Page 84 of Silver-Tongued Devil
She was rattled. It was true that she needed to try again with the galleries. And if everything in her shrank from the idea of rejection—well, she had to get over that. She could at least try.
“I got to say,” Russell said, working his way through his breakfast, “if somebody toldme,‘Come get on my fancy private jet and take a vacation, and let’s see if we can get your career moving,’ I wouldn’t be putting up a great big fight.”
“Whose side are you on?” Dakota asked.
“Yours,” he said. “That’s the point. So,” he asked Blake, “what does she need to do?”
Dakota lifted both hands in resignation, then dropped them as Blake said, “She needs to decide if that’s what she wants to do.”
All right, that was fairly sensitive, she had to admit. He went on to say, “If she does, she makes a list of the places she wants to try and gives it to me so I can get her there. She packs up a couple pieces to show them what she’s got. If I’m buying, I want to see the real deal. I don’t want to see a picture. Her two very best flowers, that’s what I’d say. Then she comes over to my house and gets my eagle and my shell and my iris, because I’ve got a damn good eye, and I got the best. That makes five, and five’s plenty. She leaves all those with me, and she packs her suitcase and waits for me to come get her in the morning, and I take her to Portland and show her a good time and let her lungs heal up. And we sell us some glass.”
“I’m trying my best to be cool here and pretend this is my norm,” Dakota said the next morning, when she was walking up a set of steps onto a sleek white business jet of a type she’d only seen in the movies.
No security checks, just Blake driving right up to the plane and being met by a couple of his security guys from the resort, who’d taken care of the transfer of the glass pieces she’d packed up yesterday. The guys had taken care of the luggage, too, and then Blake had tossed them the car keys and said, “Let’s go, wild thing.”
Now, he made his own stiff-legged way up the stairs, said, “Hey, Joe,” to somebody who must be the pilot, and told Dakota, “Have a seat.”
“No safety video?” She was going for casual here, even as she sat in something that would have qualified as “luxury leather recliner” in her world. “No explanation of where I’ll find my life vest?”
“We’re flying over the Canyonlands, darlin’. I don’t think your life vest is going to do you a lot of good. And don’t ask Joe. You’ll hurt his feelings. For the record, though, it’s under your seat.”
She spent the extremely brief flight, while Blake worked at his laptop, looking out the window and trying to calm herself down. She’d decided on “artist” for her look, and now, she was second-guessing it. Jeans, her best cowboy boots, a tangerine top, and a silk chocolate-brown tapestry jacket she’d found in a consignment shop. Her hair was loose and artfully mussed, and she was wearing her most daring, dangly earrings, an Indian design intricately beaded in shades of orange and brown. Now, though, she wondered if she should’ve tried to look more upscale. Of course, she didn’t reallyhave“upscale,” but maybe she should have worn a dress, or…
Blake looked across at her. “All right?”
“What? Sure.”
“Uh-huh. Now, see, if I was guessing, I’d say you were worrying. Stop worrying, baby. You’ve got this.”
“Right. I’m just going to walk in, unwrap a couple pieces, and blow them away.”
“Yep. You’re doing them a favor. You’re giving them the first shot.Ifthey can meet your terms. Just like we talked over yesterday.”
She took a breath. “OK. I’m trying. Positive thoughts.”
“That’s my girl,” he said, and went back to his laptop.
Another airport, then, another big, dark SUV, and another guy loading her glass carefully into the back. Blake climbed into the back of the SUV with her and said, “We’ll drop you off at the Fischer place with the hand truck, and then Conrad here will take me to the office and come back for you when you call. He’ll take you on to the next one, too.” He sat back as the driver made his way onto the main road. “So what else do you want to do while you’re out here? Want to buy some more glass or anything? I’m guessing that’d be your first choice. There are some good places around, I hear.”
“Well, yeah,” she said. “I’d love to do that, if you can loan me the car. How would you know whether Portland has glass supplies?”
“I’ve got my sources. Which is a mysterious way of saying that Jennifer did some research for me. How about tomorrow? I’ve got some meetings. You can go on and do that shopping, and whatever else you feel like. For today, do your visits, and then have Conrad take you back to the house if you get tired. Go to lunch. I won’t be home until after five, but we can go out to dinner, do it up good.”
“This must be what it’s like to be rich.”
He laughed. “Pretty much. It’s not too horrible.”
“So how come you’re so… normal, relatively speaking, in Wild Horse? You have a nice boat and a nice house, sure, but why aren’t you… I don’t know, relaxing in a yacht on the French Riviera?”
“Because I’d expire of boredom?”
“Well,” she admitted, “there’s that.”
She got quiet again, because she was nervous. But when they’d pulled up near the expanse of sleek storefront that was the Elizabeth Fischer Gallery and she had her hand truck loaded, she stopped outside the car door where he was still sitting, his leg stretched out in front of him, and said, “This is nuts. You realize this is nuts.”
“Nope. And by the way. If I show up, act natural.”
And then he shut the car door, Conrad drove away, and Dakota snapped her mouth shut and thought,What?But after that, she took a breath of Portland air and refocused.
