“Do you like working for Gallery Six?” he asked.
He was probably just making conversation, but he’d hit a sore spot. Gallery Six was one of South Florida’s premier galleries, one of only two that had been invited to show at Art Basel. Truthfully, it was a bit pretentious for Angel’s tastes, but she wouldn’t complain. Not everyone got to follow their life’s true calling or succeed at the career of their choice. “It’s an exciting place to work,” she said. That wasn’t too far from the truth.
“Have you worked there long?”
“Under a year.” Angel took a sip of wine. Their conversation was getting lopsided. She ought to reciprocate, show some interest in his work. “I liked you in Shadows Need Light.”
Myles passed along two dessert dishes with slices of coconut flan. Alessandro handed her one. “Do you like me in person, though?”
He was more beautiful on the big screen, but much more interesting to look at in real life. Either way, she liked him just fine. Still, it was more fun to tease him. “You know what they say about meeting your heroes.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Should I be flattered you ever considered me a hero, or disappointed I fell short of your expectations?”
Angel wasn’t disappointed. She was well fed and having an amazing time. “You met my expectations,” she said. “And thanks for dinner. It was awesome.”
“It’s not over. Try the flan.”
It turned out to be the best advice. The flan was light, creamy and delicious. “I know you’re a big movie star and everything, but how did you get Myles Paquin to cook your dinner? I can never get a reservation at his restaurant.”
“Myles? He’s my cousin!”
“Oh?”
She stared at the chef but could not pick up a trace of familial resemblance. Myles was the color of brown sugar with long, thick, wavy hair that deserved its own social media channel. Still, she wasn’t so closed-minded to rule out their family ties. “Are you a clan of prodigies, by any chance?”
He licked the back of his fork. “More like a clan of delinquents. We grew up on the same block. His mother is my ‘aunt,’ just not really.”
“And you’re still close after all these years?”
“I can’t shake him loose.”
Angel was envious. She did not have a bench of childhood friends to call up at a pinch. It was her fault, for spending most of her free time in her artist’s studio. And by studio, she meant her bedroom.
After the plates were cleared away, DJ Jordan was the first to leave. Despite his occupation, or maybe because of it, he was an early sleeper. “Peace, bro!” he shouted on his way out.
“Peace!” Alessandro called back.
Shortly thereafter, Rose picked up her miniscule purse and announced that she and Jenny were heading out. She was a stunning black woman, long and lanky. She wore her hair braided in neat rows gathered at the nape of her neck. Her accent was decidedly French.
“Cool meeting you,” she said to Angel. “Love your name, by the way. Is it short for Angela, Angelica, Angelina...?”
“Angeline.” The name had been in her family for generations.
“That’s French!” she exclaimed. “Tu parles Français?”
Angel had to focus to generate a somewhat decent answer. “Un peu... Je suis Haitienne...mais Americaine.”
“Je suis Marocaine,” Rose said with a laugh. “Don’t worry. I won’t torture you with any more French.” She planted a kiss on Alessandro’s forehead. “We’re still on for tomorrow.”
Alessandro joined his hands behind his head. “We’ll see.”
“Oh, don’t start!” Jenny scolded. She draped an arm around her girlfriend’s waist. “Gigi will be here tomorrow and she’ll set you straight.”
Rose beckoned to Myles, who was absently scrolling through his phone. “Hey you! We might as well take the same ferry off Fantasy Island.”
“I don’t ferry,” Myles said. “I have my boat.”
Rose and Jenny rejoiced.
“Aren’t you suddenly more attractive!” Rose cried.
“It’s not a yacht,” Myles warned.
“Never mind yachts,” Jenny said. “Let’s go!”
The three headed inside the penthouse, calling out, “Ciao!”
“Kisses!”
“Later!”
Alessandro waved goodbye to his friends. “Get outta here! Be safe!”
Angel watched them go. They could not have been more obvious. Alessandro’s friends were clearing out to give him space to...what?
“They know their way out,” he said. “You don’t have to look so concerned.”
She was concerned, only not for them.
He studied her in his quiet way. “Let’s play a game. Up for it?”
The only game she ought to play was one that resulted in her transferring ownership of an oil painting and him transferring funds into the gallery’s account. Win-win. Angel wasn’t so green as to ignore the timeworn principle: no deal was done until money had exchanged hands.
Maybe it was the food, the wine, the flan and the whole dolce vita vibe, but yeah...she was up for it.
“You tell me one secret or embarrassing thing about yourself, and I’ll do the same. It doesn’t have to cut deep. You don’t have to unearth a childhood trauma. Just something. Okay?”
She reached for her wineglass. This game did not sound fun. “You go first.”
“Okay,” he said. “When I was fifteen I stole a car, stripped its tires and sold them in under an hour. I used the money to buy a PlayStation.”
The look on her face must have given him ample ammunition to come after her. “God, I can’t believe you bought that!”
“It’s not true?”
“No way!”
In her defense, he’d established the rules. “This is a bluffing game?”
“I never stole a car,” he said. “I’ve never stolen anything. I went to a high school for performing arts and did community theatre!”
