The Artist's Touch

by E. J. Russell

  “You stood at the— Shit.” Luke poured another double and knocked half of it back. “They seriously blocked you from the funeral?”

  “They weren’t exactly onboard with Marius’s . . . well . . . everything. That’s why we lived in Indio, about as far away from Connecticut as we could get. Maybe that’s why his sister didn’t have a problem locking me out of the house. I wasn’t a person to her. Just one of Marius’s less respectable possessions.” Something to pack up and remove from the house, along with his clothes and books and half-empty liquor bottles.

  Luke flung the beans into the pan with the onions and garlic. “Jesus. How could she kick you out of your own home?”

  “Wasn’t mine anymore. Not with Marius gone.” Stefan laughed, the sound broken and mirthless. “Hadn’t been for a while, actually.” He met Luke’s somber gaze. “I was about to leave him. Car packed. Ready to walk. Made it so freaking easy for her. All she had to do was impound the car.”

  “She took your car, too?” Luke’s voice rose in outrage, and he sucked back more Scotch.

  Maybe I should warn him off the Glenlivet before he ends up naked on the bathroom floor with no memory of an entire day. “My theoretical car. It was a gift. Everything was a gift, right? But he kept it all in his name. He never could let go of anything, even when he gave it away.”

  Luke snorted. “Yeah. Bastard dearly loved owning things.”

  “I think the only reason he made such a determined play for me was because I belonged to— Because I didn’t belong to him.”

  “Fuck, Stef.” Pain flickered across Luke’s face and creased his forehead.

  Stefan ducked his head, so he didn’t have to see it. “I don’t care about the car, the clothes, the Rolex, or the damn ring. What matters are the four paintings I finished the month before the crash. For all I know, she burned them.” Possibly the last pictures he’d ever remember painting.

  “Listen, if you need—”

  “Don’t.” Stefan could see it coming—another well-meaning, humiliating offer of monetary assistance. But if he’d learned one thing during his years as Marius’s appendage, it was that nothing sucked away self-respect faster than financial dependence. The arrangement with Thomas didn’t count—Stefan had to believe that. Thomas would get all his money back, with interest, when Stefan’s work started to sell again. Stefan nodded at the stove. “Your fish are burning.”

  “What? Shit.” Luke spun around, catching himself on the edge of the counter when he wobbled a little. “No. It’s okay. They’re supposed to look like that.”

  He lifted the fish onto a platter and scattered the crisp dark skin with diced lemon. He picked up the pan of browned butter. “Ready?” The sizzle of the butter as it hit the trout echoed the buzz in Stefan’s blood at Luke’s grin.

  Luke slid the beans into a serving bowl and set it on the table along with the fish platter and a bowl of rice pilaf. “Soup’s on.”

  Stefan settled at the table. “This is . . .” Amazing. Unfair. Heartbreaking. “Great. Thanks.”

  Luke sat down adjacent to him, and by the glint in his eye and the jut of his jaw, he hadn’t finished with the subject of Marius. Christ. No more. Stefan needed a diversion. He picked the one that scared him most. “Tell me about this Arcoletti.”

  It worked. Luke’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re the second person today who’s said that.”

  “Who was the first?”

  “My employer. William Franklin. Apparently, his brother Edward was Arcoletti’s lover.”

  “Franklin’s your information source on Arcoletti?”

  Luke shook his head and shoveled a half bushel of green beans, fragrant with garlic and caramelized onions, onto Stefan’s plate. “No. Apparently, he picked me because I’m kind of an Arcoletti groupie. I saw his one publicly owned picture in Amsterdam after I left the conservatory and I was hooked. He fascinated me. Maybe because of our similarities. Working-class roots, although his were Italian, not Jewish.”

  “Italian? With a name like Jeremiah?”

  “He started life as Giacomo. Changed it when he left home.” Luke held up his scotch in a toast and pointed to himself. “Explosive temper. Gay, although that wasn’t publicly acknowledged. He disappeared in July of 1945, along with all thirteen paintings slated for a major show in San Francisco. His mystery—his disappearance, the lost collection—is what got me started as an art investigator.”

  “If the collection was lost, how do you know about it?”

  “He described it in excruciating detail.” Luke added a bucketful of rice next to Stefan’s mountain of beans and arranged the trout on top. “Eat up.” Luke glared at him until he took a bite of fish. “His patron was Ruth Gordon.”

