_OceanofPDF

“Yes.”
“So you need me to do a thing?”
“Dinner. You don’t have to.”
“I’ll go. Just don’t leave me alone with Mike.”
“Like hell,” he snarled before changing the subject. “I was going to
have Selma Quintero join us.”
I almost spit my coffee.
“I take that as a yes?” he asked.
“Why would you do that?”
“She’s an art dealer. You’re an artist. What’s the problem?”
“I’m not ready.”
“It’s dinner.”
“What the fuck, Logan? What if she wants a studio visit? I have
nothing! I’m absolute shit!”
He took me by the shoulders and bent down to look me in the eye. His
face was strength, confidence, the pure willpower to spend six months
behind a locked door knowing he had the key. “You’re Ella Papillion, and
it’s just dinner. We have six months to make you all the connections we can
before we break up.”
“Before you what?” Colton’s voice came from the back doorway. The
fucker was like a cat.
Logan let go of me.
“Aren’t you supposed to be wearing the cowbell we got you?” he asked.
“Dude.” Colton swirled the coffee around the pot. “This coffee or
mud?”
“You have a kitchen.”
Colton had lasted two months before begging for a job. Ted and Logan
put him in the mailroom. I’d warned Logan it didn’t pay enough to get his
brother out of our guesthouse. Not with rent in Los Angeles being what it
was. He replied with typical rich-person ignorance. How could that be true
when the current staff had places to live?
He wouldn’t budge. Neither did Colton. Six months after showing up,
Colton was still in the back house, but now instead of sleeping late, he’d
been coming into the front house in the morning to go to Crowne with his
brother.
I enjoyed Colton, but Logan worked eighty hours a week, and morning
coffee was the only time I knew I’d see him, and Colton’s presence during