“What’s the point of this game?”
“I know what I look like and what people think when they see me.”
His view must be distorted because from where she sat, he was Temptation. “Community theatre?” she said, trying to make light of the whole thing. “You’re losing street cred in my eyes.”
“I’ll take that chance.” He paused “You’re safe with me, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
How could Angel make him understand? A man’s penthouse apartment did not rank high on the designated safe spaces for women. Either way, her unease wasn’t rooted in fear. She needed clear boundaries, signs, guideposts, a rulebook and adult supervision to be alone with him.
“That’s not what I’m wondering,” she said.
“What then?”
“To be or not to be?”
He laughed. “What?”
“You’re not the only one who’s dabbled in theatre.”
“So we have that in common,” he said. His voice was rich and sweet and he served it up like coconut flan.
Angel studied him openly. This man had poured her wine, fed her heirloom tomatoes and left the table to retrieve clean utensils when she’d dropped her fork. She’d been convinced that he was showing off for his friends. Now, though, his audience had cleared out. They were alone and he was not letting up. Alessandro Cardenas was still flirting with her, and she did not know how to deal.
“Alright,” she said. “I’ll confess to something bad.”
His gaze flickered. “You? Angel? No me digas.”
“When I was fourteen, I stole blue nail polish at a dollar store.”
“Wait a minute,” he said. “I confessed to grand auto theft. That’s a felony in some states. And you give me dollar store nail polish?”
“You confessed to nothing!” she fi
red back. “And FYI: I wasn’t shocked at your made-up juvenile delinquency.”
He tilted his head and peered at her through his long, thick lashes. “No?”
“I promise,” she said. “I wasn’t prepared, that’s all. You said no childhood trauma.”
He leaned back in his chair. His shirt gaped open. That smooth expanse of skin was just an arm’s length away.
“I said it to reassure you. You looked so scared.”
“If I look scared, it’s because I’m way off course here!” she snapped. “I’m on the clock. And yet, here I am, out here, playing games with you!”
She could get fired for this. When celebrities stopped by the gallery, the sales staff was never allowed to get too close. They were supposed to maintain an attitude of professional indifference at all times.
“And yet, here you are playing games with me,” Alessandro repeated, as if the actor in him could not resist the chance to pump her words for full dramatic effect.
His eyes lingered on her face. For the first time that night, Angel heard the soft murmur of the surf. It had always been there beneath their chatter and laughter. The question she’d been truly turning in her mind bobbed to the surface. She dared to say it.
“Why does it feel like you don’t want me to go?”
His gaze flickered, a ripple in the sea. “Because I don’t.”
Angel exhaled, feeling better with it all out in the open. But he looked pensive. He stood up and extended a hand. “Come on. I’ll buy your painting and take you home.”
Her heart sank. He’d come to a conclusion about her. What was it? That she was too small town to play at his level, too uptight, too scared. But wasn’t she all those things?
She ignored his outstretched hand and stood on her own. The time for fun and games was over.
“You’re under no obligation to buy it,” she said. “You haven’t even seen it.”
“I’m familiar with it.”
The case with the painting was where Angel had left it. If anyone had walked off with it, her boss would have sold her on the black market to recoup the cost. He sat on the arm of one of the two suede cloudlike couches. Under his watchful gaze, she punched in the pin, released the lock, and reached in for the eight-by-ten-inch framed oil painting. “As requested: El Jardín Secreto by Juan David Valero.”
The small painting wasn’t as pretentious as Temptation. Did it merit a Miami Vice sunset speedboat trip across the bay for an in-person delivery? Maybe not. Juan David Valero was a respected but obscure artist from Cuba who had passed away decades ago. Very few high-profile collectors were clamoring for his work.
Earlier, Angel’s boss had sent her a prepared statement via text message. She pulled out her phone and read it aloud.
“The midcentury Cuban artist is best known for his renderings of daily life in 1950s Havana.”
She glanced at Alessandro to gauge his reaction. The set of his jaw led her to abandon the prepared statement. She pocketed her phone. “It’s no diptych,” she said. “But I love that the artist’s only ambition was to share a tender memory.”
His expression softened. Encouraged, Angel continued. “The artist renders landscapes in muted shades of green and yellow and blue. That’s unusual in Caribbean art, which is usually bursting with color. Valero was a Cuban exile. I believe he used color to communicate his nostalgia.”
“He was depressed,” Alessandro said flatly.
Angel studied the little painting with new eyes. The garden was bursting with red bougainvillea, but always tucked away in the shade. All the beauty in the world was veiled in darkness. “It’s possible. I’ll admit I’m not too familiar with this artist’s body of work.”
“It’s fine.”
It was not fine. She would have done her homework if she’d had the time. “I’m standing in for Justine Carr. It was all very last minute and—”
“Angel, trust me. It’s fine,” he said.
“Alright.” She handed him the canvas and, to her disappointment, he placed it on a side table without so much as a glance.
“Why do you even want it?” It was such a modest painting, so unlike the artwork on display in the house.
His gaze slid down her body, liquid and hot. “We want what we want.”