  “The actress?” Stefan said, trying to keep his mind on the conversation and not on the freaking awesome flavor of trout with lemon and hazelnut butter. Real food. Something other than krab kakes. God, he’d missed it.

  Luke nodded, fixing his own plate, then pouring himself another shot. “He wrote reams of letters to her. It’s a wonder he found time to paint or screw, yet he apparently did both with astoshening—” Luke hiccupped. “A-ston-ish-ing regularity.”

  “Another similarity?”

  Another hiccup interrupted Luke’s laugh. “Not these days. She introduced him to her inside circle in Hollywood and New York. That’s who bought his paintings. Theater people. Film stars. But in spite of hobnobbing with celebrities, he fell in love with a bourgeois nobody. Go figure.”

  Stefan dropped his gaze to his plate, jabbing several beans with his fork. “Now that’s another parallel.”

  “Stef.” Luke’s tone held unmistakable command. Stefan fell back into the achingly familiar pattern and looked up. “You’re not a nobody.”

  “I notice you didn’t contradict the bourgeois part.”

  Luke’s lips twitched. “Not much point, right? But who says there’s anything wrong with that?” He took a bite of fish. “You don’t need that fucking e at the end of your name to make you better. You’re good the way you are.”

  “Not good enough apparently.” Stefan shoved the too-large forkful of beans into his mouth and tried not to choke as he chewed.

  Luke glanced around the cabin. “Your latest patronage arrangement is a little sketchy, I admit, but not everyone’s a Prescott. Like I said, being an artist is tough, and you wouldn’t be the first to take cash flow management in a . . . creative direction.”

  “That’s not what I—” Stefan caught the edge of anger creeping into his tone and took a breath. Now is not the time for that conversation. Keep Marius out of it. Keep Thomas out of it. If only he could keep himself out of it. “What else?” He focused on Luke’s voice as he recited the sparse facts of Arcoletti’s life, but that coal of anger still burned low in Stefan’s belly, ruining the best meal he’d eaten in two years.

  If I’m that good, why did you run?

  Man, this Scotch was the real shit. It blurred the hard edges in the room, turning it into a chalk drawing, smudged by a careless artist. Blurred the hard edges in Luke’s mind too, blunting all the bullshit worry. So what if Stefan’s hair was overlong and his collarbones stood out like bas-relief ivory? The lamplight burnished his skin and the soft-focus lens of the alcohol allowed Luke to relax and enjoy the view.

  “I’ve missed your dinners,” Stefan said, chasing the last of his rice across his plate.

  “Only my dinners?”

  “Well, lunches too.”

  “What about my midnight snacks? My breakfasts?” Luke took another gulp, bared his teeth against the burn, and lifted one of Stefan’s hands. “God, I remember these hands. I can’t count the number of times I tried to draw them. Failed every time.” He traced the square palm, the row of calluses at the base of the long, tapered fingers. Stefan tried to pull away, but Luke tightened his grip. “You ever want something so fucking badly that you’d sacrifice anything to get it?”

  Stefan stopped resisting and sucked in a sharp breath. “Yes,
” he whispered.

  “That’s how I felt about painting.”

  “Oh.” Stefan snatched his hand away, but Luke recaptured it.

  He fit his own hand over Stefan’s, matching palm to palm, fingers to fingers. “Yeah. I dreamed of being the best damned painter in the twenty-first century.”

  “It’s a good dream.” Stefan’s voice wobbled, as unsteady as Luke would be if he tried to walk across the room right now.

  “I loved you so much then,” Luke said. “You have no idea. But every time I looked at you, I knew I’d never be the best. You’d always be better.”

  “Christ, Luke.” Stefan covered his face with his other hand. No good. Luke needed to see his eyes. He grasped Stefan’s wrist and pulled, caging both Stefan’s hands between his own.

  “Yep. Every single time, I’d compare my shit to yours and I knew. That dream was fucking dead.” Funny how that didn’t seem to matter so much now. This Scotch totally rocked.

  When Stefan yanked his hands away again, Luke didn’t fight him. Instead, he picked up the bottle and refilled his glass.

  Stefan’s mouth tucked in at the corners, the familiar sign he was about to drop a bomb that Luke would rather not deal with. “You should have told me.”

