Create: A Cariad Romance Three Book Bundle (Cariad Collections)

by Primula Bond

  ‘Bloody hell, why didn’t you tell me before ...?’ He looked quite pale and she stared at him, surprised at his extreme reaction.

  ‘I haven’t seen you before.’

  ‘You could have phoned. I’d have come over. Helped you with the police.’

  ‘Anton was there and, besides I thought you were busy today – you said you’d be pretty tied up.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but you still could have phoned. I’d have rearranged things. Been there for you, love. Shit, I’m so sorry. She meant the world to you, didn’t she, that painting?’

  ‘Well, yes, she did.’ She was touched by his level of concern. It was odd, but although she saw Will a lot and felt closer to him than she’d felt to any man perhaps ever in her life, they didn’t do a lot of day-to-day stuff together. They went on dates, they had intense conversations and even more intense love-making sessions, but he didn’t often come to the gallery. Anton made no secret of the fact that he didn’t trust Will and it made Natalie uncomfortable.

  Also, Will hadn’t been the first person she’d wanted to call. But perhaps that was because Anton had been there, so obviously taking control. Flustered, Natalie stared at her hands.

  ‘What did the police say?’ Will asked.

  ‘They seemed hopeful, but Anton and I think she may have been stolen to order. In which case I’ll never get her back.’

  ‘That would be awful.’ He reached for her hand and lifted her fingers to his lips. His tawny eyes were filled with concern. ‘I’m so sorry, Natalie. You must have had a terrible day and I wasn’t there for you.’

  ‘It’s OK.’ She smiled tentatively. ‘You’re here now. And at the end of the day it’s just a painting.’

  ‘I’m so glad I have the real thing.’

  ‘Not for much longer,’ she said softly. ‘I have to go back to London on Friday, and then I will have to paint for some time. I’m beginning to miss it badly. I’m not usually away for so long.’

  ‘I’m going to miss you badly.’ His gaze held hers and her stomach fell away at his words.

  ‘Then come back with me, Will. Just come for a couple of days – so you can see where I live. It’ll make things easier in the future.’

  ‘Come and watch you paint?’ He loosened his hold on her fingers. ‘I’d be a spare part, wouldn’t I, love?’

  ‘You’d be distracting, I grant you that.’ She smiled. ‘But I’m sure we’d cope.’

  ‘I’m not good in cities. Bournemouth’s bad enough. When I was growing up it was a sleepy little seaside town and there were fields everywhere. Now it’s a mini metropolis. Sometimes I find it suffocating here. In cities I can’t breathe at all.’ He yawned. He looked tired again, she noticed, though he was trying to hide it. ‘Besides, I can’t come to London on Friday. I have work to do.’

  She nodded. His eyes had grown distant, as if a part of him had already left her. Deep down in a place she didn’t want to acknowledge, a sense of foreboding was growing.

  Chapter Six

  ‘Well, apart from our obvious loss ...’ Anton lowered his voice respectfully as he glanced across at Natalie. ‘I’d say our Bournemouth exhibition was another success.’ His eyes were soft. ‘We’re not taking much back with us, are we?’

  Natalie shook her head. Her throat felt too full to speak as she glanced at the row of canvases, packaged up in bubble wrap ready to go into the Transit. Leaving the gallery was so bittersweet. And not just because it was the last place she had seen her painting.

  ‘I’ll put yesterday’s takings in the bank before we leave,’ Anton went on. ‘And I’ll call in and see WPC Carter – ask if there is any news.’

  ‘She would have phoned us if there was,’ Natalie said. ‘Don’t you think?’

  He pursed his lips and gave a little nod. ‘I’m sure you are right. But it doesn’t hurt to chase things up.’

  Except for a phone call to say the police were doing everything they could they’d had no further contact from them at all.

