Heartbreak for Hire

by Sonia Hartl

  “You’re a woman who loves to paint. Who dreams of something bigger, not just for her own art, but for artists all over the city.” He rubbed his thumb over my bottom lip, and my whole body shivered in response. “And who drives me absolutely nuts.”

  I shooed his hand away to regain my balance. “That’s nice, but spoiler alert: I’m actually a mess.”

  “I like your mess. Sometimes I think you could never be into me. Then you do something totally insane, and I think I might actually have a shot.”

  “Wow.” I glared at him. “With lines like that, how do you manage to stay single?”

  He let out a low chuckle, and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “By all means, keep twisting yourself into knots, trying to hate me. It’s amusing.”

  “You’re the worst.” I couldn’t stop myself from grinning though.

  Groaning, he laid a hand over his chest. “That smile kills me. Why did you come over anyway? Not that I’m complaining.”

  I didn’t want to get in the way of his family time, but I couldn’t hold it in any longer. My heart sped up with each passing second, like the news was ready to burst out of me. “I wanted to celebrate. I made a deal on a space for my gallery.”

  “Are you serious?” His face lit up. “That’s amazing.”

  “You should see it.” My voice took on a dreamy quality, as if I were describing a lover or a delicious piece of chocolate. Mark laughed as he opened his front door and gestured for me to go ahead of him. “It’s got gorgeous wood floors and incredible light and an exposed brick wall. I love exposed brick. It’s a bit small, but a great starting point. I’m already itching to get it cleaned up. I’m meeting the owner—whoa.”

  It took me a few moments of dumbstruck blinking to finally absorb the sight of his apartment. Where it had once looked like a portal to the afterlife, he now had splashes of color everywhere. Warm gray and turquoise pillows adorned the white couches; a dark-walnut bookcase held a collection of novels with vibrant covers and candles in the same shade of turquoise as his throw pillows. Propped against the wall were three different kinds of metal detectors, and he had several framed prints of places I assumed he wanted to explore one day, including Pompeii and Chichén Itzá, plus one Georgia O’Keeffe.

  “Interesting choice in art.” I nodded at the reproduced painting of an iris.

  He came up behind me. “What can I say? I’m a man who loves looking at a beautiful—”

  “Markus Michael, don’t you dare finish that sentence,” his mom said.

  “What?” He widened his eyes in innocence. “I was going to say ‘flower.’ What did you think I was going to say?”

  “Never mind.” His mom’s cheeks turned red. “Dinner is almost ready. You should offer your guest a glass of wine. It’s the polite thing to do.”

  “Yes, Mom.” The exasperation in his tone made me want to laugh because it was so similar to my own when I spoke to my mom. “Red or white?” he asked me.

  “White, please.” I took a seat on the couch, where his sister sat on the other end with a book, picking at her black nail polish. I didn’t do well with kids. But considering I’d already shared more with this one than I had with people I considered friends, I could make conversation. “What are you reading?”

  She looked at me with Mark’s big, cloudy eyes. “Throwaway Girls.” She glanced at the cover. “It’s by Andrea Contos.”

  “Cool, what’s it about?”

  “Murder.”

  Hearing that word out of the mouth of a child wasn’t at all terrifying. At a complete loss, I tried to lighten the mood. “One of my favorite pastimes.”

  “You’re funny.” She didn’t even crack a smile as she returned to her book.

  That had gone well.

  Mark returned, handing me a glass of wine as he settled into the chair. “I see you’ve met Kelsey. Don’t mind her black clothes, gloomy expression, and penchant for books about murder. She’s going through an emo phase right now.”

  His sister didn’t even glance up at her name.

  “I don’t think she likes me,” I whispered.

  “If she bothered to acknowledge you while reading, then she likes you. I can’t ever get her to talk to me when she’s buried in a book.”

  “That’s because you’re annoying,” Kelsey said.

  “She speaks.” Mark clutched his chest in relief. “It’s a miracle.”

  Kelsey rolled her eyes, but the ghost of a smile quirked her lips.

