by Julia London
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2016 Dinah Dinwiddie
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503953284
ISBN-10: 1503953289
Cover design by Eileen Carey
For Jameson, Jaylynn, Sage, and Savannah. What I wouldn’t give to muster as much enthusiasm for anything as you have for Minecraft.
Contents
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Epilogue
If you enjoyed this book, connect with Julia London online!
About the Author
Prologue
March
The ghostly light of cell phones being held aloft looked like thousands of tiny beacons, beckoning him. Come here, come closer. Teasing him, daring him to walk off the stage and into the sea of them and disappear. He was tempted.
Everett Alden, the lead singer in the alternative rock band Tuesday’s End, felt slightly stoned and completely numb as the last of the band’s pyrotechnics ignited, showering the stage in shards of colored light. It was the big climax of their two-hour show, culminating with the performance of their biggest hit to date, “Dream Makers.” He’d done this more times than he could count, had stared out into a darkened sea of moving cell phone lights and sung to the point of exhaustion.
The shrieks of the seventeen thousand fans were so deafening that he could hardly hear himself. There were girls down front—little girls, really, barely old enough to be out on their own—dressed provocatively and screaming up at him, their arms outstretched. They all wanted him to look at them, anoint them with sex, with money, with fame.
Tonight’s performance was at Madison Square Garden, the last gig of one hundred and fifty cities on the best and biggest tour yet in the twenty years Tuesday’s End had been together. They’d been met by crowds just like this around the world, little girls everywhere, their arms reaching, their hands grasping, their cell phones aimed at him.
Everett sang, but there was no heart in him tonight. He’d lost it along the road somewhere, left it battered and bruised and flattened in some hotel room. Not that any of the cell phones knew—he was a professional. He knew how to deliver a performance even when he was somewhere else. Even when he couldn’t hear himself. Even when he was singing bubblegum confection with no heft in the music or lyrics. He could fake it with the best of them.
But he was done. He didn’t want this anymore, even when he tried to want it for the sake of his band. He couldn’t feel it anymore. He couldn’t feel anything but bone-deep weariness. His life had become a nebulous, undefined question, the same question Trey had asked in the hours before he’d died. Is this all there is?
That’s what Trey had wanted to know. In his last days on this earth, he’d wanted to know if this was all there was.
Everett didn’t know the answer to that. He couldn’t feel anything but the tear rolling down his cheek.
One
March
This was one big ship of hope—otherwise known as the 6 train—bobbing along on a sea of lollipop dreams. Otherwise known as the bowels of Manhattan. But even the stale air and the snores of the man next to her couldn’t keep Mia Lassiter from believing that things were turning around for her, that the cosmos had at last opened and shined its glorious light on her.
It wasn’t every day a perfect opportunity fell in her lap. Lately, it had been just the opposite. She’d recently lost her job (not the greatest, but at least something in her field), and her boyfriend (not the greatest, but at least she’d gotten some average sex out of it), and was on the verge of losing her apartment (yes, it was a pit—but a pit in a great location). So to have something so unexpected and so clearly meant for her fall into her lap filled Mia with optimism, and she was practically sailing uptown with the wind at her back and her portfolio tucked up under her arm.
When at last she emerged from the Big Hope Ship onto Lexington Avenue, she began striding purposefully across the street. Move out of my way, people!
Sure, she noticed some looks in her direction from well-heeled women with small children and dogs in designer carriers. Because Mia was wearing a dress she’d made from white muslin and had stained with Earl Grey tea, a vest she had knitted from thrift store sweatshirts, a pair of ankle boots, graphic tights, and a cloche hat she’d made from a piece of felt she’d found at a sidewalk sale. Her father accused her of living in an episode of Project Runway, and he most certainly would have advised her against this outfit for a job interview. He generally advised her against this sort of outfit, period.
But this was different. Mia’s father didn’t know August Brockway.
August Brockway was one of America’s most important artists and he was hiring an intern. When one of Mia’s former instructors from Pratt Institute had called her out of the blue to tell her about it, Mia had shrieked with excitement into the phone. She’d studied his legendary work. She loved the ethereal quality of his landscapes, the use of light and shadows in his still-life paintings. He was the artist she wanted to be.
It was a dream come true to have an opportunity to intern for him. It was the sort of opportunity Mia had assumed she’d get after she graduated from college.
She had not dreamed of being a textile designer, but that’s what she’d been the last few years.
The perfect jobs she’d assumed would come her way after graduation hadn’t materialized. She’d been unable to find a job in a gallery with her fresh, never-used fine arts degree. So she’d taken the textile design job, creating fabrics for furniture. At the very least, it was creative. And it was definitely a way to pay rent until she could establish herself as an artist.
Which was now! At last, at long last, she was getting the break she needed, the chance to follow her dreams.
