Page 49 of Dirty Like Brody
“They’re for the tenth anniversary album. For the tour and everything. And thank you.” She smiled. “They want it to be kind of a retrospective as well as the beginning of a new era. All the new stuff, and the old stuff. They… um… really want you to be a partofthat.”
I looked over at her.Damn… now they had Katie doing theirdirtywork?
“So as you can see,” she went on, her cheeks pinking a little, “this is a business visit as much as a pleasure visit.” She indicated the blank canvas standing on a giant easel in the middle of the room. “Maybe you’ve figured out myagendahere?”
“Yeah. I’m kind of getting thepicture.”
She smiled even bigger. “Then you’ll sit for me? While you’re in town? I can sketch you out, it won’t take too long. I’ll take a few photos too, for reference, so I can get the detailsright.”
“Sure,” I said, because it was Katie. She’d put off her honeymoon for me; how could I refuse? And it was just my image. If Dirty wanted my picture on the album, as part of their tenth anniversary, I could givethemthat.
I took off my ball cap and shook out my hair. “Maybe… you could just let me brush my hairfirst?”
“Of course.” Katie beamed at me. “There’s a washroominback…”
But I wasn’t listening. My eyes had caught on a painting, partly tucked in behind oneofElle.
“Youpainted…Seth?”
It was him; no doubt in my mind. I recognized his eyes above all things, and my stomach turned over. A pale, grayish-green with a burst of gold around the pupils. She’d captured them perfectly. There were more lines to his face than I remembered, and his hair was longer. In the portrait, he had abeard.
But itwasSeth.
“Oh. Yeah,” Katie said, distracted, as she sorted through tubes of paint. “He came to sit for me theotherday.”
Hecameto…
Seth Brothers wasintown?
At Katie’sstudio?
“The band wants him in the album artwork,” she said. “They want him involved. At least, his image, since he co-wrote some of the most successful songs. The band wants to pay tribute to that history, to his contribution. Just like they’re doing with you. Cool, right?” She smiled at me again. “For a bunch of people with such giant egos, they’re prettyhumble,huh?”
“Right,” I said. “Cool.” But there was a lump in my throat as I turned away from that painting, from those eyes that seemed to look rightthroughme.
ChapterTwelve
Jessa
As it turned out,posing for a painting was nothing like posing forphotographs.
While Katie worked I could talk, drink wine, snuggle with Max and pretty much get up and walk around whenever I wanted to. I didn’t even have to suck in my gut or arch my back. She was only doing a portrait ofmyface.
She even said I was free to go once she’d blocked in my face on her canvas and taken a few pics with her phone, but I was in no hurry. It was fun watching Katie work. She got all serious and her eyebrows pinched together, and I could feel how much passion she had forherart.
I could also see why my brother gave her the studio. There was something special here, in her work; in her need to do her work. It was the same thing I saw in my brother when he played: a true life’s passion inaction.
Made me wonder what the hell had happenedtomine.
As a girl, all I ever wanted to do was write. I loved music, poetry, movies, fairy tales and love stories of any kind. I was such a little dreamer. When my brother’s band started writing their own material instead of just playing cover songs, I started playing around with writing lyrics, and as it turned out, I found my passion in it. Not only that… I had a talentforit.
I’d co-written songs with Dirty that millions of people loved. Songs that had made them both famous and respected in the music industry—and made us all a lot ofmoney,too.
And then I’dwalkedaway.
I’d given up the thing I most loved, most wanted to do—and the man I’d most wanted to have—and pursued another life. One that I was good at, but at the end of the day really meant nothingtome.
Anemptylife.
