“Food’s on its way, and I don’t have many clothes suitable for a girl like you.” Daniel stood in the doorway, wearing those by-now-familiar pyjama trousers, a black T-shirt pulled over his body and his sunglasses in his hair. “So I hope a T-shirt and shorts’ll do?”
“Should do!” It was a far cry from her red satin dress that he’d once found arousing, but they were beyond that now. Though she couldn’t help the shiver that ran through her as she remembered the sensation of his mouth on her body.
He held out the bundle of clothes to her and said, “The bathroom’s first on the left, if you want a bit of privacy. I’ll grab the bottle and we can start work while we wait for the food.”
“Thanks.” Eva grabbed the clothes from him and followed his directions to a huge shower room. Self-conscious in the white, clinical space, Eva changed quickly into the clothes he had lent her. She took a scarf from her bag and used it as an impromptu belt, then knotted the T-shirt to one side to stop it bulging around her middle. She tied her hair up into a topknot and flakes of dried paint fell out and speckled the immaculate white mat.
Eva was laughing by the time she got back to the lounge. “I look like I’m going to a festival! Can I borrow a tent?”
“Now you’re the one who needs someone to wash her feet,” he told her tenderly. “You look lovely. I wish I looked like that when I’m dressed for work!”
Eva danced a little jig. “I’m filthy, but it was fun! So…what do you propose we do now?”
“Wine’s open. I’ve laid down a few sheets, so I propose we see what we can do with Keiran’s inspiration. A word of warning, though. I didn’t tidy up before I left so the studio’s a mess.” He reached out and brushed a fleck of colour from her cheek. “But I’ll get it cleared up another time.”
“Mess is good.” Eva nodded.
Once she was in the studio, the memory of what had happened there rushed back to Eva. Loose paper still littered every surface, canvases were tipped over, and the stack of sketchbooks had slithered across the floor. Broken glass crunched underfoot and Eva realised something was missing.
The glass-topped table that had been smeared with coke was nowhere to be seen, apart from a twisted metal frame.
“So are you… Have you given up the coke, then?”
He turned to look at her, and for a moment she felt a flash of recognition from somewhere, but not of Daniel Scott, of a photograph or—something in the paper, probably, back from when he had blazed onto the art scene. A younger man, coal-black eyes glaring from a photograph she had forgotten.
“This morning, I went to see someone,” he told her. “A counsellor with one of those client lists, so he’s used to discretion. It’s going to be a long road, but— I’ve been a fuck-up for too long and coke’s a big part of that. I lost you, Eva. It’s a lesson I won’t forget.”
Eva fidgeted with some paintbrushes—expensive ones, which had known rough treatment. She held them up one by one to the light, examining their bent bristles. “I wanted to help, but you’ve got yourself help now, and that’s all great, and look, I’m here, and you’re here, and we’re going to eat pizza and drink wine and make a fantastic mess.”
“I’ve even covered your chaise longue.” And he had—a clean white sheet had been draped over it before the paint throwing began. In front of the vast windows, side by side, Daniel had laid down two more sheets and a selection of paints. Beside them was a bottle of wine, two glasses already poured. “I thought sheets would do for now? So, I guess we just follow Keiran’s lead and plunge in!”
Eva grabbed a wine glass first and took an unladylike swig while getting a feel for the materials. Then she put the glass aside and sank her hand into the paint.
“Are you going to go Full Keiran and lob the whole tin?” She pulled out her hand and flung out her arm, letting the blue paint arc away from her onto the sheets. “Bloody hell, that feels good, doesn’t it!”
Daniel laughed. He took off his sunglasses and threw them onto the safety of the covered chaise, then dragged his T-shirt up and over his head. This was no attempt at seduction, she knew, but a prelude to making an almighty mess of paint.
“I don’t know what the pizza guy’s going to think.” He laughed and dipped his hand into a pot of bright red paint. “But I order from them a lot, they’re not easily surprised.”
Then Daniel flung out his arm as though throwing a discus, sending a shower of red over a pristine white sheet. He gave a cry of celebration and took another handful, flinging that after the first.
Barefoot now, Eva dipped her toes into the paint and kicked the blue colour, which sprayed the floor before ending up on the sheet. “Oh, good Lord, sorry!” But in her head, that kick had been aimed at whoever it was who had been in her house, whoever it was who had photographed her through her own window. Whoever it was who wanted her to be scared.
“Why? This is great!” Daniel picked up a pot of yellow paint, a colour she couldn’t recall seeing too often in his dark works, and hurled a wave of it across his impromptu canvas. Then he dropped to his hands and knees and, just as Keiran had, crawled through it. As he did, he said, “What did you want to tell me before? What happened?”
Eva paused, her hand in a pot of green paint. “Do you have any odd fans, Daniel?” She took her hand out and sprayed the sheet, and Daniel, with the paint. “Only, I don’t know who else it could be. Other than…” Rupert. Eva shook her head.
“Probably, but none that jump to mind. Nobody sending me their toenail clippings or anything iffy like that.” He glanced at her, frowning. “Why, what’s up?”
“Someone took a photo of me. Through my window, I saw the flash. After I got home from…” A smile crept to her lips. “From the hotel. And when I got home after…after you drew me, someone had been in my house. Moved things about. Made my bed, would you believe. I wasn’t in a fantastic frame of mind, and thought I’d imagined it, but I know I hadn’t.” Eva attempted a laugh. “I never make my bed!”
“Why would a fan of mine do that? They wouldn’t even know you existed, let alone where you lived.” He rose to his feet, his bare chest speckled with red and yellow, his hands and trousers a riot of the colours. “That’s bloody horrible, and after the crap I’d just put you through, you must’ve been terrified. Can I do something? You changed the locks, put an alarm in, all that?”
