“I’ll get it,” Romeo said, guilt tinging his voice. He squeezed past several people into the cabin’s bathroom and returned a minute later with a glass of water and toilet tissue.

“Thanks, man,” I said.

For whatever reason, maybe because all eyes were not on her, Tiffany started bawling again. One of her leggy minions ran to her. “It’s okay, Tiffany.” She wrapped her arms around Tiffany.

Tiffany fell into the embrace and wept like an alligator. I knew she was still totally pissed at Samantha, but I also sensed she had other plans brewing behind her false bawling. Tiffany always had other plans.

Romeo flashed a nervous smile and stepped away while I went to work. I dipped, dabbed, and wiped with the wet tissue. In a minute, the painting was spotless. “See, Tiffany? It’s fine.”

She pursed her lips while she removed her heels. She climbed onto the bed and huffed. Hands on hips, she leaned toward the painting, her nose inches from the canvas. “I can still see black ink.”

“Where?” I asked skeptically. I hadn’t missed any.

“Here!” She stabbed her finger toward the painting.

I leaned forward, and wiped at it, just in case.

“It’s still there!” she cried, pointing dramatically, as if identifying a suspected murderer in the courtroom.

“What?” I peered closely. “That’s nothing, Tiffany. It’s just a shadow from the brushwork, beneath the varnish.”

“No, it’s not!” She had no idea what she was talking about.

“Yes. It is. I remember painting it.” I stepped calmly off the bed and stood with my hands resting casually on my hips.

Tiffany looked around at everyone.

Nobody seemed very sympathetic, from what I could tell.

Tiffany knew she was losing her audience. “It’s not okay!” she stomped once, still on top of the bed like it was her own personal pulpit, then folded her arms across her chest defiantly. “And I want my money back!”

Brandon flashed me a worried look.

“This simply won’t do!” Tiffany huffed. “I’m telling Daddy first thing in the morning! How do you think he’ll react, Brandon, when he finds out there’s graffiti all over my painting? Hmmm? It’s ruined!” Barefoot, she stomped off the bed and out of the cabin.

I sat down on the mattress and slid my boots on, one at a time. Time for a fight. Too bad it wasn’t the easy kind, with knuckles and knees.

This was turning into a royal pain in my ass.

CHRISTOS

“We should deal with this,” Brandon said in front of everybody, “before it gets any worse.”

“You sure you don’t want to let her cool off,” I suggested. “She’s still loaded. Maybe you can smooth-talk her tomorrow.”

“I’d like to spend my New Year’s day doing something other than handling fallout from Tiffany’s asinine antics.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“Excuse me, everyone,” Brandon said as he squirmed through the gawking crowd.

He followed Tiffany up the stairs. “Tiffany, wait!”

I raised my eyebrows at Samantha. “Sorry. Duty calls.”

Samantha gave a compassionate sigh. “I’m so sorry Christos. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Me too,” Romeo moped. “I’m totally sorry, C-Man.”

“Doesn’t bother me,” I smiled. “The painting is fine. Tiffany needs a reality check now and then. Too bad she gets less than one a decade. I owe you guys.”

“You sure?” Samantha asked plaintively.

I could tell she felt terrible. “Don’t worry, agápi mou,” I reassured. “No sense letting the drama llama ruin your evening any more than she already has.”

“She does kind of look like a llama,” Romeo said thoughtfully.

Samantha struggled not to smile too widely in front of Tiffany’s remaining sorority friends.

“All right,” I said, “I’ll be upstairs with Brandon, tending to Bitching Beauty.”

When I went upstairs and saw Tiffany talking to Brandon in the living room portion of the main cabin, she took one look at me and bee-lined out to the back deck.

Brandon followed her.

I sighed. I knew this game. She played it all the time. The “follow me” game. I trudged out to the back deck, but she left Brandon and continued around the walkway to the bow of the ship.

“I think it’s yours from here,” Brandon said sympathetically. “My attempts to placate her were met with resolute pouting.”

“Great. Fine, I’ll see what I can do.”

I strolled around to the front of the ship.

Tiffany stood with her back to me, arms folded. I could tell she was fuming because she hadn’t gotten her way.

I paused for a moment, shaking my head. This girl was a woman-sized baby. Her dad had made her into so much of a princess, demanding things was the only way she knew how to operate.

“Tiffany, the painting’s fine.”

