Chapter Eight

 

 

 

“I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” V said, shaking her head. “I can’t guarantee you’ll come out alive.”

“I think I might just have something that’ll calm the angry beast,” Dillon said.

“You’d better, because if he kills you, I don’t do corpse cleanup.”

“Go away, Dillon, and the two of you stop talking about me like I’m not here,” Lex growled without looking up from his efforts at making short work of a sketchpad.

“Oh, you don’t want me to go away, bro. I’m here to spread tidings of good cheer.”

The man made no response, but sat on the floor hunched over a sketchpad in the middle of a growing array of drawings, most of them looking like the things one might find in a deeply disturbing graphic novel or a nightmare—best forgotten as soon as possible. Even if the sketches made his skin crawl, Dillon knew that Lex’s drawing of his demons was one of the few truly therapeutic tools the man had taken away from myriad encounters with shrinks he’d seen through the years. Christ, if he ever got this Kelly Blake alone, he’d shake her teeth out for doing this to Lex.

Oh, he’d seen the official email from Ms. Blake apologizing for ‘unprofessional behavior,’ whatever the hell that meant, and stating that last night’s meeting had convinced her that she was not the right fit for Mr. Valens’ needs. The right fit? What the fuck was that supposed to mean? At the moment, Lex was completely non-communicative about whatever the hell happened. In fact, the man hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words since he’d returned home in the wee hours, and most of those would have scorched the hair off a porcupine. Oh, no matter how much he wished he could lay the blame at Kelly Blake’s feet, he couldn’t. How the fuck was she supposed to know? He should have warned her about Lex before he got the two of them together. He should have vetted her better. He was the one who had talked Lex into seeing the woman in the first place, and yet, there was something about the two of them together that had made him ridiculously hopeful. He couldn’t just give up. Whatever it was that Kelly Blake had done last night, whatever it was that had happened between the two of them, it was the closest to a normal fucked-up relationship between a man and a woman Lex had ever been, and Dillon wasn’t quite ready to admit failure yet—especially not after his little phone convo with his cousin.

He shoved aside drawings that were mostly teeth and claws and faceless phantoms with skeletal hands and sat down next to Lex. “I need two tickets for the Valentine exhibition next Saturday.”

Lex gave a one-shouldered shrug and continued to sketch. “So get two tickets. Hell, get a dozen, I don’t give a fuck.”

“While your generosity astounds me, I only need two. I need them for Kelly Blake and her secretary, who are huge fans of Alexander Valentine and terribly disappointed that the tickets are all taken by a bunch of rich bastards, who’ll be the only ones getting to see the exhibition.”

“What?” Lex laid down his pencil and looked up at Dillon. “I don’t have anything to do with any of that, and whoever set up the exhibition like that needs his ass kicked, but—”

“But if you did, if you made sure that these two lovely ladies had tickets and that the exhibition was held over for someone other than the wealthy to see and enjoy, well…”

“Well, what?”

In spite of his efforts to look uninterested, Dillon knew he had Lex’s full attention.

“Once Kelly Blake’s at the exhibition, softened up a bit by expensive champagne and your sculptures, which my cousin assures me she adores, I’ll take her aside and talk to her. I’m sure we can sort something out. I can be very persuasive, you know. I’d be willing to bet the two of you’ll be meeting regularly within a week.”

“She likes my work?” Lex asked, running a charcoal-smudged finger down the chiseled cheekbone of a ghoul in a black robe.

“She loves your work. She hates that no one gets to see it.”

“I didn’t know,” he said. “Get the PR team on the horn and change it. Do whatever it takes. The clinic is for everyone. The exhibition should be too.”

“I thought you’d feel that way,” Dillon said. “And the tickets?”

“Get them to Ms. Blake, with Alexander Valentine’s complements.”

“Good. Perfect,” Dillon said, pulling out his iPhone to make a few notes. “I’ll send a courier today. That’ll give them time to go shopping, have their hair done, maybe throw in a spa day for good measure.” When Lex looked at him like he was speaking Chinese, he said, “It’s a black-tie event, bro, a gala evening, a perfect opportunity to put on the ritz.”

“Of course,” Lex said. “I don’t get out much. I forget these things.”

For a moment, the two men sat in silence, Lex lost in thought that Dillon hoped didn’t have to do with the demons he now drew. At last he spoke. “Look, Lex, I’ll sort everything. And the night of the exhibition, I’ll take the lovely Ms. Blake aside and make her see reason. Hell, when I finish, she’ll want to be your own private tutor, I promise. I won’t come home until I can bring good news.”

“No,” Lex said. The charcoal pencil snapped between his fingers with a sharp pop.

“No? No, what?”

“I’ll talk to her myself.” Lex’s pulse hammered against his temple as though it would explode, and suddenly Dillon’s pulse wasn’t much slower.

“Look, maybe I can con her into coming back here to meet you, or wheedle her friend into it, you know, manipulating her in a tag team sort of way, but I can’t guarantee that, Lex, short of tying the woman up and kidnapping her, I can’t guarantee she’ll want to see you even when she knows who you are. Though, I suppose I could arrange it so that she doesn’t know until she gets here, but that would mean bringing someone else in to play your PA to persuade her, I mean she knows me already.”

“No. There’ll be no more subterfuge, at least not where Kelly’s concerned. That’s how we got into this mess to begin with. I’ll go to the exhibition and I’ll talk with her in person.”

If Dillon hadn’t already been sitting down, he might have fallen down from the shock of that little bomb. “Jesus, Lex, are you out of your mind? I mean look at you. Even talking about it you’ve gone white as a sheet and you’re shaking like a leaf. How can you possibly go to an event like that? You have no idea what it’s like. When I say it’s rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous, I mean it, Lex. I mean it.”

The man braced himself against the floor with both palms, as though he were afraid it might give beneath him. “Well then, we’ll just have to figure out a way, because I’m going to my own exhibition, and I’m going to talk to Kelly Blake in person.” He closed his eyes, and, for a moment, Dillon was afraid Lex would pass out. Then he pushed his way to his feet, and wiped his smudged hands on his shorts. “Anyway, it’s about time I found out what happens to my work after it leaves the studio, isn’t it? It’s about time I took a little responsibility.” On unsteady legs, he made his way carefully toward the studio door, then he turned and forced a desperate smile. “I mean, surely there must be a way to manage it, Dillon. There has to be.”

Dillon took a deep breath, stood up and came to his side. “We’ll find a way, bro. We’ll find a way.” And if the woman meant that much to him, he would, even if it killed him. As he followed Lex into the hallway, he texted V.

 

Gonna need serious help on this one, dear lady. Meet me in the day room in 30. D