  “Dinner’s on,” Mark’s mom called from the kitchen. She fidgeted in front of the table, waiting for the rest of us to sit first. “It’s not anything fancy, just spaghetti.”

  “It smells wonderful, Ms. Cavanaugh.” I took a seat to Mark’s left, with his mom and Kelsey across from us. “Mark is lucky to have someone cook for him.”

  “Please, call me Rachel. And if we didn’t come into the city, his fridge would have nothing but beer and ketchup packets.” She gave her son a brilliant smile, so like his own.

  “True.” Mark grabbed the steaming bowl of pasta and meat sauce from the center and offered it to me before taking any for himself. Such manners when Mom was watching.

  Kelsey pulled a couple of tortillas out of a foil wrapping and set them on her plate.

  “You’re not having spaghetti?” I asked.

  “No, I am.” She took the bowl and proceeded to dump a forkful of pasta onto a tortilla. “But it’s Saturday. Saturday is Burrito Day.”

  “Ah, well. Can’t mess with tradition.”

  She gazed at me with a solemn expression. “Burrito Day is nothing to joke about.”

  “I can see that.” I took a long swallow of wine. This was why I didn’t do well with kids. They intimidated the hell out of me. “Do you come to the city often?” I asked Rachel.

  She nodded. “Not every Saturday, but we try for a few times a month.”

  “She comes under the guise of serving me a home-cooked meal, but really it’s so she can sneak color into my apartment when she thinks I’m not paying attention.” He gave me a wink.

  “Honestly, Markus.” Rachel shot a stern look at him. “You can’t bring a girl home to an all-white apartment. She’s going to think you’ll murder her.”

  I choked on my wine and glanced at Mark, who was smirking into his pasta with a knowing grin. Kelsey opened her book again and proceeded to ignore us as she ate her spaghetti burritos. Conversation flowed easily enough, becoming tense for only a moment when Mark asked Rachel if she’d heard from him. I had no idea who this mysterious “him” was, but from the way she shook her head and glanced at her daughter, I didn’t want to ask.

  “So, Mark tells me you’re an artist,” Rachel said.

  “Aspiring, but I’m hoping to be one day. I just secured space for a gallery.”

  “If you paint, you’re an artist.” Mark set down his wine and gave me one of his weirdly intense looks. “Don’t sell yourself short or act like what you do is just a hobby.”

  Huh. That was exactly what I’d been doing. Maybe part of it was my mom’s nagging filtering through my own thoughts, but a bigger part of it, I knew, was a form of self-preservation. If I called myself “aspiring,” I never had to own the label. And if I never had to own it, I never had to let it really hurt me if I failed.

  “She’s an incredible artist,” Mark said. “Her paintings have so much depth. It’s not just images on a canvas. Looking at them makes me sad, but in a good way. Like a necessary sadness, the kind you have to feel in order to appreciate all the other emotions.”

  Now he’d rendered me speechless. No one had ever talked about my art that way. It was exactly what I’d been hoping to accomplish every time I sat down to paint. It was what I’d felt every time I bled my soul onto a canvas. I’d thought I was the only one who noticed.

  “That’s lovely.” Rachel smiled at me.

  “Can we go now?” Kelsey turned her big, stormy eyes on her mom. “I have book club at eight, remember?”

  Rachel g
lanced at her phone and jumped up. “Right. Sorry. Time must’ve gotten away from me. It was so nice to meet you, Brinkley.”

  Kelsey picked up her book and managed to keep reading while she put on her coat and shoes. That took a serious amount of skill. At the door, Mark pushed a check into his mom’s hand, which she tried to push back, but he put it in her coat pocket.

  She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Put that spaghetti away. It should be cooled by now.”

  “I will.” The exasperation in his voice was back. “I’m not a caveman.”

  “I know, honey. You’d just live like one if it wasn’t for me.” With a final wave, she put her arm around a still-reading Kelsey and guided her out the door.

  I picked up my purse by the door. “I should go too.”

  “Stay.”