  The shock Natalie had felt when she’d realised her painting was missing had settled into a dull thump of unease. For her own sanity she’d had to accept that she might never see the painting again. It wasn’t easy. It was like having a child and not knowing where she was or what was happening to her. All of her paintings were a bit like that – there was something of Natalie in every piece of work she painted, a splinter of her soul. There had to be; it was part of the process of creation. But Waiting for her Lover was deeply personal on more than one level. Not just because it depicted Natalie herself, but because she had poured all of her vulnerability into that piece of work. It had been Natalie who had sat on that rock, naked to the sea, looking out at the dark vastness of her future. It had been Natalie’s eyes that had gazed out at the horizon, waiting for her lover. Waiting for a lover who she’d already known at that point was beyond her marriage because things had been rocky between her and Patrick for some time.

  His insecurities and his jealousies had begun to feel like prison. He had always been on the possessive side, and she had always forgiven him because she knew his first love, his childhood sweetheart, had left him for his best friend. You didn’t get over betrayals like that easily. Natalie had thought she could make him secure, wrap him in stability with her love, but it hadn’t worked out like that. The more she had tried to make him feel safe, phoning him when she was going to be five minutes late, telling him exactly what she was doing, who she was seeing, the more he had wanted to control her.

  Ironically, it was Patrick who could have most easily strayed. He had his own company, which installed heating at commercial properties all around the country. He often spent nights away from her, while they did a job at some business park. Yet, even while he was away, he wanted to know where she was, who she was seeing. He phoned her up at odd moments, checking to see what she was doing. Slowly but surely he planned out her life for her. But it was when he had started to choose her clothes that things had got really bad.

  He poured scorn on the short skirts she loved that showed off her long slender legs; he vetoed the skimpy cocktail dresses she wore for gallery open days; he didn’t even approve of close-fitting trousers or polo neck sweaters. He wanted her covered up in baggy loose-fitting asexual clothes. She’d begun to think he’d be happier if she wore a burka. And she had began to rebel. They had several arguments about it and after one particularly vitriolic one during which he’d accused her of being an exhibitionist tart, Natalie had snapped. Shortly afterwards she’d painted Waiting for her Lover. It was her escape, her freedom, her way of saying, “Don’t contain me, don’t imprison me. This is who I am. I will not be ashamed. This is me. Take me for who I am, Patrick.”

  He had cried when he’d seen the painting. He had begged her to destroy it. She had refused.

  ‘If you show anyone that painting we are finished,’ he had said.

  ‘Then we are finished,’ she’d said sadly because she had known that it wasn’t about the painting. If she gave in to him now she would have handed over the last of her freedom to him, the last of herself. And she couldn’t do it.

  The divorce was bitter and angry and she didn’t think she could have survived it without Anton.

  ‘You cannot stay with a man who will not let you fly,’ he had said in a rare moment of philosophy. ‘Besides, darling girl, what sort of an agent would I be if I let you hide away your most inspired work? This painting, my angel, will make your name. She will cement your reputation in gold. Gold being the operative word.’

  She had smiled self-consciously, as he had swept over to the painting and looked at it with ravenous eyes. ‘I am serious, Natalie Crane. She is fabulous. Like a mermaid made human for a few brief moments. A mermaid waiting for her lover.’

  And so the painting had been named. And Anton had been right. Waiting for her Lover had made her name. She had inspired the whole of her Lighthouse Series. She had been the forerunner of her new collection, which Natalie had painted furiously in the aftermath of h
er divorce, a deep personal pain spawning a whole new level of creativity. She had shot from being a talented young artist to an artist of note whose work commanded and got huge prices, as collectors flocked to invest.

  Anton had rubbed his hands in glee and strutted in pride around each exhibition. Natalie had left him to it. For about a year after her divorce she’d hardly raised her head above her canvas. She’d lost herself in colour and mood and creativity, immersed herself in the blues of a thousand different seas. It had been deeply cathartic.

  And now the painting which had started it all was gone. Heart-breaking as it was to lose her, Natalie had to keep reminding herself that the painting was not a child. She was an inanimate object. Precious and irreplaceable, she might be, but she was just a canvas. She couldn’t feel pain; she couldn’t be raped or murdered.

