“I’m absolutely not brooding.”
She points at my forehead, and I realize my brows are furrowed.
“Right there. Very tortured prince.”
“That’s concentration.”
She crouches for a lower angle, and I resist the urge to fix my hair.
“You don’t like being photographed?”
“Usually, when my photo is taken, it’s used against me,” I explain. “Please excuse me if I have an aversion.”
“That’s the price of being who you are.” She rises and moves to my other side. “How so very tragic for the future king of Montclaire.”
“Your sarcasm isn’t lost,” I tell her.
“Great.” She starts mixing paint on her palette, and it’s followed by the scrape of the knife against wood.
“Speak freely,” she says, waving her hand around.
“Do you get off on ordering me around?” I sit back in the chair, watching her.
“Do you get off on needing direction?” She loads her brush, then glances up at me. “Tell me something about you that I can’t find in the tabloids.” She starts painting.
The request catches me off guard because most people don’t bother asking or care. They assume they know everything about me, and that’s enough.
“I collect postcards,” I say.
Her brush pauses mid-stroke. “Really?”
“From everywhere I’ve traveled. I have hundreds of them in a box under my bed.”
“That’s unexpectedly sentimental.” She tilts her head, studying me, then returns to the canvas. “Do you write on them?”
“Only when I send them to friends, but the ones I purchase for myself, I keep them blank.”
“Why?”
“Because the image is enough to make me remember the day I purchased it, where I was standing, and what I was thinking.” I shift in the chair, and she doesn’t tell me to sit still.
She’s quiet for a moment, and I hear the soft drag of bristles against canvas. “I like that answer.”
“Your turn. Tell me something the art world doesn’t know about Addison Cross.”
She doesn’t respond right away, and I watch her load more paint onto her brush. The silence stretches long enough that I think she’s going to deflect with a joke or change the subject.
“I used to be shy,” she finally says. “Like, I barely spoke to anyone.”
I study her face for any sign she’s messing with me. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not.” She keeps her eyes on the canvas. “I was the quiet one. Patterson and Jameson were loud and competitive and grabbed attention in every room they entered, and I … disappeared into the background. My parents forgot I was there. Kids at boarding school thought I was stuck up because I never talked, but really, I didn’t have anything to say.”
I try to reconcile this with the woman who walked into Marcelo’s party and held the attention of every person in the room without trying.
“What changed?”
“I started painting.” She switches brushes and grins. “My mom enrolled me in art classes when I was eight because she didn’t know what else to do with me. I was terrible at sports and dance. Music was a failure. Everyone expected me to be an athlete, but I didn’t have the natural abilities, and I hate group activities. But the first time I put paint on canvas and learned how to express myself, it gave me the confidence I needed to come out of my shell.”