  I stared at the clouds in his eyes. I could see every which way he’d press me down and lift me up and bend me over in his dark gaze. Hadn’t I come here for this exact reason? I could take this chance. I’d just put a down payment on my gallery. I’d proven to myself that my past would no longer hold me back from living in the now.

  My phone buzzed in my purse, and I pulled it out. I had five missed calls and two messages. “Can you give me a second?”

  He nodded and went back to his kitchen to put the pasta away.

  With my heart in my throat, I pressed play on my voice mail. “Hey, Brinkley. It’s Bridget. I’m at my building with another couple, and they just came in above your offer. They really want to close the deal tonight. Call me back if you can go to six-fifty.”

  I could go to six-fifty, she knew I could. She’d seen my bank statements. My hands shook as I skipped to the next message, left an hour after the first. “Hi, it’s Bridget again. I’m so sorry, but you haven’t called me back and I can’t hold out any longer. I’ve signed the deal with the other couple, so I’m afraid I won’t be accepting your offer.”

  The one night I hadn’t kept my phone attached to me like an extension of my arm.

  With a handful of missed calls, I’d lost my gallery.

  CHAPTER 22

  Nothing put a damper on your sex drive like losing something you’d finally gotten the courage to reach for. Mark had given me a long, lingering hug before I left his place the night before. Not a sexy hug, a comforting one with superior back-rubbing.

  Once I got home, I’d texted Ava and let her know I wouldn’t be moving into the neighborhood after all. She’d asked me if I wanted her to egg the place, which I regretfully declined. I should’ve made Bridget sign paperwork with me before she left. Now all I wanted to do was bury myself under the covers and brood for a day. Then I’d get up and keep working for Margo, because that was my life always.

  At noon, someone knocked on my door, and I threw a shoe at it in response.

  “Open up,” Mark said. “I brought coffee. We’re going out.”

  Not a chance in hell. “Go away.”

  I gathered up my cozy blanket and magazine, preparing to take them into my bedroom. Mark would get the hint and leave eventually.

  “I also brought a coconut pecan muffin from Milk and Honey Café.”

  I paused. That was just mean. “Leave it at the door.”

  “Nope. If you want this muffin, you have to answer.” I could hear the bag rattling through my paper-thin walls. “Oh no, what’s that, tiny muffin? You say it’s dark in this bag and you’re getting cold?”

  Oh my God. I’d brought this nonsense on myself by going to his apartment yesterday to… what? Throw myself at him? Did I really think I could do a casual hookup with a guy I was training to be a Heartbreaker? At least losing my gallery had cured me of that temporary fit of delusion. Glass half-full and all.

  I dropped my magazine, threw my blanket on the back of my couch, and flung open the door, snatching the bag out of his hand.

  He shook his head as he studied me. “You look awful.”

  “Stop. If you keep saying things like that, I might swoon so hard I’ll pass out and choke on this muffin.” I took a feral bite, spewing crumbs as I tore through the fluffy pecan top.

  “Tragic.” He flicked a crumb off his cable-knit sweater. “Luckily, you can stay your messy self for what I have planned for today, since we’ll be getting dirty anyway.”

  “Sorry. Not in the mood this morning.”

  “Come on.” He took my hand. “Let’s go.”

  I looked down at my oversize sweatshirt with Bob Ross painting happy trees and my ice cream sandwich leggings. “I’m not leaving my apartment like this.”

  “It won’t matter. There won’t be people where we’re going.”

  Curiosity more than anything else had me grabbing my purse and locking the door behind me. I followed him to the elevator, and when we stepped out onto Michigan Avenue, he gestured to the most beat-up van I’d ever seen in my life. It was mud brown with rusted sides and a door that creaked and looked about one roll of duct tape away from falling off.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “I borrowed it from a cousin. It’s not fancy, but it runs.” Mark gave it an affectionate pat, then looked down at his hand in disgust before wiping it on his jeans.

  “You know how to drive?”

  “You don’t?”

  I’d never learned. I’d grown up in the city, and when I was old enough for a license, my mom didn’t want me zipping around in the Chicago traffic. By the time I got a place of my own, the storage and upkeep of a car in the city cost way more than taking an Uber or the L.

