We had had a nanny, but Sissy and I were always loitering in the kitchen or following her around. She would speak to us in Spanish, something our mother would only do when we were alone. Everyone would have to get a new job; her, the guy who did the landscaping, the driver. I’d take care of it. I was the new master of the Strickland house; I sort of had to. Loyal and capable staff were hard to find; they’d all get excellent recommendations.
The junk in the house was sorted by room. The crypt was still intact, bigger than I remembered. He must have knocked a wall in to make more room. There were rooms that had never been there before everywhere. Our old playroom still had its light blue walls, but they were covered with paintings—so many that some were just stacked on the floor or leaning against the wall.
How much was all this shit worth? All this trash was probably valued at a price higher than the fucking house itself. Any indication of how the man liked to live was overtaken by the sheer volume of things in his house.
I walked up the stairs to the second story. There was close to zero actual living space. The room that used to be my father’s office was, like the rest of the house, immaculately clean, but full of garbage. In this room were the safes. More than one because he collected jewelry too.
I found the master bedroom. I wasn’t sleeping in his bed. No way. It wasn’t even that he’d died in it; it was that it was his. I’d asked Vanessa to order a new bed for me and to get rid of the one in the old master bedroom. I wouldn’t be using it if I could help it. It was just because literally all the other rooms were full of stuff. She’d ordered a standard king. White linen. It would serve. I’d also asked her to get rid of all Dad’s clothes. I didn’t have a lot of luggage, but I didn’t want to live out of my suitcase.
Why did he do this shit? Why did he collect things that he didn’t even pay attention to once he had them? He collected stuff the way he had collected children. I had given up trying to understand him years ago. It wasn’t worth it. There were better ways I could invest my time.
I got my computer out. Depending on how long this took, I’d probably have to schedule a number of teleconferences. I wanted to build in Hong Kong. Oceanfront property, with adjoining marinas, extremely exclusive, outside the city. If the development took off like Deep Water Bay, it would pay for itself, three, four times over. If they wanted to talk again, it would have to be from here.
Dad hadn’t dealt with the real estate and property development side of his business since I had started buying myself. After a few years here after college, I went to New York. There was less space there. If you were doing anything in the city, it was apartments or condos, or office space, always up, not out. I preferred it because I preferred New York. California had space, though, I could give it that. I hadn’t stopped developments here, I just based myself and operations in New York.
Dad’s interest had never really been in real estate, it was in money, and since real estate gave him that, he was in neck-deep. I handled most of it though. Since he was gone now, I’d likely be spending a lot more time here. We had completed developments in Pacific Heights and had real estate in Nob Hill and the Financial District. What was next? Whatever I wanted. I’d probably have to go to Dad’s San Francisco office for a courtesy call. Introduce them to their new overlord in person.
I stood up. I hadn’t eaten anything all day, but I wasn’t hungry. There was, unfortunately, a lot of things I had to help Mom with concerning Dad’s funeral. There had to be a wake. There had to be the funeral itself, the casket, the ceremony, the burial plot. The man was so selfish when he was alive—why hadn’t he arranged some of this shit on his own before he died? I heard the door of the bedroom open. It wasn’t Vanessa because she always knocked. I turned. It was a woman.
“Lee!” she squealed, coming at me with her arms outstretched. She caught me around the neck.
“Deb, what are you doing here?” I asked. Her arms were around me. I gingerly hugged her back. Her breasts were really hard. Deborah Fellows was a friend of the family. She’d gone to the same school as Sissy had and was the same age as her. We had never dated officially, but she was referred to by most people as my on-again, off-again girlfriend. She was tall. In her heels, she was almost as tall as I was.
She was pretty but pretty came in levels. There was pretty like the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Then there was pretty like a 2016 Lamborghini Murcielago. The car was pretty because it had been engineered and built and designed. That was the way in which Deb was pretty. Her face had been engineered, built and designed. Her face, just resting, not doing anything, had the cuntiest expression I had ever seen. It must have been her face bones or something; she just sort of looked like a bitch.
“I heard about your dad. I’m so sorry, babe,” she said. I was going to thank her, but she cut me off, ramming her tongue into my mouth. Deborah was hot in the ass like you wouldn’t believe. I respected a woman who liked to fuck. We had had sex under this very roof more times than I could count when my father was busy ignoring his family and my mother was working.
I pushed her away.
“Deb, I can’t,” I said noncommittally. I could. It wasn’t even that I didn’t want to, I just had things to do that I’d have to do later if I didn’t do them now. It was no use trying to get back to New York before the funeral. On top of that, the house was mine; I had to be there while they emptied it out. I’d be here for at least a couple of weeks. I’d have to figure out a way to telecommute and liaise with my assistant back in the city. Debbie was just a distraction.
“Why did it take you so long to come back and visit?” she asked. There she went, contrite and sincere to horny and needy all in the same breath. Her tongue was running up the outside of my ear. She lived in Los Angeles when we weren’t fucking, and New York when we were. She wasn’t nice, but she could be when she was happy. When she was mad, she screamed and broke things. For all the years we’d known each other, she’d run me thousands of dollars in property damage.
