“Yes,” he said. No softness. No concession. Just yes. You’re not in my league, Francesca. You’re an awkward, stupid, onetime fat girl.
His expression hardened, and he looked away from her face.
“I’m not what you might think. I’m not a nice man,” he said, as if that explained everything.
“No,” she said with more calmness than she felt. “You’re not. Maybe none of the bootlickers you surround yourself with have ever told you this, but that’s not something to be proud of, Ian.”
This time, he didn’t try to stop her as she rushed out of the room.
* * *
Francesca sat at the kitchen table and moodily watched Davie butter toast.
“What’s got you in such a bad mood? Not that your mood has been stellar since yesterday. Are you still feeling under the weather?” Davie asked, referring to the fact that she’d come home after her classes yesterday instead of going to the Noble penthouse to paint.
“No, I’m fine,” Francesca replied with a reassuring smile that Davie didn’t seem to buy.
Initially, she’d been bewildered and angered by what Ian had said—and done—in the workout facility two days ago, but then she’d grown worried. Had what occurred threatened her valuable commission? Had her lack of “experience” made her less valuable to Ian, and thus disposable? What if he terminated their agreement and she had no way to pay her tuition? She wasn’t a typical Noble employee, after all. She had no contract, just his patronage. And Ian was reputed to be a tyrant, wasn’t he?
She’d been so anxious and confused about how that kiss had altered her position with Ian that she couldn’t make herself return to paint yesterday.
Davie whisked toast onto her plate and shoved a jar of jam across the surface of the table.
“Thanks,” Francesca mumbled, lifting her knife listlessly.
“Eat,” Davie ordered. “It’ll make you feel better.”
Davie was like a combination of older brother, friend, and mother hen to Francesca, Caden, and Justin. He was five years older than all of them, having met them all after he’d returned to Northwestern to get his M.B.A. There, he’d met Justin and Caden, who were in the same program, and fallen in with their circle of friends, of which Francesca was a member. The fact that Davie was also an art historian, returning to school in order to gain the tools necessary to expand his single gallery into a chain, immediately drew him and Francesca together.
After Justin, Caden, and Davie had received their graduate degrees, and Francesca her baccalaureates, Davie had offered to have them room with him in the city. The five-bedroom, four-bath row house he’d inherited from his parents in the Wicker Park neighborhood was too large just for him. Besides, Francesca knew that Davie wanted the companionship. Her friend was vulnerable to the blues, and Francesca knew that having the three of them around helped assuage them. Davie’s parents had rejected him when he’d confessed that he was gay as a teenager. The three of them had tenuously reconciled by the time his mother and father died in a freak boating accident off the coast of Mexico three years ago, a fact that made Davie both grateful and sad.
Davie longed for a relationship, but he’d been about as unlucky in the romance arena as Francesca. They served as confidants to each other, the balm following their many bitter, lackluster, and disappointing dating experiences.
All four roommates were good friends, but Francesca and Davie were closest in their tastes and temperaments, while Justin and Caden often were paired up by the common obsessions of many straight males in their midtwenties—a lucrative career, a good time, and frequent sex with hot women.
“Was it Noble on the phone?” Davie asked, glancing meaningfully at her cell phone on the table. Damn. He’d noticed the call she’d just received on her cell phone had upset her.
“No.”
Davie gave her a wry spill-it glance after her monosyllabic response, and she sighed.
She hadn’t revealed what had happened in Ian Noble’s exercise room to Caden and Justin, who as brilliant young men working in high-profile investment-banking firms, were constantly badgering her with questions about Ian Noble. There was no way she’d tell him that the elusive idol they worshipped had held her against a wall and kissed and touched her until her legs no longer supported her. She hadn’t told Davie, either, which was a sure sign of how overwhelmed she’d been by the whole experience.
“It was Lin Soong calling, Noble’s girl Friday,” Francesca admitted before she took a bite of toast.
“And?”
She chewed and swallowed. “She called to tell me that Ian Noble has decided to put me under contract for the painting. He’s paying me the total amount up front. She assured me that the terms of the contract were quite generous, and that under no circumstances would Noble be able to back out of awarding me the commission. Even if I don’t finish it, he won’t request a return of the money.”
Davie’s mouth fell open. His toast drooped in his slackened fingers. With his dark brown hair falling onto his forehead and early morning pallor, he looked about eighteen years old at that moment instead of his actual twenty-eight.
“Why are you acting like she called about a funeral then? Isn’t that good news, that Noble wants to assure you that you’ll get paid no matter what?”
Francesca tossed down her toast. Her appetite had evaporated when she’d fully absorbed what Lin was telling her in that professional, warm tone of hers. “He has to have everyone under his thumb,” she said bitterly.