Chapter 17
Kat
The party wasat a small but expensive gallery in Dallas’s downtown Arts District. The building was a modern cube with narrow windows. The signs over the door announced a new collection by a hot local artist. There were expensive driver-driven BMW’s and Lexuses pulling up to the door, their lights gleaming in the darkness.
My mother and stepfather had gone to a hundred parties like this. Even as a teenager, I’d gone to some myself, as had Tyler. We’d learned early how to dress up and behave in company. By the time I was eighteen I’d owned five cocktail dresses and a dozen pairs of high heels. Even though it was a life that a lot of people longed for, teenaged me had wanted nothing more than to rebel.
And when rebellion had presented itself in the form of Alex Blake, I’d jumped at it. At him.
I’d thought I’d walked away from that life forever, but tonight I found myself looking forward to this party. While Alex had gone into his office during the day, I’d taken his car and hired driver and gone shopping for a dress to wear. I knew a lot of the old biddies and artsy types at this party would be wearing expensive, conservative high couture, so I’d looked for just the right sexy piece.
I’d ended up with a perfect little black dress: the hem just above the knee, the sleeves long to cover the bruises on my arm, and a neckline that plunged into such a deep vee that I couldn’t wear a bra underneath it. I accessorized with understated jewelry, understated makeup, and black Louboutins.
The low cut of the dress was almost trashy, but the designer label and the high price tag meant that no one would complain. I covered it with a black wool coat because the weather was what Texans laughably called “cold.” Anyone from Chicago would be amused.
As for my hair, I left it down, long and dark on my back. If these people didn’t like the sight of a woman who was one-quarter Cherokee, they could die mad about it.
Alex approved of the look. He went still, his eyes dark, when he saw me. He was quiet for a minute, taking me in as we stood in the kitchen, waiting to go downstairs to his driver.
“You look…very nice,” he finally said, his voice low.
I smiled. Alex had never been a master at poetic speaking. “You look very nice yourself.”
And God, did he ever. He was wearing a black suit and tie with a white shirt—almost a tuxedo, but not quite. He should have looked like a waiter or a Mafia boss, but he didn’t look like either of those things. He looked like a gorgeous man in an expensive suit, and what made it even sexier was that I knew the arms inside the sleeves were inked with tattoos. The stuffy people at the art gallery wouldn’t know that, but I would.
I also knew what Alex looked like naked, but if I wanted to keep my cool, I wasn’t going to think about that right now.
“Please tell me I paid for that outfit,” Alex said.
I put a hand on my hip. We’d argued about me taking Alex’s money, but since he’d been naked during that argument, I had somehow lost by turning to spineless goo. “You paid for it. I plan to pay you back.”
“If you want to.” He shrugged. “I don’t care. I’ve got nothing else to spend my money on.”
“Does my face look all right?”
I had put makeup on my bruises. They were fading now, and I thought the makeup hid them.
Alex looked more closely at me. “It looks fine. And your hair hides your ear.”
“Good.” It was part of the reason I’d worn my hair down. That, and to piss people off. With the long-sleeved dress, the only visible sign of my attack was the splint on my two fingers. I’d gone to a clinic today and had a smaller splint put on, so even though my fingers were still splinted, it looked subtle. I held up my hand to Alex. “If anyone asks, by the way, I slammed my hand in a car door.”
Now we were pulling up to the gallery. Alex got out and opened the door for me, holding his hand out so I could get my balance on my heels. “Why did you accept this particular invitation?” I asked him as we approached the doors. “Is there artwork that you like in this gallery?”
He opened his mouth to reply, but we were interrupted by a woman walking toward Alex, both of her hands out to grasp his in greeting. “Mr. Blake! What a delightful surprise that you decided to come!”
She was around forty, Asian, wearing a white floor-length dress, her hair tied up in an elaborate updo. Stylish rings glimmered on her fingers, and a necklace with a large single stone sat at her throat. She was stunning.
“Himari,” Alex said, taking both of her hands in his. “Thank you for inviting me. You look very nice.”
I smiled to myself. Apparently You look very nice was Alex’s highest compliment.
“So dashing,” Himari said, air-kissing Alex on the cheek. “I love any excuse to get you into a suit instead of the jeans you usually wear when you come here.”
Alex touched the small of my back so I stepped forward. “Himari, this is my ex-wife, Kat Sloane.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, without a rambling explanation. As if people took their exes to these functions all the time. It was the sign of someone who truly didn’t give a fuck what other people thought about him, a man who was so confident he would let people think what they wanted without it crossing his mind to please them. This was the man he’d become, I realized. And I liked it.
If Himari thought it was odd, she didn’t let on. She air-kissed my cheek, then looked me up and down frankly as I unbuttoned my coat. “You divorced this gorgeous woman?”
“It wasn’t my smartest move, I admit.” Alex took my coat and handed it to someone casually, as if he hadn’t just redefined our relationship with one sentence. Since when had Alex thought our divorce was a mistake? Hadn’t he thought for years that he was glad to be rid of me?
Himari didn’t notice my confusion. She had moved on to the next person she needed to greet, her smile gracious, but I noticed her gaze flicker back to Alex once, and then again. He interested her. I wondered why.
Alex led me into the main gallery, a large, modern cube with stark, white walls. In the middle of the room was a table with food—the promised canapés—and glasses of champagne. There were maybe two dozen people here, all of them as posh as I expected, but it wasn’t the people or the food I was looking at. It was the photographs mounted on the white walls.