“I want a straight answer.”
“You got one.”
Angel took a breath. Her job wasn’t to talk the client out of the sale. “We’re asking forty-five grand.”
“And that’s what you’ll get.”
In her opinion, he was overpaying by ten grand. But he hadn’t asked her opinion. Plus, in the spirit of Art Basel, overpaying for stuff was part of the fun. He reached for his phone and completed the transfer of funds. She received email confirmation. Her boss sent her a text message with a thumbs-up emoji. She handed over the envelope with the bill of sale and certificate of authentication. It joined the painting on the table.
Angel could now confirm that reports of Alessandro Cardenas’s appreciation for art were greatly exaggerated. He was likely collecting random pieces for the same reasons rich people did anything: the tax break. El Jardín Secreto would probably end up buried in Freeport art storage in Delaware.
“We’re done,” she said.
“Seems so,” he said. “But what’s the matter? You don’t look happy.”
She snapped the case shut. “I’m thrilled.”
“You don’t look it.”
“It’s just...art is personal to me,” she said. “I understand that for some it’s strictly an investment.”
He steepled his fingers. “Go on.”
“I’d prefer to sell you a piece that would...” She grappled for the right word. “I don’t know...”
“Spark joy?”
His snarky tone pissed her off. “Yes! Pinwheels of joy! Why not?”
He grinned. “It’s sparking something!”
That devious grin! It poked out when you least expected it, like the sun in a rainstorm. She had to drop this. What did it matter if he loved the painting or not? Whether he sold it on eBay or hung it in his bathroom, it was none of her business.
Her phone buzzed in her dress pocket. Angel reached for it, needing an excuse to look away. There was a chance it was a text from her boss with a follow-up question. It wasn’t.
NEW POST ALERT! @CHRIS_UNDERWATER posted a new video to his channel: DEEP DIVE, A FRESHWATER EXPLORATION
Angel stared at the screen. Eyes stinging, she swiped away the alert. She was suddenly furious with herself. Her ex was off living his best aquatic life. Here she was with a man who was making it very plain that he wanted to dive into her body. All she could do was think up excuses to say no. Is this who she wanted to be? The woman who rushed home to popcorn, boxed wine and YouTube? The woman who, decades from now, would sit on a rocker and tell her knitting circle about the night she’d met a handsome movie star and was too much of a mouse to make a move? She was worried about losing her job, too, only that didn’t seem as important anymore.
Alessandro fished a set of keys from a copper bowl on the coffee table. “I’ll take you home.”
“No.”
He went still. “No?”
“I’m in no hurry.”
A series of unusual events had landed her here tonight. She’d stay and explore every avenue. Tomorrow she’d walk away, run away. But tonight, she’d play the role, be whomever she needed to be to take this chance.
Three
If Sandro believed in divine intervention and the like, he would have thought his grandfather had sent him an angel to guide him. Not the kind who comes in peace, but the other kind.
Earlier, his driver had called to inform him that the gallery rep was on the way up. Then his housekeeper texted: Ángel is here. Sandro and his friends had returned from a swim. He’d thought nothing of grabbing his rumpled shirt off
the back of his chair and racing in from the terrace. He came skidding to a stop when he saw her. In her white dress and standing just where the sunlight slid across the terrazzo floor, there was something unearthly about her. Her honey-brown skin was aglow and her windswept hair, dark and wavy, had spun sunshine into a halo around her head. She looked up from the paintings that she’d been studying and fixed her steady, light-filled eyes on him.
Angel...short for Angeline.
He had no choice but to revisit his stance on divine intervention.
She had wanted to get straight down to business and wasted no time presenting the case with the painting he’d requested. He hadn’t wanted her to open that case. Like a ticking time bomb, it had the potential of blowing up everything. Instead, he’d asked her to stay for dinner.
Sandro lived a YOLO lifestyle in Los Angeles; it was the Hollywood way. Now or never. Maybe he’d forgotten how to be around normal people. People who didn’t jump into bed with the first attractive person they met. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the time to get to know each other better. He was in town for only a few nights. On Monday he was flying back to California to start rehearsals for his next film. Sandro had come home to relax and hang with friends, not to find a lover. Since he’d laid eyes on Angel, he’d wanted to know if that option was on the table.
Now she wanted to stay. At last, the opening he’d been waiting for and, for some reason, he was hesitant. It came back to his first impression: she was a normal person, here to do a job. Shouldn’t he leave her alone?
Take the gifts of this hour. That was his motto. Just take it! All night, he’d been so impatient to touch her, to feel all that glowing brown skin. If she could light him up with just a look from across a room, he wondered what other tricks she could do. He wanted his other senses satisfied. Touch, taste, smell—yes, he wanted her scent on his hands. But he couldn’t overlook the glaring signs hinting that something was wrong.
He pointed to her phone. “What was that?”
She feigned innocence. “What was what?”
“That message upset you. It’s obvious.”
She shoved the phone into a pocket of her dress, as if to bury the evidence. “It was my alarm, reminding me of something I no longer have to do.”
What Happens In Miami... Page 2