Debbie… she was just there. When I needed a release, she was always available. That was the base of our relationship. We weren’t together—we weren’t even friends. We just had sex. She knew what I liked, and she wasn’t shy. Her hands were rubbing over my chest, trying to get my shirt off. Vanessa must have let her in. Had she offered her anything to eat or drink? She would have, but Deb wouldn’t have taken it. I’d known her since we were kids and could count the number of times I’d seen her eat anything on one hand. The girl had had my whole scrotum in her mouth, and she didn’t want to eat a couple of french fries around me? I let her pull my cock out and suck it till it was hard. My dad had died, and she wanted to make me feel better.
Why would I turn down an offer like that?
4
Audra
It had been two years since I had moved to California and I still hated it. It was like another country. There were no seasons, and the people talked funny.
This place’s one saving grace was Zahira West. We had met at an exhibition; she was an artist, but it wasn’t one of hers. We had a mutual acquaintance in Sean Carmichael. He was a photographer and completely unbearable—one of those people who were good at what they did and knew it. He was pompous and pretentious, but he was talented. He and Zahira had gone to art school together, and I knew him because I had seen him at the auction house; he was a collector.
It was his exhibition, and it was a series of portraits of sex workers. He had named it ‘Trade’ and Zahira and I had spent most of the night in deep conversation over whether the obvious exploitation of the people in the photographs was justified in the name of art. Sean had made a point of exclusively photographing women and LGBT sex workers who worked the streets. It made a statement but at whose expense?
Zahira was a painter. She did that by night. By day she taught adult and child art classes and did commissioned pieces. She loved art, in every form. She was even covered in it; her back and one of her arms were tattooed. I did too, love art. One of my two majors in
college, because I couldn’t pick between the two, was art history. The other was the classics, hence, what I’d named my cats. If I ever had kids, they’d probably be named after deities of dead religions too. I’d continued with art history for my post graduate degree and had passed on museum jobs in New York to work at Strickland’s.
Jackson Strickland was a known collector. Unlike a lot of auction houses, he had opened Strickland’s for his love of art, not necessarily for its business worth. It turned profits, of course, but I had jumped at the chance to work somewhere I thought was a little better intentioned than other places. We had fantastic pieces coming through every day. We had antiques, furniture, taxidermy, jewelry, everything. It was a lot wider than what I would be able to see at a museum. Zahira had invited me to breakfast before work because I had spent the night a few days before with Brandon. I was telling her about it just then.
“What did he say to you? Tell me so I can translate,” she said.
I smiled and sipped my coffee. Zahira was a riot. She was loud and outspoken. She had hard and fast rules when it came to the guys she dated. She wasn’t seeing anyone currently, but that was because she didn’t want to be, not because she didn’t get a lot of male attention. She looked like the sort of girl you would see in a Beyoncé music video. Skin the color of coffee with some creamer, wild curly hair, almond eyes and a banging body.
“He was like, Audra, I’m so sorry for last time. I’ve changed. Give me another chance,” I said, doing my best impression.
“Okay, okay. He said that, but what he means is, Audra; beautiful, smart woman who is completely out of my league, please, give me another chance to waste your time.”
I laughed.
“That’s savage. The guy just can’t win with you.”
“No, he can’t. And he has no business trying to win with you again. He had you on his arm, and he fucked it up. You are too smart and too pretty to waste it on him.”
“But we’ve been together so long,” I said. I just said it to see how she would react to it as a defense.
“So? Are you going to keep saying that till you’re thirty, have three of his kids and he’s fucking a twenty-year-old on the side?” she challenged. “Get out now because the longer you stay, the harder it will be to get out later.”
“I know. After that last night, it’s over. For real this time.”
“After that last night? That’s what you were doing? That’s who you canceled on me for?”
I drank my coffee so I wouldn’t have to answer her.
“You whore,” she teased. “That’s why you can’t get away.”
“It’s not that,” I said, trying to cover my ass. She knew plenty about my relationship with Brandon. Maybe too much. Our sex life had been, well, the only part of the relationship worth writing home about. He was big, and he knew how to use it.
“You don’t have to be shy,” she said, “good dick has steered many good women astray.”
“I just… I don’t know. I just wanted it to work. He was so great sometimes.”
“They always are. Cut him off, Audra. He’s overstayed his welcome.”
She was right. He had.
“I’ll talk to him tonight.”
“No, text him right now while I watch you,” she urged. I made a face. She was smiling, but she was serious.
“A text message? That’s a little cold,” I said picking my phone up and starting on the message. I thought it was cold, not that I wouldn’t do it.
“Good, don’t leave any room for him to think he can keep lying to you,” she said. I smirked, hitting send. I turned the phone to show her. “Done.”
She congratulated me telling me it was about time. It was. It really was. We were done this time. For real. I noticed the time on my phone screen.
