Saving Jade: Stormborn Security Services

by Ava Bloom

  Then, she’d turned to look at me, and the world stopped spinning at the sight of her blue eyes. They were an unreal shade of blue that made me wonder if they weren’t contacts, but as she came closer, I knew they were real. Her irises had flecks of yellow and green in them.

  And then I’d screwed everything up, and she’d kicked me outside, and I was looking through her studio window like a creep while also clenching every muscle in my lower body so I wouldn’t pee. Great. Maybe I should have tried to convince my last client to take me back. She hit on me every chance she got and acted like she was auditioning for The Real Housewives, but at least I got frequent restroom breaks.

  I was thinking about running across the street to the video game store when the door to Dark Roast Coffee opened and Faith came out. The crowd had dissipated as morning turned to afternoon, leaving me mostly alone on the sidewalks.

  She handed me a plastic cup of ice water. “Jade will come around. She is very stubborn. Especially when it comes to her dad.”

  I accepted the water with a smile and wondered if it would be possible to dump it out and pee in it without anyone noticing. “You seem to know her pretty well.”

  Faith shrugged. “I started the shop a few months before Jade’s dad bought her the studio.” I had the feeling she was barely restraining an eye roll at that, but before I could pull her body language apart too much, her expression cleared and she continued. “We’ve both been here about two years, and given the fact that we are both women with our own businesses, we have a lot to talk about.”

  “I can imagine,” I said. Not really, though. I don’t have a lot to talk about with anyone. I’ve always been on the quiet side. One of my ex-girlfriends called me ‘broody,’ but I prefer ‘observant.’

  “Does Jade seem shaken up about the attack?” Faith asked.

  I shrugged. “You’d know better than me. She threw me out here within the first five minutes.”

  “We haven’t talked much since it happened,” Faith explained. “She acts tough, but I know it has bothered her.”

  “Has it bothered you? You saw her being attacked, right?”

  Faith looked down at the ground and kicked a pebble with the toe of her boot. “Yeah. It was hard to see the way those guys were…touching—I’m just glad I got there when I did,” she finished quickly.

  She didn’t need to explain any further for my blood to begin to boil. I could well enough imagine what the scumbags had done and what they’d been thinking about while they’d done it. If they did come back for Jade, I wouldn’t need much excuse to snap their necks. Part of me even hoped they would make another move, even though that would mean I’d lose the job paying me double my normal rate.

  “I’m sure Jade is glad, too.”

  “Glad about what?” I turned around and saw Jade standing next to me, one eye squinted against the sunshine, a flat hand held to her forehead.

  “Nothing,” I said quickly, taking a long drink of the water just for something to do, even though my bladder was full to bursting.

  “If you haven’t already noticed, I don’t enjoy when things are done or spoken about behind my back,” she snapped, her blue eyes drilling lasers into me. Then, she turned to Faith and rolled her eyes. “My father insisted on security. I told him I didn’t need it, but he hired this guy without my permission.”

  Faith’s mouth pinched to one corner, and she shrugged. “I don’t know, Jade. I might be on your dad’s side with this one.”

  Jade groaned. “Traitor.”

  “I’m sorry,” Faith said with an apologetic smile. “But those guys were more than your average thieves. It was scary, and with the threats they made, I’d be terrified if I was you. In fact, I’d probably have packed up my shop and moved across town.”

  “I’m not going to let those losers run me away from my studio,” she said, standing tall and smoothing a hand down the front of her dress. “Especially since they aren’t even going to come back. Not when I have my friendly neighborhood barista looking after me.”

  Faith’s frowned turned up ever so slightly at the corners at that. “Owner slash barista, thank you very much.”

  Jade smiled at her friend, and I was awed by her beauty. That smile had been aimed at me when I’d first walked into her studio. It was light and friendly, and it made you want to get to know her. It made you want to be her friend. Then, Jade looked towards me and her frown returned, along with a deep crease in her forehead. “You can come inside if you want. But one disturbance and you are back on the curb.”

  I waved goodbye to Faith and followed Jade into the studio, wondering when I’d see that smile aimed my way again.

  Jade marched straight back to her easel and the canvas in the back of the studio, so I kept myself busy looking at the art hanging all over the walls. The room was all white walls and white track lights overhead, but it was brimming with color. Each canvas imagined the world in vibrant shades of red and purple and pink. Trees exploded with turquoise leaves, the sun glinted off the water in streaks of peach and gold, and purple clouds filled the sky. It was a beautiful way to see the world.

  “These are really good,” I said, pointing to a painting of a long dock disappearing over the water, a wall of fishing buoys in every color hanging from a net next to it. “I don’t know much about painting, so I don’t know how much that means to you, but it’s true.”

  “Thanks.” The gratitude is clipped, but not as hostile.

  “How long have you been painting?”

  She sighed. “This counts as a disturbance.”

  “You don’t have to answer the question.” I sit down in the accent chair I was sitting in before. It is solid wood and all angles and sharp edges. For all I know, it is a sculpture instead of a chair, but since Jade doesn’t tell me to stand up, I assume it is safe to sit on.

