“Now I feel like I live in a bubble. Cameras follow my clients into the shop; reporters dog me for the inside scoop. I’ve had reporters try to pay me off, seduce me, threaten me. They are relentless. ”
She sighed and turned back to him. “Now how clean my personal image is becomes a factor in w
hether this billionaire will have me design his daughter’s wedding dress and the dresses for her eighteen bridesmaids to the tune of half a million dollars. Whether this big New York designer wants to take me on as a partner and distribute my work in stores I can’t even imagine reaching on my own. ”
Jax nodded slowly, raked his bottom lip between his teeth, but it didn’t ease the growing knot in his chest. “And it doesn’t matter who I am as a person. Your biggest clients would take one look at me—my leathers, my tattoos, my too long hair, my motorcycle, the cuts and bruises and occasional black eyes—and jump to their own conclusions. Then judge you based on those. And take their business elsewhere. ”
And based on how much of this she’d done on her own and the fact that she’d grown up poor, he’d bet this was all she had.
He huffed a humorless laugh. “Yeah, I get it. ”
And he was disgusted with the whole superficial scene—one prevalent in the entire LA area, not just Hollywood. More, he hated the way it kept him from what he wanted most. Lexi.
She clasped her hands, threaded her fingers, and looked down at the floor again. “It’s that, yes. But, it’s also…” She swallowed. Her hands twisted. “I’ve just come too close to losing everything because I trusted. I hoped. And it’s, I don’t know, scarred me…or scared me…or both. ”
She started laughing, an exhausted, disheartened sound, and pressed her hands to her cheeks. “See, aren’t you glad I didn’t tell you all this last month? You’d have thought I was psychotic. ’Cause…well, I kind of am…”
She covered her face and made a sound Jax couldn’t decipher between a laugh and a sob.
“I’m glad you didn’t,” he said, “but not because of that. I’d have been freaking intimidated. I think… No, I know, I’m still intimidated. I know a dozen corporate executives who can’t handle their personal and professional lives so well, Lex. ”
She dropped her hands and gestured to her face, wet with tears again. “I’m obviously not handling it all that well. ”
He grimaced. “You were until I messed things up. ”
“No. ” She approached him and gripped his arms. “This is not your fault. This is not about you not fitting in. This is about me putting on a face to be what others think I should be to keep my business going. ”
She heaved a sigh and slid her hands down his arms until her fingers wound around his, then pulled him toward a corner of the shop. He followed, hoping she was going to drag him into a chair in some corner, raise her little dress, and straddle his lap, bridge this growing distance between them. But she started up a set of stairs in the back.
Even better. Her apartment. His mind drifted away from all the problems between them and straight to getting her naked, filling her, and staying there the rest of the night.
At the top of the stairs, an open space stretched the length of the shop. One glance and Jax could see this wasn’t an apartment. It was an office and a workroom with a bed in the corner.
She had a drafting table on one side of the room, another long table with fabric bolts lined up, pattern pieces stacked, sketches layered everywhere and lining the walls. Three different mannequins stood in a corner, each wearing partially finished dresses in different states of completion beside an industrial sewing machine, it too covered in pattern pieces and stray fabric and trim.
Her bed was pushed up against two walls, the only other furniture a nightstand and a small dresser.
“This is me. ” She gestured to the chaotic space. Messy but clean. The space of a creative genius. He’d been around enough artists and writers to know what kind of spaces produced the really radical, ground-breaking shit. This was it.
She walked to the banister and gestured to where they’d just been. “That is who I have to be to do…” She waved to her drawing table. “…that. To make a living at what I love to do. The only thing I know how to do. ”
The same way Jax had to live in LA to make a living at what he loved to do. He understood. He did. But he wasn’t finding any easy solution to the issue.
She turned back to him with so much worry and pain and regret in those gorgeous eyes, his mind flickered toward becoming exactly what she needed just to be able to look at her forever. He had the breeding, the knowledge, the skill. He’d have an entire fucking fan club in his family alone.
But he wouldn’t be himself.
“I’m not too good to be true, Jax. I may look good on the surface, but on the inside…” She winced. “I’m really a pretty ugly mess. ”
Jax scraped one hand through his hair. He wasn’t going to try to argue with her here or now. “Honestly, babe, I’m digging this ugly mess. But…Lexi…Jesus, living here? Do you even have a closet?”
“Across from the bathroom. ” She pointed to the corner opposite her bed, “Through that door. ”
Jax crossed the space, peering into a dark room. “Lex, this is not a bathroom, this is a hole in the wall. ” His entire living room was the size of this freaking store, and he suddenly wanted to spoil her in his luxurious house that went to waste, empty most of the time. He turned out of the space. “How much do you charge for the dresses?”
“Anywhere between fifteen and fifty thousand, depending on the work involved. ”
Jax made an involuntary sucking sound in his throat. He finally choked out, “Fifty thousand dollars?”