House Of Payne: Scout

by Stacy Gail

  HOUSE OF PAYNE: SCOUT

  (House Of Payne #2)

  Stacy Gail

  House of Payne: Scout

  There’s no doubt that Scout Upton earned her nickname. From the time she was an orphan bouncing from foster home to foster home like an unwanted stray, she’s had an uncanny ability to scout out trouble. Now an integral part of House Of Payne’s dominance in the world of ink, her “trouble” alarm triggers every damn time world-renowned fashion photographer, Ivar Fournier, comes around.

  Former model-turned-photographer, Ivar is notorious for making or breaking supermodels, both on camera and off. But when it comes to Scout, he can’t get a foot in the door. She doesn’t buy his charm or his story of wanting to spotlight body art for his next exhibit. Maybe because that’s exactly what it is—a story. Despite being born in a world of privilege, there’s a terrible darkness behind his practiced smile, and it all stems from a past he needs to understand. Scout holds the key to that mysterious past, and if he has to break her apart to get it, that’s exactly what he’ll do.

  Discover Other Titles by Stacy Gail:

  Bitterthorn, Texas Series:

  Ugly Ducklings Finish First

  Starting From Scratch (novella)

  One Hot Second

  Where There’s A Will

  Earth Angels Series:

  Nobody’s Angel (novella)

  Savage Angel

  Wounded Angel

  Dangerous Angel

  House Of Payne Series:

  House of Payne: Payne

  House of Payne: Scout

  Novellas:

  Crime Wave In A Corset (Part of the steampunk holiday anthology, A Clockwork Christmas)

  How The Glitch Saved Christmas (Part of the sci-fi holiday anthology, A Galactic Holiday)

  Zero Factor (Part of the cyberpunk anthology, Cybershock)

  Best Man, Worst Man

  Connect with Stacy Gail:

  Blog: http://stacygail.blogspot.com/

  Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/RmNxH

  Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1rU3qmY

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/Stacy_Gail_

  Copyright

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author. Characters and names of real persons who appear in the book are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2015 by Stacy Gail

  Cover image ©2006 coka, shutterstock image ID #: 79990450

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks so much to Sherry Haynes for giving Sass a name. That name is pure genius!

  And thanks to Jade C. Jamison, for giving me a call one April morning, asking if I’d be interested in doing an anthology involving tattoo-related stories. Without you, Jade, House Of Payne would never have been dreamed up. Love ya, chica.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  Note from the Author

  About the Author

  Connect with Stacy Gail

  Chapter One

  He’s out to get me.

  Oblivious to the hustle and bustle inside Pig In A Poke café, Scout Upton sighed at the text from co-worker, Angel Taylor. Angel was the youngest tattooist at House Of Payne, Chicago’s premiere tattoo studio and art gallery. Angel had come to the House fresh out of high school, brimming with ideas and a marked talent for color work. Her artwork specialized in all things fantasy, from fairies and dragons, to celestial wings so beautiful they could belong to the angels after which she was named. She was booked months in advance, and her spin on fairytale themes had garnered her worldwide attention. Life would have been all sorts of yippee-filled awesome for Angel if it weren’t for one thing.

  Twist.

  Scout thumb-typed, “Ignore him. That’s what I do.”

  Angel’s next text popped up almost immediately. No one can ignore Twist when he wants to be a PITA.

  Oh hell, wasn’t that the truth. In the two years Scout had known Twist Santiago, she’d learned the man could give expert-level lessons on how to be a pain in the ass. “1. I’m on vacay now for the month of March, so ur talking to the wrong peep. 2. Refer to 1.”

  I’d talk to Payne, but Becks is here.

  Scout frowned. Becks had become a permanent fixture at the House since Payne had gone all goo-goo-eyed for her and popped the question. This wasn’t exactly late-breaking news. “So?”

  So, she’s in his office. With Payne.

  “What the hell, Angel, who cares?” With an irritated sound, she typed as fast as she could so she could get on with her life. “Again I ask, SO???”

  OMG. THEY’RE NOISY, SCOUT.

  She laughed before she could stifle it. Her best friend and boss, Sebastian Payne and his fiancée would have to be just about screaming the damn roof off, considering all the offices at the House were virtually soundproof.

  Before she could think of something to say, another text from Angel appeared.

  And I know you’re on vacation. But didn’t you stay in Chicago?

  Ugh. If it weren’t for the party she was throwing for her former foster parents, Mama Coco and Papa Bolo Panuzzi, she’d be grilling herself on a beach in Hawaii. “A staycation still counts as a vacation, Angel.”

  Yeah. Just not an exciting one.

