House Of Payne: Payne

by Stacy Gail

  “No, the whole shebang is still on, though I have no idea how I got talked into it. I actually wanted to talk to you about that thing last night.”

  “What thing?”

  Claire made a sound of impatience. “That news thing that had you going ape shit, remember? Since you were so upset about that tat place using your art, I decided to do some super-sneaky detective work.”

  Crap. “Wait, Claire—”

  “No, you wait, and shush, you’re going to love this.” Her friend waved her free hand to shush Becks, dislodging both Mia and the blanket once again. “Ah, crud. Mia, you need to work on that whole suction strength thing, babe. Anyway,” she went on, haphazardly getting everything back into place, “I called House Of Payne this morning to make an appointment to get your tat, Missing Piece. You are never going to guess what I was told.”

  “That there was a mistake in the news report and that Missing Piece is not actually available at House Of Payne as a tattoo. It’s just a demonstration of what 3D art looks like.”

  Claire’s eyes bugged behind her glasses. “It’s like you’re psychic. How did you know? Did you call too?”

  “No.” Though in hindsight, that would have been the smart thing to do.

  “So how’d you know?”

  “I dropped in at House Of Payne earlier this morning to tear someone a new asshole. It didn’t go quite like I’d planned.” To say the least.

  Claire winced. “You didn’t fly off any handles, did you? I mean, that is how you roll.”

  “Yeah, I know. And for what it’s worth, I didn’t threaten to beat anyone up.” She did, however, make a reference to the fortitude of Payne’s balls, but she wasn’t about to admit that.

  “Well, good. Did you get thrown out?”

  “Will you stop thinking the worst? I was going to throw myself out by walking out in a huff. Or maybe with a flounce, I’m not sure which. Whatever it was, my dramatic exit got interrupted, and before I knew it I was sharing a booth at a coffee shop with Sebastian Payne.”

  “Oh. My. God.” Her friend seemed to stop breathing as she leaned closer to the laptop’s camera. Beneath the blanket, Mia squeaked in dismay as she clearly lost the source of her meal once again. “You met the Sebastian Payne?”

  Did she ever. “Yep.”

  “What does he smell like?”

  Of all the things Claire could have asked, Becks hadn’t seen that one coming. “Uh. What?”

  “I know it’s creepy, but every time I see him on TV or the ‘net, all I can think is that he must smell like sex because he’s got to be getting it all the time. I mean, he looks like sex, doesn’t he? Oh, wait! Is he an airbrushed ho on camera, but a mile of bad road in real life?”

  “No, he’s perfect. I mean,” she hastened to add when Claire’s brows crept up over the frames of her glasses. “He’s not perfect. He’s just perfect to look at. And he smells good, like soap and sunshine. Maybe a touch of honey.”

  “Honey?”

  “Is that weird? I assumed he smelled like tattoo ink. Does tattoo ink smell like soap and sunshine and honey?”

  “No, it smells like ink. Did you talk about your art piece from the news last night?”

  “Among other things. Claire,” she went on when her friend looked like she was readying a thousand more questions on the launch pad, “when you’re saying goodbye to someone, how do you generally go about it?”

  Her friend stared. “You’ve known me since the dawn of time. We went through elementary school, middle school and high school together. We even managed to see each other every other day during your brief college career before your parents snatched your college fund away from you. And now you’re telling me you’ve never once noticed how I say goodbye? If I weren’t so confused, I think I’d be hurt.”

  “I mean like an acquaintance or someone you barely know. Do you shake hands or do you hug? Do you do one of those awkward air-kiss things, or… or real, on-the-mouth kissing?”

  “Why the hell would I do any of that? Touching people I don’t even know? Ew. For one thing, I don’t know where they’ve been. Wait,” she gasped. “Did that happen? Did Sebastian Payne, he who smells like honey and looks like sex, touch you? Did he kiss—“

  “Gotta go, Claire. I’ll talk to you later, okay? Kiss Mia for me.” Waving, she ignored her friend’s pleas to wait and closed the program.

  Bottom lining it, it didn’t matter how Sebastian Payne chose to say goodbye. All that mattered was that it was, in fact, a goodbye. Sure, he’d mentioned having brunch again tomorrow, but as he hadn’t made it a point to firm up any plans like where they should meet at a certain time, she figured there wasn’t going to be any repeat performances. In all probability, she’d never see him in person again.

  Chapter Three

  Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

  Frowning, Becks snapped off the hairdryer and glanced out the bathroom door to where her phone sat in its bedside charger dock. Its screen was dark. Automatically her gaze bounced to the clock next to it. 10:31. She’d overslept, thanks to her stupid brain replaying her mind-blowing kiss with Payne like it was stuck on repeat, so now her entire system was out of whack. At least she’d managed to upload several projects she’d been perfecting onto her online gallery, and while she had only put them up to be viewed and not bought, she was confident at least a few of them would be something the House Of Payne might be interested—

  Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

  “What the hell?” Wearing nothing but flip-flops and a cozy pink Betty Boop bathrobe, she shuffled to the never-used intercom by the front door to stare at it. No one came to see her. Well, except Claire and Thomas, and they had their own key. The landlord, Herb Janek, wouldn’t buzz as he had a master key, and she wasn’t expecting any deliveries. None of her clients knew where she lived. Hell, no one even cared where she lived. The only people who knew she was there were her mother and father…

  Her heart catapulted into her throat, choking off her air even as she stabbed a finger at the never-used “Talk” button. Maybe there was something wrong. Or maybe after all this time, some meager memory of family had trickled back into their hearts, just enough to bring about the first stirrings of forgiveness. Heaven knew part of her never wanted to see her parents again; in a strange way life was better without them. But if there was any sign that they had forgiven her…

  “Yes?”

