Dirty, Reckless Love - Lexi Ryan

by Ryan, Lexi

  “Spending my day with you isn’t a hardship. You said you wanted to go to the Tyler-Wells Gallery downtown?”

  She nods and flips down the visor to open the mirror. “It shouldn’t take long.” She pulls lip gloss from her purse and applies it carefully before reaching for her mascara.

  So fucking beautiful. “Can I come in with you, or do you need to go in alone?”

  She flashes me a smile as she drops the mascara in her purse. “You can come. I just need to ask about a collection.”

  Interesting. I don’t buy for a second that she’s on a new job, but I expected her to ask me to hold back when she went into the gallery.

  We climb out of the car and take the elevator down to the street level of the parking garage. The unseasonably warm October day is tempered by the breeze off the lake. The noon sun shines bright, reflecting off the high rises.

  “The gallery should be a block over that way,” I say, pointing.

  “Perfect.” She surprises me by linking her arm with mine before she starts in that direction. She feels good tucked into me like this. Right where she belongs. “I’m sorry I slept the whole trip.”

  “I don’t mind. It gave me some time to think.”

  She scans my face. “What were you thinking about?”

  Colton. You. Us. Secrets. “A little bit of everything, I guess.”

  “Ah, everything.” She nods. “I’ve been thinking about that too, coincidentally.”

  “What are the chances?”

  She laughs, but when we walk into the gallery, her posture changes and she transforms into an assertive businesswoman. I stay back and watch in utter fascination as she approaches the counter.

  The woman standing behind it measures her up shamelessly. “What can I do for you, ma’am?”

  “Hello.” Ellie extends a hand. “My name’s Ellie Courdrey. We met when I was cultivating the Oranthe collection for one of my clients.”

  That seems to get the woman’s attention, and her reserved smile changes to the greedy grin of someone who senses money at her fingertips. “Well, it’s wonderful to see you again, Ellie. What are you after today?” She waves her hand in the air to indicate the pieces around the gallery, then lowers her voice so I can just barely make out her words. “Not everything is officially for sale, but as you know, there are always exceptions if the price is right.”

  “I’m actually looking for something that isn’t in the gallery right now. It’s a collection connected to a piece you had maybe five years ago?”

  The smile falls from the woman’s face, and I have to bite back a laugh. This is not a fellow art lover who’s excited to help Ellie find the pieces she’s looking for. This is a shark who’s only interested in the next sale.

  “The artist?”

  “Bauer,” Ellie says, and I freeze.

  I know fuck-all about art, but I know that name.

  “The Discovery collection,” Ellie says.

  The hair on the back of my neck stands up. Why the hell is she looking for Bauer’s Discovery collection? Why now when the paintings have been missing for more than two years, and she hasn’t worked in a gallery in all that time?

  “We never actually had the series here. It was only shown once in a gallery in Indiana.”

  “You had some of Bauer’s work, though.” Ellie slides a folded bill across the desk. “I’m looking for any leads I can get on collectors. Maybe there’s something helpful in your computer? My investor is highly motivated, and if you give me a lead that helps me find the Discovery collection, there will be a commission in it for you.”

  Brightening, the woman quickly pockets the cash before turning to her computer. She runs her red, manicured nail slowly down the screen. “I can’t promise anything,” she says, tapping on the keyboard. “We actually had a painting of the model—not officially part of the collection. More . . . tame than the others? Even so, good luck getting your hands on it now. I don’t think the owner is going to be interested in any offer.”

  “Like I said, my investor is very enthusiastic,” Ellie says, and I have a feeling enthusiastic is code for rich. “It can’t hurt to ask.”

  “It sold to Asher Logan,” the woman says.

  I cough. Holy shit. “The Asher Logan? The rock star?”

  Ellie and the saleswoman turn to stare at me. The woman nods. “Yes. The model in the painting is his wife. In addition to the painting he purchased here, I heard rumors that Asher bought the whole Discovery collection from the original exhibition.”

