Selling Grace: A Light Romance Novel (Art of Grace Book 1) (7 page)

"Portia, I really don't want to talk about my ex-husband right now-"

"I turned him down, of course." Portia straightened up for a moment so that she could smile down at me, her eyes slightly unfocused. "Sisterhood. We gotta stick together, you know. Against the man. Fuck 'em, right?"

"Uh, word choice-"

"But I should have told you that he hit on me, the scumbag," she snarled. "Then you could have left him at the altar, and you wouldn't be stuck in this whole mess! Think of how much better that would have been! When the priest did the whole, you know, speak now or forever hold your stuff, you could have totally spoken now! Or then, whenever."

"You know, Portia, you're not exactly cheering me up that much, here," I said, groaning as I looked up and down the empty street. Where were the taxis?

Portia nodded. "You're right. I'm not being a good friend. So instead..."

I glanced over at her after a moment of silence. "What?"

"Um, I need to go for a moment," she said faintly, and then turned and sprinted away, into the darkness.

"Portia!" Oh my god, she was going to end up falling and hurting herself! I chased after her, trying my hardest to keep from tripping over my own feet. At least I'd had a chance to swap those damn high heels for something a bit more comfortable!

I skidded to a stop a dozen steps later, at the opening to a little alley next to Vini. From down in the darkness of the alley I could hear the sounds of someone moving around.

"Portia?" I called out, not too enthusiastic about going into a dark alley on my own.

In answer, I heard the sound of someone noisily losing the several glasses of wine that she'd just ingested. "Yep, that's her," I said more quietly to myself, and elected to stand guard out at the entrance of the alley, waiting for her to emerge after she'd finished dumping out all the alcohol she'd only recently finished consuming.

Five minutes later, Portia staggered out of the alley, looking decidedly paler as she wiped off her mouth. "That was... not fun," she informed me, as she accepted my offer of a hand to lean on.

"Let's see about getting you home, bestie," I told her, giving her a little squeeze. She burped (cutely, even now, dammit) and her eyes went briefly cross-eyed, but she kept control of her stomach this time and nodded.

I managed to hail a solitary cab after a couple of minutes, and climbed into the backseat alongside Portia. "Really, things are going to work out for me," I promised her. "Trust me, I'll figure out a way to handle all of this - the divorce, the new job, the money that I still owe Barry, all of it. I've got it under control."

"I know you do," Portia answered. She smiled at me, brushing her hair back behind an ear to reveal that model-beautiful face. Even after throwing up, something that would make most other women look awful, she still seemed ready to go sweep into a ball and be the talk of the cream of the crop, to mingle fluidly among the other high-class elite.

We pulled up at Portia's classy, elegant apartment building (a tower that looked as if it was made almost entirely of glass; I didn't know how Portia afforded to even set foot in the place, but it definitely suited her). I held the cab door open so that Portia could emerge.

"Now, be sure to drink some water," I admonished her as she got out.

Ignoring my well-meaning advice, Portia just paused for a moment to regard me out of her dark eyes. "Remember, look on the upside," she said softly, reaching out and catching my hand. "Barry was in the past. Now, you need to think about your future - and that means moving forward, having fun, getting out there. Fun. Okay, Becks?"

"I'll think about it," I promised.

She gave me one last smile, and then turned and headed into her tall, elegant glass tower as the cabbie pulled away, carrying me back towards my smaller, dingier little single-occupancy apartment.

Chapter Eight

*

Unfortunately, my past came back to haunt me the very next day.

Despite my advice to Portia, I only managed to gulp down a single glass of water before my yawning got the best of me. Wobbling a little, I peeled off most of my clothing, gave a sleepy little wave to Salem as he observed me from the doorway, and then flopped down on top of the bed and tugged the messy sheets up over me.

I next opened my eyes to the blaring of my phone alarm. "I'm up, I'm up," I croaked as I pulled myself out of bed, blinking through crusty eyes at the first rays of the morning sunrise starting to shine in through my apartment window.

I felt like crap, but I at least managed to get up, give a mewling Salem his dose of wet cat food as breakfast, and pull myself together enough to get in the shower and wash away the last remnants of last night. I felt a bit better after I emerged, and poured some coffee from my dusty old Mr. Coffee maker into a thermos to bring along with me to the art gallery. No stopping for a four dollar latte for this gal today! Saving money!

My truck pulled into the little parking lot behind the Halesford Gallery with five minutes to spare, and I congratulated myself by taking a big bite of the pastry that I'd snagged from the bakery counter at the grocery store. (Okay, I was trying to cut back on spending, but the donut only cost me a dollar fifty! That was still better than spending four bucks on coffee, right?) Glancing down guiltily at myself, I balanced my thermos on top of my truck's hood for a moment so I could use a free hand to brush crumbs off of my outfit.

Confident, caffeinated, and ready to take on any little old ladies who wanted to buy an erotic sculpture to decorate their senior community apartments, I headed up to the gallery and unlocked the door. I turned on the lights in the different rooms and then settled in behind the front desk, waiting for customers.

Maybe Carter would stop by again, I considered with a little bloom of hope, despite my agreement with Portia last night that I wasn't yet ready for a real relationship. Even if I might not be ready to do anything beyond return his flirting overtures, he definitely was easy on the eyes, giving me plenty of material for the occasional naughty daydream.

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."