  On that, Scout couldn’t agree more. Her life wasn’t exactly an adrenaline junkie’s wet dream. Her current priorities were to make sure the anniversary party went off without a hitch, and to clean out the storage room she’d inherited along with the penthouse. She’d been putting that chore off ever since House Of Payne’s benefactor, Frank Bournival, had given her the place to live after his death four years earlier. Now that she had a free month, it was time to put her own house in order. She’d sort through Frank’s old boxes and send the important stuff off to Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, and finally turn that space into a flower-themed home office. It was ridiculous, how excited she was about her decorating plans. Diligently she’d collected fabric swatches, wheels of paint chip cards and was even considering some kitschy floral wallpaper that looked like it belonged in June Cleaver’s kitchen.

  But she’d be damned if she’d tell Angel any of that. Her vacation was lame enough without revealing she’d found wallpaper that made her squeal.

  “Exciting or not, I’m still NOT AT WORK. You’ll just have to cope w/ Twist until I’m back in April.”

  Grrrr and yuck, but ok. I’ll try not to kill Mr. Alphahole, but no promises. Enjoy ur time off.

  “I would, if work shit didn’t keep bugging me,” she muttered, typing a quick farewell just as she heard her name called at the cou
nter.

  “Here you go. English breakfast tea, extra hot with room for milk.” The man behind Pig in a Poke’s serving bar, Leo, jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “You sure I can’t talk you into trying the coffee? It’s a new blend we’re trying out.”

  She frowned at the bald and jowly man who’d served her tea for four years. “And be a coffee-drinking drone like everyone else?”

  “With your pinup-girl hair and flower tats, no one could ever mistake you for anything other than an original, Scout.”

  “Awww, you say the sweetest things. But I’m still not abandoning my tea for coffee.”

  “You don’t know what you’re missing. And I guess I can’t talk you into a muffin or Danish either, right?”

  She grinned. This was the game they’d played since she’d shown up at Pig In A Poke, and she loved the familiarity of it. She’d never really had a home while growing up, but she figured familiarity was probably what home felt like. “I made the best cream scones last night. One taste and you’d swear you were in heaven. Or at the very least Buckingham Palace.”

  Leo did his best to look surly. “Why do you even come in here? Can’t figure out how to put a teabag into a hot cup of water?”

  “If I don’t have your smiling face to brighten my morning, the rest of the day sucks out loud.”

  He actually blushed before swatting a beefy hand in her direction. “Get outta here already.”

  “See you tomorrow.” Hitching her hobo bag across her body, she toasted him with her tea and headed for the door, phone still in hand. Her next stop was Zelda’s, the flower shop at the end of the block to pick up a dozen of whatever fresh blooms had come in. Maybe while she was there she’d text Payne to give him a heads-up about Twist being an asshole aga—

  A blur of movement to her right flashed like lightning—too fast for her to react. The impact of body on body sent her crashing into the side of the café. Her tea bounced onto the pavement even as her phone was tugged from her hand. She had just enough time to glimpse someone in a gray hoodie and jeans sprinting down the sidewalk.

  Holy crap, I just got mugged by the Unibomber.

  “Hey!”

  A masculine shout roared from behind, startling her. Before she could blink, another blur streaked by to tackle the Unibomber wannabe, who’d run out of sidewalk and had to slow for a busy street. Behind her, the café door exploded open and Leo raced out to stand next to her, his attention bouncing from her to the tangle of arms and legs at the end of the block before he braced a hand on her shoulder.

  “You okay, Scout?”

  “I…” Jesus, she had no idea. For the first time since she’d mastered heels at the age of fourteen, she had the craziest feeling she was about to topple off of them. Then she realized she was shaking so damn hard it was a wonder she wasn’t setting off earthquake sensors around the globe. “Yeah, I’m okay. My phone—” She gestured toward the two fighting down the street, then squeaked when her mugger kicked her would-be savior in the face before stumbling to his feet and racing away. “Oh, my God!” Without a thought, she ran—high heels, shaky knees and all—to where her rescuer was gaining his feet. “Sir, are you all right? Are you… holy shit.” Slowly he turned to face her, and the sidewalk vanished out from under her. “You.”

  As she stared in open-mouthed shock, Ivar Fournier wiped a hand at his nose, which came away bloody.

  Oh no, his perfect face…

  Even with a bloody nose, Ivar Fournier was still the most physically beautiful being Scout had ever had the good fortune to drool over. That made sense, of course. Though he was now a fashion photographer renowned for creating soul-revealing portraits that made or broke modeling careers—and notorious for banging every supermodel on the catwalk—he’d once been one of the highest paid male models in the business. Several inches over six feet with broad shoulders that any world-class swimmer would have envied, Ivar struck an imposing figure. But when it was combined with glacier-blue eyes, golden-hued skin and raven back hair, the term irresistible was hard to avoid.

  But somehow she’d been managing it.

  Barely.

  For a couple months now, Ivar had been at her like a pesky fly at a picnic, wanting to do a photographic collection of House Of Payne’s more famous tattoo designs. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem. In fact, she’d usually be the first in line to sell her nonexistent grandmother to have that kind of top-drawer, A-List publicity.