  She stepped away from her canvas, tilted her head to the side, and then dipped her brush in a glob of navy paint on her palette and began scraping it across the canvas. “Since I was ten.”

  I was making paper footballs and using rubber bands to flick them at the girls in my class when I was ten. Jade was becoming an artist. “Were you some kind of prodigy?”

  She laughed—or, rather, she snorted in amusement—and shook her head. “No. I taught myself how to paint. I enjoyed it, but didn’t know what I was doing, so I studied famous paintings in art books and magazines and recreated them. I did that for a few years until I felt comfortable making my own.”

  I could imagine Jade pouring over books, tongue pinched between her teeth while she tried to exactly copy the paintings she saw there. I barely knew her, but I could tell she was serious, and the crease line between her eyebrows told me she didn’t lack concentration. As I had the thought, she pulled her brows together as she stared at her canvas, only loosening them when her brush was once again moving. It was her painting face.

  “Your dad was rich. Why didn’t he get you classes?”

  Jade’s lips tightened, and I worried I’d struck a nerve. My family had grown up poor, so I’d grown up thinking only poor people didn’t like to talk about money. As I aged, I had begun to realize that no one really liked talking about money, whether they had it or not, but it was a hard habit to break.

  “Painting is not a worthwhile pursuit in my father’s eyes,” she said. “Instead, all of my free time since middle school was spent with language, math, and business tutors.”

  “That sounds miserable.”

  She shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal, but I could tell there was a new tension in her shoulders and her face. Then, she tipped her head towards me. “What about your childhood? Any lasting traumas?”

  The question was blunt and unforgiving. I liked it. “My parents were poor and supportive.”

  “So, the opposite of mine,” she said.

  “Apparently.” I crossed my legs, suddenly remembering how badly I had to pee, but not wanting to ruin this tenuous peace between us by asking for the restroom. “So, no childhood
traumas. Though, I spent seven years in the Army.”

  “That probably made up for lost time,” she said. “As far as trauma is concerned.”

  I stared at Jade as she painted, and at first, I thought she was refusing to look at me because she knew she’d crossed a line, but then I began to realize, she was just busy painting. Her comment about my trauma had not been a joke or a jab, merely a statement.

  “I suppose so,” I finally said. Talking about the things I’d seen and done as a Special Forces Communications Sergeant was near the bottom on my list of fun activities. It wasn’t so much that I couldn’t talk about it, but rather than when I did, people began to look at me like I was a wounded animal. Or, they would treat me like I was a modern-day saint and begin saluting me and shaking my hand every time we crossed paths. I didn’t mind when people were grateful for my service, but when they started treating me like a special class of human, things became weird. Jade seemed to have created a new third category—someone who learned about my military service and then had no explicit feelings about it one way or the other. I didn’t mind that reaction at all.

  “Were you in combat?” she asked.

  I hummed a yes. “Detonated and deactivated a lot of explosives.”

  “That’s dangerous,” she said flatly. “Lose any friends?”

  I hummed again. “A lot.”

  She slipped back into painting; her brow creased in thought for the next ten minutes. Then she spun away from the canvas, swirled her brush in a big bucket of water on a rolling cart behind her, and unhooked her apron from around her waist.

  “I have a delivery to make this afternoon, and then I’m going to be home for the rest of the day,” she said. “You can go home.”

  “But I’m supposed to—”

  “Watch me while I’m at my studio,” she finished. “Feel free to creepily watch me walk to my car, but after that, your job is done for the day.”

  I couldn’t argue with that, and I also didn’t mind the idea of getting some space from Jade for a while. I had not been at all mentally prepared to be in such a small room with her. Alone. She had a body and a personality that was hard to ignore. I needed to take the afternoon and evening to steel myself for the next few weeks or months. “I guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Jade threw her purse over her shoulder and grabbed a canvas wrapped in a white cloth from the floor and headed towards the door. Her mouth pulled down in a grimace. “I suppose so.”

  I did, in fact, watch her walk to her car. I told myself it was for her safety, but I sure didn’t mind the view.

  5

  JADE

  LOGAN and I didn’t talk much after that first day. He brought a stack of books with him—all of the dust covers were removed so I couldn’t tell what they were, which annoyed me more than I wanted to admit—and mostly kept to himself. At lunch, I ordered myself Chinese without asking if he wanted any, and he ate a giant salad he’d packed for himself in a paper bag. A few times, we both got up to use the restroom at the same time, and he would wave for me to go on ahead of him. But otherwise, we both seemed content to pretend the other didn’t exist.

  Except, Logan made that difficult.

  He was gorgeous. Strong and masculine and rugged. And he was being paid to be near me. It figured that the first man I found myself attracted to and genuinely interested in was only near me because my father asked him to be. The thought of Logan sitting down to coffee with my father made me shiver. He had been tainted, and now we could never be together.

  Not that I wanted to be “together” with him. I sighed and took a bite of my egg roll.

  “Why don’t you just have your boyfriend come hang out with you for a bit?”