She arrived at the address where her interview would be conducted. The building had a doorman. A doorman! It would be weird and exciting to come here to work every day. Mia would make friends with the doorman, she decided. She’d bring him a muffin from the corner bakery near her apartment. He would tell her what the weather was going to do that day and she would suggest a tie or shirt he could wear for a weekend party.
This was going to happen. Mia had a sixth sense about these things, and could feel it tingling in her bones. She was confident that August Brockway would see her work, would see that it was obviously inspired by his, and he would be bowled over by it. He would give her the job, and she would clean his paintbrushes and change out his drop cloths and listen to every word he said as h
e taught her everything he knew. It was fate.
She checked her vintage watch; she was ten minutes early. She took the opportunity to put down the heavy portfolio and straighten the dress she’d made. She loved this dress. Obviously, designing textiles wasn’t her first career choice, but Mia had turned out to be pretty darn good at it, if she did say so herself. She was so good, in fact, that when her boss had invited her out to lunch a few weeks ago, Mia had been sure she was finally getting the raise he’d been promising her for over a year.
Don was an overweight, lumbering man with oily black hair and wire-rimmed glasses that never sat straight on his face. He took her to lunch at a fast-food chain. That should have been her first clue, but ever hopeful, like a too-stupid-to-live princess in a fairy tale, Mia hadn’t caught on. And then, between big bites of burger, punctuated by the shoveling of fries, Don said, “We’re closing shop.”
“What?” Mia had cried, loud enough that the ladies next to them had turned to look at her. “I thought I was getting a raise!”
“A raise!” Don had chuckled as he stuffed another fry into his mouth. “We’re barely paying the rent.” He dragged a paper napkin across his thick lips. “So look, we lost that contract in North Carolina. Something about the percentage of natural fibers in our fabrics wasn’t meeting their standard—well, whatever, that’s way over your head,” he said with a wave of his meaty fist, ignoring her look of indignation. “It was a big contract, obviously, so corporate is going to have to consolidate some things and this shop is sitting in the most expensive real estate, so . . .” He’d shrugged and munched on another fry. “We’re shutting down.”
“But . . . but what happens to everyone?”
“Well, I’m moving to Scranton. And the rest of you will have to find new jobs.”
He’d said it so matter-of-factly, as if it were nothing for the little group of misfits who designed couch fabrics to find new jobs. Mia thought of Charles with his brown bag lunches and e-reader. And Maureen, the obese diabetic who baked cookies every weekend and brought them to the shop on Mondays. Maureen designed the most intricate, beautiful patterns. And what about David and Jean and Asmara? Where would they go? The injustice had left Mia speechless.
“Look on the bright side,” Don had said, pausing to stifle a belch. “You’re getting two weeks’ severance.”
“You’re kidding. Considering my paltry hourly wage, that’s not a bright side, Don.”
He’d shrugged. “Take it or leave it.”
Yeah, well, Mia had had no choice but to take it. And then she’d spent every day searching for a job that was even remotely artistic. She’d applied to teach a weaving class, to be a gallery receptionist, a graphic designer, and even a bookbinder . . . but no one wanted her. No one cared about her art portfolio. Employers cared only about her experience answering phones or designing websites.
Well, Mia didn’t have that sort of experience. She didn’t have any experience other than art school and textile design. No, wait, that wasn’t fair—she was pretty good at busing tables. Her brother Derek had pointed that out. “You can wait tables for Mom and Dad at the bistro. You know how to do that.”
As Mia had spent all her teenage years doing exactly that, it was absolutely the last thing she wanted to do.
It had all looked very hopeless until the day the cosmic powers of life had delivered this interview to her. What was that saying, that a person had to be completely torn down to be built up again? Mia liked the idea that her life had been deconstructed, and that after today, she would get the chance to construct it in a way she’d wanted for a very long time.
“Okay!” she said to herself. “Here goes nothing.” She clutched her hat and jogged confidently across the street.
She was directed to the tenth floor, Apartment B. The elevator opened up to a long hallway. Overhead, two small gold chandeliers illuminated the path to the door of the apartment. Mia’s boots were absolutely silent on the thick hallway carpet as she walked down to the end and knocked lightly with the little brass door knocker.
The door swung open and bright sunlight spilled out into the hall, blinding her for a moment. A young man with doe eyes and plump lips, tight pants, and a lock of gold hair over his brow stood before her. He smiled. “Mia Lassiter?”
“Yes.” She juggled her portfolio and clumsily extended her hand. Lord she had to outweigh this Ken doll by thirty pounds.
“I’m Vincent,” he said, taking her hand in his. His grip was as limp as linguini, his skin as smooth as a baby seal. “Please come in.”
Mia stepped across the threshold and was instantly assailed by the smell of oil paints. Heaven. She followed him inside, taking notes. The floors were hand-scraped wood, the walls painted a pristine white. The crown molding was painted a slightly grayer shade of white, just enough to give it a slight contrast and draw the eye upward.
