Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 82698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 413(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 413(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
When Saskia opens her door to the tall, handsome, and sexy-as-hell stranger, she can’t fight their immediate electric and irresistible attraction. But even after passionate kisses and seductive nights, she still can’t give Clay what he wants. She’s sworn to keep San Holo’s identity a secret no matter the cost…even if love is on the line.
When their two hearts and bodies collide like shooting stars, is there any way they can create a love that will last forever? Or will the cost of keeping secrets destroy any chance at having the love they’ve both craved for so long?
PAINTED IN LOVE is part of Bella Andre and Jennifer Skully’s bestselling series about The Maverick Billionaires. While it can easily be read as a standalone story, you'll likely enjoy reading the other books too.
THE MAVERICK BILLIONAIRES
Breathless In Love
Reckless In Love
Fearless In Love
Irresistible In Love
Wild In Love
Captivating In Love
Unforgettable In Love
Endless in Love
Reunited in Love
Painted in Love
*** More Maverick Billionaires are coming soon! ***
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Prologue
People think the night is darkest at midnight. They’re wrong. True dark comes just before dawn, when the temperature drops and the fog rolls in. I pull my hoodie over my head to keep my ears warm. A streetlight shines through the fog, giving me just enough light to work by. This alley in San Francisco’s Mission District is perfect for my next masterpiece.
Night is when I work, with the foggy halos around the streetlights. This isn’t commissioned work, but a piece for myself. I’ve been dreaming about it for weeks now, but I’ve been too busy to get out here. My best work is always the stuff I paint just for myself. Don’t get me wrong—commissions are good, my bread and butter. I’m not ashamed of that. But this work, it’s special.
The narrow, dingy, stinky alley—I’ve painted in places far worse than this—is off the beaten track, definitely not an attraction on the street art tours. Most likely, no one will ever see what I’ve painted, let alone realize it’s my work, unless they look closely. But no one will. Because it’s street art, and the next artist will paint right over it. I don’t care. All I care about is getting the images out of my head and onto the wall. That’s how I stay sane—by painting the pictures out of my head. Until another one comes along from some deep secret place inside me.
Out here, no one tells me what to paint. No one judges it. Under the veil of night, that’s when I feel most creative.
As dawn breaks through the dark and the fog, I step away to survey what I’ve done. “Yeah,” I say aloud. “This is good.”
I’ve got to remember to get out here more often, to work in the middle of the night. Because these are my roots. This is where I came from—the dark, the cold, the loneliness of the middle of the night.
I look behind me. Yes, the street is lighter than before. The dawn is coming. I need to get away before the light hits me. I add my last flourish, then escape down the alley, leaving behind the tools of my trade. Some other street artist will need them.
By the time I make it back to the place where I sleep, the sky is lightening. Fog still shrouds the city by the bay, but in a little while, it’ll be gone, just as I’ll be gone.
Like a vampire, I climb into my bed as the sun spills its rays over the city.
Chapter One
Clay Harrington looked at the kid beside him. Pretty soon, Dylan might be taller than him, though Clay was well over six feet. “If you want to do more street art,” he said, “this is a great place for it.”
They’d come out early on a Wednesday morning, before Dylan had to get to school, to San Francisco’s Mission District, famous for its street art. Early April could be cool in the Bay Area, but neither of them minded.
A lanky kid three months shy of his eighteenth birthday, Dylan Beck pushed his longish hair back from his face. Clay would have called its color dirty blond, but since Dylan was a foster child, the term felt demeaning.
Dylan shrugged. “I don’t know.” They stood in front of a mural resembling a robot made of small buildings melded together into its robot parts.
“But you’ve already done a lot of street art,” Clay reminded Dylan.
Again, he shrugged. “That’s just stuff.”
Clay knew what he meant. Dylan got out his frustrations by throwing paint at the wall. But Clay wanted to see the kid put his best work out there.
He’d mentored Dylan since Rosie and Gideon Jones’s wedding six months ago. It started out as a favor to Gideon, who’d met the kid through his foundation, Lean on Us. Dylan would soon be aging out of the foster care system, and he’d been getting into trouble tagging in places where he shouldn’t. Since Clay worked with a lot of artists, Gideon had asked him to help out, claiming Clay understood the artistic temperament.
Clay had come to appreciate the brilliant young street artist. He’d given Dylan a studio in his warehouse, among the other artists Clay assisted. While the kid’s tagging was good, the stuff he created in his studio came straight from the heart.
Instead of telling Dylan he needed to put his real work out there, Clay had brought him to the Mission District, home to some of the most amazing murals in the city, maybe even the country. Many of these wall paintings weren’t strictly street art, because the nature of street art was that it could be painted over, sometimes the same night it was created. These commissioned murals would remain for all to enjoy, but there were plenty of nooks and crannies where street artists could make their mark.