Read The Artist (The Game Changers #2) Online
Authors: Shealy James
The Artist (The Game Changers #2)
The Artist
The Game Changers Series
Book Two
Shealy James
The Artist
Copyright © 2015 by Author. All rights reserved.
First Print Edition: October 2015
Limitless Publishing, LLC
Kailua, HI 96734
Formatting: Limitless Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-1-68058-324-3
ISBN-10: 1-68058-324-7
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
“You need to love yourself and be yourself one hundred percent before you can actually love someone else.”
~Christina Perri
Table of Contents
See that girl? The blonde beauty in the champagne Oscar de la Renta gown laughing at yet another lame money joke? That’s me.
You know that leggy blonde you hated because your boyfriend kept trying to ogle her without you noticing? Yeah, that girl was also me, except take away the double D’s you might be imagining. Think Princess Charlene of Monaco, without the curvy figure and the bald husband. Oh, and the whole royalty thing. Yeah, this girl? Rich. Not royalty.
This was my life. Surprisingly, there was a name for it. People called me a socialite, because what else would you call it? I flitted from charity function to business dinner, making appearances on my parents’ behalf, because it was good for business. It was good for the family. I kept up with the gossip. I knew who’d been in bed with whom. I paid attention to who exchanged money, and more importantly, who was trading information. From the time I was old enough to speak, I was in training to be some wealthy man’s eye candy and secret weapon in business. The good woman behind the man, so to speak.
The sad part? Because of who my father was, men wanted to climb in bed with me. My father made it no secret that he would leave his multi-million dollar company to a man, preferably one in the family. That meant that every money-hungry man who had come across my father had been a potential suitor, and they all wanted a piece of me. Well, everyone except for one man—the man I was supposed to marry. Our mothers had been planning our wedding since I was in diapers. I should be disappointed that he didn’t want me. Maybe I should be hurt. The only problem…I had no interest in this life.
Last summer
“Iris, this is unacceptable. We have been planning their wedding since the day my daughter was born. Just because you can’t get your son to do what is expected of him doesn’t mean my daughter should suffer. Richard will not appreciate this when he hears about it. Maybe I need to remind you that Richard and your disobedient son are the only reasons you and Harrison are still afloat.”
My mother paused as she listened to Iris Mitchell speak again. Iris Mitchell had finally jumped on board with her son marrying Eve Bryant, his actual girlfriend, instead of me, the woman betrothed to him since he was a toddler. Who could blame him? He met someone and fell in love. If anything, I would say he was lucky. But, no one asked for my opinion, and if I knew anything, it was to keep my mouth shut.
“You never were a very good mother, were you, Iris?” My mother continued her tirade, waving her perfectly manicured hand around, so her unnecessarily large diamonds caught the light coming from the window. “Your children always rebelled against your wishes. It’s a wonder you convinced your girls to marry such successful men.” My mother slammed down the phone and looked at me. “It isn’t enough that you gained three pounds over the last two weeks and your hair looks like a homeless person cut it, but you couldn’t even land the man who had been yours since birth. What’s wrong with you, Kitty? Have I taught you nothing about keeping a man’s attention?”
No, she wasn’t saying those things out of anger or frustration toward her longtime best friend, Iris Mitchell. That was how she always spoke to me. This was my life in a nutshell. In fact, today was a good day.
I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I didn’t know why I was not married at twenty-eight to some handsome millionaire, but for as long as I have lived, perfection had been my mother’s goal for me. Settling for less was never an option. Unfortunately, I’d always fallen short of the mark and somehow lived to hear about it. No amount of money, makeup, or dressing-free lettuce would make me into the woman my parents wanted me to be. And now, thanks to Grant Mitchell, my life just became hell. He just confirmed what my parents always believed—I was unlovable. What else is new?
Winter
The knock on my door was unwelcome and unexpected. I was writing—the one thing I really enjoyed. Unbeknownst to my parents, I wrote a small column for an online magazine. I reported on the social scene in and around Seattle. The focus of my column was generally how much money was donated to the charity du jour and what everyone was wearing to this event or that dinner, but nothing was off-limits. My editor, Sue, loved gossip.
Of course, the name Kitty Peters wasn’t on any of it. Protecting my identity was the only way for me to keep writing. Rufus Levine was the name of the reporter, and it was all from the male perspective. Rufus may have been the most flamboyant man to ever live, but he wasn’t really living, was he? The truth was, neither was I. I merely existed at best.
If my parents ever found out that I was Rufus, they’d find a way to ruin it, which was why the knock on my door was unwelcome. My friends were practically spies for my mother. I groaned when I heard their voices outside my door, then I quickly started shoving my notes and laptop into a decorative wooden trunk that also acted as my coffee table. Just as I closed the lid, the second knock resounded through my condo.
I opened the door to find two of my girlfriends smiling brightly and wearing sky-high heels, their version of designer casual.
“Get dressed!” Penelope Allen, my best friend since grade school, snapped as she walked past me, entering my condo with the click-clack of her heels against my shiny hardwoods. I silently groaned at her presence. Best friend was a relative term. We didn’t confide in each other about everything. We were not like sisters, and I couldn’t count on her for everything, but she was the best friend that I was allowed to have.