She whipped around to face me. “No it’s not Christos. Nothing’s fine. Your girlfriend is ruining everything.”

What the hell was she talking about? “Nothing’s ruined, Tiffany.”

She looked up at me, her eyes soft, her lips full. Her hair fluttered in the ocean breeze. On an objective level, Tiffany was truly gorgeous. Anyone who said otherwise was in denial.

I knew from years of experience that her beauty was a dangerous lure. She loved to use it on me more than anyone else in her life. She’d almost reeled me in a hundred times over the years with that same angelic look, but I knew well the devil that waited in her darkness. Because of that, no matter how much of a wreck my life had been at any given point, I’d always managed to break free of her grasp just in time, right before she could swallow me whole and no doubt shit me out the other end when she got bored.

Luckily for me, I’d become permanently immune to her gamesmanship the second Samantha had walked into my life.

“Tiffany…”

“Yes, Christos?” she asked hopefully.

“…don’t.”

“Don’t what?” she played innocent ignorance perfectly. Gazing up at me from beneath her delicate brow and flawlessly shaped eyebrows, she coquettishly caressed my arm with her fingertip.

“Don’t play me.” I yanked my arm away.

The beauty on her face was replaced by pragmatic frustration. “Can’t blame a girl for trying.”

I waited her out.

“I don’t care about the painting, Christos. I never have. It’s you I want.”

I sighed. “I’m off the table, Tiffany. If you want, I can take the painting back to my studio and go over it with a microscope.”

She cocked her hip to one side and planted a defiant fist on it. Her nose tilted up commandingly. “Not good enough. Either you get rid of that Floozy Footstool you’re dating, or I want a new painting.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her. “Leave Samantha out of this. Your painting will be fine, Tiffany. You’re over-reacting.”

“No!” she pouted. “The painting is worthless! I won’t accept it!”

Now I was irritated. “You want me to redo it? Whatever. I’ll take this one home and knock out a copy in a few days. Then you can have two. Put one in your private jet, or where the fuck ever.”

Changing tactics, she smiled hopefully, “But we had so much fun doing that painting together.”

“You had fun, Tiff.”

“I thought you had fun too,” Tiffany mused.

“You’re kidding, right? I let you micro-manage that painting as a favor to you and your dad. Remember how many times you changed your swimsuit?”

“I wanted to pick the perfect suit. Can you blame a girl for wanting to look her best?”

“Uh-huh,” I said sarcastically. “Remember how many comments you made like, ‘Don’t make my thighs look fat,’ and ‘Show more cleavage,’ and ‘My waist is slimmer than that.’ Remember all that?”

She looked guilty as hell. “Maybe.” Denial.

“Don’t play dumb, Tiff. You may as well have painted it yourself, for all the artistic input I had. I’ll do a copy for you, from the original, if you really want it. But I won’t pose you again.”

She looked slightly chastised, a rare thing. For a moment, she chewed on her lip, unsure what to do. Then, in a little girl voice, she said, “Christos, I really just want you to paint me nude again. Then we won’t have to worry about the swimsuit,” she murmured sensually.

I didn’t like the way she said “we.”

The previous nude of her was the one I’d been finishing up when I’d started mentoring Samantha. I remembered working on it clearly. Every time I’d give Tiffany a break from posing, she’d flirt like crazy, giving me the come-hither bedroom eyes, leaning her exposed breasts into me fifty times a minute. Normally, artists’ models would put on a robe between poses and take some time to themselves. Not Tiffany. She was naked the entire time, and followed me all over my studio, hanging off me like an out-of-work prostitute.

“And I promise,” she said breathily, “no micro-managing. I’ll do whatever you say,” she winked suggestively. “Just you and me in your studio, like last time. I’ll pay for it. Fifty thousand cash, up front. Straight to you, no gallery commission to Brandon.”

She wasn’t trying to buy a painting, she was trying to buy me. “You’re nuts, woman,” I scoffed.

“But it was so romantic. You and me in your studio, the artist and his muse.”

“You’re not my muse, Tiff.”

“But I could be, again. If you let me,” she said demurely.

“You never were. Sorry.”

“Please, Christos?” she begged, reaching out to me again.

“No, Tiffany.”

“No, what?” Brandon asked. Where the fuck had he come from? It didn’t matter. I was happy for the reinforcement.

“Christos refuses to paint me again,” Tiffany whined.