  “Why? Not like you could do anything about it. My dream. My problem. If I couldn’t draw something that beautiful and be happy with it, I’d never have been good enough to suit myself. Not willing to settle for second-rate. Second best.” Luke peered at Stefan through his glass. “Second choice.”

  Stefan hugged his chest and clamped his hands under his arms as if he was afraid Luke would try to grab them again. “Is that why you left?”

  Luke shrugged and swirled the liquid in his glass. Did he really want to admit this? Marius had added another element—jealousy—to his relationship with Stefan. He’d already been both proud of Stefan, yet envious of his talent. If Marius had succeeded in luring Stefan away, Luke would have had nothing left but the envy. He hadn’t been able to take that risk, the risk that his love might turn to hate, tempting him to destroy Stefan out of spite.

  “I was on a quest.” Luke flourished his glass. Empty. Huh. Got to fix that. “A quest for something else to be passionate about.” He made a grab for the bottle, missed and tried again. Gotcha. “Sounds kind of stupid now, doesn’t it? Probably should have just become a drug addict like every other mediocre artist.”

  Stefan pushed away from the table and stood up. “Oookay, that’s a quarter bottle of Scotch talking. Time to ease up.” No wobbles in his voice now. He sounded exactly like Luke’s killjoy high school algebra teacher.

  “Nah. I’m good.”

  “Trust me. That stuff packs a killer hangover. You’re switching to water.” Stefan plucked the bottle out of Luke’s hand mid-pour and set it on the sideboard.

  Fucking spoilsport. Luke leaned his head on his fist and tracked Stefan across the room, savoring the flex of his ass under those threadbare sweats. Damn.

  When Stefan returned and leaned over to set the water glass on the table, something escaped from the open collar of his worn flannel shirt and swung in the air next to Luke’s face: a tiger’s-eye pendant on a leather thong. The sight went straight to Luke’s dick in a knee-jerk Neanderthal response. Mine.

  Stefan noticed him staring, and a blush painted those killer cheekbones as he tucked the necklace back under his shirt.

  Luke had bought the pendant because it contained all the colors of Stefan’s hair, from the pale-gold highlights he got in the summer to the darker gold and sugar brown of winter. Luke grabbed his wrist. “You hocked Marius’s watch and ring, but you kept that?”

  Stefan shrugged one shoulder, his blush deepening. “The other stuff was Marius trying to . . . to decorate me. Make me more acceptable to his circle. And to piss you off a little, too.”

  Luke snorted. “It worked.”

  “This meant something.” Stefan smiled, a lopsided quirk of his full lips. “You lived on ramen for a month after you gave it to me.”

  “So did you. We shared the same pantry.”

  “Yeah, but for me, ramen was business as usual. For you, it was torture.”

  It had been, but God, it had been worth it. Every glimpse of that necklace around Stefan’s throat had arrowed straight to Luke’s heart—his insignificant gift was important to Stefan because it came from him. It had given Luke hope that he stood a chance, even against Marius Worthington Prescott the fucking Fifth.

  Huh. Maybe Stefan was right about easing up on the liquor. If Luke hadn’t had one too many fingers of Scotch, he wouldn’t be thinking of other things his fingers could do, all involving some entertaining part of Stefan’s body.

  Ah, screw it. He took a last, fiery gulp and scooted his chair closer to Stefan’s, so he could breathe in his scent. That unique blend of soap, musk, and oil paint. A whisper of acetone. The combination of man and art was more intoxicating than any mind-altering substance, although the Scotch sure as hell didn’t hurt.

  It’s been too long. Too long since I’ve touched his skin. Too long since I’ve kissed him.

  Fuck if he was going to waste this chance.

  Stefan toyed with his fork, sorry he’d eaten so much because dinner sat heavily in his stomach. If it weren’t for him, Luke would be a painter now, with a perfectly respectable, possibly even stellar career. I drove him away. I killed his dream. Christ, as if he didn’t slog through a deep enough swamp of regret and guilt every day already.

  The scrape of Luke’s chair was the only warning he had before Luke’s Scotch-infused breath ghosted over his cheek.

  “Uh. Luke? What are you doing?”

  “Thinking.” Luke’s voice had dropped to that damn lower register, and Stefan shivered, his cock tenting the napkin in his lap.

  “Thinking doesn’t require your nose in my ear.”

