Читать книгу Tall, Dark... Collection - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 21

SIX weeks later Hebe was still waiting for the promised telephone call from Nick Cavendish.

She had been a fool ever to expect that he would phone, of course, and several conversations with Kate over the last few weeks had confirmed that Nick Cavendish did not get seriously involved with any of the women he went out with. The number of women he had been involved with since the end of his marriage, also according to Kate, had been legion, and none of them, Kate had told her wistfully—as if she’d guessed Hebe’s interest was more than casual—had ever been employees of the Cavendish Galleries.

Or if they had they very quickly hadn’t been, Hebe had decided.

In fact, she had lived most of the last six weeks half expecting to be told her employment at the Cavendish Gallery had been terminated. Of course it wasn’t as easy as that to get rid of people nowadays, but she didn’t doubt that if he wanted her out of here, Nick Cavendish would find a way.

The fact that he was—at last!—due back at the London gallery next week, in time for the opening of an exhibition they were giving was not conducive to helping Hebe concentrate on her work.

In fact, she felt decidedly clumsy today, and had been dropping things most of the morning, not seeming to be coordinated at all. Of course she knew the reason for her steadily increasing nervousness. Nick’s arrival next week was approaching with a speed that made her head spin.

Maybe she should have called in sick for a few days. She was certainly feeling more than a little green round the edges, and hadn’t even been able to eat at all today. Her anxiety at the prospect of seeing Nick again seemed to be increasing daily.

Although why she should be the one to feel so nervously on edge was beyond her. After all, Nick Cavendish had been the one to invite her out, not the other way round. And she hadn’t invited herself back to his apartment either. In fact—

‘Hebe?’ rasped an all too familiar voice after six weeks’ silence close to her ear.

She spun round sharply, at the same time dropping the name cards she had been preparing for next week’s exhibition.

‘Sorry!’ she muttered, and she bent to pick them up with shaking fingers, taking the few seconds to bring some composure back to her demeanour.

Nick wasn’t expected until next week!

‘What are you doing here?’ she prompted slowly as she straightened, eyes deeply golden in the paleness of her face.

He returned her gaze mockingly. ‘It may have escaped your memory, Hebe, but I happen to own this gallery and have an apartment on the top floor of the building; I can come here any time I damn well please!’

Well…yes…But if she had had prior notice of his earlier than expected arrival she might not have overreacted in the way she just had. As it was, she felt completely wrong-footed.

She had made her mind up, during Nick’s six weeks of silence, that she was going to be cool and composed when he did come back and would make no reference, if he didn’t, to the fact that they had spent the night together in his apartment on the top floor of the building…

‘Let’s go up to my office,’ Nick added with barely concealed impatience. ‘I want to talk to you.’

He looked just the same, she acknowledged achingly. His olive skin was just as healthily tanned, his blue eyes as sharply intelligent, and his dark hair, though looking as if it had been trimmed slightly, was still long enough to rest silkily on broad shoulders. Dressed formally in a dark grey suit and snowy white shirt, with a silver-grey silk tie knotted neatly at his throat, he looked like a man who was firmly in control.

He looked exactly what he was, in fact—the confident multimillionaire owner of three prestigious art galleries.

Looking at him now, Hebe wondered how she could ever have thought he was seriously interested in her!

‘Hebe!’ he prompted, frowning at her continued silence.

She was behaving like an idiot, she realised, just standing here staring at him, completely tongue-tied by his unexpected appearance in the gallery.

She drew in a deep breath, willing herself to behave naturally. Well, as naturally as it was possible to be when confronted by the man who had haunted her days and filled her dreams for last six weeks!

‘What can I do for you, Mr Cavendish?’ she prompted with calm efficiency.

‘You can come upstairs to my office with me,’ he repeated firmly. ‘Now!’ he added, not even waiting for her answer this time, but turning abruptly on his heel and striding forcefully out of the room.

Kate, who was working nearby, shot Hebe a questioning look as she trailed out of the gallery behind Nick, and Hebe gave her a how-should-I-know? shrug in reply.

Because she really didn’t know what this was about. They had had dinner together, spent a night together, but she hadn’t told anyone about either of those things, let alone tried to contact Nick himself. So what was his problem?