“Oh, I have to leave,” I said clearing my cup of coffee. “I have to go look at a private collection today.”
“Really? Where?”
“Across the bridge,” I sighed. “I have to go after the office. Our owner, Jackson Strickland died recently, and he wanted his personal collection auctioned off.”
“I read about that; I heard there was drama with his kids and ex-wives over who got what in the will.”
I shrugged. Understandable. Strickland, the man himself, was something of a legend. The auction house wasn’t even the thing that people really mentioned while talking about him. They were wealthy, and their money was long. Not like Rockefeller long, but almost. I said bye to Zahira and drove to the office.
The house was in Marin County, across the bridge. The Bay area was notorious for being too wealthy for its own good. Marin was one of those places that gave the Bay its bad name. The BART didn’t go to Marin, which was your first indication of the kind of place you were going to visit. I had a car, but that didn’t mean I wanted to make the drive across the bridge to get there. The traffic was ridiculous.
A middle-aged woman who introduced herself as Vanessa let me in. She’d been expecting me, or just someone from the auction house. She told me to wait in the great room for the man of the house to come see me. I declined the offer for anything to drink. The great room was large and rectangular. There was sparse furniture, a fireplace, Persian carpets covering the floor and art covering the walls. My eye caught what I hoped wasn’t a Joan Miro reproduction. I walked over to it. Maybe it was better if I just sat and waited. A man walked into the room as I was debating between the two. He smiled as he approached. I offered my hand.
“Hi, I’m Audra Francini. I’m with the Strickland auction house,” I said. He shook.
“The auction house? I’m Max. Max Strickland.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry for your loss,” I told him. Strickland. This was one of Jackson’s sons. He had two of them. This must be the one who was made consignor.
“It wasn’t sudden. He’d been ill for a while. I’m taking over ownership of the auction house,” he said.
“If you really want to get rid of all this stuff, then we’re going to have a busy few months. I had no idea the extent of Mr. Strickland’s collection.”
“Nobody did. He sort of became reclusive near the end of his life.”
“I’m sure there’s more, but what I’ve seen is already amazing,” I said, trying to stop myself from going total art geek.
“He was a shrewd collector; that’s why he got the auction house.”
“Is that,” I paused. Fuck it. “Is that a 1938 Joan Miro?” I asked, letting my excitement take over. He smiled at me.
“I want to say yes, but I think you’d be able to tell me that better than I’d be able to tell you.”
It was a 1938 Miro.
“I’ve never seen any of his work in private collections before. It must have cost a fortune,” I said, the last part more to myself than to him.
“Hopefully it goes for one too,” he said. I looked at the painting.
Suddenly I got that feeling you sometimes get when you feel like someone is watching you. I looked around the room, towards the entryways. There was a man standing there. I want to say I noticed his face first, but I didn’t. He was shirtless. I noticed that first. Once I did, I noticed his eyes. First of all, the face those eyes were sitting in was possibly the most perfect male face I had ever seen.
His hair was shorn extremely close to the scalp, but that didn’t matter. He was still completely gorgeous. His eyes were a rich brown, like black forest gateau. Stubble shadowed his hard, masculine jawline. His cheekbones were high and sharp. He was wearing black, loose-fitting pants that hung dangerously low around his hips. He walked into the room, and I felt like I needed to stand up a little straighter.
“Maxwell. What are you doing here?” he said.
“I didn’t know you were here,” Max told him. Max was incrementally taller than the man who had just walked in, but that might have been because he was wearing shoes and the man was not.
“Whether I’m here or not, doesn’t matter. You’re still trespassing. Is there something you wa
nt?” he asked icily.
“Could I talk to you in private, Levi?”
Levi. His name was Levi. He looked at me, and I almost felt it physically. His eyes were sharp. Penetrating.
“No. Get out of my house,” he said shortly.
His house? Since Max had been the one that showed up to greet me, I had figured it was his house. He hadn’t said it wasn’t. If they were brothers, he was obviously the older one. The two men stood staring one another down. This looked like something off National Geographic; two alphas cross paths, and they have to determine who is supreme between them. If it came to that, the shirtless one, Levi, looked like he would win. It looked like it might. The air in the room started to feel thick. I spoke up.
“The auction house sent me over today, but I could come back tomorrow. The collection’s a lot more extensive than I expected. It will take a while anyway to appraise,” I said. Levi broke eye contact with his brother first. In the wild, that meant he was submitting, but I felt like that was not the case here. This was probably how they usually were. He looked at me.
“You,” he said. He paused after the word and looked me up and down. “You can stay.” His tone was completely different than it had been when he was talking to his brother. It had lost its hard edge, but was still deep and, well, sexy. I hadn’t been planning on leaving, but the way he’d asked—no, told—me to stay was more than a little inviting. “I’m Levi Strickland.”
“Audra Francini,” I said. I offered my hand for him to shake—an automatic gesture; I did that to everyone new I met. “I’m so sorry about your dad,” I said. He took my hand in both of his. They were big and warm.
Levi (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 4) Page 3