A Taste of Ice (The Elementals) Read online

  Michael and Helen looked over and finally saw Cat. She quirked a smile and saluted them with her mittened hand.

  Michael charged toward the door, a Rottweiler in a stunning charcoal suit likely from some designer she couldn’t pronounce. “No, no, Alissa. This is Cat. The artist.”

  Poor Alissa. Michael would never give her the time of day now. The assistant turned on a smile, fake as Miami boobs, and swiveled back into the office.

  Michael pulled Cat in for a brief hug that had more space than contact, then stepped back, holding her arms. “You made it. How was the flight?”

  He looked good, as usual, the wrinkles on his forehead and under his eyes making him look commanding, not old. The dusting of silver in his gelled-back hair perfectly complemented his clothes.

  “Ugh.” She stifled a yawn. “My first and last red-eye.”

  But he was barely listening, also as usual. He ran his hand down her arm, his fingers catching on something. He gave it a snap and lifted up the offending price tag with a raise of his eyebrows.

  She snatched it from his fingers. “Er, just bought it yesterday. Do you know how hard it is to find a winter coat in the Keys?”

  He was smiling at her in that way she never quite knew how to read. Like he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to roll his eyes or kiss her. In the two years they’d known each other he’d never come on to her, but occasionally, like now, she wondered if he might be pondering it…or if he just saw her as some flighty bartender obsessed with painting water.

  As for her, she’d never been attracted to him in that way. The twenty-year age difference might have had something to do with it. Or the fact that he only visited his house in the Keys a few times a year. Or that sometimes he could be a serious jerk. Or that he was the one who’d plucked her from a life of showing her paintings to cruise tourists on a stopover. He’d believed in her, stuck his neck out for her, and she wasn’t about to mix business with pleasure.

  Helen inserted herself between them, hand outstretched. “Ms. Heddig. Lovely to finally meet you after speaking on the phone. Michael Ray has told me so much about you. Ever since he bought that first piece of yours at that art fair.”

  Michael Ray?

  Cat blinked, realizing that she knew little to nothing about Helen herself—other than she was one of the most well-connected independent gallery owners in the U.S. Shaking Helen’s hand, she said, “Michael speaks of your gallery very highly. I’ve seen some of the pieces in his private collection. You must have worked together a lot in the past.”

  Helen grinned while Michael shifted on his feet and stuffed his hands in his pockets. Who was this guy?

  “I should say we have,” Helen said slowly, with a hint of amusement and a sideways look at Michael. “You didn’t tell her?”

  He cleared his throat. “Helen’s my first former stepmom. Out of four.”

  “Your favorite former stepmom,” she added with affection.

  Michael wiped at the corners of his mouth as his gaze bounced around the eggshell-glazed room. So he’d not only aligned his well-known name with a bartender slash beach-bum artist like her, but he’d involved a clearly beloved member of his own family. Cat slapped on her most charming smile—the one she wore for her five-star hotel customers—but the pressure inside made her want to put her hands on her knees and swallow a few deep breaths.

  To hide her nervousness, she reminded herself of why she’d wanted to do the show in the first place. Years of wandering. Years of solitude. Day after day filled with false smiles and forced conversation with resort guests. The only thing that made it worth it was the daylight hours she could dedicate to painting her obsession: The thing that poked at her mind at night until she finally fell asleep. The first thing to stab itself into her consciousness when she awoke. The thing whose call tugged at her all day long.

  Water.

  Not many people had an outlet for their crazy, but Cat had her brushes. And it was time she put herself out there—really out there—because painting alone had reached its threshold of usefulness. If she didn’t find a new path to travel soon, if she didn’t figure out what this strange connection to water meant, she feared what might become of her.

  “What do you think of the space?” Michael swept out an arm.

  Here it came, the bartender smile. “As if I’ve ever had anything to compare it to? It’s…incredible. So much bigger than I expected.”

  “We bought the old building behind us,” Helen added, “and knocked out the joining walls. Perfect for big shows like this.”