The more she thought about it, acknowledging his brooding silence as he lithely climbed the stairs ahead of her to his office on the second floor, the angrier she became.

Had he expected, on the basis that she had spent the night with the boss, that she would have left her job here before he returned? Was that the reason he was so angry? Because he hadn’t expected to see her still here at all?

Well, that was being more than a little unfair, wasn’t it?

She loved her job here, liked the people she worked with too. Besides, none of the awkwardness of this situation was her fault, damn it!

Nick eyed her irritably as he closed his office door behind them. Unless he was mistaken, from her flushed cheeks and glowing golden eyes, he would take a guess at her being one very indignant young lady.

He perched on the edge of his cool Italian marble desk, which more than one customer at the gallery had tried to buy from him. He had always refused to sell it, though, liking the way it complemented the rest of the room, which was wood-panelled and slightly austere, although it did have a huge picture window that looked out over the river.

‘So, what are you so angry about, Hebe?’ he drawled ruefully, dark brows raised over mocking blue eyes. ‘The fact that I was less than polite just now? Or the fact that I haven’t called you for two months?’ He met her gaze challengingly.

‘Six weeks,’ she came back sharply, her cheeks flushing with colour seconds later.

‘Whatever.’ He shrugged, knowing exactly how long it was since he had last seen her, but having no intention of letting Hebe know that he did.

He had been so sure that Hebe Johnson would be just like all the other women he had known over the last two years—taken and then forgotten. But for some inexplicable reason he hadn’t quite succeeded in doing that where she was concerned. Memories of those golden eyes, that lithe silken body, came flashing into his mind at the most inconvenient of times. Irritating him intensely.

The flash of anger now in the depths of her warm eyes, and the way the fullness of those sensuous lips had tightened slightly, told him his careless attitude had only succeeded in increasing her anger. Which didn’t particularly affect him.

Not on a business level, anyway.

On a personal level, he found both things sexy as hell!

She looked good today too, dressed in a cream blouse tucked into the tiny waistband of a knee-length fitted black skirt, her legs long and silky.

So much for his absence from the London gallery these last six weeks, his deliberate lack of the promised telephone call, his self-assurances that when he came back he would have forgotten all about Hebe Johnson!

Even before he’d seen the painting he had known he hadn’t managed to do that.

His own mouth tightened as he glanced over to where he had placed the painting, on a stand to one side of his wide office, with a cover over it to protect it. But also so that Hebe Johnson shouldn’t see it until he was ready for her to do so…

Hebe eyed Nick scathingly as he stood looking at her, and, even though inside was shaking, she gripped her hands tightly together to prevent Nick from seeing they were trembling.

‘I’m sorry—were you supposed to call me?’ she came back, with all the coolness she could muster.

Which was quite considerable, if the way his mouth thinned and his eyes narrowed to glittering blue slits was anything to go by!

‘Okay, Hebe, forget that for the moment,’ he dismissed briskly. ‘And tell me what you know about Andrew Southern?’

She frowned as she dredged her memory for the relevant facts about the artist, having no idea why Nick was asking the question—unless it was an effort on his part to prove that she didn’t know her job, so giving him an excuse to fire her?

She swallowed hard. ‘English. Born 1953. Started painting in his early twenties, mainly portraits, but later moved on to landscapes—more recently the Alaskan wilderness—’

‘I’m not asking for a bio on the guy, Hebe!’ Nick cut in tersely, standing up restlessly. ‘I asked what you know about him?’

‘Me?’ She blinked, stepping back slightly in the face of his leashed vitality. ‘I’ve just told you what I know about him—’

‘Don’t be so coy, Hebe,’ he cut her off again abruptly, blue eyes mocking. ‘I’m not asking for details, just a confirmation that you know him. And if you can contact him personally.’

She was totally bewildered now. This conversation didn’t appear to have anything to do with that night six weeks ago at all, nor with an effort to prove her incompetent, but everything, it seemed, to do with the artist Andrew Southern. Of whom she was an admirer, but had certainly never met him, let alone knew him personally.