  “Becks, it’s Payne. Did I wake you?”

  The death of that wild hope was so crushing it almost sent her to her knees. God. How unbelievably stupid she was. Of course her parents would never show up on her doorstep. As far as they were concerned, the sight of her alive was an intolerable travesty. She was their agony, their deepest and most bitter regret. Imagining that a happy reunion might one day happen was about as useful as wishing for magic to exist. It could never be, any more than her brother could come back to life.

  She was better off without them, she reminded herself fiercely. She was better off alone.

  “Becks?”

  “Uh… come on up. Second floor, first door on the left.” Still reeling from the emotional roller coaster ride she’d just taken, it was a wonder she remembered to hit the buzzer to let him in. But by the time she stood in the doorway to watch him reach her landing, she’d gotten her brain back on track enough to realize greeting Sebastian Payne in nothing but a bathrobe was something that should be filed under the category of Very Bad Idea.

  “There you are.” A smile appeared on his carved, handsome face, his long fingers unbuttoning the cashmere coat he wore as he drew closer. Though she knew it was idiotic, she couldn’t help but smile when she caught sight of blue suspenders against the stark white of his shirt. “Morning, glory.”

  “What are you doing here?” Hoping she didn’t look like an absurd Victorian miss, Becks nevertheless clutched the lapels of her robe together. The sudden awareness of just how naked she was under the bulky terrycloth was almost painful. “I n
ever gave you my address.”

  “Yeah, I figured that was an oversight on your part. I’ve got people who love finding out details like that, so I went ahead and took care of it myself.”

  Confidence, thy name is Sebastian Payne. “What if I’d still been asleep?”

  “You weren’t. Obviously you just came from the shower.” He came to a halt no more than a few inches from her. His expression sharpened, and she heard him draw in a breath. “Damn, Becks. What is that?”

  “What’s what?”

  “That scent.” Without a hint of awkwardness, he leaned in until his face was an inch away from burrowing into her damp hair. “You smell like every kind of sin that would exist in my personal heaven. What is it?”

  “Lotus and amber.” In a daze, she watched his eyes close while breathing her in. The man was a frigging marvel, she couldn’t help but think. His forward manner wasn’t like anything she’d ever come up against before. If he’d been born in an earlier century, he would have been right at home in the role of conqueror. How the hell was she supposed to combat him when the pathetic, lonely side of her craved his attention the same way a withered and dying plant craved the sun? “I hate to break the news to you, but I don’t think there are any sins in heaven.”

  “Then heaven obviously isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” His eyes opened at last, but he didn’t move back like she’d expected him to. Instead he seemed content to crowd her personal space until he was all she could see. “So. I’m here. With you. You gonna invite me in?”

  “Into the loft? Sure.” Anywhere else was still up in the air… but she could be persuaded, and that startled her almost as much as Payne did. For so long, she’d been alone. Payne didn’t know she was a disgrace, a person so reprehensible that not even her own parents could stand to be in the same room with her. Maybe it was wrong to keep him in the dark about that, but it felt so good to be wanted. Even if it was only for a little while.

  “The loft was all I was shooting for. For the moment, anyway.” He grinned before he looked over his shoulder. “Okay, Andreas, we’ve got the green light. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  “Wait, what?” Alarmed, Becks gaped as an older man with thinning salt-and-pepper hair, loose black pants with white stripes and a black collarless chef’s jacket appeared with a large box in his hands. “What is this? Who—”

  “I must know something, miss.” The man breezed past her while Payne helpfully held the loft door open wider. “Do you have an oven with a range top?”

  The man had an accent. Not French, not German, but something close. “Yes, of course I do. But—”

  “Electric or gas?”

  Seriously? “Electric. Who are you?”

  The man made a sound of suffering and kept going. “At least I am not forced to use the hot plate I brought. But there are no guarantees of perfection,” he added with a meaningful glance Payne’s way, who was busy shepherding in another person, who rolled a small linen-covered table toward the windows. For the moment, the table was topped with another box and a silver wine bucket with an unopened bottle already inside. “Perfection simply cannot be created on an electric stove, no matter what the manufacturer claims. The heat, you see… it will be beyond my control. You understand?”

  “How many times do I have to point out that I’m not nearly as finicky as you? The Swiss,” Payne muttered in an eye-rolling aside to Becks, who could do nothing more than stare as the table was quickly set for two, complete with a single rose in a vase. “It’s not just their watches that are so exacting. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole nation turned out to be OCD.”