  Big show. For her. The floor undulated like waves and she grabbed Michael’s arm for support. When he looked down at her hand with an odd, uncomfortable expression, she removed it.

  Helen slid warm fingers over Cat’s shoulder. An intimate gesture from someone she barely knew. Strangely, it felt welcome and right.

  “You okay, honey?” Helen asked. “Your eyes look a little red.”

  She glanced at Michael, whose expression reminded her of the “talk” he’d given her a few months ago in preparation for these next two weeks. Be professional, Cat. Always be professional. What he was really saying? Don’t embarrass me.

  Cat waved Helen off. “Yeah. I mean, yes, I’m fine. Not used to the cold. Made my eyes water.”

  Helen humored her. “We’re excited to have you. All the canvases arrived safely and I’ve been paging through them every day. Your work is fresh. Explosive, yet serene at the same time. The perfect thing to show in the dead of winter. I expect to sell the hell out of them during the festival and all through ski season.”

  Her paintings in strangers’ houses. At least some part of her would find a home.

  Helen crossed her arms. She looked like a kindly grandmother and a shrewd businesswoman at the same time. Heaven help anyone who told her no. “Let me tell you, I had my pick of up-and-coming artists, all wanting to get in front of the Hollywood crowd. Nothing truly jumped out at me. Then Michael Ray called. He may be an arrogant son of a bitch, but he has an amazing eye and a sharp business sense. I’m not doing him or you a favor by showing you. I have a reputation to uphold.”

  Cat swallowed and glanced at Michael, but he just nodded.

  “Then I saw your work.” Helen rolled her eyes. “Wow.”

  Michael beamed. Cat realized they were waiting for a response. “I can’t tell you how overwhelmed I am to have this opportunity.”

  Helen tilted her head as if Cat were the painting. “Let’s see how long that humility lasts when the who’s who of L.A. and New York walk in here and start clawing for your stuff.”

  Michael nodded. “She’s the real deal, isn’t she? And just look at her. Made for the media. Made to be big.”

  Cat stiffened but Michael didn’t notice. He probably wasn’t even aware he’d said it out loud or that he wore a disconcerting, hungry sort of look. He’d certainly never said anything like that to her face before. As a film producer, she supposed, he was used to treating people like products because to him, they were.

  With a quick, perceptive glance at her, Helen deftly turned the conversation. “It’s stunning, Cat, how you capture the personalities of various bodies of water and still manage to twist them. Oceans are intimate. Ponds are expansive. And the rivers—ah!” She pressed a hand to her chest. “I know Michael loves the Pond series, but the Rivers are my personal favorite. You give them all such mystery. Such melancholy. Like you love it and hate it at the same time. So tell me: why water?”

  Cat toed a folded drop cloth. That was the big question, wasn’t it? If she could answer that, she wouldn’t have started painting in the first place.

  A phone buzzed. Michael reached into his pocket, mumbling, “Sorry, sorry.”

  He’d never apologized before for taking a phone call, but Cat didn’t mind because it saved her from answering Helen. Michael listened for a second or two, his mouth drawing a grim line, then clicked off the phone. “I gotta run. First screening starts in fifteen then meetings all afternoon th
rough dinner.” He turned to Cat. “Meet up tomorrow? There’s an actor I want you to meet. Big art collector.”

  She just stared. It always took a few seconds to track the speed of his brain.

  “What?” Michael tapped at his phone’s calendar. “Did we make plans?”

  “Well, no. But I have a reservation at Shed tonight.”

  She wasn’t really keen on having dinner with Michael—given that she’d made the reservation in order to stare at Xavier some more and try to figure out how she knew him—but she realized, as she said it, that she didn’t want to be alone her first night away from the ocean. Already the dryness and isolation of this place scraped at her skin and mind.

  He hissed through his teeth. “Sorry, can’t. Wait. Did you say Shed? How’d you get in there?”

  “Um. I asked?”

  Suddenly she feared he’d cancel his plans to go with her, because if Michael was about one thing, it was status.

