Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
N o boilerplate contract would do for this commission. Adrian and Saskia had gone over the details, and two days later, on Wednesday morning, they gathered in Adrian’s office. Saskia, the supposed assistant, Clay, who was seated at the desk opposite Adrian, and Gareth Tate.
Adrian had sent a copy to both of them, and Clay and Gareth would have had a long conversation about the terms.
Sitting on the sofa, Saskia tried not to chew nervously on a thumbnail while she waited to hear what Clay had to say.
Adrian spoke formally. “We’ve detailed how your expectations will be handled.”
Clay looked first at Adrian, then at Saskia, and he chuckled softly. “According to this, I’d better not have a lot of expectations.”
Adrian raised an eyebrow. “I told you how San Holo works. So did Saskia. You agree to give him free rein within your guidelines.”
Clay laughed again, the same good-natured laugh he used with Dylan or any number of artists in his warehouse. “It seems I’m allowed a few guidelines,” he drawled, then looked directly at Saskia. “Saskia has practically guaranteed I won’t be disappointed.”
Before Saskia could say anything, Adrian shot back, “Very few of our clients have been. In fact, most were amazed that San Holo gave them what they were looking for, even if they didn’t know exactly what that was.”
Gareth stood against the wall next to the water cooler, arms folded, probably wondering what the hell Clay had gotten himself into. Adrian turned to him. “I’m sure you’ve looked for flaws in the contract. But you won’t find them.”
He smiled, saying in a deep but warm voice, “All I do is warn Clay. He signs what he wants.”
That described Clay precisely. He would listen to his lawyer, but he would do what he wanted. Though she’d known him only a week, Saskia understood that about him.
“Of course,” Adrian said, “the contract also stipulates that you will protect San Holo’s identity with tents around the scaffolding and security keeping people away.” She pointed at Clay. “No one gets past security. Not even you.”
Clay closed his eyes, his lips stretched in a grin.
Until, again, he glanced at Saskia. She’d been quiet during the meeting, afraid she’d beg him to sign the contract.
He’d been elated when Adrian called to tell him San Holo had accepted the commission.
The sum was extraordinary, more than she’d been paid for any mural to date.
Then again, it was an entire building, not just one wall.
Before she even started to paint, she’d have to make hundreds of sketches, testing ideas and throwing many out before she decided on the final.
But had she persuaded him to stop trying to uncover San Holo’s identity?
Feeling his cheeky smile deep down inside her, igniting all her nerve endings the way his touch did, she knew he hadn’t given up.
He’d keep at her as long as she allowed him to.
He wasn’t above letting Dylan do his dirty work either, telling her how badly he wanted to meet his idol.
What would he think if he knew his hero was actually a heroine?
“I’m ready to sign,” Clay said. After a flourish of his pen, he rose and held out his hand to Saskia. “Why don’t we get some lunch and let the two lawyers hammer out the rest of the details?”
Saskia had her lovely Victorian in the Haight for which she’d paid cash, and she did what she wanted, ate where she wanted, flew off for two- or three-day trips to foreign locales where she could do her street art, and booked a first-class ticket if she wanted.
But this commission? It put her on a whole different plane, no pun intended.
She stood and took his hand, the touch shooting heat through her. “That would be lovely.” Then she added, “But I need to get together with San this afternoon and go over more details.” She had to start working on her sketches.
That could become a future problem. Clay would wonder why she wasn’t spending every night with him as she had over the past week. But nights were when she did her best work. And she certainly couldn’t do that work in front of Clay.
She’d have to make excuses. Or change her habits and work during the day.
Nights making sketches? Or nights in Clay’s bed?
There really wasn’t a choice.
The door closed behind Saskia and the client. The new boyfriend.
It was an exceptionally lucrative contract. Adrian hadn’t tried to push Saskia into it. Her friend had to make up her own mind. But Adrian knew in her heart that this would be as much a game-changer as that very first mural bearing the fleur-de-lis had been.
