for Victoria’s art. Her soul hung on these walls, and little pieces of her were in each paint brush stroke.

“Another successful day,” Dori said.

“It was,” I agreed.

“If you don’t need me for anything else, I–” Her cheeks flushed as she looked past me.

I turned to look behind me, where I saw Andrew, the man Lianne had been talking to and was waiting to hear from, standing just inside the door.

“Is that your… dad?” I asked, despite knowing that even though Dori was in her early twenties, Andrew was around my age. Logically, that meant Andrew would have had Dori when he was a teenager making the likelihood… zero. Maybe point zero one if I was lucky.

Dori laughed at my question. “No, he’s my boyfriend.”

Shit. Dori said exactly what I didn’t want her to say.

“Oh. How lovely.”

Dori shrugged. “It’s pretty new. He came in maybe two weeks after the opening to pick up something he had bought, and we just couldn’t stop talking. We decided to go out for dinner that night and then–” She blushed, and I knew they had slept together.

I thought back to what Lianne had told me about her date with him– about how he never slept with a woman on the first date. Considering what Dori just told me, it felt like a lie he had concocted because he wasn’t interested in anything more with Lianne and was too much of a chicken shit to tell her.

“Anyway, I better go. Have a good evening.”

“Yeah, you too,” I replied absently.

Dori skipped to Andrew and pressed a kiss to his lips before allowing him to wrap an arm around her. As they walked to the door, he looked over his shoulder at me. In our split second assessment of each other, we both knew what the other was thinking.

“Dori gone for the night?”

I turned to see Nathan striding toward me.

“Yes.”

Nathan’s eyes glimmered. He scooped me into his arms and planted a firm kiss on my lips. I melted into him. I could feel the desperation in his kiss– his desire to erase this morning.

Nathan pressed his forehead to mine. “Any chance you’re thinking about sex in my office still?”

I giggled. “Actually, I’m thinking about how hungry I am. I missed lunch.”

Nathan breathed in deeply. “Do you want to go out for dinner?”

I remembered the magazine Lianne had shown me that morning.

“Can we do something a little more low-key?”

“Low-key?”

“I don’t want my picture taken… again. If I can avoid it.” My cheeks stung with my blush.

Nathan nodded slowly. “Ah. I see. They’ve caught on.”