Fixer: A Bad Boy Romance (31 page)

When I heard the bell tingle above the front door, I looked up hopefully, my thoughts still preoccupied with Carter. As I focused in on the balding head that poked in through the front door, however, my mood plummeted straight down through the floor.

"What are you doing here?" I snarled.

"Whoa, hey!" Barry held up his hands as he stepped inside, looking surprised that I'd be at all short with him. "I'm here to talk, that's all!"

I glared back at him. "Yeah, because I want to say anything to you. I thought I made it clear after the divorce that I don't want to ever cross paths with you again."

The newest arrival in the art gallery, however, just rolled his eyes, taking another step forward and looking around with clearly feigned interest.

"So, this is what you're doing now? Doesn't really seem like you, Rebecca," he commented.

I bit at my lip to hold back my particularly vitriolic response as I glared across the top of the front desk at this man. This man, who had offered me what I thought was the perfect life, and then stomped it completely to pieces fewer than two years later.

Barry Bulger, dentist and top contender on my personal hate list, wasn't an especially powerful looking man. Even back when we'd been dating, when I had managed to successfully convince myself, if not my friends, that he was a great guy, I hadn't felt at all intimidated by his height (which he lacked), his hair (which was also starting to run thin, especially in the forehead area), or his intelligence (of which my opinion had slid steadily downwards over the years). Instead, I'd told myself that he was a comfortable guy, the sort of guy where I could relax, where I didn't need to always be on guard and where I could open up and just be myself. Barry never seemed to object to seeing the real me, so I assumed that he truly loved and appreciated me for who I was.

Later on, of course, I realized that he simply didn't care enough to object, and just wanted me to keep on playing my little domestic housewife role in our relationship. He didn't need me to dress up and look sexy and seductive not because he loved me for myself, but because he had plenty of other options on call when he wanted to get his shriveled little dick wet.

"What do you want, Barry?" I now asked, just wanting to get him out of the gallery - and my life - with as little additional pain as possible.

He sighed, running a hand up through his thinning hair. I noticed, with a little bit of petty satisfaction, that his waistline seemed to be straining at the ratty old belt he'd worn for as long as I'd known him. Barry still bragged about fitting into the same belt hole as college, but I privately observed that the gut above said belt seemed to grow a little bigger every time that I crossed paths with him.

"Look, you still owe me your half of the settlement payment from the house," he said, not sounding especially happy to be here pointing this out in person. Barry hated confrontation, and usually did his best to avoid it when possible. "I just wanted to remind you that the payment due date is coming up in a couple of weeks-"

"I know," I cut him off, my good mood now totally gone. Yeah, like I hadn't been worrying every night about how much money I still owed Barry for this damn divorce. How long would I have to keep on paying for the mistake of marrying him?

Admittedly - and I did admit it even though it hurt me - this big payment hanging over my head was, at least in part, my own fault. When we were in the process of getting married, Barry had a whole stack of papers for me to sign, and I naively trusted him and went ahead with scrawling my name on every last one. It wasn't until later, when I finally had the good sense (prompted by Portia) to retain a lawyer, that I finally realized how badly I'd screwed myself over by not reading through each and every sheet.

Not only had I agreed to a pre-nup, forbidding me from getting monthly alimony checks from Barry, but I'd also ended up putting my name on the house that he felt would be "just perfect for us to start our little family together." That house was still under a mortgage, and when I moved out and left Barry behind, I couldn't shake the financial obligation of paying for the rest of it nearly as easily as I shook off the slimeball himself.

There was an out, at least, that my lawyer managed to find. Instead of being on the hook for the entire hundred and fifty thousand dollars remaining on the mortgage, I could sell my stake in the house to be free and clear of the whole thing.

Unfortunately, the house had depreciated in the time since we purchased it, apparently due to some "minor bubble in the housing market". This meant that, even after selling my equity in the house, I still owed Barry a little over ten thousand dollars, in order to cover the difference.

I, of course, did not have ten thousand dollars.

This was, in part, why my eyes had lit up when Uncle Preston mentioned that selling art at his gallery would also involve making commission on sold pieces. If I could just move a few high-ticket items, I'd hopefully be able to get my hands on enough cash to pay back Barry.

This idea, however, required some customers, something that the gallery seemed to be completely lacking. And having Barry Bulger, the Balding Wonder Dentist, standing in the front room and looking uncomfortable certainly wasn't going to help bring more prospective art buyers inside.

"Listen," I told Barry now, rising up from behind the front desk. "I know about the money. I think about it probably far too much for my health, far more than I think about you. So just let me handle it. Okay?"

He nodded instinctively, backing down from the fight that he sensed, but he still didn't yet turn tail and flee. "Right. It's just that I..."

After another second, I grew impatient of waiting. "You what?"

"I kind of need that money." He winced, his eyes dropping down before finally coming back up to reluctantly meet mine.

"Why?"

He rubbed one Merrell-clad foot across the floor as if wiping at the wood paneling. "It really isn't important. But I need it, okay, so if you aren't going to be able to meet the deadline that our lawyers agreed upon-"

I pointed at the door. "Get out, Barry."

As my finger stabbed out, Barry immediately took an instinctive step towards the door, but then paused. "Come on, Rebecca," he said, trying to put on a calming smile as he turned back towards me. "Look, we had some good times together, didn't we? There's no reason that this has to get nasty between us."

"Has to get nasty?" My mouth dropped open. "Barry, those good times were built on lies! You were cheating on me for what, months, before I found out? And you expect me to just forgive you for all that?"

"I'd forgive you if you had cheated on me," he pointed out, as if this made everything hunky-dory.

