Devon Hartford - Reckless

The obvious solution would be to paint the come-hither look that was on her face at the moment, right? Nail her sultry hot-and-bothered-babe expression and I’d sell it for a million, right?

Maybe in porn, but not in fine art.

I could never figure out why it worked this way, but the proof was in the end result.

When I painted strangers, people would say shit like, “That’s a great painting,” or “Amazing composition, Christos,” or “Beautiful brush work,” or “I love the colors.”

But when I painted people I knew, the comments would be things like, “Wow, she seems so sincere, so kind, the sort of person I’d want as a friend” or “Do you know that crazy guy? He looks like a real bastard!” or “I feel like I’m looking at the ghost of my grandmother.”

Yeah, some of the comments were totally freaky.

The weird thing was, most people didn’t actually know which of my paintings were which. I never told them, never made it obvious from the titles. Yet the responses were consistent. Viewers always preferred the paintings of people I knew, spent far more time looking at them, and paid higher prices for them than they did for the ones of strangers.

I couldn’t figure out why.

One time, I’d asked my grandfather what he thought the reason might be. He’d said it was the spiritual component, the ineffable connection that existed between two people who knew each other that no camera could ever capture. He’d said that the more you knew a person, the more your relationship with them worked its way into the painting, and the more that such a painting would captivate any viewer, even if they didn’t know why.

I guess this mysterious element was what made art so captivating for me.

For the rest of the afternoon, I continued to paint Isabella, giving her intermittent breaks. I tried to find something about her personality to work with, something to draw out her true nature, but all she did was flirt. Her gamesmanship was exhausting. I tried telling her to be herself, but I don’t think she knew what I meant because of the language barrier. She had a fairly thick Portuguese accent that was sexy as hell, but English was definitely her second language.

When I finally set my brushes down, I was wiped.

At the very least, I was doing a decent job of capturing Isabella’s exterior beauty on canvas. Not every art collector was a connoisseur. Somebody with money would buy it.

“We’re all done for today,” I said.

“I finished?” she pouted in her thick accent, still flirting.

“Yeah. Why don’t you go get dressed.”

Isabella stood before me fully naked. Challenging me.

I smiled at her, but stood my ground. I’d been staring at her for the last four hours. Whatever.

She winked at me and turned seductively before sashaying into the studio bathroom to get dressed.

I went about cleaning my brushes.

The bathroom door opened and Isabella strutted out on heels, buttoning her blouse from the top down. I caught a flash of her flat stomach in the A of her blouse’s two billowing panels. She really had an amazing body. Even in clothes, she was stunning. Again, whatever.

She stopped in front of the canvas, her top now completely buttoned, and smoothed her tightly-fitted skirt. She examined the painting. “Christos, is beautiful!”

“Thanks,” I smiled. “You make the work easy,” I lied.

She raised an eyebrow. “You call me easy girl?” she flirted. When I didn’t respond, she leaned into me. Every guy I’d ever met would’ve been pitching a tent with a beauty like Isabella coming onto them this blatantly.

I wasn’t every guy.

Undeterred, Isabella gave me one of those purring laughs that few men will ever hear in their lifetimes. Not a trashy stripper laugh. I’m talking about the kind of laugh you only heard from the world’s sexiest women, the kind they saved for the special men in their lives.

Isabella was holding her door open for me, telling me to come inside. Emphasis on “come” and “inside.” And I’m not talking about any literal door. I’m talking about her door. Yeah, that one.

But I’d heard it a hundred times before. On several memorable occasions, I’d heard it from women hotter than Isabella.

But none of that mattered to me. What mattered was that I had Samantha, and there was only one of her in the entire fucking universe.

I really didn’t care what Isabella had in mind.

Unrelenting, she cocked her own crazy-sexy dimpled grin at me. It didn’t have the desired effect on me.

I sighed and stepped away from her, trying not to be rude. I walked over to the table where I kept my receipt book in a drawer. “Did you want cash? Or am I supposed to pay the agency directly?”

“Is all taken care of,” she smiled.

That meant Brandon. I’m sure he’d send me the invoice later. Or maybe not. When you’re slinging six-figure canvases out the door one after the other, a few grand here and there doesn’t make anyone blink anymore. At least, that was the plan.

“Do you need anything for the road?” I asked Isabella. “You want some water to take with you?”

She walked over to where I stood at the desk and placed her palm on my painter’s smock.

“Please,” she flashed her wide-mouthed smile.

Please was right. I gently skirted around her and headed toward the kitchen. “Come on, I’ll grab you a cold bottle from the fridge.”

I heard her clacky heels following behind me.

I’d already grabbed a water from the fridge by the time she made it to the kitchen. I leaned against the doorframe when she came in.

“We drink together?” she pouted her lips in that way women who know how to use their looks always pouted. The way that makes most guys drop to their knees, tongues hanging out, and start begging and promising the world and anything else they can think of. She wasn’t getting it.

“Sorry, Isabella. I’ve got a ton of work to do before the sun goes down.”

“Is good, having so much work, no?”

“Yes.” I said flatly. I could tell she had no intention of moving from where she stood, hand on her cocked hip.

Fine. If she wanted to play games, I knew my way around the board. I raised an eyebrow and waited her out. My guess was her next move would be a hair flip.

She raised an eyebrow.

That was her tell. The hair flip was seconds away.

Wait…wait…

Oh! There it goes!

She tossed her lustrous main around with spectacular grace.

Hair flip!

I’m sure she’d practiced that move for photo shoots a hundred times. She finished by tilting her chin down, another camera-ready pose. She really had nice eyes.

I didn’t care. It was Game Over time.

I turned and walked into the entryway and opened the front door.

I heard her pout again. This time, it was the real pout. The frustrated kind that sounded like a little girl not getting her way. When she walked out of the kitchen, she looked a bit sulky. I felt sort of bad, but she was throwing herself at me. She’d get over me. Someday.

What could I say? Old habits died hard. This shit was regular as breathing to me.

Isabella stopped on the runner in the entryway and eyeballed me again. Was she not getting the hint? She had it bad.

I motioned outside with my arm. “After you.”

“Your tattoos are very sexy.”

I already knew that. “Thanks.”

Finally, she walked outside.

I would be a completely rude dick if I didn’t open her car door for her. We walked to her shiny Jetta together. When she clicked the alarm, I opened the door.

“You are very gentleman,” she said in her lusciously accented broken English.

“Always,” I smiled.

“Maybe next time, we eat lunch, yes?”