  I peeked my head into the van and glanced at the back. One of Mark’s metal detectors rested on an old flannel blanket peppered with wood chips. “Where are we going?”

  “It’s a surprise.” He started the engine, which belched a dark cloud of smoke before settling into a steady rumble. “Buckle up.”

  He drove us to a public forest with a small lake outside the city. I didn’t spend much time in nature. It was full of weird noises. Every time something buzzed past my ear, I jumped.

  The crisp scent of the earth and fall leaves surrounded us. Away from the bitter wind of the city, I could appreciate how lovely fall could be. At least, I would’ve, if I weren’t still throwing a personal tantrum over losing my gallery.

  Mark walked along the lake with his metal detector and motioned for me to join him. “I know you’re not into metal detecting, but I thought it might help take your mind off things.”

  When his machine started beeping, he pulled out a small shovel with a pointed tip and crouched down to begin digging. He looked like he was having the time of his life, but I couldn’t understand why. He was just tossing around dirt.

  “You’ve been here before?” His enthusiasm got the better of me. I wandered over to see what he’d picked out of the ground.

  “I usually come out here on weekends after I hit the gym. It’s quiet, and this smaller lake gets its water from a stream connecting to Lake Michigan, so all kinds of interesting things could wash up on the beach.” When he pulled out a piece of flat metal with no real shape, he tossed it aside. “Part of a corroded beer can. They can’t all be winners.”

  “Have you found anything good here?”

  “Found this last week.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out two pennies and what looked like a lump of mud.

  “That’s very… impressive?” I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but I had no idea what I was supposed to say. I tended to find more than that in the lint trap of my dryer. “It’s nice to have a few extra pennies, I guess.”

  “These are Indian Head pennies from 1907 and 1908 and a silver button from somewhere between 1850 and 1910.”

  “That’s marginally cooler, I suppose. How much is that all worth?”

  “At least five dollars.” He grinned like he’d discovered a Van Gogh in an old truck he’d bought at an estate sale. “I haven’t had a find this good in a while. Do you want to try it?”

  “Oh. No.” I held my hands up, backing away a step. “I’m sure it lets you l
ive out your Indiana Jones fantasies, but it’s not really my thing.”

  “If you find any jewelry, I’ll let you keep it.”

  Well. Since he put it that way.

  He showed me how to sweep the ground, what beeps to ignore because they merely indicated iron in the soil, and how to clear away the dirt around an object. I picked through bottle tops, scrap metal, and a few rusty bobby pins.

  I wiped my arm across my brow. “I get why you’re so thrilled with a couple of pennies.”

  “Yeah?” His face lit up, as if he’d been waiting for me to understand this very fundamental part of his psyche.

  “After hauling up all this junk, I’d be thrilled with the bare minimum too.”

  He laughed. “You’re not wrong. But isn’t it kind of fun?”

  I surveyed where we’d been digging in the dirt like little kids. The anticipation of working the spade into the earth. Hope that it wouldn’t be another bottle cap. Frustration when it turned out to be, in fact, another bottle cap. “It’s okay.”

  “You once said the same thing about me, so I’ll take it.” His expression softened. “Did it at least get your mind off the gallery?”

  “A little.” More than a little. I hadn’t thought about my gallery since I’d started tracking those little beeps on the metal detector. I rubbed my hands on my leggings, but mud had caked into my nails and the grooves of my palms. “Thank you for getting me out of my funk, and for dinner last night. Your mom is great.”

  His face lit up. “She’s the best. Kelsey’s dad recently took off, and it’s been tough. He emptied Mom’s bank account in the process, but she’ll land on her feet. She always does.”

  “I can’t believe she had you so young.”

  He tucked his hands in his pockets. “My father was eighteen and a drug addict. He had no business messing with a sixteen-year-old.”

  “I’m so sorry.” I couldn’t imagine how hard it must’ve been for him and how many challenges he’d had to overcome to get where he was now. “I didn’t have a father growing up either. My mom picked out my better half at a sperm bank, and I always thought I was missing something, but maybe there are times when it’s better not knowing.”