  “I’m more interested in who might have bought and sold it since then,” Ellie says.

  “You think Asher Logan sold provocative paintings of his wife?” I ask. “I don’t think so. Someone else must have bought and sold them.”

  Ellie shrugs. “Maybe he’s proud of them. She’s gorgeous.” She folds her arms on the counter and leans toward the woman. “Surely you could point me to a dealer who has their finger on the pulse when it comes to rare Bauer pieces?”

  The saleswoman shakes her head, as if trying to shake the memory to the surface. “There’s been some chatter, but I’m not sure this is a typical resale item.” She scribbles on the back of a business card. “Try this dealer. Sometimes he gets his hands on . . . otherwise unattainable pieces.”

  Ellie beams at her and tucks the card into her purse. “I understand. Thank you so much.” She turns back to me and heads out of the gallery, once again sliding her arm through mine.

  “Why do you need those paintings?” I ask.

  “I heard they might be available, and I just want to track them down.” That fucking fake smile again. “I can think of any number of people who’d be interested in buying if they surfaced. It’s just smart business.”

  “But your business is real estate.”

  She shrugs. “Maybe I want to get back into art.”

  “Don’t lie to me.” My jaw is hard. “I can handle that you have secrets, but I can’t deal with lies.”

  She studies me for a long time before nodding, a series of emotions I can’t identify passing over her features in quick succession. “Can I trust you, Levi?”

  “Completely.” The word is too big and sticks in my throat.

  “I believe that, but my secrets . . .” She shakes her head slowly. “I think you might be too good to be saddled with my secrets.”

  “We all have ugly mistakes in our past, Ellie. Every single one of us.”

  “I’m looking for the paintings because I can’t risk them ending up in the wrong hands.”

  “Is that why you asked Colton to steal them when they were at the gallery?”

  Her eyes go wide. “He told you that?”

  “I helped him.” I’ve never admitted that to a soul. Colton and I did a lot of stupid shit when we were younger, and we somehow made it out alive and without any serious convictions. I planned on taking our secrets to the grave, but this is Ellie, and right now, the truth seems so much more important than any risk to my reputation. I shrug. “You never reported it. I knew without him telling me that he was doing it to protect you from Nelson, but I didn’t understand why.” I wait a beat. “And I never thought you knew Colton was involved.”

  “He stole them for me, but I didn’t ask him to. I told him about the paintings, and he did what he thought he needed to do to protect me.”

  “Why did you want them so badly? Do you know the artist or something?”

  She releases a hollow puff of laughter. “You could say that.” She studies the skyline. “Want to go grab a cup of coffee?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  She points to a little place a few storefronts down. We go in, pay for two cups, and doctor them before returning outside to take a spot at one of the tables on the sidewalk.

  She stares into the steam rolling off the top of her cup. “When I was in college, I thought Chicago was the best city in the world. My friends and I would ride bikes along the Chicago Lakefront Trail or wander around Oak Street Beach. I’d go shopping an
d look at all the beautiful shoes and purses I could never afford. It’s the best of both worlds to have the sand beneath your feet, the big-city skyline at your back, and the expanse of Lake Michigan looking as grand as the ocean across the horizon.”

  She smiles at a middle-aged couple walking by, and I wait for them to pass so she can say more. She’s telling me something important, and I won’t rush it.

  “When I graduated, I started working with Tate Andrews, an art dealer. Tate’s job is to seek out hard-to-find pieces for eccentric private collectors, and I traveled all around the world with him.” She turns to me, and her eyes are sad. “I grew up poor, Levi. And I don’t mean Mom couldn’t afford the designer jeans the other girls were wearing. I mean she couldn’t afford groceries. She tried her best, but she was raising two girls on her own and she had no education beyond her GED. Some months, making ends meet was difficult. Other months, it was impossible, but I saw how hard she worked for us, and I always promised myself I’d pay her back someday. It wasn’t until I worked for Tate that I had the opportunity.”