“Oh wow,” Mia murmured. The apartment looked like pictures she’d seen in the pages of glossy architectural magazines. “This is amazing.”
“Original floors and moldings,” Vincent said. “Reworked, of course.”
“Of course,” she echoed dreamily. There was a fireplace at one end, the mantle distressed raw wood. The windows facing the street were at least ten feet tall and marked with cornices carved to resemble leafy vines. But the most spectacular thing about that room was the paintings and drawings in various stages of completion. They were hanging on the walls, stacked on the floor, and graced two opposing easels. It was truly a treasure trove of August Brockway artwork, and her heart began to flutter with joy.
Between the two easels was a stool, and Mia pictured August sitting there and swiveling between his works in progress as his mood dictated. Drop cloths, spotted with paints, covered a big swath of floor. Next to the stool was a small table with bowls and pitchers crowded onto it. Near the windows, a bistro table, on top of which was a plate with a half-eaten sandwich and some chips.
Mia slowly turned around, taking it all in. She could picture herself in this studio, assisting a master. This was exactly what she wanted: a real art studio. A peaceful, beautiful place with nothing but a blank canvas and her creativity.
The click of heels against the wood drew her attention to an arched door that led into a kitchen. Mr. Brockway emerged, wiping his hands on a towel, which he handed to Vincent. He was a slight man, barely taller than Vincent, with neatly combed silver-gray hair. Mia, with her average height and curves, felt very roly-poly in comparison to the two of them.
Mr. Brockway was wearing jeans that had been splashed with drops of paint, loafers without socks, and a salmon collared shirt with cuffs rolled to the elbows.
“Mr. Brockway,” Mia said, trying to keep the nerves from her voice. “It’s such a great honor to meet you.” She thrust her hand forward.
“Yes, I’m sure,” he said absently, and took her fingers and gave them a little shake before letting go. His gaze skipped over Mia’s body and settled on the portfolio she held. “Is that your work?”
“Yes.” She’d brought six of her best pieces, carefully selected with an eye toward color and spatial relevance, qualities she’d learned were important to Mr. Brockway.
Vincent took the portfolio from her and laid it on the floor. He unzipped it as Mr. Brockway knelt down on one knee to have a look. Mia was uncertain what she was to do, but she felt awkward standing above him. She managed to negotiate her way down onto her knees in a manner that didn’t require props and rested her fists against her thighs as he examined her work.
Mr. Brockway held up the first painting, an abstract, and squinted at it.
“I call that Breathe,” Mia said nervously. “It’s supposed to symbolize the first breath. Like a new experience.”
He said nothing, but shifted the painting to catch more of the natural light coming in from the windows, and then the other way, where the painting was in the shadows. He wordlessly put it aside and picked up the next.
“That one is—”
; “It shouldn’t be necessary to explain your work,” he said without looking at her. “The art should speak for itself.”
Yes, yes, art should speak for itself!
Even so, Mia was desperate to tell him what had inspired her, and she had to bite her lip to keep from blurting out what she was thinking. Her knees ached as he studied the paintings and her nerves were a jangly mess. She wanted his approval so badly she felt slightly nauseated by it.
When Mr. Brockway had finished reviewing her work, he put the paintings back in the portfolio and gestured at Vincent to zip it back up. He stood up. So did Mia, coming to her feet about as gracefully as a toddler. “No, thank you,” he said. “Vincent, you can show Miss Lassiter out.”
Stunned, Mia looked at Vincent, then at Mr. Brockway. That was it? No questions about her goals or experience? No critique, no comment whatsoever? As Vincent tried to usher Mia out, she ducked around him. “Mr. Brockway!” she called, before the artist could disappear through the arch and into the kitchen.
He paused and looked back at her with one brow lifted imperiously above the other. “Yes?”
“Why not me?” She hadn’t meant to ask it precisely that way, but yes—why not her?
He shrugged. “You don’t have the talent.”
She gasped softly. An old wound, deep but tender, began to open. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard it. More than one instructor had advised her to consider a career in something other than canvas work because she didn’t have the talent necessary to make it. But Mia had worked so damn hard for it, and she knew she’d improved.
“You should come with me,” Vincent said, his fingers lightly on her arm.
“What do you mean?” Mia asked August Brockway as she brushed Vincent off.
Mr. Brockway turned full around and planted his hands on his waist, considering her. “Would you really like to know what I think of your portfolio, Miss Lassiter?”
No! No, no don’t ask! “Of course I would,” Mia said. Oh God, this was going to hurt. “You’re a renowned artist,” she continued with far more confidence than she was suddenly feeling. “I’m just starting out. I would work really hard for you, Mr. Brockway, and I know I would learn so much. So yes, I would like to know what you think.”