Chapter 18
Kat
I hadno idea where Himari was taking me, or why she had singled me out, but I figured out the answer to the second question pretty quickly. She wanted to talk to me, alone, about Alex.
Oh, God,I thought as she led me through a doorway and then around a corner, through another doorway. She and Alex have a thing going. That’s why she was giving him the eye earlier. She’s in love with him, and I’m trapped with her in this awkward conversation, and she’s going to tell me to leave him alone so she can have him. She’s going to?—
“This is the second gallery,” Himari said. “You can see why we didn’t put these pieces in the main gallery.”
I gasped and looked around. This room was much smaller than the main gallery, more intimate. There were only four other people in here. They were all staring in silence.
The photos in here were in color.
I considered myself hard to shock, but even I cleared my throat, speechless. There was erotic art, and then there was this. The photo in front of me, blown up to four feet high and in full color, featured the torso of a man standing under a spray of water, his cock glistening where it rested on his thigh. Right at the viewer’s eye level.
“She really has quite a striking eye, doesn’t she?” Himari said.
“Yes,” I said, glancing away from the man’s cock only to have my eyes land on a woman lying on what looked like a large spiderweb, naked, her knee crooked so you could see her vulva. In color. “It, er, makes a statement.”
“It does,” Himari agreed. “One is forced to confront one’s own reactions when we look at these. Shock? Titillation? Anger? How does society want us to feel? How did our parents and families train us to feel? We were all raised with some degree of shame. What if we freed ourselves of shame? Could we feel true happiness?”
I was only half listening to her art lecture. A trickle of sweat had started on my back. I gulped my champagne.
“You see what we do here,” Himari said. “We push boundaries and give artists a voice. We don’t just get the established big names in. We support those who are doing something different.”
I looked at her, not sure where she was going with this. “Okay.”
Her gaze was laser focused on me. “I want to talk to you about Alex.”
My dread came back again. Here it came. “Look, I really need to?—”
“We’ve put a proposal to him to fund renovations to the gallery,” Himari said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “I want you to convince him to do it.”
Now I was completely surprised. “What?”
“There’s another room that is unused right now,” she said. “It’s rough, but if we renovated it we could add a whole new gallery room, which would increase our capacity by twenty-five percent. It also means we could add shows and increase our admission and membership sales. The numbers work out over a period of two years. I’ve given him all of the estimates.”
I stayed quiet. I had so many questions, I didn’t know which one to ask first.
Himari didn’t let me ask any of them. “I know Alex has already given so much. To us, and to a lot of other galleries here in the Arts District. And we all appreciate his philanthropy, we really do. But this renovation is important, and I don’t think I can get it done without his help. It’s also good for business. The Arts District is a destination in Dallas, but it also attracts artists and art lovers from around the country. He loves it here as much as anyone—he’s at one gallery or another almost every week. I’m willing to name the new gallery after him if he agrees to this investment, but I know he’ll never agree.”
I tried to keep up. Alex was an art philanthropist? He was a regular at art galleries? I finally asked the most pertinent question. “Why are you asking me?”
“Because he’s never brought a date to one of these events before. So you must be important to him.”
Important? “We’re divorced.”
Himari smiled. “That doesn’t matter. I’ve been divorced twice myself. If he brought you tonight, divorced or not, you matter. He might listen to you. So, you see, I’ve given you my pitch. I had to give it to you one on one, because Alex has already heard it multiple times.”
A few days ago I’d been a bartender, and now this woman thought I could get her millions of dollars for her art gallery. I couldn’t help it—I laughed.
Himari’s eyebrows went up, and I realized I was on the verge of offending her. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought you brought me in here alone because you’re sleeping with him.”
“With Alex?” Her eyebrows climbed even higher, if that was possible. “Oh, hell, no. I’ve tried, of course. So has every woman who works in this gallery and several of the men. None of us have succeeded. He’s the most mysterious man in Dallas—rich and gorgeous, but determined to stay under the radar. He never makes the gossip columns or the society pages. He comes here all the time for the art and never talks about himself. We didn’t even know he was divorced. That’s why you’re such a big deal.”
“I’m a big deal?”
Himari nodded. “One I couldn’t pass up. So what do you say? Will you talk to him?”
Now that I knew what she was all about, I relaxed. “I give you points for spine,” I said. “That was a good pitch.”
“Thank you. I’ll—” She stopped and looked past me. “Looks like I’m out of time. Here he comes.”