Since I thought that Flynn might be right, I decided to blow off a few house-related errands in favor of going by the gallery to see Cole.
“He hasn’t come in yet,” Liz said. She was a pretty blonde who used to be one of the dancers at Destiny.
One of the cooler things that the knights did was help the girls who worked at the club find the kind of jobs where they didn’t have to take off their clothes if they didn’t want to. They even paid for school or vocational training, and Tyler owned a placement agency that a lot of the girls used when they were ready to move on.
The really cool thing was that a number of the girls had been snared in a white trafficking ring, and the guys had managed to get them cut loose and gainfully employed. It was a low-profile operation, but both Angie and Sloane were so proud of what their men had done that I had heard about it as well.
Now all three of the knights worked on and off with a federal task force that had taken down the ringleaders of the trafficking scheme. The case was still being investigated, but I imagined there would be a huge, media-circus-worthy trial one of these days.
“The gala went over great,” I told Liz. “You did an awesome job putting it together.”
“Thanks,” she said, looking pleased. “Do you want to leave him a note or something?”
I wasn’t sure that I did, but it seemed odd to show up and not say a thing. Besides, leaving a note was what civilized people did. “Can I just go back and put it on his desk?”
“Sure,” she said, giving me a winning smile.
This time, when I walked down the corridor of offices and workspaces, I saw that the door to Cole’s studio was open. I caught a glimpse of something familiar and paused, then found myself drawn in by the image of a woman’s naked back—an image I’d seen before.
The canvas was propped on an easel, and though I’d originally thought that this was the same portrait that had intrigued me last night at the gala, I soon realized that the angle of this one was slightly different. It was another study of the same woman.
There was, however, one very obvious difference. This one was signed in a familiar scrawl.
Cole.
I remembered our conversation and bit back a smile. No wonder Cole had said the gallery would continue to feature the artist’s work.
Without realizing it, I’d walked all the way into the studio. Now I was only inches from the canvas. The perspective on the woman was almost the same as that of the portrait displayed in the gallery, with some subtle yet important differences.
Like the original portrait, the woman in this painting suggested beauty and purity. She seemed vibrant, yet in control. Alive and aware and exceptional. A goddess, only here on earth.
It was a testament to Cole’s skill that he could evoke such a range of emotions and such vivid interpretations simply from his paintbrush. I’d known he was talented, but standing here now I was struck by the fact that his talent edged up against genius.
I took a step back, wanting to simply soak in the image. Right then, it was as close as I was going to get to Cole, and I didn’t want to waste the moment or the opportunity.
Unlike the portrait hanging in the gallery, this image wasn’t shielded by the fountain, and so there was no barrier between the woman and the audience. The details of her back were more clear, including a tan line that gave her a more human quality. On top of that, the image dipped lower, showing a few more inches of her hips and the two small dimples just above the swell of her ass.
I had dimples like that. When I was a kid, I’d hated them. Now, I considered them an asset. A little sexy, a little flirty. I had to assume Cole thought so, too, otherwise why choose—
I froze, my eyes drawn to an area just below the model’s left dimple. Was that . . . ?
I bent closer, then sucked in air. It was a tattoo.
More than that, it was the tattoo of a Latin expression. Ad astra. To the stars.
Automatically, my hand snaked around to my own back, just below my own dimple. To my own tattoo of those exact words. Words that I’d grown up with because they were my father’s favorite saying.
I stepped back so that I could take in the entire portrait. It was me. I had no doubt anymore. That was my waistline. My hair. Even the way that the model’s head was tilted slightly to the side, the way I often did when I was thinking.
I’d been staring at myself, interpreting my own portrait, and I hadn’t even known it.
More than that, I’d had no idea that Cole was using me as a subject.
What the hell?
I thought about all the times I’d sunbathed on the roof of the condo with Angie. The times that Evan had taken all of us out on his boat.
Cole had been watching me?
And not just watching me, but studying me.
Restless, I moved around the room, realizing as I did that the canvas on the easel wasn’t the only image of me. Rough sketches littered a worktable, and as I looked down, I found myself staring back into my own eyes, taking in the curve of my own cheek, the swell of my own breasts.
Empirically, the work was exceptional. But that wasn’t what intrigued me.
Cole wanted me.
At the very least he was attracted to me, intrigued by me.
Obsessed with me.
That, apparently, was something we had in common.
So why the hell was he fighting so hard to stay away from me?
I drew in another breath and looked around this bright, airy room, seeing it this time as Cole might see it. It was filled with me. Or, at least, a version of me.
But the girl on the canvas and in those sketches was filled with light. She suggested purity and sweetness. There was nothing harsh or secretive about her.
She was me—and yet she wasn’t. And the pleasure I’d been feeling began to shift into something cold and unpleasant.
I don’t know who Cole saw when he looked at me, but he wasn’t seeing Katrina Laron, or any of the other names I’d used throughout the years.
He wasn’t even seeing Catalina Rhodes, the girl I’d started life as, but who had been erased long ago.
Had he not really been looking at me at all?
Or did he see something in me that I’d been hiding from everyone? Including myself?
six
I’d planned to go straight from the gallery to The Drake hotel, where I was meeting Sloane and Angie for a liquid lunch before Sloane and I branched off to discuss Angie’s bachelorette party. That would have been the smart thing to do, considering I could have walked between the two locations in under fifteen minutes, and the drive would take less than five.