She turned to Gareth as he said, “Since Clay has already signed, there’s really no further details to work out.”
She smiled at him. “I wasn’t talking about those details.”
He pulled out the chair Clay had been sitting in and faced her.
The man was definitely a good-looking bloke.
Tall, oh yes, she’d seen that as he leaned against the wall.
He had beautiful muscles, sculpted from hard workouts.
She would love to give them a squeeze. He wore his auburn hair short, the way she liked it, and his jaw clean-shaven, also the way she liked it.
Although a little scruff on his chin after five o’clock would be delightful.
And those eyes, the color of her first cup of coffee in the morning and the piece of dark chocolate she allowed herself in the evening.
She held in a dreamy sigh. Because this man might become something more than just a handsome man whose muscles she’d like to squeeze.
“Saskia told me you’re a painter. She was quite impressed with your art.”
The fine lines of his face seemed to harden a moment, though she had no idea why. So she added, “I’d love to see your work.”
“Saskia might’ve exaggerated,” he drawled.
“Why don’t you let me decide?”
He took out his mobile phone, scrolled, tapped, then handed it to her.
How she wished she had these up on her big monitor.
The first was an amazing self-portrait, the one Saskia had told her about.
It was all the Impressionists rolled into one, and yet, it was uniquely this man’s.
Even without seeing it in the flesh, so to speak, she felt the emotion brimming in every line, every swirl of paint, every blotch of color.
It was brilliant. There was no other word for it.
She asked politely, “May I look at the rest?”
He gave her a simple, “Yes.”
There were paintings of Harvard University, rowers on the river, one of Clay, seascapes, cityscapes. And people. He was exceptionally good with people’s faces, showing their emotions with just a few strokes.
She couldn’t help herself. “Why are you hiding all this on your mobile? You should be selling it.”
He shrugged, the move so eloquent that it told her all the reasons why. “I realized back in university that I would make a better lawyer than an artist.”
She snorted, not caring how inelegant it sounded. “Balderdash.” An archaic word, but better than bollocks .
“There were several critics who disagreed with you.”
His gaze fastened on her lips as she licked them. “So you did put your work out there. And what? Someone told you it was rubbish?” It was blunt, but she always spoke bluntly.
“I was royally trashed,” he admitted.
She felt his pain. Being Clay’s age, in his early thirties, whatever happened had gone down ten years ago. Wounds that immense took years to heal. Saskia still hadn’t healed from hers.
“So you reinvented yourself as a lawyer,” she said, rather than using the British term solicitor .
He merely nodded.
Leaning back in her chair, she toyed with a pen. “I had to reinvent myself too. I came to the States and decided to become an agent. I still use my law qualification, which helps me stand out from other agents.”
Holding her gaze, he said, “You certainly stand out.”
Adrian wasn’t sure if that was a compliment, but she decided to take it as such. “Thank you.”
Then he asked the inevitable question. “How long have you been representing San Holo?”
About to say, We go back a long way , she realized that would give him too much information. Yet that was how comfortable she felt with him. Comfortable enough to almost make a slip. “I’m afraid I can’t address that. How long have you known Clay?”
“From our university days. Clay has been a great help to me.”
She eyed him from beneath her lashes. “But you’re a lawyer instead of an artist, so how exactly did he help you?”
He looked past her to the magnificent view of the bay. “Clay saved me from despair.”
Her heart ached for him as it had for Saskia, but she pressed on. “Over your art?”
He nodded. “That’s what Clay does for the people he brings into his warehouses. Many of them are hanging on by their fingernails.” He didn’t seem to mind the cliché. “He pulls us all out of the gutter.”
She said softly, “But you weren’t in the gutter if you were attending Harvard.”
“Sometimes the gutter is metaphorical.”
She heard in his tone that he loved Clay the way a man loved his best friend, the way two men bonded.
“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.
It was the worst thing that could have happened.
It was like Gareth.
And Gareth had never painted again.