Fixer: A Bad Boy Romance (26 page)

I'd gladly trade away a couple of cans of cat food each day for keeping Salem as my companion, and occasional therapist. Now, sitting comfortably in my arms, he purred deeply, squeezing his eyes shut at me in the feline equivalent of a warm hug.

After a few minutes, however, Salem oozed out of my grasp, getting up and arching his back as he stretched, flexing his claws on my rug. He tore at the carpets sometimes, but I'd read online about how declawing cats was basically the same as chopping off the last little third of their toes, and I couldn't bring myself to do that to the poor fellow. He'd already lost his testicles, I told the vet. He didn't deserve to lose anything more, just so that he could be a pet. I could handle his scratching.

Now, Salem meowed at me, turning in a slow circle. I'd read that cats showed their butt to their owners as a sign of trust, but that didn't mean that I liked looking at him from that particular angle.

"What?" I asked, as he continued meowing. "Come on, Salem, use your words. Tell me what's wrong."

Finally, after it became clear that meowing wasn't getting his message across, Salem turned and took a few steps towards the little kitchen area of the bare-bones apartment before glancing back over his shoulder at me. "Are you getting this, dummy?" his eyes seemed to ask me.

"Right. You probably want food." My stomach rumbled a little. "Apparently I do, too. Let me get up and I'll give you your dinner."

In the kitchen, I found a can of cat food in the cupboard and popped the little tin lid. Salem purred and wove his way through my ankles as I pulled open a drawer and grabbed a spoon. "Remember, you only get a quarter can per meal," I warned him. "After all, the vet says that you already don't get enough exercise, and you're gaining weight. Need to keep you slim and slender."

Salem just purred harder, clearly intent on charming me into giving him as much food as he could manage. Feeling my willpower slip away, I decided to give him a third of a can instead of a quarter. Maybe he'd been burning extra calories as he worried about me leaving him to go to my interview.

Once Salem was noisily chowing away at his lump of wet kitty pate, I turned my attention to the fridge. I pulled a couple slices of bread out of the loaf on my counter and began assembling a sandwich, really pushing the limits of my limited culinary abilities. I spread peanut butter on one side of the bread, grabbed the other slice, and grumbled as I searched the fridge for jelly.

Oh yeah, I remembered a minute later. I'd already used up the last of the jelly. A sticky note clung to the door of my fridge, reminding me that I needed to buy more food. I turned my eyes back to the bleak contents of my refrigerator, searching for something else to put on my sandwich. Pickles?

Surprisingly, a peanut butter and pickle sandwich turned out to not be completely awful. Hopefully, now that I had this new job, I'd be able to afford to buy more jelly, or maybe even some actual food that didn't seem like I'd stolen it from the larder of a college student.

I tried pouring myself a glass of milk to help wash down the taste of the sandwich, but that just made the pickle flavor more pronounced. Sighing, I dropped back down onto my couch, not too worried about the crumbs.

"This is my life now, isn't it?" I called out despondently to Salem, still gulping away at his cat food in the kitchen like it might vanish at any second. "Living alone in a single bedroom apartment with my cat, eating a peanut butter and pickle sandwich without a plate. This is who I've become."

Salem didn't disagree with my evaluation.

I fought against thoughts of how I'd been previously, but they came welling up like bubbles out of mud in a marsh. I remembered how, three years ago, I'd been so certain that my life would be perfect, charmed, that I'd be the one that all of my high school friends envied at class reunions.

Hah. Now, I'd be lucky if I avoided getting outright pity.

In my defense, things really had been going well. Too well, I now knew, but they'd felt comfortable. I'd convinced myself that I was comfortable, if not exactly head over heels in love. Sure, Barry had been short and chubby and already going bald a bit, even though he tried to comb his hair over that spot, but he'd provided for me, hadn't he? He'd paid for the nice house (where he brought the other women when I wasn't around), sent me off on spa weekends (so that he could invite the other women to spend the night with him), and let me fritter away his money on little trivial gimmicks like ceramic cookware (so that I'd have hot dinner waiting for him every night).