  I was so surprised to hear Logan’s voice that I dropped the last bit of my egg roll. It hit the side of my paper carton and fell to the floor with an oily thud. I stared at it longingly before looking up, my mouth pulled down in a frown. “What?”

  “If you are so bothered with having a bodyguard,” he said, waving his hand at himself. “Why don’t you tell your dad you’ll have your boyfriend walk you to and from your car and stop in at lunch?”

  I raised one eyebrow, though my bangs are long enough I knew he couldn’t see it. “Are you trying to see if I’m available?”

  The question had been a joke because Logan had shown no obvious signs of interest in me, but as soon as I asked it, his posture stiffened, and he began stabbing at a piece of chicken in his salad bowl. “Just wondering why I’m here instead of a man you know…and like.”

  “The problem is that I do not need any man to come and rescue me, whether it be a hired professional or a boyfriend. I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” I said. I hadn’t felt perfectly capable the night of the attack, but Logan didn’t need to know that. No one did. I hadn’t slept well the last few days because of nightmares, and I’d woken up several times each night to make sure all of my doors were locked. But that was to be expected. My space had been violated, and after a couple weeks, things would settle back down to normal.

  “Right,” Logan said. “But the boyfriend trick would get me out of your hair.”

  He really was fishing to see if I had a boyfriend. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have kept pressing. The realization forced me to bite back a smile. “It would, but first I’d need a boyfriend.”

  He nodded, feigning disinterest, but whether he knew it or not, Logan had shown his cards. And it felt good to know that he found me to be slightly dateable. At least my attraction was not one-sided.

  “I haven’t dated anyone in a while,” I added, not sure why I was carrying on the conversation. Boredom, perhaps.

  “Why?” Logan crunched through a lettuce leaf, and I wondered how he fueled a body of muscle like that on grilled chicken and vegetables.

  “Because I haven’t wanted to,” I said. When he smirked, I narrowed my eyes. “A woman can choose not to date. Not everyone spends their days obsessing about relationships and sex.”

  He glanced up at me and then quickly away. “But most people find some time in their lives for it.”

  “Do you?” I asked, wondering how terrible it would be to pick up my last bite of egg roll off the floor. Maybe I could pretend to fix my shoe and Logan wouldn’t even notice. Though, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d mopped my floors, and I was well beyond the bounds of the five-second rule. “Make time for it, I mean.”

  “I date,” he said with a shrug.

  “I wonder how you find the time, seeing as you spend your days standing guard over people and throwing yourself in front of danger. Unless you date your clients, I don’t see a workplace romance in your future.” It was meant to be a snarky comment, but it came off sounding like I was flirting with him, dangling the idea of the two of us dating in front of him. I wasn’t, but I couldn’t correct the misunderstanding without sticking my foot even further in my mouth.

  “It’s called a bar,” he said slowly, like maybe I wouldn’t understand. “It’s a place where people can go and drink and get to know one another.”

  “I know what a bar is,” I snapped back.

  He shrugged, his lower lip pouting out. “I’ve been here a week, and you haven’t done anything other than work and go home, so I wasn’t sure.”

  “That is because I take my work seriously,” I said. “And I take myself seriously. I’ve spent years building up this business and my reputation as an artist. I’ve sold my shows at flea markets, local coffee shops, and competitions. I pimped my art out for pennies online until I had enough money to start an online print business where I could sell my work. And now, thanks to the success of the online business, I have a big deal with a local home goods store that, if I play my cards right, will be a huge launching off point for me. When that goes through, maybe I’ll have time to kick back and have a drink. But until then, I have to keep working and scraping to cement myself as a worthwhile artist for people to pay attention to. There is no time for a man.”

 
Logan got up and walked towards me, and I snapped my attention to him. For the briefest of seconds, I imagined him wrapping a thick arm around my waist and hauling me against his body. Until I realized he was simply throwing away his paper lunch bag and napkin. “Why don’t you just have your dad help you out?”

  “He doesn’t know anything about art.”

  “Yeah, but he knows about business,” he said. “And he’s loaded. Doesn’t he have rich friends who have bare spots on their walls to fill?”

  I shook my head. “Absolutely not. I’m not going to let my father take credit for a career he has never supported. When I’m successful, it will be because of my hard work. Not his money.”

  “What about the studio?” Logan was walking slowly along the back wall where several of my works in progress were gathered. They were just masses of smeared color that, with a few skillful brush strokes here and there, would become mountains, oceans, and plains. I loved the way the tiniest alterations could change a blob of pink into a boulder or a streak of blue into the tumbling surf.

  “What about it?” I asked.

  His eyes widened in a question. “Your dad paid for it. What’s the difference between that and recommending your paintings to his friends?”

  My lip curled back in confusion and disgust at the suggestion that I had accepted any money from my father. “Where in the hell did you get the idea that my father paid for my studio?”

  To his credit, Logan looked a bit panicked as he glanced at me and then at the wall over my shoulder. “I guess I just…assumed.”

  “Well, don’t,” I said a bit harshly. “I paid for this place myself. I saved money and ate nothing but instant noodles for months to get the down payment. He didn’t even want me to have a studio space. My father said it would be a waste of money since I could sell my work online for much less.”