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“I’ll purchase the piece.”
Her lips part in shock.
“I…” She trails off and shakes her head, looking away. “You shouldn’t have let me go on like I did before. You clearly know what you’re doing when it comes to art.”
“I’m a novice, I assure you.”
Humility is not something I’m very familiar with. It feels foreign on my tongue.
“Consider the work sold,” I insist, more stern now than a moment ago. I don’t enjoy repeating myself. “Now show me another.”
Her gaze whips up to find mine.
“You can’t be serious,” she says, sounding nearly breathless.
“Why on earth would I be kidding?” My patience is suddenly growing thin. “Do you know who I am?”
At this, she laughs, a great wild sound that has my heart galloping in my chest.
With flushed cheeks, she advances on me until we’re nearly chest to chest. “I was about to ask you the same thing. Do you remember me? Surely you do.”
The question takes me aback. I frown, considering her, my gaze cutting swiftly down her figure as my brain works tirelessly to place her. Surely I would remember seeing this woman before with her dark hair and prominent cheekbones, her clean, smooth skin and full lips. There is something on the periphery of my mind, some nagging feeling that I’m missing something right in front of me.
“I admit you do feel familiar.”
“Feel,” she repeats, tilting her head curiously. “What an intimate word.”
I’m tempted to reach up and take hold of her slender neck, to tip her chin back so the light catches on her face, highlighting every detail until some memory shakes loose inside my mind. Annoyance bleeds into anger.
Who are you? I’m about to demand just as the clouds part and fate gifts me my answer.
“Lainey, I hate to interrupt,” says some young girl who’s wearing a white name tag pinned to her shirt and an uneasy frown. She looks like a college intern, which would explain why she thought it was appropriate to interrupt our conversation even though I’m the most important client they have in here.
She pays me no mind, her big worried eyes pinned on Lainey. “Could you help me for a second? This customer is quizzing me on our post-modern works, and I feel slightly in over my head. Would you—”
“Of course.” The intern doesn’t even need to finish the thought before Lainey seizes the opportunity to leave me now that the mystery is solved. She places a reassuring hand on the girl’s arm and barely gives me a departing nod. “I’ll send someone over to help you, Mr. Mercier, and I’ll place a hold on the Guernica piece, as you requested. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
She slips away before I have a chance to speak. I’m left to watch her get swallowed by the crowd of people, a few of whom have been anxiously waiting to talk to me. A man nearly leaps in front of my face, cutting off my pursuit of her.
“Mr. Mercier, if you have a moment, it would be an honor to make your acquaintance,” says some guy with the overeager eyes and trademark ill-fitting suit of a journalist. He pulls out his phone and starts recording, confirming my suspicions. “Do you mind being on record? I just have a few questions about your future at GHV. There are whispers that soon you’ll be promo—”
I weave around him while he’s still talking, needing to know for certain if the woman I just spoke to is who I suspect her to be.
Physically, it fits. Those pale green eyes stood out even when she was young. The dark hair. The demure features. But the Lainey I knew was a wallflower, a child who lurked in quiet corners and kept to herself. I can’t reconcile my memories of her with the fiercely confident woman I just spoke to.
I keep sight of her in the crowd as she approaches the guest who was giving the gallery’s intern a run for her money. Lainey turns to face him with a gentle smile, and even from clear across the room, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt she’s Lainey Davenport, all grown up.
Chapter Ten
Lainey
I should already be in bed, but I’m out on my balcony. Again. I’m out here so often lately, sitting on a chair with my legs tucked up against my chest. It’s getting too chilly, but I can’t seem to make myself move no matter how many gusts of wind threaten to topple me.
In my right hand, I roll an unlit cigarette between my thumb and pointer finger, focusing hard as I do it. I don’t know why I have it. I don’t have a lighter on me. Short of smelling the nicotine, I can’t do anything with the damn thing.
I’ve never smoked before. Collette smokes. She’s perpetually stepping out back during her shifts at the gallery. The other day I bummed this one off her and tried to ignore the look of surprise she gave me as she passed it over. “Little miss goody two shoes likes to smoke?”