I hadn’t recognized the artist’s name on tonight’s collection, so I hadn’t realized she was a photographer. And I hadn’t realized, more specifically, that she was an erotic photographer.
The photos were in black and white, and all were of the human form, male and female. Some were single bodies, some were several together. People were twisted together like strands of a rope. Hands grasped. Knees were bent. Long, tangled, sweaty hair fell over swaths of skin, a landscape of perfect muscle. Some of the skin was dark black, some of it white. Men and men. Women and women. Every other combination invented by Mother Nature. All of it on display, without apology and without shame.
It was beautiful. It was also hot, but at first, I was simply consumed by the technical mastery and artistry of the pictures. Everything fell away as I circled the room, looking at one work of art after another. In my head I thought of lights and lenses and digital processes, speculating at all the ways this photographer had produced so much with only a naked body (or two, or three) and a black backdrop. How every photo seemed to tie into the others and tell some kind of story if you were willing to see it. How the pictures were about sex and pleasure, and yet they were about so much more than that, too.
I had no idea how long I stared at the pictures, oblivious to everything around me. Eventually I looked down and realized that I had a glass of champagne in my hand and I’d drunk half of it. Alex was standing patiently at my shoulder, looking at the photo on the wall in front of us. He’d handed me a drink and followed me around the room, letting me indulge my obsession.
“Don’t say anything,” he said. “I’m trying to guess what you’re thinking.”
Slowly, the sounds of quiet conversations around us, the gentle clink of glassware, came back into my consciousness. I took a deep sip of champagne to hide the effect all of this was having on me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been to a photography exhibit—it had been years. “Do you have a guess?”
“You wish you were doing photography again.”
He had to hit the nail right on the head, didn’t he? I looked back at the photo in front of us—a woman from behind, standing with her legs spread, a man’s hands emerging from between her thighs to grasp her skin—and drained my glass.
“You used to love it,” Alex said, his voice a rumble over my shoulder. “Why did you give it up?”
“Is that why you brought me here? To ask me about my old hobby?”
“It was never a hobby, and you know it. You loved photography more than anything. You wanted to do it for a living. Don’t lie to me, Kat.”
Of course he knew. He knew the worst of me. I suddenly wished for the near-anonymous acquaintances I’d had at the series of bars I’d worked at over the years, none of whom knew that I’d once felt passionate about something, wished for something. Wanted something and realized I’d never have it.
“You sold your camera,” Alex continued, because he loved to torture me. “You put all of your photos on a drive and put the drive in a closet. You used to drag me all over the place, looking to take pictures every spare hour you had. You made me drive you places at dawn for the early light and at dusk for the magic hour. You were crazy about it. So tell me: Why did you stop?”
I stared at the photo. The man’s body was shrouded in shadow, and I couldn’t quite make out how he was posed. I wondered if he had his mouth pressed between the woman’s legs. The thought made a shiver of pleasure move down my spine.
“The camera was expensive and I needed the money,” I answered Alex.
“That’s bullshit.”
“No, it isn’t. Do you remember what it’s like to live without money, Alex? I do. It’s how I was living until a few days ago.”
His voice was a low growl, because I’d finally succeeded in pissing him off. “Yes, I fucking remember what it’s like to live without money. All of this—my entire life—it’s meaningless. It’s for show.”
I made a scoffing sound. “You have everything.”
“Do I? That trip to Hawaii—the one you interrupted—was the first vacation I’ve ever taken.”
I turned and stared at him. He was beautiful in a suit, so beautiful, but after looking at these photos, all I could think was that I’d rather have him naked in the bathtub again. “What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. I’m thirty-five and I’ve never gone anywhere.”
“No trips to Paris? No part-time villa in Italy?”
He looked grimly amused. “I fly to Chicago for meetings. Sometimes, for variety, I fly to New York or L.A. for meetings. That’s it.”
Well, shit. I’d ruined his first vacation ever by nearly getting killed. I hadn’t taken any vacations either, but that was because I didn’t have any money.
If I’d stayed with my family, if I’d forgiven Tyler like they wanted me to, I would have had plenty of money for vacations.
I didn’t regret my decision. Still, I was the same age as Alex, and the most exotic place I’d ever been was the tiki bar I’d worked at in Florida, making overpriced margaritas with a plastic lei around my neck for six awful months.
“I gave up photography because I’m terrible at it,” I said, the truth stumbling out of my mouth before I could stop it.
Alex looked surprised. “What are you talking about? You were good. Even I knew that, and I’m a dunce about art.”
I shook my head. “I could master the technical things. That wasn’t the problem. But real photography isn’t about the technical things. It’s about everything else. And it was everything else that I couldn’t master.”
“Everything else like what?”
“This.” I gestured to the photo on the wall. Just looking at it made my skin heat and my pussy throb and my brain turn over questions. “I can’t do this,” I said, gesturing clumsily as words failed me.
“It’s brilliant, isn’t it?”
I turned to see Himari standing at my shoulder. She smiled at me.
“Kat,” she said with effortless elegance, ignoring Alex, “you haven’t seen the secondary gallery yet. I’m going to rectify that right away.” She took my empty glass from my hand, put it down, and took two glasses from the tray of a passing waiter. “Follow me.”