Read Online So Damn Beautiful (A New Adult Romance) by L.J. Kennedy - Free Book Online Page B

to the next
stratosphere. Think about it. George Clooney’s one of her clients.”
The redhead was talking weirdly fast, perhaps in an attempt both to
divert attention away from the boob girl and to keep Chase’s
interest.
    I rolled my eyes. Apparently, she didn’t know
the guy that well if she was appealing to his desire for fame. As I
made that observation, two things happened simultaneously. A small
mob of girls who looked like they were about to swoon and faint
circled Chase, vying for his attention—at the very moment he caught
my eye.
    My heart started beating double-time, even as
I felt myself retracting from my body. Shit , I thought. He’s coming over!
    Somehow, Chase had managed to beg off his
little platoon of fans. He had a cocky smile on his perfect lips as
he walked toward me.
    “If it isn’t Goldilocks, and her baby boo,
too!” He gave Kendra a cursory nod, at which point Kendra pierced
me with an I’ll-leave-you-to-handle-this look and skedaddled off
toward the wine bar.
    Chase stepped closer to me, and I could smell
whiskey on his breath, but as I inhaled, it was like I was
breathing in a tantalizing and heady mixture of velvet and
leather.
    “What . . . what are you doing here?” I
asked, dazed by his closeness and, as always, mildly irritated by
his ability to strike me dumb and wordless.
    “I’m guessing I’m here for the same reason as
you—to see the man himself, Quentin Pierce.” Chase pronounced the
artist’s name with such a sense of significance that I wondered
whether he was serious or joking.
    “You’re a fan?” I asked, trying to sound cool
and disinterested.
    He tilted his head to one side and sucked in
his cheeks, like he was deciding whether or not to let me in on a
little secret. I shifted my weight nervously. “I guess you could
say . . . I have some regard for him, from way back before his work
became a dog-and-pony show for all the Upper West Side
flunkies.”
    At that point, a video monitor close to my
head turned on. Startled, I backed up so that I was practically on
top of Chase. “Uh, sorry,” I said, embarrassed.
    “I’d be all herky-jerky, too, if I was coming
into contact with this shit for the first time,” he said drily.
    The monitor flashed a few times before the
screen alighted on an old interview with Quentin Pierce. I couldn’t
tell who was interviewing him, but it was very cinema verité–style,
with Quentin walking down an urban block and turning to the shaky
camera every now and then with a comment. He was wearing a T-shirt
with colorful graffiti spray-painted across it and torn, faded
jeans, and his hair was scraggly and long. He even had a beard. I
wouldn’t have known it was Quentin if it weren’t for the subtitle
next to his face. “You know, man, whatever the peanut-gallery side
commentary is trying to tell us, street art is here to stay. Banksy
and Shepard Fairey have pretty much changed the art world for the
better in a lasting way, so don’t believe the haters on the
streets,” he said earnestly, as he took a drag from a cigarette and
pointed out some murals on a street corner.
    I raised an eyebrow. This was Quentin
Pierce? It was a far cry from his current persona, which was fewer
words and more voguing. I wasn’t all that up on fashion, but I’d
say he was undergoing some kind of androgynous David Bowie phase at
press time.
    As if Chase had read my mind, he remarked,
“That was Quentin circa 2005, way before he achieved megasuccess.
Now it’s all played out. I mean, take a look at all this
installation crap. Haters gonna hate and all, but let’s be
honest—it just plain sucks. No innovation. Pedantic and boring. His
early stuff, before any of the shit you see here, wasn’t trying to
hit you over the head with a message. It was true to where he came
from: the streets. It was a description of the world around him,
but it was also a description of the world people like us are
trying to create. None of that MTV bullshit. That’s