Jamison (Beautiful Mine #3) Read Online Free Page A

school at Johns Hopkins. Moved here for work.”
    “Kansas, eh?” She looked me up and down. “Nothing about you screams ‘Kansas’ to me.”
    I smiled. “That’s a good thing, right?”
    She held up a hand. “Your words.”
    “What about you?” I asked, bringing the mug to my lips for another careful sip.
    “I’ve lived here a couple years,” she said. “I rent this place from Mia. She gave me a hell of a deal, or else I’d never be able to afford it in a million years. I graduated from Taylor Art School in upstate New York.”
    “What brought you here?”
    “Art,” she sighed dreamily. “Thought I was going to make it big. Sell a bunch of paintings and live the life.”
    “You’ve still got plenty of time,” I chuckled. “You’re young. Nothing’s stopping you.”
    Her eyes dropped to the floor, and for a moment, she appeared lost in thought. “My future’s unwritten, at this point. Anything could happen.”
    “Your paintings are beautiful,” I said, eyeing them from across the room. Even from the street at night, they were beautiful. Abstract. Colorful. Dreamy.
    “Thanks,” she said humbly.
    “You ever try to sell them?”
    She blushed. “I thought it’d be easy to ask people to buy my work. I mean, I studied art in college. I went to art school. I’ve been painting since I could hold a brush, but… here, in this city, it’s hard.”
    I scrunched my face. “Your paintings are beautiful, Sophie. I don’t say things I don’t mean. You have real talent.”
    “I used to paint things,” she said. “Still lifes. Portraits. Now I just paint those.” Her eyes drifted to throngs of abstract canvases leaning against the brick walls. “Somewhere along the line, I lost my ability to paint anything real. No one wants to buy shit that looks like the stuff their three-year-old brings home from preschool every day.”
    I shook my head. “You’re selling yourself short.”
    She stood up, mug in hand, and headed to her makeshift art studio. I followed. “Mia’s renovating her store, adding a high-end gallery to the front and moving the supplies to the back. We’re going to put our stuff on display and see what happens.”
    “Are these for sale?” My gaze honed in on a piece covered in streaks of grays, blacks, and blues, reminding me of a stormy Kansas summer night. “This piece was made for my living room.”
    “Seriously?” she said, peering at me from the corner of her eye. “Make me an offer.”
    “A thousand dollars enough?” I asked.
    Her jaw dropped and she tried to stifle a smile. She reached down and pulled it out from the wall. “On the house.”
    “On the house?”
    “Since you helped me the other night,” she said, biting her lip. “With my ankle and the paint and everything. And you walked me home tonight. Just—please. You can have it.”
    “I can’t,” I objected.
    “Your money’s no good here.” Her eyes gazed over my shoulder, peering out the windows that led directly to a view of my place. “Storm’s getting worse. Listen, I’ll just keep this here, and next time the weather’s better, I can drop it off at your place.”
    “There’s no arguing with you, is there?”
    She set the painting against the wall and traipsed back to the living room, plopping down on the cushy sofa. “Never.”
    I followed her, opting not to sit back down as I stared into the bottom of my empty hot chocolate mug.
    “I’ve got to work early tomorrow morning,” I said, walking my cup to her kitchen and rinsing it in the sink before returning to her living room. “We can’t all be bohemian painters.”
    “Funny,” she said with a wink as she scrunched her nose at me. She stood to walk me to her door, lingering in the doorway for a moment as I buttoned my coat. Her brown eyes drank me in, whether or not she knew she was doing it. “Which apartment is yours over there?”
    “3A,” I told her, knotting my thick scarf around my neck and tucking the tails into the front