Bounty (5 page)

M
y shop has never felt so
boring before. Normally I love it. But I’m having a hard time concentrating today — my mind keeps flashing back to Liam. His tattoos. His hands. The light peck he gave me at the door, when every inch of me was aching for more.

Why didn’t he ask to come up after our shooting and sushi date?

The only logical explanation is that he’s just not that into me.

And who would be? I look like a goddamn Weasley. Oh, and I cried all over him, was rude to him, probably too clingy, and
then
I told him all about my
very recently ex fiancé
. No wonder.
I
wouldn’t be into me. What a weird first date. I probably won’t see him again.

So stupid and ironic — at first I wanted to scare Liam off, and he couldn’t be deterred. And then as soon as I decided I did like him, he wasn’t interested. I guess that’s how things go, though, right? Men want what they can’t have, and then as soon as they can have it, they aren’t interested anymore.

Like Alan. Only in that case, I guess we both knew that it wasn’t work. Only difference was, I was stupid enough to try to make it work anyway. At least he had the brains to move on and start fucking someone else. Would have been nice if he’d broken off our engagement first, though.

Men.

I have to just put it out of my mind, concentrate on my work. And anyways, Dad will want me to get started on that big project. He “trusts my judgement.” Time to get cracking.

A new concept starts to take shape in my head, a vague sensation slowly solidifying to an actual project idea. Not another driftwood piece. I want to hit up a vintage store, an antiques shop. Or maybe a consignment store or pawnshop. Maybe even the dump. Find something really wild. I’m not sure what, exactly, but I want it to look old. Not just old for cutesiness, but really old. Something someone loved, once, and had to part with. Or cast aside. Something made of wood, and glass, and metal. Something with a bit of function to it, with curving form.

Nadine isn’t here yet, so really I should stay in the front of the boutique, but I really want to start planning and sketching. I’m just feeling motivated to get working. It’s always the best distraction from my problems.

I text her to come in early, but get no reply.

Fuck it. That’s what that stupid door chime is for anyway, right? Besides, it’s been a slow morning.

I dive into my sketchbooks, my easel, start drawing out a few ideas, looking up stores that might have what I want.

Finally, a loud dinging catches my attention. I sit up from my sketchbook, where a new idea is forming, and realize that I missed the door chime and someone is ringing the little bell that sits on the counter.

Fuck. People could just come into my store and rob me with how oblivious I am. It’s probably just another fancy-pants banker-type man, looking for something with which to adorn his new penthouse or suburban castle.

“Coming!” I shout. My hands are covered in charcoal from sketching, and I’ve got little rolled-up eraser bits flung all across my black shirt. Whoever’s on the sales floor is supposed to look professional, not like a total slob. So my dad says, anyway. Whatever.

I tuck my charcoal pencil behind my ear and careen back into the front room, trying to suppress the rage that always bubbles up when my flow is interrupted. I can’t hate on my customers. They’re what keeps me able to create art, instead of working a nine-to-five. Being a receptionist somewhere, or an “analyst” of some type. So I put on my best, friendliest, most professional smile for whoever dinged my bell in the showroom.

It’s Liam.

Clean-shaven and wearing an actual button-down with dark jeans, rather than his usual tank and grungy denim. He cleans up fucking well. And he’s
here.
I thought… I didn’t think I’d see him again after that crazy-lady first date.

And he’s holding a bird cage in the shape of a tree. It’s absolutely gorgeous. And obviously perfect for creating a completely unique timepiece. He has a real eye for this, and seems, somehow, to have seen and understood my aesthetic. It’s exactly what I like, the angles and color combinations work perfectly for me.

“It’s perfect,” I breathe. “Wow Liam. It’s just perfect.”

His smile, sudden and dazzling, ignites a spark somewhere in my chest. Then it vanishes again and he shrugs.

“I just saw it, and. I thought of you.” he says, a little gruff, but sincere. Not smirking, not teasing me, not flashing me that dimple as if purposefully toying with me.

And it’s like he’s blowing warm air on that spark, fanning it into a small, flickering flame. Burning in my heart.

“Thank you,” I say. “Come on back, let’s get it set up in the workshop.”

This he grins at, and there’s that little wicked smile. The flame in my chest burns hotter, starts to spread.

“Fuck it,” I add, and scoot around him to close and lock the door, flipping the sign to ‘closed.’

His eyes light up as he watches me.

“That’s hot, Bluebird,” he says, eyes flickering from my lips to my waist and my nethers as I try to brush past him.

“Hush you,” I pat his arm. Oh wow, his bicep is
thick
. “I just really want to get work done and it’s been a slow day anyway.” But the flush spreading across my cheeks and décolletage probably gives me away.

