House of Payne: Ice

by Stacy Gail

  KILL ME NOW.

  “Sunny day.” Her hallucination—but maybe he wasn’t, since everyone else seemed to be interacting with it—had the unmitigated gall to smile at her after he’d publicly feasted on her internal organs. “I’d forgotten how damn fine you look as a brunette, babe. I like.”

  “Wh…” She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t talk. When he hauled her into a bone-creaking embrace and landed a smacking kiss on her lips—her lips!—she was fairly certain she couldn’t continue to go on with life. Since when did they have a kissing-type relationship? That ship had sailed a long damn time ago. “Ice? What… I don’t… Just what?”

  His grin was as wickedly charming as ever, the bastard. “Looks like I finally pulled off the big surprise I was hoping for. I’ve never been able to surprise Sunny,” he confided to their happily staring audience. “I tried throwing a surprise party for her birthday one year. I was so certain she’d never figure it out, because I’d planned it a full week before her actual birthday. But before I knew what was going on, she’d gotten in touch with the caterers and changed the menu.”

  “You hadn’t accounted for any of our vegan and vegetarian friends,” she tried defending herself before she backed away from him as far as the small conference room would allow her. Never again would she drop her guard around this man. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you in California?”

  His sandy brows slowly inched up. “Why the hell would I be there?”

  “Because you live there.” Far away from her, which was exactly the way she wanted it.

  “Sunny, I’m surprised you don’t know.” Mary Pat stepped forward, adjusting her sparkly cat-ear headband and smoothing her silky brown hair with a shy glance Ice’s way. Sunny couldn’t blame her. Mary Pat was female and had a pulse. Of course her coworker was dazzled, not just by Ice’s fame, but by the fact that he was the most perfect male specimen to ever walk the earth. “House Of Payne made a huge announcement about it last summer, I think.”

  Sunny’s interest sharpened at the mention of the internationally famous tattoo studio. When she’d been striving to put Skull and Bones Ink on the map, she’d studied House Of Payne’s business model like it was her personal religion. “I haven’t been paying attention to the world of ink since I moved back home to Chicago. What announcement?”

  “The announcement that I’m moving to Chicago and working at House Of Payne,” Ice answered before Mary Pat could open her mouth.

  The floor went out from under Sunny’s feet.

  “Making the move from L.A. to Chicago’s taken longer than I’d anticipated,” he went on, as if he had no clue he’d just put a bullet right through her soul. “I was working on a project that I thought would move faster than it did, but I finally got it done. And then there was the sale of Skull and Bones Ink, which took some time. But once I closed on it, I got my ass here as fast as I could.”

  Just when she thought he couldn’t hurt her any more. “You…you sold it? You sold Skull and Bones Ink?”

  His gaze was steady, watchful. “No need to hold on to it when I was set on moving to Chicago, Sunny. Of course I sold it.”

  “Excuse me, I need some air. Meeting will start in ten minutes,” she added, pushing past her surprised coworkers at a near-run. She didn’t stop until she was outside in the cold air, the sky a brilliant, cloudless blue and the temperature hovering somewhere around freezing. They’d had snow earlier in the week, but only puddles remained in the parking lot as Sunny gulped in lungfuls of crisp, late autumn air.

  He’d sold it.

  Skull and Bones Ink, the teeny hole-in-the-wall tattoo parlor she’d slaved to make an international name. And he’d sold it like it was nothing.

  Like all her hard work was nothing.

  Like she was nothing.

  At least that last part didn’t come as a surprise.

  In the eyes of the magnificent, internationally famous rock star of the ink world known as Ice, she’d always been nothing. While he’d been raised in the glamorous, rarified world of Beverly Hills, she’d been a proudly nerdy, academically driven girl who got excited about click-through rates and the latest in digital marketing platforms.

  This couldn’t be happening, she thought, pushing a hand into her chest. The action didn’t calm the thudding of her heart as rage slowly pushed past the layers of shock. In the year she’d been in Chicago, she’d gotten used to not feeling anything; certainly she’d learned to slam all the mental doors on anything having to do with Atticus “Ice” Eisen. Having him land right smack in the middle of her new life was…

  Impossible.

