Page 15 of Tears of Ink

Like, if I didn’t want to be there in The Ritz talking to him, then he really and truly didn’t want to be there either.

Maybe he didn’t like my outfit. Maybe he just didn’t like me. Maybe he wanted to be off shagging someone and I was an inconvenience.

Maybe.

I thought I might have heard from the baroness herself. Perhaps an apology for standing me up and leaving her arsehole son in charge. But I haven’t.

So, tonight I’m going to look for a bar job. I can’t leave it any longer, and obviously the summer installation has fallen through.

My phone beeps and I can see Abi’s face, but my mood is black—dangerous.

The phone rings off and I crank on the shower to clean up. Before I climb in, I flick through the small wardrobe I keep at the studio as the water runs through warm.

With a decision of black harem trousers, a black skinny vest, and a leather jacket, I choose my outfit for my mood. With no blue in sight.

The shower does little to settle me down, so after I’ve dried off, I fling on my clothes and tip my head upside down and scrape my fingers along the damp strands of hair, dragging them into a high ponytail which I twist and secure with pins.

My phone rings again but I ignore it. People should know by now if I don’t answer the first time, the chances of me picking up from that point on dramatically decrease.

I grab my purse and keys and open the door. It’s time to get drunk, find a job and hopefully find some indiscriminate screw who can help me forget the colour blue.

“What the actual fuck?” I curse as I swing into a hard chest the other side of the studio door.

“Miss Hitchin?”

God, no! It’s the gem deep eyes of loserville.

“Fairclough.” I snap. “What are you doing here? My eyes, they won’t stop or behave themselves and they rove all over his chest, over the muscles straining against the tight stretch of his T-shirt. He’s wearing dark jeans and sliders. The short hair and casual combo give him a rugged edge that’s kind of hard to stop staring at. Two days ago, he was suave and icy. Today, he’s beach bum, rough and ready chic.

“I thought you might need this.” He lifts the black book containing every documented precious item I’ve ever produced and holds it out. I grasp its edges. That baby is mine, and it needs to come home. He holds onto the spine though, and I stare up into his face. When I meet his gaze, my tummy tightens. No, Faith, that is not an indiscriminate screw. “Also, we got off to a truly awful start, and I was hoping we could try again,” he says.

I glare at him, but he spreads the most charming smile across his handsome face. And crap if it isn’t the most handsome face I’ve ever seen. Sharp cheekbones and soft lips—and those eyes. “Totally my bad.” He steps back from the door and lets go of my book. “I can leave if you think my failed attempts at interviewing are past redemption.”

My lips twitch with an annoying urge to smile. “The single worst interviewing skills I’ve ever come across,” I reply.

He nods sagely, the little dimple on his right cheek growing. “It’s as I thought. I suck.”

“So much so I’m about to go searching for bar work.” My eyes narrow as I scrutinise him. He could not be more different than the man I met in The Ritz. I’m wondering if he’s a twin, and this is some weird sibling game called “let’s fuck with the girl’s head”.

He holds his hands to his heart, knitting his fingers together like a child begging. “Don’t let me be the one to set you on the path to inhospitable working hours and drunken leering old men.”

“Maybe I like drunken, leering old men.” I smile, just a little.

“Oh, well, in that case we have many of them at Bowsley Hall, you will be inundated.”

“Inundated? Now you’re talking.”

For a moment we stop and stare.

Then he spreads his hands to his side and raises them up. His arm muscles flex—not that I’m noticing. “What do you say, Faith? How about we go for a drink and attempt a half normal conversation?”

“Half normal, are you sure you can manage?”

The left side of his lips quirk into a smirk and he runs a hand through his cropped dark hair. I wonder what that feels like? “I can try.”

An unsure hesitation roots me to my doormat. He is extremely attractive. Staring at his face for a couple of hours wouldn’t be a hardship. But then he does seem to be a complete arse… and there’s the fact I’m desperate for a screw. That wouldn’t be a good idea. Not at all. Terrible. Also, did I mention the fact he is extremely attractive, in a panty-melting, I’m-going-to-smile- that-underwear-straight-off-your-body kind of way?

His eyes sweep behind me into the studio. I could invite him in, show him some of my more successful work. Obviously not the pile of marble dust I’ve created. This way I might still stand a chance at the Bowsley summer job. I don’t though. I don’t even know if I want him seeing inside my studio; it’s strangely intimate.