  ‘It’s me who feels violated,’ Natalie had told Will the previous night. ‘Me who feels dirtied and betrayed.’

  He had looked sad, but he had never answered. He had never said he understood. And why would he? Composing music wasn’t the same. Music was shared with the world – it was free in the ether to dance. It didn’t belong to any one person. Will had told her that himself many a time.

  The sound of Anton clearing his throat broke through her troubled thoughts. And Natalie became aware of her surroundings once more.

  ‘Earth calling Natalie Crane. Or maybe I should continue speaking to myself. Maybe I would get better answers. I would certainly get more attention.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She realised he was pacing around the empty shop, his footsteps echoing on the wooden floor.

  ‘I was just saying that I trust you have things to do?’ he said. ‘Loose ends to tie up.’

  She nodded, expecting him to elaborate, make some caustic remark about Will, but he didn’t.

  He came across the space that looked much bigger now all the display boards had been removed.

  ‘Don’t look so sad.’ His eyes were kind. ‘If it’s meant to be then it will be. You know that, don’t you?’

  She gulped. She’d almost have preferred sarcasm. His kindness was bringing the tears closer to the surface.

  ‘How could he not want to see you again, beautiful girl? He would have to be a eunuch not to care. And judging by the amount of nights you’ve been absent from your entirely satisfactory bed I am guessing he is not one of those.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she said.

  ‘So put on your best smile and go and say au revoir,’ Anton commanded. ‘Because it will be au revoir, darling girl, it will not be goodbye. Now go on. Scram. I will finish up here.’

  She blew him a kiss over her shoulder and went. He was right, she had arranged to meet Will – even though she’d climbed out of her lover’s bed a mere three and a half hours earlier. ‘I want to say a proper goodbye,’ she’d said then, hating herself for her neediness. ‘Can you meet me for coffee before we leave, Will? Have you got time?’

  ‘Of course,’ he’d murmured, not meeting her eyes, but not refusing either. ‘It’ll have to be a quick one though, I’ve got an appointment.’

  She’d arranged to meet him in the bistro where they’d first had coffee and left before he could change his mind, and now her heart thrummed with the pleasure of seeing him one more time. It was a terrible thing, love. It enslaved you, tipped your world upside down, made you do things you would never normally do.

  As she got closer to the beach, she remembered the time they had made love in the sea, and the other times they’d made love outside. Once, beneath the evening stars, at Studland beach, Will had pulled her down beside him in the shadow of the dunes onto the sandy grass. He’d flicked up the long skirt she’d been wearing, pulled aside the crotch of her panties, and dipped his tongue inside her.

  ‘Will, don’t,’ she’d gasped, torn between the ecstasy of what he was doing and the fear of being caught. ‘What if someone comes?’

  Ignoring her protests, he’d tongue-swirled her clit and then spread her apart with his fingers so she whimpered with need.

  ‘No one’s going to come – except hopefully us,’ he’d murmured when, content that he’d brought her to the brink of orgasm, he’d tugged down his cut-off jeans and lowered himself on top of her.

  He was right about that. Though the sex had been hard and fast, they’d both come quickly, the excitement of being outside adding to their pleasure.

  Natalie felt stirrings of lust every time she thought about it. She forced her thoughts back on to safer ground, wishing she knew when the next time they made love would be. Will was still resisting London.

  He’d seemed strangely distant this morning and he’d looked pale and a little tired, the fine lines around his eyes more pronounced than usual. It was probably because they’d been up late the night before, talking, making love, holding each other. But she’d felt a deep unease because he still hadn’t said what would happen after today. He still hadn’t committed himself to seeing her again, even though she couldn’t believe he would just let things end here. After all they had experienced together the idea was insane.

  It was cloudy today, and there was quite a breeze, especially when she got closer to the beach. It whipped up the tops of the waves and sent a fine mist of sand skittering along the promenade and swept the hot breath of the burger bars into her face.

