“No.”
“So, you will wait for me? Come to my studio every time I ask you and return every time I don’t get that first piece in motion?”
Silence.
“Mr. Wilder.”
“Edmund. Or Ed. Think about it,” he said, then hung up before she could argue. The woman would probably argue with a dead person if she could, which was fine with him. It meant she had a passion and a good dose of temper, perfect for a bear shifter he wanted to capture in color. She had a good head on her shoulders, too, for not trusting him too swiftly. All that was needed was for her to show up.
He waited the minutes out and noted the hour pass as he tried envisioning her and ended up with some listless charcoal streaks. On his nth crumple of paper, his ears cocked, detecting her arrival before she leaped in and brushed herself off. Alexa came from work, still wearing her apron until he pointed it out. Her cheeks reddened as she snatched it off and folded it.
“Sorry I’m late,” she muttered. “They needed me to do overtime for a last-minute wedding order.”
“You are here now.”
“Yeah.”
Something inside him eased at the sight of her—a woman so different from the world he walked in, but with knowledge of the one part that he kept secret from that world. It erased the sickness of his conflict with his father’s ideas and the disappointment of a failed deal, his mind lasering in on this one success he managed to snag.
“Splendid! We missed a week, so it’s time to—”
“Wait.”
He froze at her request, then at her hands held up. He took in her determined expression, too, watching her work her way into a decision.
“Yes?” he prompted.
“No financial compensation.”
Another surprise.
“Then what do you…?”
“If my painting’s good enough, you sell it at a reasonable price. In Europe. I rake in the profit.”
Yet another punch in the gut, and they kept coming in a manner he liked very much. Edmund reassessed Alexa. Then he showed a thumbs up.
“Good deal.”
Chapter 5
Alexa took her time setting up her canvas and arranging the materials he provided, her hands not as certain as they had once been. It had been years since she’d last picked a brush up, the memory of when she had last painted forming a crystallized picture in her mind: her old, happy and pregnant self, swishing away with no worries in the world and a sureness that her future was secured. That was all eliminated to dust in the blink of an eye…and that was in the past, something she was determined to fence off there. The future was Archie, her brother, and their stability—and this, whatever this deal was transforming into.
She poked her reflections away, then turned to give some instructions. Edmund sat on the same block of chair, an image that had her lips pursing.
“The shirt needs to go.”
A brow lifted. “It does? Why?”
“It’s a standard dress shirt in a standard dark color.” And it fit him like a glove, the black material hugging and covering his body at the same time. The slacks were the same fit, so at ease with his form that they had to be custom-made. “While it’s a good contrast to your complexion, no one wants to see a picture of a businessman when there’s a vampire underneath.”
“If you say so.”
“Find something brighter. Lighter. Nothing stuffy.”
“All right.”
His easy agreement removed some of the nerves thrumming in her veins, deducing that perhaps this would be a piece of cake. A sketch, a piece done, and boom…six pieces finished, and the deal closed. Her hand closed over a new paintbrush, testing it in her fingers.