House of Payne: Steele (9 page)

He looked down at the phone she held, reaching out to enlarge the photo. “You draw?”

“Of course. All designers do.”

“You draw.” He nodded to himself, as if this had some great meaning for him. “No one knows how hard it is to be an artist. You suffer with it. You starve for it. No one you know sees value in it, or you. Not even when someone else tells them your art is good. No one knows how you wrestle with images inside your head, how you have to force them out into the world, yet even then what you create never comes out exactly the way you envisioned it. No one knows what this is like, except another artist.”

“I’m lucky that I come from a family of artists.” But she had the impression that he hadn’t. “Well, my mom and brother, anyway. But from the time I was a teenager and decided fashion was going to be my thing, I had everyone’s support. I take it you didn’t have that?”

“I had myself. No one else was necessary.” He reached out and expanded the photo of the pants. “Why place the mandala at the knee? Why not over the crotch?”

That was it, she realized. He liked to shock people. Shock them, or distract them. Distract them from what, she didn’t know or care, because she understood. He did it to push people away. She had her own avoidance behaviors, so it was easy enough for her to spot.

“Two reasons. The first is that I need these mandala designs to touch, and no woman likes to call attention to the fact that her thighs touch.”

“You women worry over such ridiculous things. No man cares if his woman’s thighs touch. It’s how they open that matters.”

“The second reason,” she went on as if he hadn’t spoken, “is that I’d have to be a frigging idiot to put a design that drips anywhere near a woman’s va-jay-jay. Gross, dude. Just gross.”

For a heartbeat he stared at her as if he was the one who’d been sent into shock before he threw his head back and roared with laughter. Essie smiled along with him; she couldn’t do anything else, it was such a great laugh. And as she did, it occurred to her that the likes of Scout and Payne might not know Maximo as well as they assumed they did. Whoever he was, whatever he was, she had a feeling he wasn’t what anyone would expect.

When his humor at last eased into chuckles, she pocketed her phone and shook her head at him. “You’re not what you seem either, are you?”

His brows went up even as his smile lingered. “It seems we have this in common. Not a bad thing to have in common, in my opinion. I’m told you’re the little sister of Twist, yes?”

Essie sighed. So much for keeping that fact under wraps. “Yep.”

“I like your talent. I like your family. You may use any piece of art I’ve created for the House as you see fit.”

Delight bloomed along with excitement. “Thank you, Maximo.”

“Make it Max. My family called me Maximo. I want to stab the sound of it.”

Yikes
. “Max it is, then.” Anxious to steer the conversation to less stabby waters, she cleared her throat. “Do you have any favorite pieces that you think might translate well into the world of fashion? I’m always open to suggestions.”

A shoulder lifted before his attention flicked to a point beyond her shoulder. Then he scowled so thunderously she snapped around to see if they were about to be mauled by a bear. Surprise zipped through her when her gaze latched onto Steele as he stalked toward them, determination in his every step.

Chapter Eight

For no reason that Essie could fathom, her skin burned with invisible fire as Steele approached. He was here, her brain babbled repeatedly, and she had to clamp her lips shut to make sure those happy words didn’t tumble out on their own. But she couldn’t ignore that she was suddenly and ridiculously happy. Happy he was there, happy to see him, happy he was coming toward her.

It was like he’d become the embodiment of all things wonderful, and to be around him was like being around pure joy.

Except there was a problem.

He
didn’t look happy. And it wasn’t just that he’d slipped on his mask of professionalism, either. She’d seen what that was like, and the expression he now wore wasn’t it.

If anything, it looked like he had the acute discomfort of having a stick jammed up his ass, and he blamed them for putting it there.

“Hi.” When in doubt, go for a friendly tone. “Were we being too loud? Sorry about that.”

“Don’t apologize.” To her surprise the admonition came not from Steele, but from Max. She glanced his way, only to find his gaze locked on Steele with an almost maniacal intent. “This isn’t a library. We can be as fucking
loud
as we want.” He all but yelled the word, startling Essie, before he grinned like a crazed ax-murderer at Steele, as if daring him to do something about it.

Essie stepped forward. In every way possible, she didn’t want to find out what that
something
would be. “Or we could be a little quieter as we—”

“You’re fine, Essie.” Steele didn’t move at the other man’s unexpected increase in volume, not even an eye twitch. The only thing that changed was his expression. It slid from annoyed to bored as he regarded Max, who was a few inches shorter than Steele, but exuded an aura of mercurial volatility that made Essie’s survival instincts twitch. “I don’t give a shit what you do, Mr. Kulagin, as long as it doesn’t bother the House’s clientele.”

Max’s teeth suddenly showed in his beard, but it had nothing to do with a smile. “
Mr. Kulagin.
That was my father.”

