by Clare Naylor
“Right,” Kate said without much emotion. As she sat here, in her new house, surrounded by her new beginnings, she suddenly wasn’t sure whether she was brave enough to hear him out. For the first time in ages she felt as if nobody could hurt her. She didn’t know if she wanted to be shaken up again so soon. She took a deep breath. “I’m going to get us some tea.” She walked out into the hall without letting him finish.
“Kate,” he called after her. “Just hear me out. Please.”
“I can’t, Louis. I just want to be by myself for a while.” She stood in the hallway and looked down at the parcel, which was leaning against the bottom stair. The brown paper was peeling back at the top. She wondered what it could be. It was very badly wrapped.
“Don’t walk away from me.” Louis came after her, then stopped as he watched her take the first layer of paper off the parcel. “What’s that?”
“I don’t know. It came in the post just before you arrived.” She knelt down and peeled off the paper. “I think it might be a picture.”
“It is.” Louis stood over her.
“Oh my God.” Kate moved away from it when she felt her finger brush a corner of canvas and oil paint.
“What?”
“This better not be what I think it is,” she said as she very carefully stripped away at the package. “She can’t have sent this without so much as HANDLE WITH CARE written on it. Can she?”
“It’s incredible.” Louis looked over Kate’s shoulder as she gazed at the painting in front of her. A card was stuffed into the bottom corner of the frame. It read,
A HOUSEWARMING GIFT FOR MY FAVORITE ARTIST AND GREATEST FRIEND. LOVE MIRRI XX
P.S. PUT NOVEMBER 21 IN THE DIARY. WE’RE DOING THE UNTHINKABLE. WILL YOU BE A BRIDESMAID?
“No way!” Kate screamed as she read the card. “No way.”
“What?” Louis touched Kate’s shoulder and tried to get some sense out of her. “What’s going on?”
“She’s getting married.” Kate laughed in disbelief. “They’re getting married.”
“Mirri?” Louis guessed.
“I can’t believe it.” Kate looked at the picture on the bottom stair. It had to be what Kate thought it was. Kate stared at it. If it was Mirri then she was virtually unrecognizable—her nose was where her ear was supposed to be and her head seemed to turn a corner—but the colors were spectacular. Then Kate tilted her head and looked at it again. Suddenly it seemed to make sense: the feline eyes, the tempestuous pout, and the yellow hair. It was definitely Mirri.
“It’s mine,” Kate said. She stood up and looked at Louis.
“It’s a Picasso.” Louis could hardly believe it, he didn’t know whether to look at Kate or the treasure on the stairs.
“So what was it that you wanted to ask me?” Kate was suddenly curious. As they both gazed at the Goddess in the picture Kate knew that she wasn’t ever going to get away from the lessons she’d learned. She could close her front door and not invite them in and she could walk out of the room when she was confronted with them, but she couldn’t ignore them anymore. Because what she’d learned from Mirri was no longer just the things she knew. It was who she was. She had no choice.
“It doesn’t matter,” Louis said as he turned away from the picture and toward Kate. “You said you wanted to be by yourself for a while.”
“I lied,” Kate admitted.
“Okay then.” He smiled. “Do you want to come out to dinner with me?”
“I’d love to,” Kate said. It was much easier than she’d thought it would be.
“Great.” He reached out to touch her cheek. Kate lowered her eyes, waiting for him to kiss her. She felt the familiar thrill being near him. “Are we still being honest?” He looked at her face and screwed up his nose.
Kate frowned. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. Where was her kiss? “Yes,” she said suspiciously.
“Great. Because I have to tell you that you have the worst taste in paint and if you paint your bedroom that color then you’re going to be spending most of your nights at my place.” He laughed.
“How dare you?” Kate kicked him in the shin and glared at him. Then she looked down at Mirri’s portrait and remembered something the Goddess had once taught her.
“Well, you won’t be saying that when I’ve finished with you,” she told Louis. “In fact, you’ll be begging to sleep at the foot of my bed.”
“Really?” he asked as he grabbed her by the hand. “Is that a promise?”
“Trust me.” Kate smiled as she stepped over the Picasso and led Louis up the stairs. “I learned from the best.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Clare Naylor worked as an editorial assistant at a major publishing house. When her first novel, Love: A User’s Guide, was bought for the movies, she left her job to write full-time. Her other novels include Catching Alice, Dog Handling, and The Second Assistant (co-authored with Mimi Hare). She lives in England.
By Clare Naylor
Catching Alice
Love: A User’s Guide
Dog Handling
The Second Assistant
(co-author Mimi Hare)
The Goddess Rules is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2005 by Clare Naylor
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Naylor, Clare, 1971–
The goddess rules / Clare Naylor.
p. cm.
1. Women painters—Fiction. 2. London (England)—Fiction. 3. Lions as pets—Fiction. 4. Actresses—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3614.A95G63 2005
813’.54—dc22 2004054531
Ballantine Books website address: www.ballantinebooks.com
eISBN: 978-0-345-47872-6
v3.0
