The Artist's Touch (The Gentlemen's Guild Book 1) Read online

  “Wonderful,” Tristan said, breaking the silence, taking Ellie’s clipboard from her and strolling back over to the table where Morgan sat.

  He made brief eye contact with Morgan as he sat the clipboard down in front of him, choosing to ignore the perplexed and questioning look that Morgan returned. What had just happened wasn’t typical for Tristan; Pierce, maybe, but not Tristan. Usually, he just sat behind the table and watched Pierce make all the models either excited or uncomfortable with his blatantly sexual overtures. Tristan usually kept his distance during the audition, and he definitely didn’t this time, and he was sure that Morgan was going to ask him about it.

  “Miss Carter,” he began, turning back to his siren.

  She’s not yours. Yet.

  The thought brought a devious smile to his face as he walked back over to her.

  “We’ll continue the process tomorrow. Come to one fifty-seven west fifty-seventh street tomorrow at noon,” he instructed quietly, keeping some distance from her, and ignoring the cough that came from behind him, from Morgan.

  He was already going to be in pain for the rest of the afternoon; he’d already let himself be taken unawares by her. He needed some space.

  “Oh, ok. Of course,” she stuttered, “is that it? For today? I mean, do you have any questions for me? Do I need to fill anything out? Well, I mean, I know I filled out those other forms, but… I’m sorry, I’m rambling.”

  She stopped and laughed at herself. Tristan wanted nothing more than to be able to silence her with a kiss.

  Soon.

  “That’s it for today, Miss Carter,” he clarified. “I will see you tomorrow.”

  “Of course, thank you so much,” she said, gracing him with a gorgeous smile that lit up her emerald eyes, “oh, you can call me Ellie. Miss Carter is just… well, just call me Ellie.”

  Her hand came up to cover her mouth as she realized that she was rambling again. Mumbling a thank you, she turned and walked out of the room and Tristan was pretty sure he heard her stumble as soon as the door shut behind her; he couldn’t help himself from laughing.

  “What was that all about?” Morgan’s voice cut through his thoughts.

  Morgan was always so damn nosy.

  “What do you mean?” Tristan replied, trying to play down his actions.

  “All…that…” Morgan responded vaguely, gesticulating with his arms, trying to refer to what had just happened between Tristan and the models.

  “It was nothing.”

  The look Morgan gave him at his answer said that he didn’t believe him, and Tristan couldn’t afford any questions, or worse, having Morgan tell the rest of the guys how he had just behaved.

  “Pierce wasn’t here to make them squirm. How can I judge if they are right for the piece if all they do it stand there? I needed to see some sort of reaction from them, and without Pierce, that left me to provoke it,” he continued with his explanation, coolly.

  “I see,” Morgan responded, clearly processing Tristan’s response, wondering if it was just a little too believable.

  “What?” Tristan pushed back, daring his business partner to question him.

  “Nothing,” Morgan replied, his hands raising in mock submission before continuing. “So, what was up with the girl you picked though? Not usually your style.”

  Tristan turned away from his friend, his jaw clenching in annoyance at having to explain everything that he had just done.

  “I don’t know. Figured I’d try something different for this stupid competition that Pierce signed us up for. None of the others intrigued me,” he responded casually as he began to gather the minimal things that he had brought with him, including the forms that the models had filled out. His blood fired up at the thought of just how much she had intrigued him.

  “Well, she was certainly different than the rest, that’s for sure,” Morgan said with a chuckle, “Elsa Carter…any chance she’s related to Jack Carter? The man who has your mom’s portrait.”

  Fuck.

  “I have no idea,” Tristan, turned to face Morgan, trying to reply as nonchalantly as possible, “it’s a pretty common name. Who knows, maybe she’s related to Jay-Z and Beyoncé, too.” His sarcastic retort might have been too much of a protest against the connection but he couldn’t take it back.

  Morgan and he locked eyes and stared at each other for a moment, each trying to assess the truth of what the other was thinking; Tristan, daring Morgan to contradict him. A few seconds later, Morgan let his gaze fall with a heavy sigh.

  “I hope you know what you are doing.”

  Well, it wasn’t like he had much of a choice.

  “Winning, that’s what I’m doing,” Tristan responded with a confident smile as he started walking towards the door. “Thanks for arranging everything, man. Talk soon.”

  “Oh hey!” Morgan exclaimed just before Tristan made it safely through the doorway, “did I hear you give her your apartment address?”

  Fuck.

  It wasn’t a codified rule, but there was a general assumption throughout the group that models weren’t to be taken to their private residences; too many potential problems, too much information to be gleaned. What if they came back after the modeling contract period was up? No, there was too much that could go wrong which is why they never did it.

  Plus, it would have given the women an even greater sense of attachment to them, which was not what they were going for – or, at least he wasn’t.

  But, this time, he had. He had asked her to come to his apartment, his home, and Morgan had heard.

  “I rented space in the Park Hyatt,” Tristan replied, thinking quickly on his feet.

  The Park Hyatt hotel sat below One57 and basically shared the same address.

  “I see,” came Morgan’s hesitant response.