  “This kind does. I’m thinking how goddamn sexy you are,” Luke rumbled.

  “What?” Danger. Danger. Stefan edged away until his butt was halfway off his chair. Remember me? Suspected forger? Dream-killer? The guy you walked out on? Stefan hadn’t missed the purposeful past-tense of love, either, and his anger flared again. “You can’t think any such thing. You said I look like a skeleton.”

  “Maybe I think skeletons are sexy.” Luke leaned toward him until they were practically horizontal.

  “That’s revolting.” Stefan shoved Luke’s shoulder until he was back in his own personal space.

  “Maybe it’s Freudian. Maybe I want to jump your bones.” Luke leered over the top of his empty highball glass. “Or maybe I want you to bone me.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  Luke chuckled, a low burr that stroked Stefan’s spine like a teasing finger. Damn it. “On a couple of shots of Scotch? No way.”

  Stefan sighed. “Way. Give me your keys. You’re not driving in this state.”

  Luke leaned his chin on his cupped palm, but his elbow slipped off the table. “Gonna let me sleep here? With you?”

  Christ, talk about a disaster. To wake up and see disgust—or worse, indifference—in Luke’s face once he’d sobered up? Stefan needed to be business-like. Detached. Steel himself so he could get through the night and survive Luke’s inevitable departure. Because regardless of the reason—whether Stefan grew something resembling a spine and tossed him out, or because Luke pulled another unexplained runner—it was inevitable. “Dream on, pal. Let’s go. You’re done for the night.”

  He hauled Luke out of his chair and frog-marched him into the bedroom, which would have been impossible if Luke wasn’t plastered. Stefan might be taller, but Luke was broader—and had eaten regularly for the last couple of years. “Sit.”

  “Excellent plan.” Luke dropped on the bed, bouncing on the mattress in a squeak of protesting springs. “Join me?”

  “No.”

  Luke’s shoulders slumped. “’S no fun,” he muttered.

  “Can you take off your shirt and pants, or do you need help?”


  Luke didn’t answer, but he held out his arms and let his head loll back. Stefan huffed out an exasperated breath and unbuttoned Luke’s shirt, revealing a tight white T-shirt underneath. Thank God. He wasn’t prepared for the sight of Luke’s naked chest. Not in a million years.

  “Drop your arms, Morganstern.”

  Luke’s arms flopped to his sides. Stefan peeled the Oxford off, gritting his teeth when Luke laid his head on Stefan’s shoulder. He stood up so fast that Luke toppled forward. Stefan steadied him with one hand. “Lay back.”

  Luke blinked up at Stefan. “I ever tell you your eyes are like the Gulf on a perfect day?”

  “What Gulf? We lived in the middle of Connecticut.”

  Luke pointed an unsteady finger at Stefan. “Right. Hadn’t seen the Gulf yet. But I see it now. Every morning. Like you’re looking back at me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “’S true.”

  “If you say so.” When Stefan nudged his shoulder, Luke fell backward onto the mattress. He unbuckled Luke’s belt and unzipped his chinos. Unbelievable. Even after seven years, the guy still dressed like a complete prep. When he raised Luke’s feet to grab the hem of the pants, Luke chuckled.

  “Whoa, Stef. You a top now? That’s a new wrinkle.”

  “Shut up.” Stefan shucked the pants off. “Keep your socks on. It gets cold overnight if the fire in the woodstove dies.”

  Luke wiggled his hips. “Boxers next.”

  Stefan clenched his jaw, grinding his molars together. He’d thought the dinner had been torture, but this set a new standard. “I don’t think so.” He pulled Luke to his feet and turned down the covers. “Get in.”

  “You’re interested. I can see.” Luke reached for Stefan’s burgeoning crotch, but Stefan caught the wandering hand before it landed, placing it firmly on Luke’s belly.

  “Yeah, and you’re wasted.” When you’re sober, you can’t stand to touch me. When you’re sober, you’ll run away again.

  God, the smell of him. Even overlaid with Scotch and wood smoke, it was still Luke. Stefan could get drunk himself on the scent, but one hangover a day was his limit. Besides, he knew from experience that a Luke hangover lasted for years. The withdrawal from his last overdose had nearly killed him. The coal of anger in his middle flared at the memory, and Stefan welcomed it. Hell, he fanned the freaking flames.