  Just like Ice.

  The door opened behind her, and with fingers of dread tightening around her already-heaving stomach, she turned to nail Ice with a deadly glare. “Leave. Go home.”

  “Jesus, it’s cold.” Apparently deaf to whatever he didn’t want to hear, Ice blew on his hands before shoving them into the front pockets of his jeans. “I seriously cannot believe how fucking cold it is.”

  “Didn’t you hear me? I said leave.”

  “Gotta be honest, I don’t know if I’m ever going to get used to this shit.” He glanced up at the vivid blue sky, the sunshine gilding his thick blonde hair and casting shadows beneath his chiseled cheekbones and jaw. Even freezing cold, he looked like he should be on the cover of a surfing magazine, and she hated him for it. “How the hell can you be out here without a coat? Is that like a Chicago native superpower, where you don’t feel the cold like normal people? I’m going back inside to get you a fucking parka before you catch your death out here.”

  “I’m not kidding.” She’d been dismissed so easily after shedding blood, sweat and tears to bring Skull and Bones Ink onto the world stage, and he dared to ignore her now? Again? No way. “Get the hell out of here. Go home and never, ever come back.”

  Ice stopped a few feet away, his magnificent, once-adored face unreadable while his eyes remained watchful. “Chicago’s home for me now, Sunny day.”

  “Don’t call me that. In fact, stop talking entirely and just go the hell away.”

  “Where to? I told you, I sold Skull and Bones Ink. As of today, I’m slinging ink at House Of Payne.”

  The enormity of his statement was enough to knock her sideways all over again. “That business was everything to us. For two years we lived and breathed nothing but Skull and Bones. How can it be gone?”

  “It’s not gone. It just belongs to someone else now. You’ve got a cut of the sale coming to you, by the way.”

  “I don’t want it.” What she wanted was for him to understand how devastating this news was, but he was clearly out to lunch on that score. Not that this surprised her. Much too late, she’d finally realized Ice was simply too shallow to grasp anyone else’s feelings. Maybe it was because he’d been raised in a luxurious world that had never seemed real to her. His tabloid-publishing magnate of a father, Damien Eisen, was famous for wresting away a two-bit tabloid called Inquiring Minds from his older brother, and hurtling it to international fame. He’d married a supermodel, had Ice, and proceeded to spoil him rotten. In a glitzy world like that, it was no wonder Ice had wound up with as much emotional depth as a puddle. “The bottom line is, you threw Skull and Bones Ink away like it was nothing. I certainly know how that feels, but still I’m surprised you’d do that. I thought you were at least capable of having some form of caring about the business.”

  She wasn’t sure, but she thought his eyelids flinched. “Sunny—”

  “What about the reality show? Whatever happened to Skull and Bones L.A.? In the end, that was the most important thing to you.”

  “I never gave a flying fuck about that show,” came the surprisingly hard-edged reply. “All those cameras and cables getting in the way and tripping people up, and all the dumbass manufactured friction the producers came up with was a headache I didn’t need. As far as I’m concerned, that show was like a goddamn wrecking ball. The moment it came into existence, it left nothing but rui
n in its wake.”

  She stared at him, hardly able to believe her ears. “That show was everything you cared about.”

  “No, Sunny. It was everything you cared about.”

  “Because it brought in more clients than we knew what to do with, and your amazing, realistic art and coloration techniques got the worldwide attention they deserved,” she shot back, knowing there was a healthy dose of truth in his words. She was the one who’d started the show in the first place, uploading videos she’d taken around the studio every day and building Skull and Bones Ink’s online following to over three million. When a popular cable TV channel approached them about making her uploads into a reality TV show, it had been the happiest day of her life. “The only reason I started the Skull and Bones Ink videos was to generate business. It worked. The show I created around the business, your business, hit the top-ten of the most-viewed reality TV shows in the country, and that was before it went viral worldwide. Most people would’ve killed to have been in that spot.”

  His shrug was infuriatingly dismissive. “I guess. Never gave it much thought, to be honest.”