Barry even paid for my truck. That had been one of the few sore spots in our relationship (before all the lies came to light); he'd expected me to get a cute, girly little two-seater, a Mazda or maybe a convertible. Instead, however, I remembered borrowing a pickup truck from a high school friend when I needed to move to college. I loved the feel of riding high on the road, having all that power under my foot. Barry protested, argued with me, but I remained firm.

I got my truck, a blue Toyota pickup, small enough to fit in a parking spot without scraping the paint off my neighbors' cars but still with plenty of "go" under the accelerator. I'd taken loving care of the truck, up until I found out that Barry had been cheating on me for the entire short length of our marriage - and earlier - and drove it straight through his garage door and over his damn overpriced black BMW.

I might not have the house, the disposable income in the bank account, or the simpering husband around any longer, but I still at least had my truck. It was parked down the street from my apartment, just visible when I glanced out the window. Hopefully, I wouldn't end up having to sell it to cover my bills.

"But maybe it will all work out," I said aloud hopefully as Salem came back into the living room from the kitchen area, dropping back down into his usual flopping spot on the rug where he could gaze up at me. "I'll sell a bunch of art, stone penises and things, and make a hundred thousand dollars in commissions and totally pay back Barry for all the money I owe him. Won't that be nice?"

Salem just blinked at me again, but I took his silence as assent.

For a moment, I dwelled on how much money I still owed Barry. After the divorce papers were in, the fees kept on piling up. I'd managed to take care of most of them, giving up equity in his business, the house, everything we'd owned together - but I still had one last bill from him hanging over my head. A doozy of one.

But I didn't want to focus on that now. I needed a distraction.

I felt something hard poking me from under the cushions on the lumpy couch. I shoved my hand into the crack between the cushions, digging out the remote to my television. I clicked it on, not especially caring about what I watched. I just needed something to distract me from thinking too much about how my life had fallen apart.

Tomorrow, I repeated silently to myself. Tomorrow, I'd start taking the first real steps to getting my life back together, moving past Barry and that whole chapter.

I'd get up, get some coffee, open up the Halesford art gallery, and learn how to manage the place. Maybe I'd even meet some interesting people, I thought to myself in a vain attempt to cheer myself up. Artists were sexy, weren't they? I tried to think of someone with chiseled muscles, someone tall and intimidating, maybe with a European accent. The anti-Barry.

Unfortunately, the only artist that came to mind was Bob Ross, and while I did enjoy pretty little clouds, I didn't feel especially aroused by brown afros. I groaned and sank a little further back into the couch.

After another minute, Salem rose from his spot on the floor, jumping easily up to the couch (hah, and the doctor said that he was fat!) and settling down on top of my outstretched ankles. Despite the bumps of my shins and feet, he managed to get comfortable, curling up and purring like a buzz saw.

"Thanks, buddy," I said down to him, leaning back against the pillow beneath my head and closing my eyes.

Just a few minutes here, I told myself. Then, I'd get up and go get my clothes ready, pick out an outfit for working as an art gallery curator, set up my coffee maker, get ready for bed. I just needed a few more minutes of laying here with my eyes closed, listening to the background babble of the television, not thinking about any bad part of my life...

Chapter Three

*

"I'm here, I'm here!" I panted out to no one in particular, tottering into the Halesford Gallery in a mad, off-balance scramble.

Behind the front desk, my uncle looked up at me. "Ah, good, you're here," he said mildly, not commenting on the fact that the clock behind him already read nine-fifteen in the morning. "I thought that I'd show you the ropes, and then leave you to handle the rest of the day. How does that sound?"

