Page 28 of How to Get Even

He’d wanted so much not to fuck this up.Dammit.He ran a hand over his face.

‘You have to tell them,’ she as much as accused.

‘No,’ he denied. Not until he’d figured out who to replace the featured artist with.

She stared at him blankly, the look having the same impact as a sharp inhale of frustration, which was impressive, really, when you thought about it.

‘I would like you to advise me how best to do my job when you are withholding significant information from me,’ she articulated with such patience that it only served to show howimpatientshe was with him.

Chase barked out a laugh.

‘You know, most people would phrase that question differently,’ he said.

‘How so?’

‘Something along the lines of… How the fuck am I supposed to do my job like this?’

He watched her closely. She all but flinched at his curse.

Jesus, they were like chalk and cheese. But that didn’t mean she was wrong.

He bit his lip, failing to see her eyes flick between his mouth and his gaze and by the time he glanced back to her there was a pretty blush on her cheeks, presumably from his curse, or her question.

‘Is this how you want to run a gallery?’ she asked hotly. He seemed to have driven her beyond the boundaries of her usual poise, and that he felt a second’s worth of pleasure from it was warning enough. But he couldn’t deny that he quite liked seeing her off balance, when it was all he was most of the time. ‘We’re all doing separate things and no one person is talking to another. Itwillbe a miracle if we make it to opening at this rate,’ Bella said as if more to herself than to him. But it was her last jab that landed particularly hard. ‘How can we help you if you won’t let us?’

The question reverberated in Chase’s mind, echoing back through the years. One that he’d said himself, to the father who had been stretched to the point of breaking. Standing in his father’s garage, sucking the smell of oil and exhaust into his lungs the way most kids did with the sugar in a candy store. His father, his hero, callused hands the size of dinner plates and overalls that were never clean, utterly devastated by the loss of the wife he’d loved more than anything in this world.

All those people who’d come by after the funeral, wanting to help with food, or things around the house and his father had not let anyone help him. He’d done it all himself – the Miller way – but it had come at a cost. Unable to talk about his feelings, a distance had grown between them, and Chase had been left alone to navigate his grief. A distance that became physical when he’d left for art college in London.

Was that what he was doing now? Making the same mistake as his father?

‘Can I ask, what is it you want for Nayak?’ Those grey eyes, startling and surprising in such a classically beautiful face, delving where he didn’t want her to go.

‘Because I can’t see it,’ Bella said. ‘Not in any of the material provided to Magenta, not in the website design, not in the artists that youhavemanaged to secure. I can’t see it in the layout, I can’t…seeit,’ she concluded with frustration.

That she even wanted to see it was frankly a minor miracle. So far, since arriving, he’d insulted her, tested her without her knowledge, withheld information that she needed to do her job and – from the looks of the way she’d held herself walking around the office – accidentally committed bodily harm by omission.

Is this how you want to run a gallery?

Christ, no. He railed at the accusation. He’d just… he’d just wanted to prove that hecoulddo it. He’d wanted to come up with the solutions. Wanted to get them out of the mess that he’d caused. Dammit.

And itwashis fault that she couldn’t see what he wanted Nayak New York to be. Tej trusted him completely. He wanted,needed, Bella to see what he did, what he knew Nayak could be. He might not be able to explain it, but he couldshowher.

He looked at his watch.

‘What are you doing right now?’

She squinted at him. ‘I’m talking to my boss,’ she said slowly as if he were a child, or had had a stroke. Either one was a possibility in her eyes, he realised with a smirk.

‘Funny. Okay, do you have plans after work or can you come somewhere with me?’

‘Now?’

‘No. Tomorrow.’

‘Funny,’ she shot back and him and his thought was,There is still hope.

He pulled out his phone and fired off a message to an old friend.

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