Entry-Level Mistress

chapter 19



On the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, the first windy hint of the incipient fall tempered the lingering heat. I sat on the wooden bench outside my studio for a brief “lemonade and chat” break with Lila and Lila’s new med school roommate, Taneasha.

As another visitor wandered up the path, I smiled, welcomed her, and gestured past her into the studio, invited her to take one of the artist statements I’d carefully letter-pressed on thick cotton paper. In the weeks that I had been at Barrows Farm, I’d made excellent progress on the mythology project. I wouldn’t start on the actual sculptures for likely a few more weeks, but my studies for the first four pieces hung on the walls of the studio and, combined with the small models carefully arranged around the room, gave a good sense to anyone looking of what I hoped to do with texture, the concept of masks and the stories of gods and goddesses.

“So how long will it take you to complete everything?” Lila asked.

“Longer than five months,” I answered with a laugh. “Hopefully, I can show what I do have somewhere in New York.”

“That can’t be easy,” Taneasha interjected.

“No, but I’ve been lucky and made some great contacts.” Edward Ainsley had surprised me a few days earlier when he’d shown up unannounced at the farm. Even though it hadn’t been a day open to the public, he’d stayed for dinner, mingled with everyone. He’d grilled me about my future as well, intimated that he’d liked what he saw and would be happy to act as something of a mentor for me.

It had been a bittersweet triumph because all I could think about the whole time Ainsley visited were those few days in the Hamptons. I’d come to think of that weekend as The Idyll Before the Storm and I saw it in a wash of pastel colors with short brush strokes, as a seaside resort with clouds on the horizons. It was easy to lose myself in those thoughts, to linger on the beauty of Daniel’s naked body, on the tenderness of his touch. In my mind there was a fantasy of what could have been, what might have been, if he hadn’t made the game we had played real.

It was even harder to not think of Daniel when Ainsley mentioned running into him at the opening for the Picasso and the Future exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts. Ainsley’s expression had been sympathetic, as if he knew about the breakup—surely everyone did—but he wanted me to know I had his support.

I would very likely need that support. I would need to make a successful life for myself as soon as possible after leaving Barrows Farm. I could no longer live off murals and CD cover art.

The bright sunlight turned to afternoon shadows and eventually we all stood. Lila hugged me tightly.

“Well, I know it’s selfish of me, but I can’t wait until you move to the city.”

“Hah,” I said with a laugh, stepping back. “You’ll be way too busy with all your classes.”

“It’s pretty intense already,” Taneasha agreed.

“But I wouldn’t have missed this! You’re so talented. I had no idea.”

My friendship with Lila was another one of the many positive outcomes of the summer affair. In fact, as time passed, I found it more difficult to hold onto anger. Sadness, longing, all those wistful emotions remained, but my relationship with Daniel had changed me irrevocably. For the most part, I liked this new version of myself.

And slowly, I was coming to terms with everything else.

I said goodbye to my friend and returned inside, asked the few people who peered at my sketches if they had any questions.

I was explaining my plans for Aphrodite when the room darkened slightly. I looked to the door, the daylight blocked by a tall, achingly familiar figure.

As if conjured up from my daydreams, he stood there, perfect in his usual suit, accessorized with a dark purple tie today. He looked like a buyer or maybe a Manhattan gallery owner, because who else would be at the colony dressed like that on open studios days. It hurt to see him, but at the same time it was a pleasurable pain. He had come to see me.

Of course, I was also suspicious.

I excused myself, strode toward him, and then past him, knowing he would follow me back outside. I rounded the corner of the studio until, under the shade of one of the maple trees, I turned and faced him.

There was that expression on his face, so similar to the way he had looked when I first met him, only, with something else there.

Julian had said Daniel missed me. Maybe he did.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to apologize.”

I softened inside at the words, just as I had at the very sight of him. But I couldn’t be soft. As much as I’d missed him too, I’d also made a decision, one that didn’t involve him. And if he was here wanting to be back in my life—

“No need,” I said, shrugging, forcing the insidious, traitorous thoughts away. “It’s not like you did anything that needs apologizing for. Unless you did know about my father’s deal—”

“No,” he protested.

I continued quickly, not wanting to analyze the relief that flooded through me. “So what then? You hired me? Oh, you slept with me? Gave me an expensive bracelet? Yeah, you’re a real villain, Hartmann.” I started to turn away. Only, he was here. And he wouldn’t be apologizing just to assuage his guilt.

“I knew we’d be photographed.”

I laughed. “Seriously, Daniel? You’re famous. I should have thought about that. You even warned me.”

His lips curved, and I lowered my lashes, desperate to deny how that smile still made me feel. I almost didn’t see him step forward. Almost lost my chance to step back.

“And I’m the one who leaked your name to the press. Or rather, asked Janine to.”

My gaze flitted back to his face in disbelief.

“Are you trying to convince me that I should be angrier with you?” I asked with a laugh, attempting to cover the confusion his admission created. Did it change anything? “If not you, then someone else would have. But … why?” If not to hurt my father, then why?

He didn’t answer right away.

Or maybe it had been to hurt my father indirectly, to show off that Daniel could have anything he wanted, including me.

“I’ve missed you,” he said again, in that way that made me melt inside my skin, not answering my question and yet saying the words that I wanted to hear. Saying almost enough. “Emily.”

“Daniel, we’re standing here right now because I had some crazy idea I could get back at you for what you had done to my family. Instead … instead I learned that everything I thought I knew was a half-truth. That my father really is a criminal.”

“I’m sorry.” He reached for me but I shrugged him off, shrugged away the sound of concern in his voice.