  Tristan waited for another second to see if Morgan would question him again before walking out of the door, hoping that with some thought, Morgan would choose to believe him and forget about the whole thing.

  Hopping in a cab, Tristan anxiously waited to get back to his place so that he could take a cold shower and punish his body for its traitorous thoughts.

  Chapter 4

  What had he been thinking?

  He hadn’t been thinking and that was the problem. Tristan grunted in frustration and exertion as he did his fiftieth pull-up. She was going to be here in two hours and he was trying to exercise himself into exhaustion so that his body couldn’t respond to her even if he wanted to.

  Ellie. Elsa.

  It was almost like two different people. Ellie. Her nickname suited her – it was warm and endearing and just a little quirky; even in the brief moments that he’d been in her presence, he could tell just how well her nickname fit her. Elsa, on the other hand, completely didn’t fit with her personality; Elsa was cold, frozen in formality. He’d never thought so hard about a woman’s name before, but the dichotomy between the two was so stark.

  Then again, he’d never thought so hard about a woman in general before, and it was royally pissing him off that he would start with her of all people.

  He tried to convince himself last night that it was only because he was forced to draw her that he was so ensnared. He ignored the fact that he hadn’t realized who she was until after he had already set his sights on her; he couldn’t ignore that his reaction to her in spite of who she was made him even angrier. His body was betraying him; he couldn’t fall for the daughter of the man blackmailing him, who herself could be up to something just as malicious.

  He focused on that anger, letting it fuel his workout and his plan for how to handle Ellie. He swore to himself that yesterday was the last time he would let her have so much power over his emotions; from now on this was his show, he was going to treat her just like he did every other woman who modeled for him, and she would play right into his process without even realizing what had happened.

  The Guild members each had different methods to achieve their final works; Sloane usually sculpted
the model in a way that resulted in a piece portraying modesty and blissful innocence. Pierce portrayed women in the throes of passion, enraptured in desire. And Tristan, well, his drawings usually showed a variety of those deeper emotions, sometimes it was passion, but it was passion combined with a deeper attachment, which was more than Pierce’s representation of purely physical lust.

  Most times, he chose to draw the pain or sadness that came after he told the woman – the model – that there was nothing more to the physical relationship than the job and what the contract entailed, even those his previous actions might have tempted them to assume otherwise. That sadness, bordering on heartbreak, was usually the deepest and most moving emotion he could evoke from them.

  The only thing that he had never attempted with them was love - which is why the portrait of his mother must have come as a shock to those who had followed his work very closely over the years as a digression from the norm. Her portrait was the only thing he’d ever made that could truly show love because it was the only time he’d ever felt it.

  Most times, it seemed that the Guild’s pieces together told a story, showing the progression from innocence into passion that finally ended in heartbreak – even though Tristan’s works weren’t always representing sadness. They never planned it that way, but there was a reason they each focused on the specific emotion that they did; they never brought the reasons up – a kind of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, leaving each member to handle their past and their emotions as they saw fit.

  Sloane’s process was a mystery to both him and Pierce. He was always very secretive during the time when he was working; Sloane also found his models separately from the rest of them, no matter how many times they suggested just having one audition for all three of them. Even though Sloane was normally a pushover when it came to most things, when it came to his work, he was not.

  Pierce was on the complete other end of the spectrum. He was the most vocal about his process and the most ostentatious because like most things, he just didn’t give a shit. Sometimes, he would pick one model, sometimes he would pick more than one, fuck more than one, draw more than one, and then narrow down once the pieces were completed. Everything about him – his demeanor, his words, everyone who showed up to the auditions knew exactly what additional benefits were included if they chose to model for Pierce; this is why Tristan usually tagged on to his auditions, because it meant less work for him. Pierce would have probably signed any or all of the first three women he’d seen today; Pierce would have taunted them, excited them, he would have made it easy to see which women were more ideal for Tristan to use. It was a symbiotic relationship – Pierce put in the work, and Tristan put up with Pierce and his shenanigans. They even used to share a warehouse studio, but after the second year, Tristan moved out and found his own space; Pierce and his model, or models, were a little too consistently loud and distracting for him to focus.

  Tristan fell somewhere in the middle of his two cohorts, usually preferring a more well-rounded approach to get to know his subject. It made sense - in order to achieve that deeper emotion, there had to have been some attachment, some bond formed between Tristan and his model in the first place. So, Tristan got to know the women he drew; he paid attention to them, he took them out places, encouraged them to talk to him, and shared – certain parts – of his life with them. Some had already experienced trauma or heartbreak in their lives, that made his job a little easier, drawing out that emotion to replicate. If that wasn’t the case, when they were comfortable with him, he drew their relationship even deeper into the physical realm, giving them intense passion and pleasure, letting that build and capturing that. But, in this case, he was going to take it that much farther.

  He didn’t know if Jack had realized just how well Tristan got to know his subjects, but he was going to make absolutely certain that his daughter found out the hard way.

  He was going to make her fall for him, hard, and then he was going to break her beautiful heart.