“Why?” I asked, closing the door after Victoria Templeton, our friend from college, followed her with a similar click-clacking. Victoria was an opportunist. She was my friend because it was convenient for both of us. Sure, she was always good for a laugh or gossip, but in reality, she was nothing more than a social climber.
“Makeover!” they both squealed.
“What? Why?” I frowned.
“Your mom mentioned that you needed a pick-me-up and your hair needed a touch-up when I asked her how you were doing with the news of your man putting a ring on another finger.” See? Spies for my mother. They have always done her bidding at the drop of a hat.
“Yes, she thinks he doesn’t want me because I gained weight and my hair is too dark these days.” Honey blonde had been my hair color for the last ten years. According to my mother, it was unflattering on a woman of my age. Supposedly, I needed to go a shade lighter to appear younger. Men wanted younger women, not a twenty-eight-year-old aging one. I kept wondering, though, when did twenty-eight become old?
“Umm…have you seen his fiancée?” Victoria asked. “If anyone needs to lose a few pounds and do something with her hair, it’s her.”
“She’s not so bad,” I mumbled, knowing it was a useless path I was paving. They hated the idea of Eve, not the actual person. Eve committed the ultimate sin. She stole my man. Gasp!
Too bad Grant was never anything more to me than a friend, and he really stopped being my friend around the time our mothers started putting on the pressure to finalize the wedding plans after I graduated college. It didn’t matter what I did to delay it, Grant thought I was just as invested in this “relationship” as our mothers were. The truth was that I was doing everything I could to avoid the fighting at home. If I had told my parents that I didn’t care about Grant marrying Eve, I would have paid for it one way or another.
Victoria’s unnecessary, sympathetic outrage never ceased. “Not so bad? Ugh! She’s something else. I mean, not only is she a man stealer, but she and her country accent could really use a lesson on how to be the mogul’s wife. How does she think she is going to handle being the wife of a man like Grant? It takes grooming and polishing that she doesn’t have.”
Neither do you, I thought unkindly. Victoria was always a bit of a bitch, but she thought she was being loyal.
Penelope, on the other hand, was actually loyal even when being a snob. She was raised in a picture-perfect home with a Norman Rockwell family. Of course, she was spoiled and egocentric, but you would be too if you had everything handed to you from the moment you were born.
While I couldn’t count on Penelope for everything a best friend would do, I could count on her to calm Victoria down. She could be a mother hen and had a special way of distracting Victoria’s rant before I could strangle the girl. “She may need polishing, but Kitty needs a fun spa day. Bringing up her arch nemesis isn’t helpful.”
Victoria changed her tactic immediately. “I’m always up for a spa day!” she said and clapped her hands.
“Get dressed,” Penelope snapped at me again.
“Oh, fine!” I left them in my living room while I ran back to my closet and threw on slacks, tall boots, and a fitted sweater. After I pinned my unwashed hair into a sleek bun and applied minimal makeup, I headed back out and found them arguing over what they should wear to the charity art auction we were attending in just over a week.
“Let’s go. Both of you should wear black and don’t go too formal. The gallery is modern, and so is the artist. Speaking of polished, wait until you meet her. For someone who does wild art, she is shockingly well put together. She was not at all what I was expecting,” I told my friends as we climbed onto the elevator and met the driver who was waiting at the curb for us.
At the spa, I had my nails done and hair lightened at my mother’s request. I went ahead and opted for a massage, waxing, and a facial that left me feeling relaxed all over. I knew I was pretty—my parents and a very expensive surgeon made sure of it—but days like this made me feel like a new woman. That was the point of spending thousands of dollars a year at the spa, though.
After gossip in the sauna and finishing the day with a killer blowout that left my hair shiny and hanging flawlessly around my shoulders, I said goodbye to my friends. I avoided their attempts to have me join them for dinner and drinks, opting to be alone instead. I had always been a loner. It came from being an only child of parents who either ignored you or critiqued you, and years of questionable friendships. The therapist I saw in high school tried to pin my need for solitude on my parents. He said something about deciding to be alone wasn’t hurtful like neglect or rejection. It was supposedly my way of protecting myself. I laughed at him, then said, “Someone with a Ph.D. shouldn’t be so cliché and shortsighted.” That was my last therapist appointment. Having daddy issues didn’t change the fact that people only wanted to be my friend because I had money and access to the best parties and exclusive people, including my father, in Seattle. My parents made sure I had the best of the best, only to create a lonely, highly criticized existence for myself. But they were only part of the problem.
Don’t get me wrong. This wasn’t the poor Kitty pity party. I was a lucky girl, even if I was currently more bitter than the kale smoothie I had for lunch. If I wanted a brand new hundred thousand dollar car, I called Daddy. If I wanted a Dior gown designed only for me, I called Mom. However, if I wanted to wear blue jeans and t-shirts and work as a waitress, my father would lock me away until kingdom come. They would do anything in their power to prevent me from doing anything considered beneath us. And for the record, when it came to me, they had a lot of power, and everything was beneath us.
