Page 42 of Love Me Tomorrow

“Like I said,” she says pointedly, her chin tipping up, “he just needs some love and affection.”

I cock a brow, folding my arms over my chest. “You totally sleep with your bedroom door closed, don’t you?”

The second she starts shifting her weight and cutting eye contact, I know that I hit the nail on the head. “He surprised me a few times when I first brought him home, that’s all.” More shifting. Her gaze bounces from my face to her feet and then back up again. “I woke up at three in the morning—”

“The witching hour,” I murmur, just a little sarcastically. “Want me to say it a little louder for the folks in the back? Your cat is possessed.”

“He isnotpossessed. I think I would know.”

“Could be trying out for the role of Binx in aHocus Pocusremake.”

She rolls her eyes, but there’s no hiding the telltale curve of her lips. “Has anyone ever told you how dramatic you are?Anyway, he just . . . he liked to pounce on my face while I slept. I think he wanted to play.”

“Or suffocate you.”

“If that’s the case, he clearly didn’t succeed. Here I am.”

Yeah, here she is.

Her makeup is heavier tonight—longer and fuller lashes, lips painted a darker hue. Shiny earrings dangle from her ears, matching the pendant that rests above her breastbone. Her dress is modest compared to so many of the other gowns I’ve spotted around the ballroom: thin straps snake over her shoulders; a neckline that teases more than it reveals.

She looks every inch the sweetheart that the media has dubbed her, and I feel every inch the alleged bad boy for wanting to muss up her perfect bun and yank that too-mature neckline down, down, down, until she’s dirty and messy and fuckingliving.

“You never answered my question,” I say, aware that my voice sounds too damn husky but unable to do anything about it. “Looking to make a purchase?”

Not for the first time tonight, I fight the urge to snatch back the sketchbook and hide it away. My first mayor’s auction and instead of taking part in the drinking and the dancing and the general debauchery of the upper echelons of New Orleans society, I’ve found myself watching this table.

When I haven’t been stealing glances at Savannah, that is.

“Why would you give this up?” she asks, cleanly sidestepping my question. “You could have stuck with doing the tattoo.Onlythe tattoo.”

Again, her thumb grazes the spine. Again, my head feels like it might explode—vulnerability and confidence war with each other, each fighting for the upper hand.

I tear my gaze away from the sketchbook and zero in on her face.

“Nobody’s gonna pay five grand for a tattoo,” I tell her. “I’m good, Sav, but not that good.”

“Youarethat good. Celebrities come to Inked all the time.”

“They don’t pay five-thousand dollars a pop.”

Her lips pull tight, the bottom one catching my eye when she bites down in clear frustration. “This journal is way too personal. You can’t auction it off.”

Up until a few weeks ago, I would have said the same thing. Hell, Ididsay the same thing. But then Mayor Frannie Barron stopped by Inked so we could discuss the Entrepreneurs of the Crescent City—in particular, my vision for the organization and how we can increase numbers among New Orleanians who don’t think they have anything to offer, due to their circumstances—and she’d spotted the sketchbook on my desk. I’d drawn in it the night before. Forgot to put it away. And while I’m a confident bastard, I’m not stupid; you don’t tell a public figure like the mayor to stop what she’s doing. So, I kept my mouth shut. Watched uncomfortably as she cracked the spine and pored over the drawings that I’ve created over the last fifteen years.

I never would have opted to sell my art. Not until Frannie Barron personally asked me to show the world what I’ve drawn. She wanted to stir up awareness for the slices of New Orleans life that so many people ignore when they come solely for the partying and the drinking and the chaos.

“Donate it to the auction,” she’d encouraged, “give people something to talk about that really matters.”

And then she’d intended to outbid all of her competitors.

Savage, really. Part of me even approved.

I pluck the notebook out of Savannah’s grasp. “I’m ready to let it go.”

“I call bullshit.”

These pages have been with me since the time of my parents’ deaths. I have other sketchbooks—countless others—but I always come back to this one in particular when I have something I need to expel from my brain. Sometimes that leads to a series of sketches, all tied together by a common theme; sometimes I end up with only a single image.

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