She wasn’t going to acknowledge the relationship, Nick realized frustratedly. Well, the guy was old enough to be her father, so maybe that explained her reluctance to talk about him. Whatever, Nick had been trying to arrange a meeting with Andrew Southern for years. For once neither the name Nick Cavendish nor the Cavendish Galleries themselves had opened that particular door. And now it seemed that Hebe, of all people, might be the key to that meeting.

From deciding that he had to stay as far away from Hebe as possible in future, or else take her to his bed again, he had now discovered that if he wanted to get anywhere near Andrew Southern with the idea of an exhibition of his work, then Hebe was the person he had to talk to.

‘Look, Hebe, let’s start this conversation again, shall we?’ he reasoned pleasantly. ‘I accept that I overstepped the employer/employee line with you six weeks ago, but by the same token you have to accept that it wasn’t all one sided, huh?’

Hebe eyed him derisively. If that was his attempt at an apology for the night they had spent together, or for his non-existent telephone call since, then it was pretty lame. Besides which, an apology for the former was insulting, to say the least, just as an off-hand apology for the latter was totally inadequate.

She had been so miserable these last six weeks, wondering where she had gone wrong, what she had done to make Nick Cavendish not even want to call her again, let alone see her.

And now he had turned up unexpectedly, dismissing their night together as the satisfying of a brief, mutual attraction, before going on to talk about Andrew Southern—an artist of phenomenal reputation, and known as a complete recluse, who had been so for almost thirty years.

Making her realise just how little she understood Nick Cavendish.

She eyed him coolly now. ‘Is that all?’

‘No, of course—!’ He broke off to draw in a deeply controlling breath. ‘Are you deliberately trying to annoy me?’ He looked at her with narrowed eyes.

She gave a mocking lift of her eyebrows. ‘I seem to be doing that without trying!’

He relaxed slightly, an amused smile slightly curving those sculptured lips. ‘I see now why I found you so intriguing that night,’ he murmured softly.

It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Not here. Not now.

She had spent the first week after his departure back to New York in a frenzy of self-recrimination, with a deep-felt need for Nick to call her to nullify all those negative thoughts.

She was in love with him, totally physically enthralled with him—and this was the twenty-first century, for goodness’ sake, not the Dark Ages, where a woman’s wants and needs weren’t considered as important as a man’s, she had chided herself.

She had done nothing wrong by spending the night with a man she found so attractive and who had wanted her too!

But as the days and weeks had passed those assurances hadn’t meant a whole lot.

And now standing here looking at Nick, they meant absolutely nothing.

She grimaced. ‘I think it might be better if we both just forgot about that, don’t you?’

It was a statement rather than a question, and Nick found himself deeply irritated by her easy dismissal.

Okay, so he hadn’t been able to wait to get her out of his apartment that morning six weeks ago, and he hadn’t called her as he said he would, but it was a bit of knock to his ego to realise that she was willing to dismiss the memories of him as easily as he had tried to dismiss her.

Or was she…?

He took a step towards her, lids lowered as he looked down at her with dark blue eyes, trailing one caressing finger down the smooth curve of her cheek. ‘Am I so easy to forget, Hebe?’ he murmured seductively, knowing that this was probably another mistake, but finding her coolness infuriating as hell. ‘Was our lovemaking easy to forget too? Or has it kept you awake nights, thinking of all the ways we touched and aroused each other?’

She gave him a startled look even as the colour entered her cheeks, her lips parting slightly as her body swayed towards his.

‘I thought so…’ He murmured his satisfaction with her response, his wandering fingers parting her lips slightly, caressing that softness, before trailing the length of her throat down to the deep vee of her blouse and the creamy swell of her breasts. All the time his challenging gaze continued to hold hers.

How could this be happening? Hebe inwardly protested, even as she felt herself responding to his touch. The arousal of her breasts was instant, the nipples hard and sensitive, as she reached out instinctively to cling tightly to the broad width of his shoulders, her legs seeming in danger of melting beneath her.

But as suddenly as he had touched her she found herself thrust away from him, and Nick was stepping back, that devilishly handsome face now set in scathing dismissal.

‘You really are a sexy little thing, aren’t you?’ he mused as he leant back against his desk, his blue gaze considering now, as he looked at the firm thrust of her breasts against her cream blouse.

