Page 78 of Dirty Shots

Chapter Twenty-three

Eric

Anya repeated what her friendhad told her over the phone, her eyes wide and filled with tears.

“God damn it!”

Eric paced the floor. To see such sadness in her eyes put murder on his mind. Adrenaline fizzed through his veins, making his brain race and filling him with tension. He’d not been able to sleep the previous night, leaving Anya sound asleep in bed so he could work. The itchy anxiety he’d been experiencing about his work recently boiled over to a new level. He was filled with the sudden urge to allow the tension to explode out of him, to find this Gavin Hollis again and beat him so badly he wouldn’t get up from it this time.

“Eric, please,” said Anya, getting to her feet as well. “You need to calm down.”

The sadness he’d seen in her eyes had turned to alarm, and though he knew he was the cause of it this time, he didn’t seem to be able to rein himself in.

“I want to kill those sons of bitches, especially that Gavin guy. Jonathan Turner is an asshole, but he’s still doing his job. Gavin has done this purely to be vindictive.”

“I know, but there’s nothing you can do. You can’t go and attack him again, Eric. You just can’t. Gavin is a college student, and you could get in serious trouble if you hit him again. I bet Jonathan Turner would just love for you to go raging at him with all guns blazing. It would only give him more ammunition to throw at us.”

He knew she was right, but a part of him didn’t even want to calm down. He wanted to use the energy firing inside him to make Gavin Hollis pay for hurting her. He wanted to throw and break things, but only the look in Anya’s eyes stopped him from doing so.

Though he still couldn’t bring himself to sit down, he at least stood still and forced himself to take a breath.

He needed to think. If they couldn’t win this with brawn, he needed to use his brain.

Anya stared at him, her face taut with emotional pain. “What are we going to do?”

“We need to own this, Anya. We need to be proud. If we try to act as though we’re ashamed or trying to hide anything, they’ll have won.”

She shook her head at him. “How do we do that?”

“By making the exhibition a huge fucking success. By making you a huge fucking success.”

“I’m not sure I understand...”

Without realizing it, he started to pace again, his fist clenched in his hair. “I know I’ve always said that I didn’t plan on selling your photographs, but what if someone offered a disgusting amount of money?”

“I ... I don’t know ...”

He continued. “And what if I made sure every cent was paid directly to you.”

Her eyes widened. “Eric! I couldn’t have you do that!”

“Why not? It’s your body. Wouldn’t it shut all those assholes up if they had to report that one of your photographs sold for thousands.”

She shook her head. “Eric, no one is going to pay thousands for my picture.”

His brain whirred, excitement pulsing through him. He was warming to his ideas, and could feel them taking hold. “Really? People are coming into this thinking that none of these photographs will be sold. What if we sell just one to the highest bidder? Erotic art is extremely fashionable at the moment. The collectors will be climbing over each other and throwing their money at us to get that one, solitary piece.”

“I couldn’t take that kind of money from you, Eric.”

“Why not? You earned it.”

“So did you.”

He nodded, almost frantic, desperately wanting her to understand what an amazing idea this was. “Okay, so we split it—fifty-fifty. If I get my way, everything that’s mine will be yours, too, at some point in the future anyway, so it’s no big deal for me to share the profits with you.”

Her cheeks flushed pink at the implication of what he’d just said. He didn’t care if he was coming on strong. He wanted her to be in his future for the rest of his life. He couldn’t ever imagine wanting to let her go.

“But what if people hate the photographs? What if it doesn’t work?”

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