I beckon to him, feeling hot and bold, and totally touched that he thought of me. He follows me down the hall to the workshop. I might just be imagining it, but I can feel his gaze on my ass, which is currently only covered by a pair of stretchy pants. I can feel myself flushing even more deeply.

“So, this is it,” I say, gesturing around to the big, airy space filled with tools, materials, wood scraps, canvas, paints, and currently, warm morning light. I turn back to him to see his eyes glowing a luminescent jade when lit from the side like they are now.

“So this is the Bluebird’s little nest,” he says, grinning. He puts the lamp down on the very edge of a table where that’s only a few layers of newspaper under. Suddenly the fact that he brought me a bird cage feels significant.

I brush it aside.

“Yep, this is where the magic happens.”

I’m embarrassingly eager to have him back here. I try not to fidget too much as he has a look around, picking things up and putting them back down, running his fingers across various tools, exploring my old-school phone. His face looks calm and happy as he turns back to me.

“It’s nice to see you in your natural habitat.”

He’s standing just a little bit too close for polite conversation. The heat emanating off of him is incredible, I want to curl into it. I can smell him. His cologne, a brisk whiff of deodorant, and something saltier and deeper. Liam’s smell. I can almost taste it, and I wish I could.

God, I have to keep my thoughts under control. But my skin has turned to fire.

“Wanna see me use a circular saw?” I say, to try to dissipate some of the feeling.

“I’ve never wanted anything so much in my life,” he replies, and even though I know we’re joking, the tone of his voice makes my knees turn to jelly.

I show him how to saw planks of wood in half, introduce him to my power sanders, anything I can think of, but he’s still too close, I can smell him, feel him move around the room. I show him my paints. A middle finger immediately gets dipped in the blue paint, which he then wipes across my cheek before I can dodge out of the way.

“Hey!” I squeal, pretending to wiggle away as I actually dive for the paints myself. Before he knows it, he’s got a dab of green streaking across his arm. He looks down at it, actually astonished, and then back at me. His smile could melt butter.

“
H
ey yourself
,” I say, looking April up and down, the blue paint streaking across her pale, freckled cheeks. She doesn’t look silly as much as… strangely warrior-like. Like a Celtic queen. Even with a smear of blue paint edging across her plump bottom lip, for a split second all I want to do is take her face into my hands and press a kiss to it. I want to watercolor her skin from head to toe. I want to stain us both irrevocably.

I shake my head. I’m starting to lose my edge here. Must be particularly horny, spending so much time with a fox like April. Gotta stay on task.

Showing up at her shop was absolutely the right move — our date went well, as dates go, but it wasn’t the best way to get more information. Too awkward to give her the third degree while trying to charm her — pressing too far will only scare her off.

I’ve already placed a few tiny microphones, just little bugs under various objects in the workshop. They’ll just look like little buttons, not noticeable to someone who isn’t trained to find them. And now that I’m here, I can ask a million questions about the Boutique and her business without sounding suspicious. Devlin Sullivan must be involved in the business model somehow – the devil is in the details.

So instead of kissing her, I gesture back to the paints. Endless colors, different types, everything both organized and labelled neatly, but also sloppy, splashed, mixing and chaotic. Controlled chaos is what it is. I don’t usually notice this kind of shit but honestly it’s pretty striking, all those colors and all those raw
materials.
Makes me feel like a little kid again, when the teacher would hand you crayons and paper and cardboard and glue.

I don’t know how to verbalize what I’m feeling, so instead I say “These look nice. This must all be expensive.”

“Yeah,” she says, shrugging, wiping the corner of her hand off on an apron that’s been tossed across her painting workbench. “Maintaining a shop with this much versatility is pretty rare,” she admits. “There aren’t a lot of artists who do carpentry, metalworking, glasswork, and painting all in one place.”

“Wow you can blow glass here?” I waggle my eyebrows at her. “I’d like to see you blow something.”

“Ah, shut it,” she says, and gestures to a back corner. There is what looks like a big metal oven, a lot of metal structures, long poles, and what I suppose must be raw blocks of glass material. I know nothing about glasswork, so I’m not totally sure what I’m really looking at, but it looks complicated.

“I’m impressed,” I say, and it’s not a lie. “How do you do it?”

“Do what? Blow? I can teach you.”

I bark out a laugh. “I mean all of this. Afford it, I mean. Not to be nosy, but maintaining all of this must be difficult.”

“I charge a fuck-ton for my work,” she says plainly, and laughs. The way she tilts her head back is so —
focus, Copperhead
.

“That’s it?”

