...“I’ll let you represent me if you come to my house and spend the next forty-eight hours doing anything I say. If you’re still able to walk out my door, I’ll sign the contract.”

The statement hung in the air surrounding them for three complete heartbeats.

“So? How about it? You’re an entrepreneur, right? You built an art empire from nothing. Are you willing to put it all on the line?”

Clay Fife looked at the fey creature standing in front of him.

She was Edith Agnes Raines and should have been a little, old lady wearing support hose and wildly flowered dresses. She was anything but dumpy, even if she was dressed like no woman he’d ever seen. Before he’d ever met her, this woman had been haunting him.

Now she taunted his male pride.

“I can’t believe you want to make this bet,” Clay said.

She smiled. It was like a hungry feline looking at a breakfast mouse. At six-foot-four-and-a-half inches tall and two-hundred-twenty pounds, Clay wasn’t used to feeling like a mouse.

“Why? Don’t tell me you’re one of those men who thinks only they can make the first move?”

“Of course not,” Clay asserted. “I will admit I’ve never had an artist respond this way when I’ve offered to bring their work to the world.”

“It seems you’ve been dealing with the wrong kind of artists then, Mr. Fife.”