I pointedly ignored my mother’s phone calls for the rest of the evening, knowing she wanted to critique my hair color or cut, or maybe the nail color I chose. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t in the mood for her. She would ruin my relaxed state with one comment, and I had just gotten the inspiration I needed to finish my article. Instead of dealing with her, I grabbed my laptop, changed clothes, and headed to the coffee shop on the corner. It was my favorite place, my normal place.
Sitting at my favorite table, in my favorite over-cushioned chair, with my favorite high-calorie latte, I tucked my legs under me and stared out the window at the people going about their business on a typical rainy winter day. This seat was my place of peace. Thanks to the great people watching, and no one knowing who I was, this coffee shop was the best-kept secret in Seattle.
“Seat taken?” a deep voice asked while a hand gripped the back of the dark orange winged-back chair that sat across the table from me.
“No,” I said without looking up. The downside of a small coffee shop was that there were never enough seats. It wasn’t unheard of to share your table with a stranger. In fact, I had been lucky to get my favorite seat today considering the crowd that surrounded me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a black leather jacket drop to the arm of the chair and dark jeans covering long legs take their place on the seat. “Thanks,” the voice said. After a moment he added, “See anything good out there?”
That question made me look up at the stranger who was now sitting across from me. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark clothes…he looked like every bad boy fantasy I ever had, right down to the smirk on his perfect lips. He had a tattoo sneaking out from the collar of his red t-shirt, hinting at where it led beneath his clothes, and stubble that darkened his cheeks and chin in that “I wake up looking like this because I’m naturally this hot” kind of way. It was beyond sexy, and I was sure a man like him could use that stubble to bring a woman to her knees.
“See anything good in here?” he asked with amusement when I still hadn’t spoken. That smirk was something else. Something sexy, something alluring…something I didn’t need.
I shook my head in an effort to banish the unwelcome thoughts. As expressionless as possible, I said, “Not interested.”
“In what?” he asked in response. That damn smirk still played on his lips. It was like it had a mind of its own, like it could read me without him being aware of it.
Keeping my face relaxed and the annoyance out of my voice, I responded just as quickly. “You.”
“Me?”
“You.”
“Okay…” He kept staring at me.
“If you sat down here to hit on me, you can move on. I’m not interested.” I punctuated my final words carefully.
He laughed, giving me a glimpse of a smile that could stop traffic. Damn him! Now I really hated him. No one should be that biologically attractive.
“Nope. I sat here to work. It was the last comfortable chair in the place since you’re sitting in my favorite seat.”
“Hmm…sure,” I said and turned back to my computer.
“Hard to believe?” he asked, bringing my attention back to those dark eyes that never strayed from mine.
Confused by what he meant, and completely affected by his mere presence, I responded with a voice I hardly recognized. “What?”
There it was again. “Hard to believe a man would speak to you without trying to hit on you, huh?” He was making fun of me. I did not take well to teasing. People do not tease Kitty Peters!
“Me? Yes. I’m a hideously conceited princess. Ask anyone.” I waved my hand around. “Now, can I get back to work?”
“By all means, Duchess. Don’t mind me.”
I rolled my eyes. I was trying to put the finishing touches on my article before I emailed it to my editor, but I couldn’t focus. My eyes kept betraying me by sneaking glances at the rude man sitting across from me. He was something else. His dark eyes bore into me like he could see right through me. Calling me Duchess only made me wonder more if he could see beyond the version of myself I allowed others to see. When our eyes had met, his eyes remained on mine. They didn’t wander down my body or flick down to my lips, yet there was something carnal in the connection we had. Maybe it wasn’t the connection. Maybe there was just something instinctively sexual about him. He was everything a girl imagined she wanted behind closed doors, but he was not the guy you brought home to Mommy and Daddy, especially not Richard and Violet Peters. My body didn’t get the memo, though. Knowing he wasn’t for me didn’t stop my libido from reacting to his presence.
I tried to focus on my work, but it was futile. Everything I didn’t need in my life was sitting less than two feet away with his ankle resting on his knee, an iPad in his lap, and one long finger mindlessly rubbing the dark stubble on his chin. Since when did a pointer finger become sexy? Since it came attached to this guy.
I should pause and explain something important. I have never had a crush or pursued a man. Never! This cat did not do feelings. I’ve never had to reduce myself to a desperate girl hoping for some man’s attention or affection. Of course, I have had feelings for some of the men I’ve dated. I never thought I’d be allowed to stay with someone I actually cared about, so I never allowed anything beyond lukewarm feelings to develop. My parents would do anything to make me fall in line with their wishes, and they would never approve of me marrying for love. Feelings have never been part of the game for me, so lusting after this man was a completely foreign feeling for me. I knew I had to get away from him before I humiliated myself by drooling down my chin or something equally ludicrous.
Finally, I gave up and slapped my computer shut. “Chair’s all yours, Maverick,” I told him as I threw my laptop and notes in my favorite Kate Spade.