"Sounds good, Uncle Preston," I answered, dumping my purse on the other side of the reception desk and taking a long gulp from the take-out coffee cup in my hand. "Again, I'm really sorry that I'm late-"

"No worries," Preston cut me off, waving a hand. "The gallery doesn't get a ton of foot traffic." He paused. "Not that this should keep you from opening on time in the future, of course."

"Of course not," I nodded, making a note to circle back later to that 'not many customers' point. Hard to earn commission if no one came in to buy anything.

Once again, Preston walked me through the basics of handling the gallery; taking phone calls, ringing up sales, where to file any sales papers in the back so that the artists who came in could find out that they'd moved one of their pieces. It didn't seem too hard, and Preston even gave me a nod of approval as he observed my outfit.

Thank goodness, I thought to myself, rewarding myself with another big gulp of coffee, loving the warm trickle over my tongue, the little buzz of caffeine heading straight to my brain.

I'd woken up this morning with a sudden start, sitting straight up on the couch - and then immediately wincing as pain cut across my lower back. My lumpy couch definitely didn't have the same support as a mattress.

Panicking over the lateness of the hour, I'd staggered into my closet with my brush still snarled in my unkempt hair, my toothbrush hanging out of my mouth. What in the world did an art gallery manager wear? Eventually, deciding that I'd rather be overdressed than under-dressed, I went with a pencil skirt, a blouse that hung loose enough to cover up some of the post-marriage stress eating, and a pair of high heels.

It wasn't until I rolled out of my truck and dashed to the front door of the gallery that I realized that, while looking halfway decent, a pencil skirt and high heels wasn't the best combination for moving quickly. I'd come dangerously close to twisting an ankle as I hurried to try and not show up too late for my first day of work.

"So, that's about everything," Preston finished, as we arrived back at the front reception desk, having taken a loop through the four areas of the gallery. "You should be about set."

"Great," I said, hoping that my uncle couldn't hear the note of hesitation in my voice. Buck up, you've got this, I told myself sternly, willing the words to magically become true.

Preston started towards the exit, but then paused and wheeled back around. "Oh, but there are two people that you should keep an eye out for. The VIPs, you might say." He chuckled to himself.

"Who are they?" I asked after a moment of silence.

"Oh! Right. Carter James, and Onyx."

I frowned blankly back at my uncle. Were those the names of two people, or three? And Onyx? That wasn't a name, surely - hadn't he said something about Onyx the other day, when I visited? Was Onyx linked to the stone genitalia?

"And those names, then, who are they?" I asked.

"Well, Carter James is the real estate agent for many of the commercial properties in the area," Preston answered. "He tends to buy quite a lot of art from us, mainly so that he can sell the building owners on having local artists featured in their lobbies and waiting rooms. He probably generates the most regular sales for us, so keep on his good side!"

I nodded, trying to keep my eyes from lighting up with dollar signs. "And the other? Onyx? Didn't you mention him the other day?"

"Yes, he's our local celebrity artist," Preston said. "He does the black stone carvings, and he's been featured in several national magazines and exhibitions. He brings us a lot of our publicity, so we need to make sure that he doesn't even think of leaving our gallery for another! Whatever he wants - moving his statues, putting in a new exhibition, changing the lighting, whatever he demands - make it happen."

I nodded, repeating the names to myself in my head. Carter James, and Onyx, no last name. Other artists sometimes gave themselves one-word monikers, I supposed. Madonna, Prince. Maybe this Onyx fellow figured that he was at the same level as them, and so he just went with the one word. What did he write on checks?

"There's more info on them in the notes on your desk," Preston went on, pointing down at the receptionist's desk at the front of the gallery. "You should have plenty of time to read up on them."

"Okay," I said, again frowning as I considered the implications of his words. Preston had told me previously that his art gallery was profitable, but that didn't necessarily mean that he was raking in cash hand over fist. Could I really earn enough here to pay my bills, or was this just a little short-term exercise in futility, a way for me to take a month before leaving my uncle's little play-business and finding a real job?