Painted On My Heart

He’d already been inside the studio this morning. The art had been hung, just like Sara had promised him last night. There was no dallying. The studio looked outstanding.

A very quiet, almost undetectable alarm sounded when he pushed open the closed door of the gallery. As he entered, both Sara and Kellus turned toward the door. Arik froze for a second; he had zero reason to have come inside the gallery and absolutely nothing to say. He was certain if he opened his mouth, drool might slip free from just how mouthwateringly handsome Kellus looked this morning. Arik began to move forward, watching Kellus lift a hand to sweep those long pieces of hair back off his face. That move had haunted his memory last night when he should have been sleeping. Kellus did it all the time, even when his hair wasn’t in his face. A nervous habit? Did he dare hope he made Kellus even a bit nervous?

“I’m just hearing what you did, Arik Layne.”

Arik’s startled gaze darted in Sara’s direction. He’d lost himself again. Luckily, she saved him from his lack of manners, and at the same time, gave him purpose for being there other than stalking the hot artist when he had about a million other things he should be doing right now.

“Oh yeah?” he questioned, letting his good-natured grin slip in place as he walked straight to the pair. Only then did he notice a check in Kellus’s hand.

Ah, the purchase.

He’d ended up bringing the magnificent sculpture with him to his office this morning because he had a clear unhealthy attachment to the object. Since no one ever needed to know how unbalanced that move had been, he focused on the direction he could take in this conversation he’d just crashed. He looked pointedly at the check in Kellus’s hand, seeing he was also holding a new cell phone.

“I told you I’d take care of Gage,” Arik said.

“You paid asking price. I’ll give them their cut,” Kellus replied, handing the check over to Sara. When Sara took the offering and looked up at Arik, whatever she saw startled her enough to have her handing it back to Kellus. That was one of those “his reputation precedes him” kind of moves, but he certainly hadn’t meant to make her nervous.

“No. You should give this to Gage. I learned early on not to get involved in their family dynamic,” she said, but his stare didn’t seem to have the same effect on Kellus. He refused, shaking his head no and lifting both hands to reject her offer.

“Really. Please take it. I need us both to do well so I can keep showing here…”

Arik reached out and took the check from Sara when Kellus absolutely refused to do so. Startled blue eyes met his. He liked those eyes focused right there on him, even more so now that he’d developed such an unhealthy fixation on both the statue of this man and the man himself.

He stared back at Kellus, again seeing the man in the sculpture. More than anything, he wanted to know what had caused the pensiveness that created such an emotional piece.

Arik lifted the check while making a show of tearing it in half before handing the pieces back to Sara. “You’ve given me a captivating piece and something to tease my cousin about. Trust me, he deserves it, and I give my word, in the end, I’ll cover the cost he’s lost.”

“Kellus, Gage does give Arik an incredibly hard time. We should let them handle this.” Sara smiled a reassuring grin and nodded at both of them.

“I have a feeling he dishes as well as he gets,” Kellus said, which caused both Arik and Sara to laugh just as a quiet chime sounded and the noise from the front lobby filtered inside.

“Excuse me,” Sara said, then walked away, leaving Arik alone with Kellus and heading toward the couple who’d just entered.

Kellus seemed to have no problem staying quiet, and as calming as Arik found this man’s art, Kellus in person had the complete opposite effect, making him unsettled and off-balance. He nervously pushed his hands inside his slacks pockets to keep from fidgeting.

He pointedly looked down at the phone in Kellus’s hands. Kellus had a different look than any other time he’d seen him before. Today, he had dressed in a clingy knit shirt that left nothing of that mouthwateringly muscular chest to the imagination, even exposing an indention or two of some well-defined stomach muscles. His tightly fitted, low-rise jeans hugged his ass in all the right places, at least as far as Arik could tell from this angle. The hole in the knees looked real, not manufactured. Those long pieces of his hair that always fell forward stayed back, even though his fingers ran nervously through them again. He’d likely styled them with gel to keep them off his face. Several leather straps adorned each wrist, and the same style of leather hung around his neck, a cross dangling from one strip.