  “Why don’t you go with Helen?” he offered. “You two could talk more about the show. Get to know each other.”

  Helen grinned, sliding on her glasses, the beaded chain catching the overhead lights. “Sounds good to me. As long as I can pick up the check. We can giggle and talk about Michael Ray behind his back.”

  Michael snorted. “You already know everything. I’m an open fucking book.”

  As he gave Cat’s arm an impersonal pinch, she wasn’t entirely convinced that that was the case.

  THREE

  Michael kissed Helen on the cheek, gave Cat a squeeze on the arm that felt more awkward than it looked, and left the gallery. No one could rattle him like the gorgeous, modest, as-yet-unknown artist from Florida…despite the fact she was still a nobody. With his help, that would soon change. And then she’d be worthy.

  Out on Waterleaf, he flipped up the collar of his cashmere coat and tugged on his stiff, leather gloves. His gaze skated over the papered windows and the chalkboard sign with Cat’s name scrawled on it. He shivered, but it had nothing to do with the cold.

  Cat’s opening was going to fucking kill.

  Suggesting to Helen to schedule the gallery event in the middle of the festival, at the peak of the Hollywood presence and the greatest saturation of money and power, was brilliant on his part. Aside from the fact that he’d contracted with Helen to take a finder’s fee from sales, really what he was selling was Cat.

  The L.A. elite spent their lives grasping for whatever was “the latest.” They worshipped new faces. They obsessed over beauty. They loved whatever someone else told them to love, whatever someone better than them deemed important or rare or special. Michael was a prime example of this, and he knew it. Thank you, Raymond Ebrecht, for passing on the torch.

  Michael was merely doing his duty by telling the rest of the elite to love Cat’s art. He was nothing, if not a trendsetter.

  He was nothing, if not a man obsessed with the one woman who didn’t give a shit about his money or his job. The one woman who wasn’t quite good enough for him.

  His phone rang. With a grunt he pulled off a glove with his teeth. No wonder the industry was based in L.A. If everyone had to jump through these goddamn hoops all the time to get to their phones, the number of tantrums would increase exponentially.

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me you’re on your way.” Grant, his office assistant.

  “I’m on my way.”

  Grant’s voice lowered. “I have Tom Bridger in my eyesight and he’s talking to some random. Get over here and you’ll catch him before the main title.”

  Bridger seeing Michael at the theater before the screening went a hell of a lot further than Michael approaching the director right after. That meant Michael was about to actually sit through the film and hadn’t just popped in during the denouement. Bridger needed to know Michael’s pursuit of him was deadly serious.

  The project for which Michael wanted the young, up-and-coming director was going to be a game changer. But Michael had to slow play him. Bridger was one of those annoying types who were into film for the “art” and publicly decried anything to do with Big Hollywood. So far, Bridger had barely acknowledged the calls from Michael’s production company. Michael’s number-one business goal while in White Clover Creek? Change Bridger’s mind. And he was exactly the kind of guy who’d love Cat, with her aw-shucks likability and raw talent. He’d introduce them as soon as possible and let Cat’s good vibes rub off on Bridger. Everything was coming together so nicely. With Bridger in the director’s chair, the thing would sweep the Oscars.

  The world assumed that winning more Oscars than the record-setting Raymond Ebrecht was every Hollywood producer’s dream. Not for Michael. His goal was much more personal.

  “You there?” Grant’s tinny voice came through the phone.

  “Be there in five.”

  At the bottom of the Waterleaf hill, a respectable crowd gathered outside the Gold Rush for Bridger’s opus on eighteenth-century French prostitutes, shot with one camera and a max on Bridger’s credit cards. A light snow started to fall and Michael had to slow his steps so his loafers wouldn’t send his ass rolling down the sidewalk to the red carpet below.

  His phone buzzed. A text this time.

  “Jesus, Grant,” he mumbled, “I’m almost there.”

  But it wasn’t from Grant. It was Sean, his other assistant.