  “You only think that because you are all over the place. So many projects everywhere at once.” Andreas began removing items, including two copper-bottomed pans, a carafe of something, cooking utensils and plastic food containers. “Too messy.”

  “I get things done faster that way.”

  “Or it could be that you simply succumb to Shiny New Idea Syndrome—”

  “Excuse me.” With her space invaded while she stood there wearing nothing more than a look of confusion, flip-flops and Betty Boop, Becks suffered no remorse for interrupting what appeared to be an old argument. “What the hell is going on around here?”

  “Don’t tell me you forgot.” Payne’s confused expression almost matched hers… until she caught the wicked gleam in his eyes. He knew exactly what he was doing, damn him. “We had a brunch date, remember?”

  “That was…” She just managed to stifle the impulse to stomp her foot. When it came to childish behavior, flip-flop stomping had to be right up there with public tantrums and eating paste. “I’d assumed you were kidding since no definite plans were made.”

  “I never kid about two things—food and a date with a beautiful woman. And especially a beautiful woman who understands the importance of brunch.”

  “That’s three things.”

  He tapped a finger on the tip of her nose. “Don’t be picky.”

  “Brunch and midnight snacks are Payne’s favorite meals of the day,” Andreas supplied from his place by the stove, while she recovered from the stunning fact that she’d just been booped. “As his personal chef, I can tell you it’s impossible to get him to eat like a real person.”

  “I’d starve without Andreas… but probably not be hassled as much, so it’s kind of a trade-off. Are you allergic to any foods, by the way?” As Payne spoke, he guided her to sit in an arm chair that had been pulled up to the table, before he sat on the edge of the unmade bed opposite her. She considered dropping dead from mortification when she realized her Hello Kitty flannel sheets were displayed in all their glory. “Strawberries? Dairy products? Champagne?”

  Holy shit, was he kidding? “No.”

  “Good. Life would suck if a person had an allergy to champagne.”

  “Can’t argue with that.” The young man who’d brought in the table poured steaming coffee into a china cup set in its gold-rimmed saucer, then focused on uncorking the champagne. “So… you do this all the time, right?”

  “Do what?”

  “This.” She flapped a hand at the magnificent setting. Any minute now she expected Martha Stewart and her camera crew to waltz in for a magazine shoot. “I’m assuming you ambush people with… with brunch and other assorted meals.”

  His laughter rang up to the loft’s high ceiling. “Ambush?”

  “I don’t know what else you’d call it. You’re remarkably good at it, so I figure you must do this on a regular basis.”

  “This brunch ambush, as you call it, is a first,” he said, grinning. “But since I like your reaction so much to this surprise, I don’t think it’s going to be the last.”

  “You don’t say.” It was really quite tragic, how her needy heart spun when a few vaguely positive words were thrown her way. “I’m not sure, but I think that sounded ominous.”

  “Nah. Well, maybe a little.” His smile was so wicked it had to be illegal in some states. “At least I’m not boring.”

  Hell, no, he wasn’t. “What you are is unexpected. It’s hard for me to put the edgy, bad-boy king of the tattoo world together with bud vases and fine china.”

  To her surprise, he grimaced. “For a free-spirited artist who doesn’t seem to answer to anyone, you seem to be bogged down with a lot of conventional, old-fashioned ideas.”

  “What you do mean by that?”

  “It’s a stereotype to think a tattoo artist doesn’t have the sophistication to enjoy and appreciate luxury. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a total whore when it comes to the finer things in life. That’s why I work my ass off to make sure House Of Payne stays on top, and I will until the day I die.”

  It was her turn to grimace when she realized he was right. She had assumed that the tattoo culture somehow equaled a lower level of sophistication, and that was an unworthy concept for both of them. “I stand corrected. Anything else?”

  “I haven’t considered myself a boy in a long damn time. I’
m every inch a man, make no mistake. And as for being bad… I’ve never had any complaints.” That smirking half-grin that had pissed her off so much the day before reappeared, but today it was knocking her proverbial socks off with its delicious charm. “But I don’t want to brag.”

  She couldn’t resist. “Why would you? Your video from a few years ago does all your bragging for you.”

  “Not really. Like you said, that was from a few years ago. I’ve gotten so much better in my technique since then, Becks. So. Much. Better.”

  It took all her strength to stifle a shiver. Unbidden in her mind, she could picture exactly what having sex with Payne would be like. The two of them naked, slick with sweat as he pumped so hard into her, their bodies collided with each frenzied impact. It would be as raw and primal as it was meant to be, and with the veneer of civility stripped away, she knew she’d come with enraptured screams while digging her heels into his ass to push him in deeper…

  A low, aching throb of need between her legs had her pressing her thighs together, an instinctive move to hit the off switch on the lusty tension building up. The action only made the discomfort worse as the slickness heated her cleft. Good grief. Was she really so desperate for basic human contact that her panties—if she’d been wearing any—got wet just from a few idle words? Was she ready to fall onto her back the moment interest was thrown her way by a man she’d known only twenty-four hours?