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I smiled into my drink.

That was about to change.

Denise Ellis curated exhibitions for two galleries in Los Angeles and advised enough private collectors that getting her attention could do more for Samantha than another year of submitting slides to people who wouldn’t bother looking at them.

I’d met her twice. That was all it had taken to get Samantha’s painting in front of her. I hadn’t told Samantha that part. She’d spent the drive into the city making me promise I hadn’t paid anyone, bribed anyone, or told Denise she had to like her work.

I could buy Samantha a gallery tomorrow if that was what she wanted. I could fill it with every painting she’d ever made and put her name across the front in letters large enough to see from the fucking street.

But she wouldn’t want that.

Samantha wanted to believe she’d earned everything herself. I was learning when to let her.

Denise finally stepped away from the painting.

“I have a group exhibition coming up next month. Mostly emerging artists.” She looked at Samantha. “I’d like to include this.”

“I’m sorry. What?”

Denise smiled. “I’d like to show your painting.”

“Seriously?”

“Very.”

Samantha looked at me.

That was the moment I’d been waiting for.

Three weeks ago, she’d barely wanted to call me.

Now, when something she’d wanted for years was suddenly sitting in front of her, I was the first person she looked at.

I smiled. “Don’t look at me. It’s your painting.”

Her smile widened.

Denise excused herself a few minutes later to speak with someone across the gallery.

Samantha waited until she was out of earshot before turning to me.

“Oh my God, Richard. She wants my painting.” Samantha grabbed my arm, practically bouncing where she stood. “In an actual exhibition. People are going to come here and see something I made! I can’t believe this.”

I’d known Denise would like her work. I wouldn’t have brought Samantha here if I thought otherwise.

She looked back at the painting, then at me again, and there was something almost childlike about how happy she looked. No sarcasm or suspicion about why I’d done something for her. For once, Samantha wasn’t trying to figure out what I wanted from her.

She was just happy.

And I was responsible for it.

“I don’t even know what to say.” She shook her head. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Denise wants your painting because it’s good.”