Sarah Mayberry - She's Got It Bad

Jacinta made an impatient noise. “Does that mean you like it?”

He dragged his gaze from the plump tips of the woman’s breasts and shifted his attention to her face.

Then he forgot to breathe.

Took a step backward.

Made a noise in the back of his throat that may or may not have been a four-letter word.

Green eyes. A dimpled chin. Long dark hair.

A face he remembered in his dreams. The most bittersweet memory of his life.

Zoe.

“Damn.”

Jacinta touched his arm. “Liam. What’s wrong?”

His gaze swept the painting again, looking for proof that he was wrong. Again he saw those open thighs, her hips, her breasts. And Zoe’s face. Indisputably Zoe’s face.

He stepped forward.

Why would she do this? Put herself on display like this? Little Zoe, spread across the wall for any man to stare at.

“Liam! What are you doing?” Jacinta demanded as he gripped the sides of the painting.

“Who else has seen this? How long has it been on dis play?” he asked.

“Liam, put that back. My God, what is wrong with you?”

He lifted the painting off its hook and turned it around. Only when it was leaning against the wall, face in, did he relax.

“Wrap it up. I don’t want anyone else looking at it.”

Jacinta planted both hands on her hips and glared at him.

“Would you mind putting the painting back, please?”

He pulled his checkbook out. “How much is it? I’m taking it with me.”

Jacinta stared at him for a long moment.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

He waited for her to name the price.

“It’s fifteen thousand,” she finally said.

He wrote the check and tore it off. “I want to speak to this Paulo guy. Tonight.”

“Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but—”

“I know her,” he said bluntly. “Or at least I used to know her. I don’t know what this guy offered her to sit for this painting, but she doesn’t belong up here.”

“For God’s sake, Liam, you sound like an outraged parent. This is art, not pornography.”

“Can you get me this guy’s number or not?”

Jacinta studied him, frowning.

“I don’t want you calling one of my artists and harassing him. What do you want to know? Her contact details, I suppose?”

“For starters.”

“Give me five minutes.”

Jacinta disappeared toward the rear of the gallery where he knew she had her office. Once he was alone he ran a hand through his hair and closed his eyes. He felt sick. Like someone had punched him in the guts.

This Paulo shithead must have offered her big money to pose for him. She must have been so desperate it seemed like a good deal. Damn, what the hell was Tom doing, letting his little sister get into this kind of trouble?

The tap of heels heralded Jacinta’s return. She handed over a scrap of paper.

“No home number, just her workplace. She’s very private, according to Paulo.”

He studied the address and phone number. The Blue Rose, on the western side of the city in Footscray. Not exactly the most up-and-coming area. He wondered what kind of business it was.

“Can you get someone to wrap the painting?” he asked.

“I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking if you would mind leaving it until the show is finished so I don’t have a dirty great gap in my display?” Jacinta countered.

“No.”

She sighed. “I didn’t think so.”

She headed off again, but stopped in the doorway.

“By the way, I asked what he paid her to sit for him.”

“And?”

“It was a freebie. No fee.”

He shook his head. He refused to believe it.

“No way.”

Jacinta simply raised her eyebrows before swiveling on her heel and continuing out the door.

Forty minutes later he pulled up in front of the address he’d been given. He leaned forward over the steering wheel to check the number above the shop door was correct.

The Blue Rose was a tattoo parlor.

It was the last thing he’d expected. He stared at the dingy front window for a long time before he threw his black SUV into gear and drove home. All the way, he thought about the Fords, felt again the mix of guilt and regret and gratitude that he always experienced when he remembered their kindness to him. Wondered where he would have wound up if it hadn’t been for them taking him in. In a state home, most probably. A problem teen no one wanted to take on.

But the Fords had. They’d supported him through his mom’s brief but brutal illness, then they’d asked him to live with them, offering him their backyard studio. They’d even renovated it for him—new paint, new carpet, insulation so he wouldn’t stew in his own juices in summer.

He and Tom had been best mates, a friendship that hadn’t come easily to Liam. He and his mom had been on the road, moving around for so long that he’d stopped bothering to make friends. He’d seen so much ugliness that it was hard for him to invest in the same things that other kids his age were into—music, cars, chicks. But Tom had made it easy, as had his family. And Zoe…

He could still remember the first time he’d seen her. Tom had brought Liam home after school, and they’d been standing at the open fridge door, drinking soda straight from the bottle when she came into the room. She’d been wearing a pair of cutoff denim shorts and a tank top, her dark, straight hair in a ponytail. Her legs were long and slim, but she seemed uncertain of them, like a baby giraffe trying to walk for the first time. The buds of her breasts pressed against her top, ripe and full of potential. And those eyes…those incredible green eyes.

He’d taken one look at her and choked on the mouthful of soda he’d been swallowing.

She was special. He’d known it the moment he saw her. Every second he spent with her afterward only confirmed it. Over the past twelve years, he’d wondered how she was, what she’d become. She’d be twenty-seven now. He’d always assumed she’d be married, maybe with kids of her own.

He dumped the painting in his empty dining room when he got home. He leaned it against the wall and stared at Zoe’s exposed body, the image blurred by bubble wrap.

This was not something he’d ever imagined for her.

He turned away. He wanted to look at her again, to tear off the bubble wrap and feast on her. Which was exactly why he wasn’t going to. He closed his eyes and forced himself to remember her laugh, the trust in her eyes when she used to look at him, the utter honesty and vulnerability in her face and body when she’d told him she loved him.

Zoe Ford deserved better than this painting and that tattoo shop. First thing tomorrow he was going to seek her out and do whatever it took to put things right in her world.

“HEY, HOW ARE WE this beautiful morning?” Zoe asked as she pushed through the back door into the Blue Rose’s workroom.

“Zoe! Man, I was starting to sweat about you,” Jake Lewis said, throwing her a frustrated look.

She made a big show of checking her watch.

“I’m right on time for my ten-thirty appointment, Jake,” she told her boss.

“Would it kill you to get here twenty minutes earlier?”

“You know I don’t need the prep time. It’s all up here, baby,” she said, tapping a forefinger against her temple.

She shrugged out of her denim jacket and threw it on a chair. Her cowboy boots thumped solidly on the concrete floor as she crossed to her workbench and began setting up for her client.

“Anyone ever told you you’re a smart-ass, Ford?”

“Oh, yeah. First time today, though, so you get a prize.” She flipped her middle finger at him. As she’d hoped, he laughed.

She smoothed her hands down her lace-up jeans as she considered her workbench. Everything looked good—disposable ink cups, new needles ready to go.