“Wrong. Your father was Lt. Kulagin, first of the KGB and then of the FSB. You’re Mr. Kulagin. And if you yell at me again I might have to break your jaw just so I can have the pleasure of knowing you’re destined to have it wired shut.”

For a handful of seconds crackling with wire-taut tension, Essie was sure Max was going to attack. But before he could make a move that would no doubt be the end of his jaw, Steele went on.

“I merely came over here as a favor to Scout, to let you know your client is here and has been sent up to your tattooing booth to wait for you. Essie, I need a private word with you.”

“Sure.” Not at all sure what the hell just happened, but positive all the way to her bones that they’d just dodged a bullet, she offered a farewell nod to Max before following Steele toward the end of the gallery. But when Max called her name she looked back, sensing that Steele had stopped beside her as well.

“You want to look at more of my work, you say the word.” His ax-murderer’s smile was still in place as his gaze bounced from Steele to her and back again. “You’ll discover I can be very accommodating.”

“Thanks, Max.” Every instinct she had told her that Max had made the offer just to have the final word, but she smiled gamely even as Steele took her by the arm and guided her around the last of the gallery’s modular walls and out of Max’s sight.

“Okay, that was both weird and intense.” Essie kept her voice low as she looked up into Steele’s grim, scarred face. “I take it you and Max have some serious bad blood going on between the two of you?”

He seemed to have trouble getting his teeth unclenched. “No.”

That was a shock. “Really?”

“This is the first time that crazy prick and I have spoken to each other.”

“You’re kidding. I would have put money on the two of you being mortal enemies.”

“No, I’m not kidding.” His expression hardened, when she hadn’t thought that was possible. “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

Great. Now the hostility was oozing its way over to her. “Actually, from the moment you showed up you’ve looked kind of rabid. As a fashion expert, I feel I can safely say it’s not a good look for you. Is something wrong?”

“You could say that.” His pale eyes had been doing that surveillance sweep thing—going from one end of the building to the other. Then he focused on her, and it was like he wanted to see if he could burn her alive with his gaze alone. “The next time you have a meeting with that asshole, you’ll tell me about it so I can be there when it happens.”

“What?” Baffled, and not completely in love with his highhanded tone, she frowned. “Why do I have to do that? Payne said we can speak with any of the tattooists as long as we make an appointment.”

“You don’t know what you’re dealing with when you deal with Maximo Kulagin, you understand? You’re not going to talk with that guy on your own. He’s not right in the head.”

“He’s not the only one,” she muttered, giving him a speaking glance. “I’m not sure that I’ll need to speak with Max again—”

“Good.”

“—but if I do, or if he needs to speak with me, I don’t have a problem with that. I also don’t need a chaperon for it. I can handle Max just fine.”

“Yeah, you’ve thought that once before, and look what happened.”

Her intake of breath was just as sharp as the smack of his words—his unfair, horrible words. Damn it, she thought bleakly, even as the outrage and injustice of it all mushroomed inside of her.
Damn it
. She’d never get away from it. It didn’t matter how much time had passed. It didn’t matter how enlightened society became. There was always some jerk waiting to throw stones at her—for fuck’s sake,
her
—for getting attacked.

Goddamn to hell, it just…wasn’t…
fair
.

“You’re right to say that I never should have trusted a monster that worked so hard at appearing trustworthy,” she gritted out, and the anger that shook her voice made the rest of her body tremble so hard she wouldn’t have been surprised if she exploded right there on the spot. “That’s something I’ve never forgiven myself for, and I
hate
that. But I also hate how someone always blames me just as much as I blame myself. There’s always some asshole who wonders what it was that
I
did that made me look like I was
asking for it
.”

The edgy pissiness in his expression began to drain away. “Whoa. Wait.”

“I opened a door when the doorbell rang, Steele. I take full responsibility for that terrible action. I did it, and it was the worst mistake of my life. I’m sorry, okay? I’m so damn sorry I opened that door. You’ll never,
ever
know how sorry I am.”

“Essie, don’t apologize—”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to apologize for anything else, you got that? To accept any more responsibility than that is to take the burden of blame off the shoulders of my attacker, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to do that. He doesn’t deserve that, and neither do I, so you can shut the fuck up about
what I thought once before
.”

“Damn it, that’s not what I—”

“As a guy, you probably have no clue that we live in a culture that’s totally fucked up,” she went on, refusing to let him mansplain his words away. They weren’t just
words
he’d thrown at her. They were a reflection of how he truly saw her. It probably wouldn’t do any good, but she’d damned well do her best to correct his vision. “It’s always up to the woman, the physically smaller, slower and weaker of the species, to somehow fight off whoever’s out to get her, and not get raped. It’s
never
up to the man, the more brutal and powerful predator in that dynamic, to
not rape
. Well, I’ve got a news flash for you, pal—I did nothing wrong then, just as I did nothing wrong now. And,” she added when he opened his mouth, “if you’re about to say that you were only bringing up my personal history to prove the point that I can’t be trusted to take care of my own helpless little self, that’s fucked up too. Violence can happen to anyone, at any time, woman or man. When that violence happens, it should
never
be the victim’s fault, and it sure as hell doesn’t make them a permanent victim, forever fated to be someone else’s prey. I’m not a victim now. I’m a survivor. And the only person I trust and depend on to take care of my safety is me.”

