11. Emma #2
Last night, he walked away like touching me was something he regretted. This morning, the way he looked at me made me wonder if walking away was what he regretted instead. I’m not sure which possibility hurts more.
The drive to brunch passes in a silence thick enough to touch.
I push last night out of my mind and turn to the window instead.
It is my first time in New York, and the city gives me plenty to look at, buildings rising so high I have to crane my neck to see the tops, yellow cabs packed bumper to bumper, people spilling across intersections the second the light changes, storefronts and signs passing faster than I can take them in.
For once, I am grateful for the distraction.
Alex drives with both hands on the wheel, showered and composed, every inch the billionaire again. There is no sign of the man who stood behind me this morning with trembling fingers against my neck.
At a red light, his gaze drops to my collar and flicks away before I can decide whether I imagined it.
The bruise beneath my blouse throbs, dragging last night back with it—his hand locked around my hip, his mouth on my skin, the hard press of him between my thighs.
I turn toward the window and keep my eyes there. Neither of us speaks again.
When he pulls to the curb, he glances toward the restaurant entrance.
“I’ll send the car when you’re finished.”
“I can call a cab.”
“I’ll send the car.”
I open the door before the order becomes an argument.
Sofia is already seated by the window in black sunglasses and red lipstick, looking remarkably put together for someone who, judging by the texts she sent while I was on the way over, spent most of the morning convinced she was dying.
“Do not shout. Do not clink anything. I’m brittle.”
“You look glamorous.”
“I threw up in a hotel ice bucket. So many times Em, I think I met a few of my ancestors.” She removes the sunglasses, squints at the light, and puts them back on.
“You do not look like it, so, win?”
“That’s because I chose lipstick instead of admitting defeat.”
“You told me alcohol was poison.”
“It is.”
“Yet you kept drinking it.”
“That was before the research concluded.”
A server approaches with warm biscuits. Sofia reaches for one before the basket fully touches the table.
The restaurant smells of browned butter and espresso. Silverware clicks against china, conversations rising and falling around us beneath the low hum of music.
Sofia splits the biscuit and packs butter into the steaming center.
“You have always loved food more than most people.”
“Food has never asked me to do anything but eat.”
She takes an enormous bite and closes her eyes.
“God.”
I slide the jam toward her.
Her eyes open.
“You do love me.”
“I prefer that you stay alive and stay far away form any ancestors.”
“My stomach has been growling since I woke up.”
“That was your stomach? I assumed there was construction outside.”
She points the butter knife at me.
“Be kind. I am medically fragile.”
She takes another bite, then lowers her sunglasses halfway down her nose. Looks at my neck. Pushes them back up.
“So.”
I lift my coffee.
“So?”
“When did you start sleeping with your boss-slash-ex?”
Coffee goes down the wrong pipe. I cough into my napkin.
“I’m not sleeping with him.”
Sofia looks at my blouse.
Then at me.
Then back at my blouse.
“Did your body get that memo, or are you both in denial? Because whoever did your concealer this morning should be fired, and I say that with love.”
“It’s complicated and it’s nothing.” I reach for my water.
“Those are opposites.” She lets it sit for exactly one breath, then waves a hand. “Fine. Withdrawn. For now.”
I reach for the only weapon available. “What is happening with you and Danny?” I ask, because offense beats defense.
Her biscuit stops halfway to her mouth.
“Excellent counterattack.”
“You arrived with him last night. He called you baby and hand spent half the gala attached to your waist.”
“Because Preston was being an ass.”
“He kissed your head.”
“I considered homicide.”
“You went home with him.”
“I went back to the hotel, Emma. There were separate rooms.”
“Uh-huh.”
Her eyes narrow.
“He hired me to fix his house. That is the entire scandal, tragically. And his house is depressing.”
“That is your professional diagnosis?”
“It looks like a very expensive tax deduction occupied by a robot. Beautiful furniture. No life. No warmth. Nothing that suggests an actual person takes his shoes off there.”
“So he hired you as an interior designer?”
“Not exactly. More like, make it look inhabited by a human being.”
She sighs. “And that turned into him showing me his art projects, charity programmes, development plans, and eventually deciding I should become some kind of Pinehaven liaison.”
“So the house was the opening move.”
“I think he likes having excuses to summon me.”
There is a beat of silence, then Sofia frowns.
“No, actually, he likes ordering people around. That is different.”
I hide my smile behind the coffee cup.