"Yeah, well, now I'm wishing that I had cheated on you," I snapped back at him. "Maybe with someone who can go for more than thirty seconds without getting winded and needing me to climb on top!"

Barry winced, and I grinned savagely to myself. Score one point for Becca!

"Clearly, you're not in a reasonable mood to talk about this," Barry said, now retreating towards the front door of the gallery. "I'll come back when you're less emotional."

"Emotional?" I howled, looking around for something to throw at him. My hand strayed temptingly towards a heavy looking stapler sitting on the desk, but my good sense managed to intervene at the last second and convince me that an assault charge wouldn't look good to my long-suffering lawyer. "Get out, before I do something that's a lot more than just emotional!"

My hand finally settled on a binder clip, which I hurled overhand at Barry. It hit him in the neck, but didn't have quite the same impact that I imagined the stapler would leave on his fleshy, soft skin. Still, Barry's eyes widened and he quickened his retreat.

"Good to see you, Rebecca," he called out quickly before the door closed. My eyes widened, but he was gone before I could manage to find a suitable insult.

I stood there behind the front desk of the Halesford Gallery, glaring at the door with an intensity probably strong enough to send invisible beams of hatred straight through the wood. Maybe, if this was a fair and just universe, my hatred would earth itself in Barry's stomach and give him some ulcers or dyspepsia or that Irritable Bowel thing that seemed to feature in so many TV adverts.

"Well, that was interesting."

What? Who said that? I jumped nearly a foot in the air, spinning around as my eyes flew wide open in surprise.

I spotted the speaker immediately as he moved forward, standing up from the wall he'd been leaning against behind me. He'd been in the second room of the gallery, with a line of sight on both Barry and me, but not close enough for either of us to notice his presence. He now advanced forward, and I felt a little chill of something run down my spine.

"Old friend?" he asked, dark eyes the color of black coffee examining me.

"Um, ex-husband. Who are you?" I stammered out.

He smiled. "Must be a recent break."

I caught myself halfway through a nod, trying to regain my conversational balance. "Seriously, who are you? When did you come in here?"

He smiled, and brilliantly white teeth flashed in strong contrast against skin the color of coffee with lots of creamer. "Name's Onyx. Heard of me?"

Chapter Nine

*

"Onyx?" I repeated dumbly, staring back at this man who'd somehow managed to sneak into the art gallery as I argued with my ex-husband. Maybe not the best first impression, I considered ruefully to myself.

I seemed to have a problem with that, as of late - especially when it came to sexy, handsome, mysterious men.

He nodded, taking another step forward. He crossed over to where the binder clip that I'd chucked at Barry's head had landed, and bent over to pick it up. I tried to not ogle him as he leaned down, his long, mocha fingers extended out, and failed miserably.

Onyx looked like he stood at least a few inches over six feet tall, long and limber with cords of muscle standing out on his exposed forearms. I didn't doubt for a moment that those bands of muscle also extended over the rest of his body. A pair of tight black jeans and a matching black sweater, the sleeves of which he'd rolled up to just above his elbows, covered the rest of his lean figure. He looked like he belonged on the cover of a spy magazine, perhaps fighting hand to hand with James Bond, and I suspected that his presence on the silver screen would instantly win over legions of adoring female fans.

No wonder why he'd been featured in magazines, and why people wanted to buy penises that he carved, I thought to myself faintly. The buyers were probably all sex-starved women who just wanted to add to their fantasies about the artist.

Onyx glided over to the other side of my desk, reaching out and placing the binder clip in front of me. "Want to talk about it?" he asked.

I shook my head mutely, looking up at him.

"Good," he said, but he didn't leave.

After another second of silence, during which I did my hardest to not start sweating at the presence of him this close to me, I finally managed to clear my throat. "So, is there, um, something that you needed?" I asked, doing my best to pull together my remaining shreds of professionalism. "Do you need me to get you something?"

Onyx, however, just shook his head. "I sometimes come here when I need inspiration," he said. "Watching how people interact with art, how they respond - it pushes me to try and define the edges of my influence."

I nodded, not even trying to make sense of the words. They came from the mouth of a man who was literally tall, dark, and handsome! He could probably read off a recipe for lasagna from the back of a pasta box, and I'd be totally spellbound as I listened to him.

"So you're just here to watch customers?" I asked. "Unfortunately, we don't have many of those, it seems."

"It's often a lot of waiting," he nodded, and I caught another brief flash of those white teeth in a smile. "Perhaps I also just don't want to sit in my studio when I feel at a loss for inspiration."

Okay, that made more sense. "Anyway, I don't think we've met before," I continued, trying to keep the professionalism going. Salvage the situation, Becca. "I'm Rebecca Grace, but you can call me Becca. I'm going to be the new manager of the Halesford Gallery."

"Pleasure," Onyx murmured, taking my hand and giving it a firm but not overly harsh squeeze. His dark brown eyes peered into mine, and for a moment, I swore that he could definitely read my naughty thoughts about him.

"So, Onyx?" I asked. "That's not your given name is it, I'm guessing?"

Onyx just smiled at me again as he stepped around the desk and grabbed the second chair from behind, drawing it out so that he could sink into it. His actions reminded me of a cat, graceful and precise, as he settled into the chair and propped his long legs up on the desk. His languor made it clear that he wasn't planning on answering my question about his name.

"Do I just make the checks out to Onyx, if someone buys one of your pieces?" I pressed. I was aware that the questions might sound annoying, but decided that my babbling was at least better than awkward silence. "And if someone buys one of your statues, do I have to wrap it up so that there won't be any sort of issue with lewdness when they carry it out?"