“That you—”

“That I was a coward?”

I stared at him. Startled.

“You were,” I whispered in agreement, trying desperately to make sense of my swirling emotions, to find steady ground. I missed him, too, but I couldn’t go back. The summer had been wonderful and horrifying and for the first time I finally knew who I really wanted to be. And it wasn’t his mistress.

“I can’t be your girlfriend, living in your house, in clothes bought by you, with your billions.”

He smiled slightly, but I was serious. He needed to understand that. I didn’t need the fabulously wealthy life. When Daniel took that away from my family all those years ago, I’d come down to the ground, grown up like every other normal American teenager with a dysfunctional home life.

“I wasn’t asking you to leave here. You’re talented, Emily. I don’t want you to live my life.”

“What were you asking, then?” I wanted to call the words back because I wasn’t certain I wanted to hear the answer.

“Emily—” He reached for me again, but I backed away and his arms fell to his sides, hands sliding into his pants’ pockets. “I’m just asking for another chance.”

“Chance to do what? Get revenge on my dad?”

It was unfair of me but I needed to hear him say it had nothing to do with my father. It was one thing for me to come to that conclusion on my own. To chalk the whole thing up to my stupidity.

I watched him clench his fists in frustration. The gesture unclenched something inside of me and I wondered about all these weeks since I’d last seen him. Had he gone through a similar emotional upheaval?

Maybe I could forgive him, or at least should forgive him. Maybe it was worth the chance.

“The past is the past, Emily. But we, you and me, we make sense in this crazy way.”

I nodded.

His fists unclenched and when he reached for me, I let him. When he touched me, his hands cupping my face, I closed my eyes and luxuriated in his touch, even as it hurt.

The kiss was soft, and at first, tinged with sadness. I wanted to cry and maybe I was crying because when his lips coaxed mine, when fierce desire surged up within me, my cheek was wet against his.

“I missed you.” The words caressed my skin as his lips moved hungrily down the side of my face, my neck.

And I’d missed him. Missed the touch that made me feel alive, made colors more vibrant and all my senses sharp.

I missed letting myself be in love with him. I rose up on my toes, pushing his head to the side gently with mine so that I could lick the bare skin above his collar, breath in the scent of him. His hands curved around my hips, lifted me, and I wrapped myself around him, enjoying the heat of him, the hardness pressed against me.

I wanted this. I wanted him.

He pulled his head back slightly and I looked up at him, dizzy with passion and confused by the pause.

“Are there rules about me coming back to the lodge?”

I shook my head. “But I don’t really want to wait that long.” Despite the people inside the cabin, if we moved just a few feet deeper into the forest …

He laughed. “Neither do I, but I wasn’t really expecting … Unless you have condoms here?”

Condoms. I laughed, too, wanting to cry again. I slid down his body, stood on my own weight. I would have taken a step back as well, except the pressure of his palm on my hip kept me where I was.

“You were right about me,” he said softly, his eyes intense and focused on mine. “I leaked your name because I thought there was no way we could survive that. I was scared of getting hurt again, of being left instead of being the one leaving.”

Oh. Even as I struggled for breath to slow my racing pulse, to ease the tension of wound-up desire, I unpacked that dense statement with the key of the tragic past. His mother, of course, was the reason he never had a real relationship, the reason the models only stayed at the show loft. But he’d let me in.

“You don’t have to say this.” It didn’t matter if I understood, if I felt at all vindicated by his confession. It didn’t matter because—

“It was supposed to be a game.” He looked at me urgently, begging me to understand. And of course, I did. “You were the last person I should have felt anything for but I was falling in love with you.”

Love. I thought of his expression that night on the beach, the way I’d analyzed the photographs on the internet for hours. And then when I’d gone to confront him in his office. He’d said then it was only a game.

“You don’t love me.” His tone was flat, a statement, and yet … I knew he was prodding, wanting me to deny it.

“How I feel doesn’t matter—”

“Yes!” He stepped forward, turned me to face him, and his hands on my arms were a cruel attack on the senses. I wanted to be held up by him, let him embrace me, forget about everything. “Yes it does matter, Emily. Because I love you, in a way that obliterates everything else. If you love me too than all of this hedging is just wasting time.”

He loved me. He was admitting that he loved me. But did that really change anything?

I took a deep breath and said the words he couldn’t refute. “Except you loved me before you hurt me.”


• • •



I watched him leave. Forced him to leave with the promise that I’d consider everything he had said, because I needed to think and I didn’t want to tell him the one thing that would make him refuse to go. Didn’t tell him that I was pregnant, just as I hadn’t told anyone else yet.

But I was twenty-one and I wasn’t certain what I wanted to do about the situation. If anyone had asked me how I felt about terminating a pregnancy just a few months ago, when I was in college, I would have said it’s a viable option if the situation would ruin the mother’s life. Except, I’m the one who ruined everything. Not this … nascent life, which was causing small changes in my body that made denial, at least to myself, impossible anymore. I wasn’t a child and helpless. Yes, there would be sacrifices but …

It was part him. Part reminder of something so precious, even if it had hurt. This decision was not purely logical. Because I did love him, and I knew he loved me. In a way that obliterates everything else.

But even if I did keep it, that didn’t mean I should be with Daniel. And as I had told him, I needed to think, away from him, away from his overwhelming presence and the way it managed to obliterate my ability to think. Regardless, if I kept this child, I’d have to tell him.

Eight weeks had passed since that night on the beach in the Hamptons. The one night we hadn’t been safe. I’d have to make my decisions soon.