  “He paid you well?”

  She swirls her coffee in its cup. “For my official job, he paid me the same as any assistant, and frankly, he took me around the world to beautiful cities, so I couldn’t complain. But then there were other opportunities.” Putting the cup down, she meets my eyes. “I have an art degree, and while I’ve never been praised for my originality, I have a damn good eye and hand for copying the work of others—paintings in particular, especially in certain styles. I’m like a mockingbird—I have no song of my own to sing, but I excel in mimicking the styles of others.”

  “I’ve seen you paint. Don’t believe for a second you don’t have a song of your own.”

  She shrugs, as if it doesn’t matter to her. I know better. She might hide her artistic tendencies, but I’ve seen what happens to her face when she loses herself in her painting. “One time when Tate and I realized our wild goose chase to find a painting was just that, Tate joked that he should just have me ‘find’ the piece—in my studio with a canvas and my brush.” She swallows hard. “Tate would never sell a client an obvious forgery, but if the forgery was identical to the original and the buyer would never know? He called that an ethical gray area, though I knew better.

  “I bought my mom a car with my cut of that sale, and then I bought myself a Prada handbag and a pair of shoes and felt just like the ladies on the Magnificent Mile. God, I wanted to be them.”

  While I get that forgery is a crime, I don’t know the art world well enough to understand its implications. I can see on her face that the decision still doesn’t sit right with her. Maybe it shouldn’t sit right with me either. Ellie and I have been friends for years, and I never would have imagined she’d be capable of breaking the law for personal gain. Maybe she’s more like Colton than I realized. Maybe she’s more like me . . .

  “It was supposed to be a one-time thing for a South American investor whom I found loathsome in his business practices anyway.” She sips on her coffee. “But it made me feel dirty. Like I’d whored my talent and let greed rule me. After that, I knew it was time for me to part ways with Tate.”

  “Did he pressure you? Would you have done it if it was a simple paycheck?”

  She chews on her thumbnail. “I told myself he did. I told myself that if I hadn’t been half crazy in love with my boss, I’d have said no. But then Nelson McKinley asked me to do it again, so my excuse of being young and in love didn’t hold.”

  Fucking Nelson. He could manipulate anyone into just about anything. Even if Jake and I are wrong about Molly’s kid, it doesn’t mean Colton didn’t kill his asshole father. He’s wanted to get rid of the man for years just to feel free from his control.

  “Nelson said he knew someone who wanted Bauer’s Discovery collection—someone who either didn’t know or didn’t care about the rumors that it had been burnt to ash years ago.”

  “I didn’t realize Nelson did art deals. I thought the gallery was just about status for him.” Status and money laundering, but I don’t know if Ellie knows about that, and I don’t want her to know anything that might put her in further danger.

  Ellie shakes her head. “I still don’t know if the client was really Nelson’s or if the request came from Tate—they knew each other—but it doesn’t matter. I didn’t want to pass up the payday, so after doing research to be sure the originals would never turn up, I agreed.”

  “Were the original paintings destroyed in a fire? Is that the rumor?”

  She leans across the table and lowers her voice. “Not just a fire. Asher Logan burned them in a giant bonfire. I spoke with his wife, Maggie, and she confirmed it. The paintings reminded her of a dark part of her past, and Asher bought them all and destroyed them so they couldn’t haunt her anymore.”

  “Wow. Score one for the rich rock star.”

  She grins. “He was pretty damn dreamy. He treats her like she’s the most precious thing in the world. If I ever get married, I want that.”

  And yet you were going to marry Colton, who’d driven you away through months of loneliness. I still can’t think about that fucking ring without wanting to track Colton down and punch him in the face. Maybe he wasn’t cheating, but he didn’t deserve Ellie. “Don’t people create replicas of art all the time?”

