Page 39 of Ruthless Enforcer

"Name it."

"Stopping the war didn't stop the clock.” She takes a deep breath. “My show opens in Bozeman in two weeks. I am not abandoning the exhibition."

I let out a quiet, exasperated breath. "You are not going back to Bozeman or Helena or anywhere, Clara. The gallery is an exposed target since you’re tied to it.”

“I’m not,” she says, stepping forward. “No one knows I paint except Uncle James, and even then, I sell my paintings under a pseudonym. Not even the gallery owner knows I’m Clara Whitlock. I use a pseudonym, with every contract running through an anonymous corporation.”

The benefits of having a mogul guardian. I arch my brow. “That’s a lot of subterfuge.”

She shrugs. “I didn’t want to trade my uncle’s name for success. What good is it if you didn’t earn it yourself?”

I’m learning something new about my wife all the time. “It doesn’t matter what name you use. Turner’s operatives probably have eyes on anywhere you’re known to frequent, waiting to see if you show up."

She stares at me for a long moment. Finally, she nods. "I know."

"Then you understand why you're staying put."

"I understand I'm not going to Helena," she replies, her voice cool, steady, and infuriatingly composed.

She turns on her heel and walks toward the living room windows, leaving me standing by the fire, acutely aware that laying down the rules is one thing—and enforcing them against Clara Whitlock is an entirely different kind of suicide.

32

CLARA

After our little negotiation—which isn’t finished, even if Gabriel might think otherwise—I go upstairs to shower and change. I put on a cashmere lounging set. When I bought my wedding dress, I picked up a few other things, like panties and some clothing I thought I’d need for the short term, so I put all that away in the closet in my room. I put the legal pad and pen on the table next to the bed and go back downstairs.

To snoop, of course.

A quick look around shows me Gabriel is nowhere to be found.

I walk across the wide-plank fir floor, the warmth of the fire he made kissing my bare ankles. Stopping at a window, I look outside. It’s a world of violent sweeps of Payne’s gray, Prussian blue, and titanium white—a tempestuous ocean hurling itself against jagged monoliths of black basalt.

Inside, the world is raw umber, warm cedar, and the deep amber glow spilling from Gabriel’s fire. It is breathtakingly cozy. A shelter carved out of stone and wood at the edge of the world.

I love it. I’ve never felt such a swelling of pleasure, such a deep sense of belonging, as I do here.

Swallowing, I try not to wonder how long I’ll get to stay here. I glance down at the diamond on my hand. It’s all clean lines and cold fire, severe enough to be beautiful and far too substantial to pretend it means nothing.

Kind of like Gabriel.

Sighing, I let my eyes wander along the cedar wall adjoining the stone hearth, taking in the clean, masculine lines of the room—and then my breath stops dead in my throat.

Hanging on the far cedar panel, illuminated by a discreet recessed spotlight, is a four-by-six-foot canvas.

Heavy cold wax and oil. Deep, moody indigo colliding with fractured slivers of muted gold and raw linen, capturing the precise moment a storm breaks over an empty highway. It’s raw, textured, and slightly unrefined—one of the first large-scale pieces I completed after James gave me the private studio space outside of town four years ago.

I signed it in the bottom right corner with only my cipher: a stylized, interlocking CL—Claire Laurent.

Behind me, I hear Gabriel pad into the room. “Do you like it?”

I have to try a couple times before I can get the words out. "Where did you get it?"

He moves closer, though far enough away to respect the invisible boundary he just spent five minutes laying out. "A private gallery in New York. Three years ago."

It’d been my first big show. They’d asked for three pieces, and they’d sold all of them. I’d been thrilled when they asked me to be a part of it. The fourteen-year-old inside would have died if she knew Gabriel Reyes was one of the buyers.

"Alessandro wanted to buy some glossy modern trash for the Seattle penthouse, but we were both struck by this one. It was the only thing in the room with actual soul. I bought it out from under him. I knew it belonged here." He pauses, a faint, curious tilt in his tone. "Why?"