  The sharp pain in his chest that accompanied that thought he attributed to the intense workout he was having and all of the stress that he had been under; it was not a twinge of guilt for his plan; it was not a pain in his heart at the thought of hurting hers. He didn’t even know her.

  That wasn’t to say that in the past he’d never felt bad for breaking hearts because some women had certainly taken it harder than others, but the contract was very clear; the models were hired to do exactly that: model. If they got caught up in the process, in his process of getting to know them, that was their own fault; he never promised it was more than what it was. Just like how he got about the competition with Pierce (obsessed about winning) it was the same when he worked on a piece for their exhibit. He hated to say that it was a game, but it was a battle to win someone’s trust, to win access to their deepest emotions and to control them, and it was one that he needed to win; it was what drove him, constantly winning that affection.

  He’d never set out with the intent of breaking someone’s heart before; sometimes it had happened as a side effect, which is why he tried to pick the models who didn’t seem like they would read too much more into it than there was. This time, though, his goal wasn’t to win her, it was to watch her lose him.

  Jack Carter wanted her portrait; well, this was how Tristan operate, and he was going to relish watching just what cost Ellie Carter was going to have to pay for her father’s selfishness.

  He had his reasons for getting close to the models, for finding out what made them vulnerable, what made them break down, but he rarely opened that locked door in his mind to revisit them. In this case, his reason was simple: Carter had been deceitful and blackmailed him, using something so important to him against him. Now, Tristan was going to do the same thing; he was going to use Ellie against her father, he was going to break her and made Jack regret ever thinking that he had had the upper hand.

  With that ominous thought, Tristan dropped down from the pull-up bar in the gym in his building, grabbed his water bottle, and chugged the remainder of its contents. Picking up a towel, he wiped his forehead and went back upstairs to his condo to change and shower. This was hardly even a business transaction with the blackmail involved and he would be damned if he let it become more than that.

  Tossing his gym clothes on the floor, he hopped in the shower to quickly wash off. He only had an hour before Ellie would be here and he needed to prepare himself. He wasn’t expecting his reaction to her the last time. He’d never experienced a response like that to anyone before, which is why he tried not to think about it. He didn’t want to attribute any significance to it, convincing himself that he was just inordinately attracted to her. He didn’t want her to be special because if she was special, if she was different than all of the women before her, he wouldn’t be able to do what needed to be done.

  She means nothing to you; you don’t even know her.

  The words became his mantra as he dried himself off, his muscles throbbing in complete exhaustion from his workout.

  Perfect.

  Throwing on jeans and a white tee, he went into the kitchen to make a protein shake; only twenty minutes until she would be here.

  For some reason, he found himself walking around his apartment making sure that everything was clean and looked neat. It wasn’t like he was a messy person in the first place, but he couldn’t stop himself from making sure that everything looked presentable.

  You just don’t want her finding out more about you than you are willing to offer, that’s all.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d brought a woman here, if he ever had. He was always working or at the studio, he barely even slept here. Taking the last sip of his chocolate shake, he rinsed the bottle and put it in the dishwasher, just as the phone in his apartment rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Black, it’s John from the front desk, there is a Miss Elsa Carter here to see you,” the concierge responded.

  “Send her up,” Tr
istan responded. Hanging up the phone, he turned to look at the clock. She was fifteen minutes early. Since when was a woman fifteen minutes early for anything? He quickly washed his hands before glancing around the apartment one more time looking for anything that might seem out of place.

  Do not lose control, Tristan; remember your goal; remember what is at stake.

  He walked to stand by couch that faced the entryway, hand resting on the sofa, he closed his eyes for a moment to focus. As if he could sense her presence, his eyes opened, staring directly at the door, surprised that the fire burning in them didn’t burn right through the wood to her.

  Knock, knock.

  The knock was almost barely perceptible. He fought his instinct to rush, instead walking calmly over to the door; wiping all emotion from his face, he opened the door. His eyes flared in recognition, his blood firing on seeing the familiar, freckled face, framed by her glossy, red waves. This time, he didn’t have to provoke her, as soon as his eyes locked with hers, she felt the shock of desire pass through them, her mouth parting slightly. His jaw clenched for a second, trying to reign in the need that burned through him.

  “Miss Carter,” he said huskily, “please come in.” He moved back from the doorway, allowing her to enter.

  Today, again, she was dressed very practically, and yet he couldn’t imagine her being any more enticing. She wore a pair of cropped navy pants that seemed to mold to the muscles of her legs and her shapely ass. Her white blouse had three-quarter length sleeves and a gold zipper embellishment on the front, drawing his eyes to the hint of cleavage that peeked out from above it.

  He watched her forced swallow as she hesitantly entered his apartment, her beige loafers hardly making a sound on the hardwood floor. Even though he looked closely, he saw no sign of skepticism in her face, merely that of startled curiosity as though she hadn’t experienced the feeling of desire that had left her breathless.

  “I...ahh…thank you,” she responded, hesitantly, finally finding her words. “This is a lovely building. I didn’t realize this is where I would be coming. Well, I mean, I knew that this is where I was going, obviously…”