  It was amazing, how impossible he could be. “Just as we reached that pinnacle, some fool of a producer decided I should be fired because I didn’t meet some half-baked demographic, and you were all for it. I was out the door before I could even plead my case. You sacrificed me for the sake of the show, so obviously you cared more about Skull and Bones L.A. than anything else.” Like me.

  “News flash, Sunny day—I’d already decided to get out from under Skull and Bones Ink by the time that bossy bitch producer bent my ear about hitting the eject button on you,” he said, his voice hard. “That was when I decided to wipe the slate clean and get the hell out while the getting was good.”

  “And you started by getting rid of me.” When he didn’t have any answer for that, Sunny shook her head, steeped in a fury that hadn’t burned itself out in nearly a year. Ice had meant the world to her, along with Skull and Bones Ink. But her feelings obviously hadn’t been mutual. If he’d cared about her even a little, he never would have gotten rid of her on the last episode of Skull and Bones L.A. for the whole world to see. “I spent two years building a business—a dream—with you, and you chose to wipe the slate clean without even talking to me about it. So, fine. You wiped it clean, Ice. Good for you.”

  “Sun—”

  “But here’s the thing. You can’t unwipe that slate. It’s done. You kicked me out of what was basically my life. That left me with no choice but to go off and build a new one, a life that has nothing to do with you. And it will continue to have nothing to do with you, because you’re leaving now.”

  “I would, except I have business here,” Ice said when she would have used her statement as a perfect exit line. Instead of magnificently stalking past him like a kickass winner, she was the one left standing there with her mouth hanging open while he headed back toward the door. “Let’s go inside and get you warmed up. You’ll see what I mean soon enough.”

  Chapter Two

  Cat people were something else again, Ice thought to himself.

  He sat at the small conference table as Sunny wrapped up her PowerPoint presentation on a three-month plan on how to make everyone on the planet desperate to subscribe to a monthly gift box for their cat. Hell, she was so good at selling the product, he wanted to buy a subscription, and he didn’t even have a cat.

  Maybe if he bought one, she’d be less inclined to kill him where he stood.

  This first meeting had always been destined to be the toughest part; he’d known that from the beginning of this crazy ride. Considering how fast the situation had gone south last year, he’d suspected that the last time he’d seen Sunny—the day he’d fired her—might have actually been the last time. If things had swung a different way, it really could have been the last of Sunny Fairfax gracing his life.

  More than a few sleepless nights had been spawned by that particular thought.

  The way things shook out, though, their paths had crossed once more right there in the Windy City. One way or another, she was going to have to find a way to make peace with it, because he wasn’t going anywhere.

  It was a damn good thing he liked a challenge, he thought, watching her go through the familiar paces of showing the world just how much of a promoting dynamo she was. Back when he’d first started Skull and Bones Ink, it had just been the two of them against the world. She’d looked so different back then, with a tan even more golden than his, and her long hair Barbie blonde and rippling with beach waves. They’d been best friends then. He’d taught her how to surf, how to eat sushi and what the infield fly rule was.

  She’d taught him that smart was sexy, and that a smile from the right woman could stop a heart dead in its tracks.

  On the surface, Sunny looked vastly different from the woman he’d last seen a year ago. Her skin was ivory-pale, making her large brown eyes seem almost black, and he couldn’t get over how they dominated her delicately carved face. She’d chopped off about a foot of hair, and had returned it to the dark chestnut brown she’d been born with.

  Blonde or brunette, it didn’t matter in his eyes. Whatever color she chose, all that thick, glossy hair begged for a man’s hands to grip it while he made love to that serious mouth of hers.

  Something told him, however, that this was the last thing she’d ever want to hear from him.

  As different as her appearance was, there was no mistaking that Sunny was still the same go-getter she’d always been. Just watching her work her way through her presentation brought back a flood of memories from happier—and certainly warmer—times.

  For him, anyway.

  From the moment he’d shown up that morning, Sunny Elizabeth Fairfax had made it crystal fucking clear she wasn’t in the same nostalgic boat.

  No surprise there.

