When the Billionaire Begs novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Not for Sale

Carlton brings Odette to Claire's studio and gives her Claire's Biennial painting; Claire takes it back and Carlton grips her wrist.

The next morning, Veronica Keswick called while I was locking my front door.

"Claire, dear," she said, in her warm, easy voice. "Dinner tonight at the house. Seven o'clock. You and Carlton will come together."

"I can't, Mrs. Keswick. I have plans."

Her voice cooled. "What plans could matter more than family?"

I said nothing.

"Carlton mentioned a little quarrel. Couples have them. A sensible girl knows when to soften."

"We broke up," I said.

She laughed, light and pleasant.

"Don't be dramatic. Think of his position, his future. Half the girls in our circle would give anything to stand where you stand."

"I'm not coming."

"You have been sensible for three years, Claire. Don't throw it away over pride."

For three years she had said sensible when she meant easy to push.

I hung up.

At two o'clock I was in my studio in the arts district, stretching paper for the weekend workshop.

My apprentice leaned into the back room with her eyes wide. "Claire, Mr. Keswick is here."

I wiped my hands on a rag and walked out to the front.

Carlton sat on the lounge sofa with his jacket over the armrest and a coffee on the glass table.

Odette sat beside him with her legs tucked up, paging through the portfolio of my students' work.

She looked up at once and smiled at me.

"Claire! Your students are so good. This one with the boat made me want to cry."

Her finger rested on the watercolor on the counter.

It was my entry for the Regional Emerging Artists Biennial, a cast-iron streetlamp over an empty bench on a rainy corner.

Carlton had called an early sketch of it striking, once, in passing.

I had spent two months redoing the wet pavement seventeen times, so that he would say it again.

"It's so lonely, though," Odette said, and tilted her head. "It feels like a bad omen."

Carlton looked up from his phone. "Odette wants to try painting. I brought her to see a real studio."

"We don't take walk-ins," I said.

Odette's eyes filled at once. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know I wasn't welcome."

"Claire," Carlton said, quietly, with a warning in it.

Three of my morning students looked up from the drying racks.

My apprentice stood by the supply closet with both hands tight around a jar of turpentine.

"Do you want me to take the class into the back room?" she whispered.

Carlton stood and straightened his cuffs, and walked over until he was standing right above me.

"Haven't you made your point?" he said, low enough to sound private and sharp enough to cut. "I came to take you to dinner at my mother's."

"I told your mother. I'm not going."

He looked at me for a long moment, and then he smiled.

It was a small, cold smile.

"I'm finished asking nicely."

He turned back to the counter and nodded at the painting.

"Odette, you like that one? Take it."

My stomach dropped. "What?"

Odette blinked at the two of us. "Wait, really? Isn't that Claire's entry for the exhibition?"

"I'll buy it," Carlton said, in a bored, pleasant tone. "Name one thing in this room I didn't pay for."

The studio went silent.

I heard one of my students breathe in.

My face went cold.

He had helped me, once.

I had paid back every dollar of the lease deposit he fronted, over fourteen months, by transfer.

The pigments were a birthday present, two years ago.

The entry fee I had paid with three weekends of workshops that left my wrists swollen.

He knew all of that, and he had just turned it into charity.

My students knew it too now, and not one of them was looking at me.

"It isn't for sale, Carlton," I said, and my voice shook.

His eyes narrowed. "Not for sale? Or not to Odette?"

I did not answer.

Behind him, Odette had already reached out and closed her fingers around the frame.

I stepped past him and pulled the painting out of her hand.

"It isn't for sale to anyone."

The last of his amusement went out of his face.

He took hold of my wrist.

It was not a wild grab, but it was a lock, and it did not give.

"Apologize, Claire."

"To who?"

"To Odette. For your behavior."

A laugh came out of me, short and ugly.

"You want me to apologize in my own studio to a woman who tried to take my work off my wall?"

Odette stood up from the sofa with a soft, worried sound. "Please, don't fight over me."

She was holding her phone up at chest height, and the little red light was on.

His grip closed down until my pulse beat against the bone.

"I will not ask a second time."

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