With that, she stalked away, trembling with a rage so deep she had to get away from him before she gave in to the urge to knock his damn head off.

The sun was an angry red ball in the west when Steele climbed the stairs to Essie’s floor. When he knocked on her door, he didn’t have a hell of a lot of hope she’d answer, so he was pleasantly surprised when it swung open seconds later. But his greeting died a silent death when he saw her neighbor, and not Essie herself, standing in the doorway.

“Oh, hi again.” The woman served up a bright smile and swung the door open wide. “Thought you were the pizza guy. Come on in.”

Steele had to stop himself from asking why she hadn’t looked through the peephole. He’d shoved his foot in his mouth enough for one day, and he wasn’t so fond of the taste of it that he wanted another go.

Instead he distracted himself by looking around the single, catchall room Essie had been calling home since she’d returned to Chicago. There was barely enough space in between all the sewing equipment for anyone to comfortably move around in. Hanging in a corner near a sofa, he spied the gray-on-black slim-fit cobra hoodie she’d shown him in her sketchbook, along with a matching T-shirt. The snowflake top she’d shown him was done as well, plus she’d made a women’s leather jacket, in icy blue, with the arms covered in that same snowflake overlay. A dressmaker’s dummy was draped with a man’s long-sleeved gray pullover shirt. Black fabric in a basket weave pattern had been placed over the shoulders, and again past the elbows and forearms to emulate some badass bracers.

His gaze lingered on the bracers. Her brother Twist had come up with that design as a sleeve tattoo—a tattoo Steele had been tempted to get, because it resembled medieval leather armor. The pattern had won awards for both Twist and House Of Payne, so it wasn’t a surprise Essie had chosen to showcase it. Slung around a high-backed stool was a leather biker jacket with an asymmetrical zipper and that same leather basket weave pattern on the front panels. On closer inspection he saw that every other strip of leather had the House Of Payne logo branded into it.

Damn, that was cool.

Essie was hunched over a big flat table that ate up most of the space in the microscopic apartment. She’d been busily pinning a large appliqué of a mandala onto some black fabric, but the moment he’d entered she’d stopped what she was doing, mid-pin, and stared at him as if his presence stunk up the place.

He’d had warmer welcomes from enemy combatants.

“So… anyway.” The neighbor who had let him in stood beside him, looking from one to the other as if this was a play and she was expecting them to recite lines. When that didn’t happen, she cleared her throat and forged ahead. “We almost met the other day. I’m Carla, from across the hall, and you’re Steele, right? Is that really your name?’

“Ezekiel Steele, but I go by Steele.” Since it didn’t look like Essie was going to thaw out any time soon, he offered a nod to the other woman. “It’s nice to meet you, Carla.”

“Yeah, same here. When the pizza gets here, we’re going to hop on over to my place and chow down, since Essie refuses to let any kind of food get near her creations. You’re more than welcome to join us.”

Somehow he doubted that. “Thanks, but I’m just here for a short visit.”

“Well, if you change your mind—” Another knock on the door swung Carla’s attention around. “Okay,
that’s
got to be the pizza dude.”

“Check the peephole this time.” Essie came to her feet as if her knees had suddenly stiffened up, and she gave him a significant look before nodding toward the door. “Since I’m about to head over to Carla’s for dinner, why don’t I walk you out?”

“Tell you what, you two go ahead and take a walk around the block or something, give the pizza a chance to cool off. I always worry my kid’s going to take after me and burn the shit out of her mouth whenever she eats pizza, so I always wait a good fifteen minutes before letting her have any,” Carla explained as she headed out the door. “Essie, see if you can’t talk Steele into joining us, okay?”

He doubted Carla was surprised when Essie didn’t answer.

The world was suddenly a flurry of activity, from paying the pizza delivery guy, to loud and happy greetings from Carla’s little family as she opened her apartment door, to Essie finding her keys and locking her door behind them. But through it all he never lost track of her, and when she began to slow down near the head of the stairs in preparation to tell him to keep walking without her, he took a chance and grabbed her hand.

“This won’t take long,” he promised her, even as he felt her flinch at his touch. He waited for her to pull completely away, ready to let her go if that was what she really wanted. Instead her hand relaxed in his, not holding onto him but not squirming away, either.