“Have you ever seen him go into the room?”
“No, he must wait until we’re all gone for the day. Or maybe he does it early in the morning.”
“Do you think he has any paintings that are worth a lot of money?”
Wren shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. I don’t think he sells as many paintings as he’d like people to believe. His style is…eclectic. But not in a good way.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s no common thread or general theme. A lot of artists will experiment and try new things, but in Sean’s work, I can’t even see an attempt to build upon a particular style or technique.”
“What’s he like as a teacher?”
“Pushy, talks a lot of shit that doesn’t mean anything.”
“What about the other girls?”
“They eat it up.” Wren shook her head. “They’re young and grateful that someone has given them an opportunity in an industry that’s so competitive. They believe he can turn them into wunderkinds.”
“That’s not the case?”
“Not from what I’ve seen. But maybe I’m just jaded and that’s affecting my view.”
Wren had worked with several different art teachers over the years. They’d all given her different advice that often clashed and contradicted. Art, she’d come to realize, was like cutting out a part of your soul and showing it to the world. It hurt when people rejected what you’d made because they were, in essence, rejecting you.
And the closer you got to painting something from deep within, the more likely you were to end up bleeding.
“Why do you say you’re jaded?” He looked genuinely confused.
“I’m not exactly the poster child for a successful career in the arts.” She leaned back against the booth and pushed her mostly untouched plate away. “I’ve had more success painting faces at county fairs than I have painting on a canvas.”
“You’re not giving yourself enough credit.”
“I am. I have to take some responsibility for what I painted and where it landed me.”
She’d spent many nights wondering why she’d left the paintings in a place Christian could easily find them. Why she’d thought it a good idea to paint such provocative things in the first place. Only they weren’t provocative, not really.
“How did you come to paint naked women?” Rhys asked, finally tucking into his meal.
“It happened by mistake, at first.” Wren smiled at the memory. “I was planning on a series of portraits of female farmers. I put up an ad on a rural community forum saying I was looking for models and I found Cassie. When she came to my house I had a chair set up for her and she just…stripped.”
“Without you asking?” A smile tugged at Rhys’s full lips.
“Yep, without any warning at all. I was totally gob smacked, but I didn’t know what to say…so, I painted her.” Wren tentatively reached for her plate and found her appetite returning. “She had this big scar that ran up the side of her leg from a farming accident. When she tried to hide it, I asked her if she would mind me painting it. By the time we were finished she said it was the first time she’d ever felt beautiful with her scar showing. She’d never had the courage to show it to anyone and that’s why she’d applied to be my model.”
“To get it over with?”
“Yeah. That’s when I knew what I was supposed to be painting. These women of all shapes and sizes would come to me and I would paint them as I saw them. Without their barriers or their masks or their shields. Just them and their natural beauty… Like how I painted you.”
“You didn’t know anything about me then,” he said.
“Don’t you ever meet someone and have a connection with them that defies logic? Like you see their truth.” The irony of her words wasn’t lost on her, but she wanted Rhys to understand how she felt. “I could tell you were a good person. I don’t meet a lot of people like that.”
“And I don’t have the connection with anyone else that I have with you…” Silence settled over the table. Rhys looked perplexed.
“But?”
“But that doesn’t mean I can ignore what you’ve told me tonight.”
Wren wanted to reassure him that she wasn’t an evil person. Sure, she seemed to make bad decision after bad decision…but it was all with good intention. That had to count for something, right?
“How long do you think Sean will keep hurting women if we don’t intervene?”
“We don’t have any proof he’s doing that.”
Her heart sank. Could he really turn a blind eye to Sean’s behavior? They didn’t have proof, sure. But Wren was certain they could find it if they worked together. At the very least they could get one of Sean’s victims to speak up—and maybe if one person confessed the others would follow.
“Are you going to turn me in?” she asked.
“I need to think on it, Wren. I’m in a really difficult situation here.” He seemed genuinely conflicted, and that made her feel even worse.
“But you agree that Sean is up to something, right? I know I’m not an angel, but I’m trying to figure out what’s going on so he doesn’t hurt anyone else.” She reached for his hand across the table. His skin was warm, soft, but he didn’t embrace her. Didn’t give her anything back. “Please, Rhys. Give me a little more time. I’ll try to get Kylie and Aimee to talk. I’m on your side.”
“My side?” He pulled his hand away from her grip. “You do realize who hired me in the first place, right? My side is supposed to be Sean’s side…which is most definitely not where you are.”
“But you’re investigating him, aren’t you? That’s why someone from your company called Kylie to ask questions. If you were just helping Sean with his security, you wouldn’t be snooping around and talking to ex-employees.”
“We’re doing what we were hired to do, which is find out who’s been trying to get access to Sean’s information and why.” He pulled his wallet out of his pocket and tossed a few bills onto the table. “And now I know.”
“So that’s it?” Wren pushed up from the table and followed him out of the diner and into the parking lot. “You don’t care that he might be beating these women?”
Rhys whirled around suddenly and she almost face-planted into his chest. “That’s the reason I haven’t made up my mind on how I’m going to handle this yet.”
So it had nothing to do with her. The realization stung, but then she’d known from the beginning that Rhys had a very strong moral code.
Shoving her pain aside, she steeled herself. “I want him to pay for what he did to my friend and I want to make sure it doesn’t happen to Aimee, either. Or the next unsuspecting woman he hires.”
“I want that, too,” he said.
“Then let me help. I’ll get the girls to talk, I’ll keep an eye on Sean at the gallery and I can call you if anything suspicious is going on.” She wrapped her arms around herself, praying that he would give her this chance. “Please.”
“Fine. I’ll keep this under wraps for a couple of days, but you have to promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”
“Don’t you mean, anything else stupid?”
“I mean it, Wren.” His features were hard; his eyes gave nothing away. “I don’t want you to be the next person he hurts.