  She slowed by the promenade and looked out at the dark sea. The change in weather hadn’t put off the tourists. There were still a lot of families on the sand sheltering beneath parasols and sitting behind windbreaks. Kids with buckets and spades built castles and paddled in the frill of the tide. She watched a man swing a toddler by his armpits over a breaking wave and the little boy shrieked in fearful delight.

  She would have liked to have had children – and she guessed at 35 it wasn’t too late for them, but sometimes when she looked at the young mothers with buggies and the man with the toddler, who looked little more than a teenager himself, she felt like it was too late.

  Now, glancing at her watch again, it was a shock to realise she was five minutes late for Will. She quickened her steps along the prom – and the wind caught her hair, wisping it around her face so that by the time she pushed open the bistro door she felt hot and untidy.

  It was too early for many people on this Friday lunchtime and she could see at once that he wasn’t there. She ordered a coffee from a distracted-looking waitress and as she sat and drank it, she remembered how Will had smiled at everyone the first time they’d come and how they’d smiled back, turning to him, lighting up for him while pools of sunshine had played across the ceramic tiles and terracotta pots of dried pampas grass. Or had that just been her rose-tinted perception of things? Had she already been half in love with him?

  Where was he anyway? She took another sip of her coffee – he was 11 minutes late – and she remembered how she had spilled the salt and wondered if she should, after all, have thrown it over her shoulder – so the bad luck hadn’t loitered in the bistro waiting for her.

  But bad luck had nothing to do with Will not turning up, she realised, as she sipped at the last inch of coffee in her cup, stretching out the time, making a million excuses for him. Maybe the traffic was bad; the council always saved road-works for summer in Bournemouth, Will had told her. Maybe his car had broken down, or he’d got lost in some piece of music he was composing.

  He could have texted, though, couldn’t he? He could have phoned. Maybe his battery was dead, or maybe she had no signal here. She checked. She did have a signal. But maybe he had no signal where he was.

  Fifteen minutes late. She could order another coffee and prolong the agony. She could phone his mobile again and listen to an impersonal voice telling her it was switched off.

  Or she could accept that he had never intended to come at all. That he couldn’t stand goodbyes – and that this morning, when he’d kissed her so tenderly in his kitchen, that had been the last kiss. That had been goodbye.

  When she got back to the gallery it was loc
ked up, an empty shop once more, its windows lifeless eyes, and she felt another little rush of sadness. There was no sign of Anton, or the Transit, but he answered his mobile with a curt, ‘Where are you?’

  ‘At the gallery, where are you?’

  ‘Just leaving the bank – I’ll drive round and pick you up.’

  When she climbed in beside him he took one look at her face and shook his head. ‘The bastard’s not worth it.’

  She sat beside him unable to speak. And sensibly Anton didn’t add anything else to his summary of events until they were out of the town and trundling along the A31 at snail’s pace through the holiday lunchtime traffic.

  It was only when Bournemouth was 30 miles behind them that she got herself together enough to speak. ‘He didn’t come, Anton. Why didn’t he come?’

  ‘Because he’s a gutless, spineless, manipulative, scheming, bloody bastard,’ Anton spat, and added more gently, ‘not to put too fine a point on it.’

  ‘But what if something happened? What if he had an accident on the way to meet me?’

  ‘I take it you tried his mobile and that it was switched off?’

  She nodded, dumb with pain.

  ‘Then, there’s your answer, beautiful one. If you want my advice you’ll forget he ever existed.’

  Chapter Seven

  There had been at least three occasions on the journey home when she’d wanted to beg Anton to turn around and go back to Will’s house and find out what was going on. Why he hadn’t come. There had to be a reason. Only a fierce pride had stopped her.

  Not that she was under any illusion that Anton would have turned round and gone back, even if she had begged.

  Anton was furious with Will – not least because he’d abandoned her when she was at her most vulnerable.

  ‘Men like him should be castrated,’ Anton had muttered. ‘Or locked up, or at the very least they should have a danger warning tattooed on their foreheads so that women know to avoid them.’