Page 88 of Sawyer
You’d better watch yourself.
She pretended to be the compassionate friend, showing them the soup she’d made—all true—and before she knew it, the landlady was opening the door for her. She gave her a warm smile before walking inside and closing the door quietly.
Following the sounds of the TV, she headed down theshort hallway to find Phoebe binging on some period piece where women dressed up in nonsense contraptions and men sniffed the perfume on their wrists. Thank God she hadn’t lived in that time. She would have grabbed the guy’s sword—the other one—and ran him through for being so tedious.
“You look cozy.”
Phoebe jumped and cried out,“What the fuck!”
Made her day. “Nice to see you again too. So, I hear you have this crazy notion that Doc knew his agent was going to cut your knees out from under you and give his show to your mom. Please. I didn’t take you for an idiot.”
Phoebe clutched a fuchsia pillow to her chest, her face a comical mask of shock that had Madison’s lips twitching. “Hey! How thehelldid you get in here?”
“I used to pick locks in Miami growing up to put bread on the table.”
Phoebe’s mouth parted. God, had she bought that horseshit? She shook her head. “I told them you were my friend and that I was bringing you soup because you were sick. Technically you are sick in the head if you could ever think what you did about Sawyer.”
Phoebe threw the pillow aside and stood, so angry she stomped for effect. “I know! I came to that conclusion some time ago, but I’m still not over being furious. Not at him— Dammit! At my mother! At Beverly! At?—”
“Every damn person you can be mad at,” Madison finished for her, setting the bag down on the coffee table strewn with art magazines. “I get it. Your mother must really be a bitch to cut you like this.”
Hurt and anger burned behind Phoebe’s eyes as she glanced away. “She is. The truth is, she wouldn’t have even agreed to have Sawyer’s show if Beverly hadn’t called her. When I told her I wanted him after theLe Mondepiece, she gave me her wholeYou can’t run a successful gallery showing anuntested artist with no portfolio, Phoebe. We at the Anderson Gallery have a higher barspeech. I hung up after she saidI won’t have you showing this Sawyer person’s work.”
Madison sank onto the turquoise couch and kicked out her feet. “That makes me like you more, Phoebe, and willing to forgo sharpening my cleaver when I get back to the restaurant.”
“Funny,” she grumbled dryly but plopped down in the purple chair adjacent to the sofa.
“Do you mind if I turn down the British drama of bitches and britches? If you watched it at a lower volume, you would have heard the door opening.”
She flounced back into her chair and grabbed the remote. “I was trying to cover up the sound of me crying my eyes out since I thought Sawyer had betrayed me.”
“Oh.”She frowned before nodding toward the bag she’d brought. “Didn’t he text you to tell you his side?—”
“I turned off my phone.”
Of course she had.
“I didn’t want to talk to anyone.”
Yeah. Madison got that. Why talk to people when they sucked and let you down? “Well, now you know that’s bullshit. Have some soup. You don’t want to get dehydrated. There’s also bread, which people assure me is comfort food.”
“Thank you,” she said with the same tight voice.
“Well, I’ve done my part for Operation Sawyer and learned you’ve got some things you need to tell Sawyer. One last question. If your mother hears about you and Sawyer being together—because you’d better be doing your part to patch that up soon—do you think she’d sabotage Sawyer’s gallery show when she finds out he’s your boyfriend?”
Phoebe picked up a magazine and opened it to the front and ripped a few pages out. “Does this woman look like she’d fuck anything up? No, she’s a professional through andthrough. Which only pisses me off more because she doesn’t extend that professionalism to her own daughter and business associate. She should have told me she’d talked to Beverly, especially since I’m the one who left my card, but it wouldn’t have dawned on her to tell me. I’m not an equal partner in the business, and now I know I never will be. My dad warned me this would happen. I should have listened.”
Madison took the proffered pages, staring down at the older woman standing in a tony gallery surrounded by large paintings. Phoebe had her green eyes and sweetheart-shaped face, but beyond that, Madison couldn’t see a resemblance. This woman reminded her of those fancy movers and shakers who wore New York black, dripped jewels, and looked like they would stab someone in an antique store for something of value.
She wasn’t a pretty face. She was a player, and just looking at her, you knew she knew her shit.
“No, she seems stone-cold serious,” Madison agreed. “I thought if she went all personal because of you, we’d have an angle to have you do the show and not her, but that’s not going to fly.”
“I appreciate your looking for solutions, but Beverly would never go for that. She told me at her party that she’d loved hearing I’d reached out to Sawyer. I have such a good eye, you see, like my mother—gag—and she was sure my new branch in Paris would be successful if I built it smartly and worked hard for like fifteen or twenty years.”
Ouch. “I hope she doesn’t volunteer for a suicide hotline.”
A harsh snort escaped Phoebe before she said, “My mother says the same thing about my path to success, which really pisses me off because they don’t listen when I tell them I don’t want to do things like them. All stuffy people who only come to shows to be seen or for tax purposes. I’m not them and never have been. I mean, look at me. I dress like an artist. My dad loves saying that.”
