“You’re not worried about him, are you?” Romeo said uncertainly. “I mean, you don’t think he’s sampling his merchandise, do you?”

My stomach knotted at the thought. “Christos isn’t like that. He’s totally in love with me.”

Romeo had an apologetic look on his face as he sipped more lemonade. “You’re probably right,” he said. “I guess I just worry because gorgeous women are always throwing themselves at him. Heck, I throw myself at Christos every chance I get.”

I smiled. “I’m not worried about you, Romeo.” But I was worried about all the other women. Especially the nude one in his studio right now. I’m sure she looked like a super model and was thrusting her breasts at Christos this very moment.

I sighed and looked around the food court. “Is there any place around here that sells ice cream? I think I need a sundae. Extra fudge, extra whipped-cream, extra ice cream.”

“Let’s go find out,” Romeo offered. “You look like you could use an ice cream pick-me-up.”

He had no idea.

CHRISTOS

“Can you arch your back just a bit more,” I asked the model.

“Anything for you, Christos,” Isabella said breathily. She tossed her hair back and smiled at me seductively through her alluring lashes. She was naked from head to toe and reclined on a divan a few feet in front of my painting easel.

“Perfect,” I said. “Hold that pose.” When it came to Isabella, perfect was an understatement. She was a gorgeous Brazilian girl from L.A. Brandon had found her for me at one of the big modeling agencies in Hollywood. He wasn’t kidding about finding fresh faces.

She winked at me right before I turned my attention to my palette.

They didn’t get any fresher than Isabella.

Facing my palette, I dabbed my brush into the pile of burnt sienna, then mixed it into the smear of flesh tone I had on my palette. I needed to richen up my mixture if I was going to capture Isabella’s caramel skin tone.

My mind wandered as I mixed.

Brandon hadn’t been blowing smoke when he’d said everybody wanted a piece of me. I had a list of commissions as long as my arm. It was good to be loved.

Too bad the checks only came after I delivered the paintings. I had lawyer’s fees to pay. Russell Merriweather was far from cheap, but he was worth every penny if he kept me out of the big house. Maybe I needed to talk to Brandon about pre-sales, get some cash flowing.

The only down side to the influx of business was finding time to fit everything in: Samantha, painting, school, working out, eating, sleeping. Something had to go, so I took the term off from SDU. No surprise. Who needed a graduate degree when people were throwing money at you?

Besides, canning my class schedule was the only way I could make any time for Samantha. As it was, I had what seemed like thirty minutes a day for her. Not my preference.

Not even close.

But the iron was hot, as Brandon had said. Six-figure hot. Which meant the painting had to be my main focus for now.

Samantha was totally busy herself with her classes and work schedule, so it worked out. Sort of. I don’t think either of us were truly happy with our schedules.

But there was work to do.

I had several canvases of various L.A. models in progress. Different women came in throughout the week. Jacqueline on Mondays and Thursdays. Becca on Tuesdays and Fridays. Isabella on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I never had a break.

 I’d only finished one painting so far. The model’s name was Avery. She was an actress in L.A. struggling to get work. I don’t know why her face wasn’t plastered on magazine covers already. The painting of her was drying in the rack against the back wall. The in-progress paintings of Jacqueline and Becca sat on smaller easels in the studio.

These next few months were going to be insane. The good thing about the hectic pace was that it kept my mind off my fucking trial.

I did my best not to think about it.

The current painting of Isabella sitting on my main work easel was life-sized, which meant the canvas was huge. One thing was a constant in the art world: bigger work meant bigger money. I was up for it.

Time to turn the money crank.

I turned to look at Isabella, assessing her lines and forms, the lights and darks, and the overall composition of her pose. She was so beautiful, you’d think painting her would be a slam-dunk. Just paint what you see, and you had a masterpiece, right?

Nope.

Portraits didn’t work that way.

I didn’t know a thing about Isabella, other than she was hot, which ironically served only as a distraction. Her flirtatious behavior wasn’t helping either, because I knew she was repressing her authentic personality when she was coming onto me.

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.