‘Mr Cavendish—’

‘Oh, come on, Hebe,’ he drawled tauntingly, shaking his head slightly, those blue eyes alight with mocking laughter. ‘You can hardly go back to calling me that after sharing your body with me,’ he reminded her, with a challenging rise of that square, uncompromising chin.

Hebe felt the colour warm her cheeks at his deliberate taunting. Why was he doing this to her? What perverse pleasure did he get out of humiliating her in this way?

She straightened defensively, glaring at him. ‘At the same time as you shared your body with me!’ she came back, with all the fury of her humiliation, uncaring now if this was just his way of trying to get her to resign from her job at the gallery.

Fine. Let him sack her. She was quickly reaching the point where she didn’t care.

His smile was derisive. ‘I’m flattered that amongst all your other lovers you’ve even remembered me.’

All her other—! What was he talking about? She had had one relationship before him, and that had been five years ago; ancient history rather than recent.

‘Let’s stop playing this game, shall we?’ Nick said impatiently as he stood up.

‘Gladly!’ she agreed tautly. ‘Can I go back to work now?’ If she didn’t get out of here soon she was very much afraid the humiliating tears that blurred her vision would escape and begin to fall hotly down her cheeks!

‘No, you damn well—’ Nick broke off abruptly, drawing in controlling breaths as he realised she had to be deliberately baiting him.

Because he knew of her relationship with Andrew Southern?

Probably, he accepted scathingly. Okay, so as an artist the man was a legend in his own lifetime, but he was still a man aged in his fifties, and Hebe was only in her mid-twenties. And Nick had wondered if he was too old for her!

‘Okay, Hebe,’ he began reasoningly. ‘I accept that your affair with Andrew Southern is none of my business—’

‘My what?’ she gasped incredulously, gold eyes wide with disbelief.

‘It’s past history, I realise that—’

‘Past—!’ Hebe gave a dazed shake of her head. ‘But I told you. I don’t even know Andrew Southern!’ she protested indignantly.

‘Evidence proves the contrary—’

‘Evidence?’ she repeated disgustedly. ‘Look, Nick, I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ She shook her head, that amazing silver-blonde hair moving silkily against her creamy cheeks. ‘Maybe you have jet-lag, and it’s affecting your judgement. I don’t know, but—’

‘I came back from New York last week, Hebe,’ he told her softly, his gaze narrowing as she looked at him sharply. ‘I’d received information that there was a possibility of a hitherto unseen Andrew Southern coming up for sale in the north of England.’ His mouth twisted. ‘As you can imagine, I had no intention of letting anyone but Cavendish Galleries own that painting.’

‘For Cavendish Galleries read Nick Cavendish!’ she came back scathingly.

‘Exactly.’He smiled in acknowledgement of her derision. ‘Imagine my surprise when I saw the subject of the painting!’

Hebe gave a dazed shake of her head. She had no idea what this conversation was about, or where it could possibly be going. But Nick, it seemed, had been back in England a week already. A week during which he had neither telephoned her nor tried to see her again.

Until today. When he had done nothing but humiliate and embarrass her.

But he had taken her in his arms too…

To prove a point. Nothing else. And he had proved it too, hadn’t he? She responded to him even when she didn’t want to.

Sometimes she wasn’t sure if she didn’t hate him rather than love him!

‘The subject of the painting…?’she prompted frowningly.

‘Yes.’ Nick was looking at her with narrowed eyes now. ‘A portrait. A woman. A very beautiful woman, in fact.’ He shrugged his broad shoulders as if that point was indisputable.

‘It’s one of his earlier paintings then—?’

‘No,’ Nick cut in with certainty. ‘I can categorically say this work is recent. The last five years or so, I would say,’ he added consideringly.

‘But I thought he didn’t paint portraits any more—’

‘Obviously this woman inspired him to do so,’ Nick cut in dryly.

Hebe didn’t like the way he was looking at her now, as if critically dissecting every part of her body.

A body he had come to know intimately six weeks ago…

Except he hadn’t seemed to find anything to critisise about it then, had he?

