Page 73 of Meet Mason, the Billionaire

“No, not really. What’s up?”

“It sounds like it’s a bad time. Your voice seems… I don’t know.”

“Well, if you don’t know and can’t tell me, I can't understand what you mean.”

Something about his tone set my teeth on edge. “It’s like—it’s like you’re trying to get through this phone call so you can get back to whatever you were doing.”

“I—okay, look, you have my full attention. I’ll face time you and you will be able to see that I’m not focused on anything else.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I sighed.

“No, it’s fine. Here.”

His handsome face appeared on my screen. He looked a bit haggard, with dark circles lurking under his eyes, as well as a haunted cast about his gaze.

“You look tired, hon,” I said.

“I’ll be fine. You were saying?”

I chewed my lower lip for a moment.

“Remember that gallery show I was supposed to have?”

He hesitated just a moment too long before answering. “Of course.”

I gave him a long look before continuing, but he didn’t say anything else.

“Well, the dickface ex-boyfriend running it just told me that my show is off unless I sell a particular painting to a rich dickwad.”

Mason dropped the phone. I heard him cursing, and the screen went dark. A moment later his face came back into blurry focus before the image sharpened up.

“Mason? What’s wrong? Why did you freak out?”

“Because I’m afraid I’m the one who got your show canceled,” he said, his face a grim mask. Why was he angry with me? “You see, I’m the rich dickwad who wants to buy that portrait.”

The news hit me like a slap. Maybe if I hadn’t already been all worked up by Brian’s ultimatum, I would have reacted differently. Instead, it seemed to me at that moment that all of my paranoia, all my fears that Mason couldn’t possibly be interested in me, that he was using me just like Brian had, seemed to come to a justifiable fruition.

Of course I’d been right all along. I was always right about the bad shit.

I shook my head, unable to speak. I shut the call off and turned off my phone. This time a rage didn't seize me. Instead, I sank onto the sofa and fell into an almost catatonic state. I didn’t even move when a hairy spider crawled across my lap before disappearing in a nook of the sofa.

Mason had been using me to get to the painting the entire time. My mind put together all the ‘clues’ to support my hypotheses. Our chance meeting on the balcony terrace at the Galleria hadn’t been a chance meeting at all. He’d scouted me out and made his move.

Why hadn’t he directly tried to buy the portrait from me? I figured he must have talked to people at the gallery and found out I had no intention of selling it. I added to the growing list of ‘evidence’ I had built up in my mind.

The whole trip to Paris had been nothing more than a way to get me out of the country so he could have his people lean on Brian. Not that he would have had to make Brian learn much, but I figured Brian must have been threatening my exhibition because he had no choice. As much as I knew he was a dick, I still tried to blame Brian’s bad behavior on Mason.

In my mind, Mason was the architect of my pain and woe. Everything he’d done, every nice act, every kind word, every time he made me feel like he really cared about me had been just another step toward getting his hands on what he really wanted.

That painting.

But why? Why go after a portrait of an unknown man? My grandfather had something of a following in his heyday, but he was hardly world famous. The portrait couldn’t possibly be worth that much money.

In my mind, I decided that Mason was just that ruthless. He was a billionaire businessman after all, and he probably—no, must have—applied that same cold-blooded ruthlessness toward getting that painting out from under my grasp.

“Well, you’re not going to fucking get it,” I growled suddenly. I stood up and turned my phone back on. Multiple missed contacts, but I didn’t care. I ignored the many calls from Mason, not to mention his texts. I instead brought up my contacts list and found Brian’s name.

I called him, pacing like a caged tiger while waiting for him to answer.

---