“It’s not so hard to turn a profit when each piece is fetching a month’s worth of rent.”

My eyebrows shoot up on my forehead. “That much?”

“Yeah. Though it doesn’t all funnel back to me.”

Ah ha, here we go. My heartbeat picks up.

“Oh?” I try to sound only politely interested, instead of prying.

“Yeah it’s…” her lips part, but no sound comes out for a moment. “You know, a cut goes to investors, a cut to my advertisers and salespeople.”

“What salespeople? I’ve only ever seen you here.”

“Well I have Nadine, my assistant. But my father and I also partner with art brokers, who send potential patrons our way. They ‘talk up’ my work in the art community and do a lot of other work. It’s a very complex process. So I’m making more than enough to maintain the place, and to buy new materials, and pay for rent at my apartment. But not a ton more. I’m not
clearing
as much as I’m
making.”

I chuckle. “I get the difference between gross and net profit.”

Her cheeks flush pink. “Well, most people actually don’t!” She says defensively.

“I’m not most people.”

“Well that’s obvious,” she says, and then looks down at her hands again, and then back up at me, biting her lip.

Fuck that’s appealing. Those lips, pressed against mine, nipping at me…

I snap my eyes back to hers, trying to sound polite again. “And investors?”

“Well, yeah.” She shrugs. “I mean, it’s embarrassing to admit, but I owe most of this to my dad. He believed in me.”

“What do you mean?”

Her eyes flicker back and forth quickly, and I can’t tell if she’s just nervous and embarrassed, or hiding something. “He doesn’t like it when I talk about him to strangers.”

Oh ho, so he doesn’t want her to talk about it. Obviously because he’s hiding something.

“I’m not a stranger,” I say.

“Let’s just say he gave me initial funding to get things off the ground. Each stage of expansion, each time I’ve added a new set of tools or a new branch of clients… I’ve been very fortunate, that’s all.” She clearly doesn’t want to go into details with me.

Interesting.

Does she know something’s not right, or has she just been trained to never speak of such things?

But then she grins at me, and the savage pride on her face is
extremely
attractive on her. “Though, I’m making back much, much more than we spent. I’m killing it, honestly.”

“Fuck yeah you are. It’s clear you work hard and you’re passionate about the shop. I don’t think you have anything to be embarrassed about.”

She stares at me, and then a slow, secret smile steals across her face. “Thanks, Liam.” Her voice is quiet. Something drops through my heart and my stomach.

I almost can’t stand it.

I should try to press her for more information but I’m out of words. Casting about the room, my eyes settle on the large glass-and-steel furnace.

“Anyways. Wanna show me how some of this stuff works?”

I try to stay concentrated on the details I need for my mission but it’d hard not to be distracted by watching her show off her process. She fires up the glass bellows for me, and as she blows her breath through a tube to a little bauble of glass, wrapping her lips around the end, effortlessly twisting, pumping, and twisting, until it begins to inflate and take shape. Watching her able hands, her lips, her throat working as she gently blows, I feel my cock stiffen in response, imagining those lips on me.

“Wow,” I say dumbly. “That’s impressive.”

When she’s done, she’s created a delicate spire of glass to serve as a clock hand.

“I’ve been wanting to build something of a crystal palace clock for a while,” she says sheepishly. “All glass and metal. This’ll be a good start.”

“Well, don’t let me stop you! Get to work.”

I get to watch her use the welding rig, how her eyes light up like fireworks as sparks skitter across her vision. Her hands are so careful, so sure. Nimble, but strong. I watch her bend metal and breathe life into glass. I watch the cage I brought her grow into a spiraling crystal clock tower.

It’s gotten late. I should excuse myself. April is packing up some power tools and grinning.

“I never would have gotten to this pet project if you weren’t here,” she says, gesturing to the clock that she’s started to create in the last two hours. “Thanks for that. I think… I think you’re good for me, Liam.”

“That can’t possibly be true,” I say, almost without thinking. “I’m not good people.”

“Sure you are,” she says easily, as if it were completely obvious. I’m not as sure. I don’t feel like a good guy very often. I mean, I know I do good work for the city. I’m just not sure I’m a good
person.
It’s not like I can tell her,
actually, I’ve been lying to you this entire time, and the only reason I’m with you is to get information on your father so I can capture him and turn him in to federal law enforcement.

Yeah, that would go over really well. April looks right at me and repeats herself, again as if she’s reading my mind. “You’re a good guy, Liam.”

Then she looks away, blushing, and goddamn if it isn’t the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. I should really leave, but instead I step closer to her and put a hand to one porcelain, perfect cheek.

I can’t control myself around this girl.