She shrugged. ‘As far as I’m aware, Andrew Southern hasn’t painted a portrait for over twenty years.’

‘Are you doubting my expertise, Hebe?’ Nick snapped tautly.

No, she wasn’t doing that. Not in any way! She knew only too well what an masterful lover he was. And he hadn’t built up the prestigious worldwide reputation of the Cavendish Galleries by not being extremely knowledgable about art. He knew his subject equally as well as he knew how to be a lover!

Nick was growing tired of Hebe’s prevarication. He strode forcefully across his office to flick the covering from the painting displayed there, his piercing gaze never leaving Hebe’s face as he did so. He wanted to see her reaction to the portrait.

Her eyes widened as she stared blankly at the portrait, her body tensing rigidly.

Not surprising, really, Nick thought with hard amusement.

The painting was of her. Sitting sideways on a chair, wearing a clinging dress of midnight-blue, her hair a glorious curtain of silver down the long length of her spine.

And that was where the formality of the portrait began and ended!

Because her expression could only be called sultry, with a knowing smile curving those pouting, kissable lips, and her eyes, those wonderful golden eyes, half closed as if in arousal. Her breasts were thrust slightly forward beneath the blue dress, the material clinging so closely to those long silken limbs that it was impossible to believe she wore anything beneath it.

That Hebe wore anything beneath it.

Because the woman was most certainly her.

Nick had kissed those same lips six weeks ago. Seen that arousal in her eyes. Caressed the proud tilt of those breasts. Suckled on those rosy nipples. And those long silken limbs had been wrapped around him more than once that night too.

‘Who is she…?’

Nick turned sharply back to look at Hebe as she spoke in a whisper, his frown deepening as he saw how pale she was, her eyes like golden orbs in that pallor.

But they both knew her question was totally unnecessary. ‘Oh, come on, Hebe.’ He sighed his impatience as he moved to stand beside her. ‘It’s you, damn it!’ He would have reached out and shaken her, except that she looked as if she might disintegrate at the slightest touch.

No doubt she had never thought this portrait—a portrait painted by a man who had obviously put the love he felt for its subject into every brushstroke—would ever be seen by the general public. That was the reason for her obvious shock. In fact, it was pure luck that it hadn’t gone into a local auction with a lot of other things from a house cleared out by relatives after the death of its owner, consequently disappearing back into the realms of obscurity.

Luckily enough, the autioneer had been experienced enough to know the Andrew Southern signature—a swan with the single letter S beside it—and had called a friend of his in London to see if any of the big dealers were interested in coming to look at it. Nick most certainly had been, getting the man’s promise that he would let no one else view it until he had flown in from New York to see it.

One look at the painting, at the almost luminous style that marked it as Southern’s work and not some pale imitation, and Nick had known he had to have the painting. At any price.

It had taken some time and considerable skill to negotiate that price with the new owner and the auctioneer before bringing his prize back to London this morning, and his first priority had been to talk to Hebe Johnson.

Undoubtedly the woman in the portrait.

And, at the time of the painting, Andrew Southern’s lover.

Something she seemed to be denying most strongly!

Hebe moved forward as if in a dream, her hand moving up to touch the painting, her fingers stopping only centimetres away from the canvas, trembling slightly. Her breathing was shallow.

‘Who is she?’ she repeated emotionally.

Nick stepped forward. ‘For God’s sake, Hebe, it’s you—’

‘It isn’t me!’ She turned to look at him, able to feel the rapid beat of her pulse in her throat. ‘Look at it again, Nick,’ she told him shakily, pleadingly, turning to look at the painting, a gut-wrenching pain in her chest as she did so.

‘Of course it’s you—’

‘No,’ she cut in quietly again. ‘She has a birthmark, Nick. Look. There.’ She pointed to the rose-shaped birthmark on the swell of one creamy breast, visible above the low neckline of the deep blue dress. ‘And look here.’ She pulled aside the open neck of her cream blouse, revealing her own creamy breast.

Completely bare of that rose-shaped birthmark…

Whoever the woman in the portrait was it most certainly wasn’t Hebe.

She knew it wasn’t.

But if it wasn’t her, who—?

No, it couldn’t be!

Could it…?

And that was when everything went dark…