  “But we weren’t selling replicas. We were passing something we knew to be a forgery off as the real thing.” She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth. “I told myself it didn’t matter. Here I was, an artist who all through school was told I wasn’t anything special, but if I put some man’s name on my painting, suddenly what I created was worth millions. I told myself I was just thumbing my nose at the snobby art world, but the truth is, I knew what I did was wrong, and forgeries by a living artist, like Bauer, are risky. He’d be able to identify it as a fake, even if our buyer couldn’t, and then I’d be implicated in the crime and never have a chance to make a name for myself as an artist. Never mind the legal ramifications of getting caught.”

  “What would they be able to charge you with?”

  “Criminal fraud, material misrepresentation, breach of contract . . . and with today’s technology and paper trails, it would be easy enough to prove. That’s why Tate liked working with international investors who didn’t care about the means by which he obtained the works.”

  I take a long swallow of my coffee, processing this. I didn’t give much thought to why we were stealing the paintings at the time. I was far too preoccupied with the fact that we were stealing from someone we knew. Colton and I had both been turning a corner, making our way without doing favors for Nelson. Breaking into the gallery had felt like taking ten steps back, and the only reason I did it was because I thought it would protect Ellie somehow. I had no idea how true that was. “What happened to the Discovery collection after Colton and I lifted it from the gallery?”

  “Colton gave them back to me.” Her smile wavers. “I successfully hid them for more than two years.”

  “You hid them? You didn’t destroy them?”

  She gives a wan smile. “I thought of them as an insurance policy of sorts. I didn’t want to ever sell them, but if worse came to worse, I could.” Her smile falls away and she stares off into the distance. “But now there are whispers that they’re available, and I looked last night. They’re no longer where I hid them.”

  “Could you have moved them?”

  She shrugs. “Yeah. I guess, if I thought I needed to. But, unfortunately, I don’t remember, and I can’t think of a reason why I’d decide moving them was a safe idea or what I might think it would accomplish.”

  I don’t care that she forged some paintings—if anything, I admire her even more now that I know she realized the path her life was leading her down and got out. Like me. “The night you were assaulted, could someone have been trying to find the Discovery collection?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.” She shivers and wraps her hands around her mug. “When I got out of
the hospital, I was terrified of everything. But do you know the one thing that scared me more than imagining my fiancé tried to kill me?”

  My chest feels tight. I hate thinking about anyone hurting her, but I want to know everything so I can protect her. Every little detail. Every little fear. “What?”

  “Worse than the idea of being engaged to a man who would do that was the idea that there’s someone out there who wants me dead—someone I don’t remember enough about to know I should be afraid of.” She shakes her head. “Now that I remember so much, I don’t believe for a second that Colton was responsible. If I ever want to feel safe again, I need to know what happened to those paintings.”

  I peel her fingers off her cup and grip her hand in mine, not speaking until she meets my eyes. “Don’t. Please. I’ll look wherever you want me to, but don’t put yourself in danger like that.”

  “Not knowing makes me more vulnerable than anything else. If someone discovers those paintings, the others I did for Tate could be exposed as forgeries as well.”

  “This is dangerous.”

  “But that’s just it.” She pulls her hand from my grasp. “The biggest risk of exposing a forgery comes from the forger herself. Nelson knew I wasn’t comfortable with the deceit, and if he got his hands on the collection and wanted to sell it, his best chance of it not being exposed was in making sure I couldn’t speak out.”

  “I’m afraid you’re chasing the bad guy. Putting your life at risk.”

  Her face is pale, her shoulders tight. “My life is over if I don’t.”

  Ellie

  “Why are you bringing me here?” I ask Levi.

  He takes his eyes off the road for a beat to look at me. “I thought it might be nice not to go home right away.” He swallows. “Is this okay?”

  I smile out at the autumn colors lining the long, private road that leads to his family’s cabin. I remember the cabin well now. Levi and his family had Colton and me out here for countless get-togethers and holidays. “It’s better than okay.”