  “For the next month, the online presence of IBKC gift boxes will be in every pop-up and margin of popular social media platforms.” Sunny wrapped up her presentation by tapping a couple times on her laptop’s touchpad, before reaching for the nearby light switch. “First and foremost, the goal is to make IBKC a brand name that everyone knows. Familiarity breeds trust, and once we have that, we’ve got everything. Now, about the extra content in the holiday edition boxes—”

  “That is where your friend from L.A. comes in.” Franklin Lennig, solid and comfortable in a Mr. Rogers sort of way, nodded in his direction. Ice took his cue and headed toward Sunny, who looked about as welcoming as an agitated beehive. “Take it away, Ice.” Then he giggled and nudged his wife. “Did you hear that, honey? I just called him Ice.”

  “Ooooh, you’re one of the cool kids now.” As giggly as her husband, June clapped her hands together. “Maybe you should get a tattoo. What do you think, hon?”

  “Like a cat tattoo? Or paw prints? How about our logo, all the way across my chest?”

  “If we could focus, please,” Sunny said in that long-suffering voice Ice knew all too well.

  “Yeah, let’s get this show on the road.” Ice took a thumbnail drive from his pocket, glanced at it with a half-smile before plugging it into her laptop. “You don’t mind if I hijack your laptop, right, Sunny day?”

  “Little late to ask, but whatever.” She leaned slightly forward, squinting a bit at the screen. “What am I looking at?”

  “Just a list of all the secrets of the world, plus the reason I’m here today.” Before she got a look at the menu that had appeared, he had the photos he’d wanted all queued up. “Ready for a slideshow?”

  “Is that what we’re doing? I’ll get the lights—”

  “I’ve got it.” He stepped right into her space and reached an arm behind her to the light switch, so close his chest brushed against her breasts and her scent of roses and spice filled his world. A nanosecond later, Sunny jumped away from him as if he were covered in spiders, and nearly landed in an office plant.

  Interesting.

  “So,” Sunny said, trying
to look unruffled while righting the plant. “What’s this about?’

  “I’m now at House Of Payne, and I want to celebrate this new chapter in my life. I’m also an animal lover at heart, as I’m sure Sunny can tell you,” he added, looking to the rest of the room. “We raised a stray kitten by the name of Snarky back in L.A. He was a sick little guy who didn’t make it more than a year or so, but in that short time he became our mascot.”

  “Oh, I remember Snarky,” Bob piped up, a skinny dude who had no fashion fear when it came to wearing a purple plaid blazer over a T-shirt decorated with a DJ-style hip-hop cat. “Didn’t he have just one eye, and he lived at the tattoo parlor until he died of FIP?”

  “He did, that sweet little ginger boy,” June Lennig answered before Ice could. To his surprise, she looked like she was one strong sniffle away from bawling her eyes out. “I loved all those Snarky videos, you have no idea. It was the reason why I talked Franklin into hiring Sunny. She’s so overqualified, we worried she might want to go to a big PR firm after a while. But then I remembered Snarky—how she bottle-fed him when he was a baby, and how she cried when you and she held his sweet little funeral…” She did give a big sniffle at that point and blinked watery eyes at Sunny. “Because of Snarky, I just knew you’d understand our product, and share our love of all things kitty.”

  “Snarky was such a good boy,” Franklin added, sounding emotional. “I even bought a couple Snarky the Pirate Kitty T-shirts.”

  “I have one of Snarky’s shirts too.” Ice fought a grin when Sunny made a faint choking sound. They might be on the outs, but he was still pretty sure she’d never reveal she’d threatened him with slow death by leeches to get him into that T-shirt for a Skull and Bones Ink promo spot. “Sunny and I did a couple fundraisers for the local animal shelter back in L.A. I want to keep that tradition going now that I’m in my new hometown.” He called up the first picture. “This is some original art of mine—four designs in all and all animal-themed. These designs will be transferred onto fabric, which will then be made into toys to be included in every gift box for this upcoming holiday season. The manufacturing of these toys bearing my artwork will come out of my own pocket, so no worries on that score. I’m asking that IBKC tack on an additional dollar to the overall gift box price so that this, in turn, can be donated to Chicago’s local shelters during the holiday season.”