  Need you up at the house. Now.

  Problem? Michael texted back.

  A surprise from Lea. Get up here.

  Oh, God. She’d brought him another one.

  Michael snapped his phone shut, adrenaline hurtling through his body. Growing up he’d never had the joyful Christmases like you saw in his films, but in the past two years Lea had become his own goddamn Santa: unpredictable, generous, and magical.

  He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, right in front of a boutique that had rolled out racks of sale sweaters and jeans under its awning. A woman walking behind him skittered on the slanted concrete trying to get around him. He didn’t apologize.

  Ten minutes to curtain on Bridger’s film. His rental house up in the mountains a fifteen-minute drive away. He needed to be two places at once.

  No problem.

  He stalked down to the end of the block and hung a tight right. Shit, the narrow, one-way street was full of people posing for pictures against the backdrop of the main square and its horrid statue. He kept going and came out on Groundcherry Street, which bordered the backs of all the buildings along Waterleaf. An overflowing parking lot sat across the street. No celebrities, no gapers.

  He ducked behind the boutique, into a little alcove where new snow was trying to make the old sludge look pretty again. A tower of empty Christmas decoration boxes tilted against the old brick wall and he wedged himself behind it, shielding himself from view, should anyone come along. Good thing he’d inhaled a giant breakfast. He needed the energy.

  Pressing his back against the brick, he drew a deep breath and held it. He closed his eyes and dove into the black of his mind. There, straight down the center of his subconscious, ran a thick, pulsing seam of glowing red. He pushed his awareness into that seam, filling it until the crack widened and widened. He slipped ghostly fingers into the seam, taking hold of each side, and ripped his own mind apart.

  He split.

  The second it happened, Michael went weightless. His body felt like it shot upward from the ground, bobbing like a balloon. The next second, someone yanked on that balloon’s string and he was jerked back downward. His stomach sloshed and lead lined his veins. He inhaled. Exhaled. The world evened out. Then he opened his eyes.

  Michael Ebrecht stood in front of him. The same coat, the same posture, the same face.

  It was not a twin, with a similar face and separate thoughts. It was not a mirror image or doppelgänger. It was him, Michael. Divided.

  The double raised a gloved hand and smoothed down his silvering hair. Always, at the first look after a split, Michael was painfully aware of how he’d aged. H
ow narrow his face had gotten, how all his years spent in L.A. and Miami had weathered his skin. If only he’d figured out how to use the splitting to his advantage at a much earlier age. If only Raymond had actually explained it to him. Or talked to him even. Ah, youth. Wasted on the youth. And Michael’s was most definitely a waste.

  He and his double didn’t need to speak. The other automatically knew what he needed to do and by when. He nodded to Michael, stepped out from behind the boxes and headed back toward Waterleaf. They didn’t share a consciousness, but instead melded together their separate conversations and emotions and occurrences upon reabsorption. He never worried the other would rebel; they had the same goals, the same mind. Within three hours, because that’s how long the energy could last, the two would rejoin, and Michael would learn how the “surprise” meeting with Bridger went.

  Michael stayed huddled behind the boxes until his watch said the screening had started. Then he turned out onto Groundcherry and headed back uphill. He waved down the first cab he saw, only realizing he’d stolen it from someone else when the jilted, irate couple stood on the curb and windmilled their arms. The rusting white minivan with the faded taxi decals pulled away. He couldn’t have called back the limo driver who had toted him into town earlier that day because technically Michael was supposed to be in the screening. The first trick to being two people was to never get caught. The second trick was to use it for every advantage.

  Divide and conquer, he always said.

  The cabdriver whistled as he pulled his rattling source of income into the driveway of the sprawling, two-story fieldstone house Michael had rented for the next two weeks. The driveway made a wide circle around a dry fountain still topped with a decorated Christmas tree.

  “Never driven anyone up here before,” said the cabbie, his mouth hanging open as he peered through the windshield. “It yours or you renting?”

  “Wait for me,” grunted Michael.