  But it wasn’t that simple. Ivar didn’t want to photograph the tats all by themselves. Oh, no. He’d decided his collection had to be made up of people who bore the House’s exclusive ink. That meant handing over the House’s private client list to a man who might have his own agenda.

  The words, “Uh, yeah no,” couldn’t leave her mouth fast enough.

  Strangely enough, though, Ivar had refused to take no for an answer. Then again, she supposed she couldn’t blame him for that. Considering how insanely hot the guy was, he’d probably never heard the word before and had no clue what it meant.

  When Ivar had first appeared on House Of Payne’s doorstep, Scout had acted as she always did when it came to business—she investigated the crap out of him. Though her official label at the House was executive manager and assistant to Payne, her real job was to detect any trouble for House Of Payne and eliminate it. Sensing trouble was a talent she’d always had, from the time she’d grown up in some of the worst foster homes South Chicago had to offer. It was an ability linked to her survival instinct, and since she’d survived one hell of a lot in her twenty-six years, she almost never questioned it.

  She was sure tempted to question it now. Her trouble alarms clanged in the worst way whenever Ivar Fournier appeared, with his suave Prince Charming looks and pearly white smile that never reached his eyes. But her instincts had almost never steered her wrong before. If they were telling her that the dashing, sophisticated Ivar Fournier was more trouble than a bag of pissed-off rattlesnakes, then it was a foregone conclusion. From the top of his stylishly tousled head to the bottom of his Armani shoes, Ivar Fournier was trouble, through and through.

  And lucky her, here he was now, popping up out of nowhere, doing his impersonation of a Good Samaritan and getting his beautiful face bloodied in the bargain. How the hell was she supposed to react to that?

  “Are you out of your damn mind? You could have gotten yourself killed!”

  Oh. So apparently nagging like a PMSing shrew was how she was supposed to react.

  Good to know.

  Again Ivar wiped at his nose. “You are most welcome,” he drawled in that yummy, no-contractions, French-accented voice that made her go all gooey. Then, to her amazement, he held up her phone just as Leo huffed his way over in a half-jog, half-shuffle. “It is both an honor and a pleasure to risk life and limb for such a gracious woman.”

  Ugh. As she grabbed up the offered phone, she wondered if she could feel any smaller. “I’m sorry, it’s just… you’re bleeding. A phone isn’t worth shedding blood over, even if I am grateful to have it back, and… Oh geez, you’re so totally bleeding.” All at once her stomach executed a wowser of a gymnastic move, and she sucked in some air to keep it from doing back flips all the way up her throat and out her mouth.

  Leo stepped forward, out of breath and sweaty. “You did a good thing there, pal. Come on into the restaurant and we’ll get some ice on that, okay? Just try not to bleed all over the place, if you don’t mind. Not that I’ve got a problem with that, but the Board of Health would have my ass in a sling, so…”

  “It’s cool, Leo, I’ve got this.” No one was more surprised than Scout when the words popped out of her mouth. Both men stared at her, but Leo was the first to find his voice.

  “What do you mean, you got this? You even know this guy?”

  “As a matter of fact, I know Ivar quite well.” Okay, that was a stretch. She knew what she’d dug up on him. He’d been born in Canada, but now lived in New York. She’d managed to find out his mother was Eliane C
hantal Fournier, once a model but was now retired and living in Montreal. She’d been married to shipping magnate Rupert Rundstrom, who’d apparently owned approximately half the world before he kicked the bucket last fall of an aneurism. There was no father recorded on Ivar’s birth certificate, but she did know he’d been raised by his maternal grandmother, a totally legit blue-blooded French baroness, who’d suffered a stroke around the time Rundstrom died, and was now in a top-notch nursing home. Like her daughter before Ivar, the grandmother had managed Ivar’s modeling career until he dropped out to go behind the camera in his late teens.

  At the time, that career decision had seemed like a huge mistake. Ivar had been a rising star and more in demand than ever when he gave modeling the middle finger and took up the camera. But it became obvious almost immediately that the guy wasn’t just a pretty face. He was an artist whose medium was photography, and over the years he’d gained an uncanny reputation for capturing the true soul of his subjects—for better or worse. Would-be models flocked to him in droves, hoping to attain that “angelic” touch that had catapulted several careers to the supermodel level. But there were times when his portraits wound up being downright hideous. He never pulled his punches when this happened, refusing to accept responsibility for it. He’d simply say that the camera never lied, and whatever ugliness the model inherently possessed couldn’t be hidden from it.

  With a crappy attitude like that, Scout was baffled why anyone would put themselves in front of his camera. But they all did, no doubt hoping they’d be the next supermodel to pass the great Ivar Fournier photographic litmus test.

  Leo looked doubtfully from one to the other. “Well, if you’re sure…”

  “No worries, Leo.” Dropping her phone into her bag, she dug out a packet of tissues, pulled one out and held it out to Ivar. “Hold that to your nose until I get you to my place, okay?”

  He did so, tilting his head back. “Your place?”