“He wants me to help him deal with the town because he has finally realized marching into Pinehaven with billionaire money and announcing plans is not the best way to make friends.”
“That is progress.”
“He still wants to run roughshod over everything.”
“You agreed to help him?”
“I agreed to gather intelligence.”
“Of course.”
“I am protecting my town.”
“Right.”
“It was strategic.”
I laugh.
Sofia gives me a wounded look, then reaches for another biscuit.
“Oh, speaking of art.” She spreads jam on it. “Do you know Danny is completely insane about your paintings? It is the only good thing about his lifeless house.”
My cup stops halfway to my mouth. “You mean painting?”
“No plural. All of them, yours.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The older ones in his house.”
I slowly lower the coffee. Sofia keeps going, unaware that the floor beneath me has shifted.
“He has an absurd collection. His office, private hallway, outside his bedroom, another room where half of them are stored properly because paintings also get better housing than normal people. A fact I am not mad about.”
My fingers tighten around the cup. “What do they look like?”
She gives me a strange look.
“Like yours.”
“Sofia.”
“I’m serious. The brushwork. The way you leave light along the edges of things. The scraping around windows. The underpainting you let show through in places where anyone else would cover it.”
She points her biscuit at me.
“I know your hand, Em.”
My mouth goes dry.
“What initials are on them?”
“B.M.”
Everything inside me goes still.
Sofia watches my face.
“I knew it.”
“What?”
“That means something.”
I say nothing.
She considers me for a moment, then sets the biscuit down.
“I’m not going to ask what B.M. is.”
My gaze snaps to hers.
“Or what it stands for,” she adds. “If you haven’t told me, there’s a reason. You’ll tell me when you want me to know.”
Relief hits so hard that I almost close my eyes.
“Thank you.”
“I’m nosy, not suicidal. There’s a difference.”
A laugh catches in my throat.
“Anyway, this explains the gallery mess.”
“What gallery mess?”
“The anonymous piece.”
My stomach tightens.
Sofia had been the one trying to sell it.
One of the few newer paintings I allowed out of my hands after I started painting again. No name. No initials. Nothing that could lead anyone back to Emma Clarke or the woman she used to be. Sofia had insisted the work deserved a gallery. I had let her try.
Then the payment never came. Sofia had been furious enough for both of us.
She leans across the table now, warming to her theory.
“Think about it. Danny has spent years collecting B.M. paintings. Then I bring a completely anonymous piece into a gallery, and whoever handles the Hartley acquisition sees it and probably thinks someone is copying the artist Danny has been buying for years.”
I remain very still.
“That’s why they refused payment,” she continues. “Called the work derivative. I thought they were being pretentious assholes, which they were, but now it makes sense.”
It doesn’t, at least not in the way she thinks. Danny knows exactly who painted that newer canvas now, and he is still withholding the money. I let Sofia believe what she wants. She sees fraud where Danny made the choice to hurt me, and I’m not ready to explain the difference.
“They probably assumed some unknown artist was mimicking B.M.,” she says. “Same brushwork, same light, same habits, but no signature. Then Danny ends up in Pinehaven, meets you and suddenly realizes the anonymous artist and whoever B.M. is you.”
My thumb runs along the rim of my cup. “How many does he have?” I ask.
“You barely paint anymore. At least not enough for there to be hundreds floating around. And he has a ridiculous number.”
My mind fills with canvases drying in the studio Alex built for me. Paintings stacked against walls, propped along shelves, finished pieces I sold or gave away without imagining where they might end up.
B.M.
I signed without fear then. There was nothing dangerous about my own name. I never imagined I would one day have to bury it.
“How many are hanging?”
“A lot. But the weird part isn’t the number.” Sofia tears the biscuit in half. “It’s where he keeps them. He doesn’t hang them in the grand rooms where rich people show off expensive things. They’re in his office. His private hallway. Places guests barely see.”
I swallow against the sudden pressure in my throat.
“He looks at them every day,” she says. “Whatever Danny thinks about the artist, he doesn’t hate the work.”
Danny. The sixteen-year-old boy who used to stand in my studio pretending he was only there because Alex dragged him along. The boy who once stared at one of my unfinished skies for ten straight minutes and then became embarrassed when I noticed.
I never knew.
“Em?”
I blink.
“You went somewhere.”
“Low blood sugar.”
Sofia looks at the table loaded with bread. “Bold lie.”
“Keep going. You have a thesis.”
“I have a rant. Related genre.”
I almost smile.
She leans back.