“Yes, Lyndsey and Miles came over and helped sort out the locks. I’ve got an alarm already, but I must’ve forgotten to set it when I left. I did remember today, though!” Eva stirred a pot of paint with her finger, then drew a line along the edge of the sheet. “I’m just worried in case—what if it’s Rupert? Making my bed just seems…weirdly intimate, do you know what I mean?”
“There’s something about him with you, the way he looks at you.” Daniel walked over to Eva, leaving a pattern of red and yellow footprints on the edge of her sheet. “And I’m not saying that out of jealousy, it’s just—something.”
“He keeps asking me out, and I keep saying no and he says these things that are just lewd, really. Sexual favours in exchange for him helping me out.” Eva drank some more wine, hoping to dislodge the bitter taste in her mouth. “Other than not go anywhere near him or his gallery, I don’t know what to do. And he’s so important in the art scene down here. If he makes up his mind to crush my career, then he will.”
“Except now you’re painting with triple Turner Prize winner Daniel Scott, which makes you considerably more difficult to crush,” he told her dryly. “He seems the sort to resort to frightening someone, probably hoping you’ll cry on his shoulder and make him a hero. I’m sorry about paddling all over your sheet, by the way.”
“I’ll paddle over yours, if you like!” Eva laughed. “It’s good to talk about it. Lyndsey sounded horrified when I suggested it might be Rupert. But it’s such a relief to hear you agree. Not that I know what to do, really. I’ve told the police, but it’s weird lying in my bed and thinking…someone was in my room, and I have no idea
who they were.”
“And there’s been nothing since?” He frowned. “Say Lyndsey told Rupert that you’d had the police out and then it stopped. It’s a bit too much of a coincidence, isn’t it? He’s not going to risk getting arrested, and I know she’s your mate, but she doesn’t seem like a girl who avoids drama to me.”
Eva rolled her eyes. “That woman loves drama. She even sees it where it doesn’t exist. The idea that I have a stalker has given her far more entertainment than you can imagine!” Eva picked a cloth up from the floor and wiped her hands on it. “I don’t mean that nastily, she was really concerned, but knowing Lynds, she’ll be dining out on it for months.”
“Did they break in or unlock the door?” He dipped his toes into the blue paint as he was talking, then pressed them to the sheet on which they were standing.
“No sign of a break-in. That’s why I asked Lynds if it could be Rupert, because she’s got spare keys for my house, and he could’ve helped himself to them out of her handbag or her desk or anything.” Eva wished she could hug Daniel again, but two hugs in one day didn’t seem very platonic. At the scent of his cologne, the memory of their bodies moving together returned to torment her.
“Or it could be her.” Daniel glanced over Eva’s shoulder. “Pizza’s here, they know to come to the side.”
He touched her hand fleetingly, a gesture of friendship or comfort, then strolled over to the doors where she had entered in what seemed like another lifetime, leaving her with the ridiculous suggestion that Lyndsey had been making her bed and moving her shampoo.
Why the hell would Lyndsey do that?
Unless it had something to do with Miles. But Lynds had Miles now. She didn’t need to stalk Eva. And Lynds was hardly the stalking type. There wasn’t a more normal, level-headed person than Lynds.
When Daniel closed the door and returned to her, he was carrying two enormous pizza boxes, which he set down on the floor beside the wine bottle. When he lifted the lids she saw first the promised pepperoni then, in the second, a vast garlic bread. Not quite the meal they had shared in the hotel, but no less welcome.
“I didn’t mean she was trying to frighten you.” He knelt down beside the boxes, extending one leg to dip his toes in the red paint. “But maybe, I don’t know…a joke that backfired? Something like that?”
“I see…sort of.” Eva gratefully sat down with a wine glass in one hand and a greasy slice of pizza in the other. “I hope that’s what it is, I really don’t want to have a stalker!”
“My money’s on Rupert.” He dabbed his toes this way and that on the sheet. “Are you all right there? You know you can stay over here if you want, though I’d understand if you didn’t after what happened. But you can.”
“That’s really kind of you.” Eva wondered if she could get any sleep if she was in the same house as Daniel. How would she not lie awake and lament their failed liaison? “To be honest…heading back later this evening does worry me.”
“So don’t head back.” He pressed his bare foot to her shin, leaving a smear of red paint there. “Stay with me.”
Eva retaliated, tickling his ankle with her blue-painted toes. “Thanks, I’ll take you up on that, and I’ll head home tomorrow in daylight!”
“I don’t regret anything that happened between us.” Daniel took a sip of wine, then another slice of pizza from the box. “I’ve never been so alive, such intensity, without drugs or booze, just— I regret the end, but I don’t regret what we did. You’re amazing, Eva, never think otherwise.”
“You’re so sweet!” Eva laughed gently. She fell silent, but only for a moment, because his words had freed hers. “I don’t regret it either. I keep thinking of you, I keep remembering—all the time. I try not to, but I can’t help it.”
“I don’t know what it feels like to be in love.” He looked down, his voice quieter when he spoke again. “I’m no good with words, sorry. I miss you.”
Eva almost dropped her glass in surprise at what he’d said.
Was that almost a declaration of—? No, it couldn’t have been.
“I miss you too.” She put down her glass and threw the crust of her pizza into the cardboard lid, then brushed her hands against her borrowed shorts, leaving crumbs and paint in their wake. “Hug?”
“So long as you don’t mind the paint on my hands?”
“Not at all.” Eva pushed herself across the floor, half-skidding on the loose paper, and put her arms around him. She whispered against his neck, feeling the warmth of him on her lips. “Shall I tell you what love feels like?”
“Yes please,” Daniel replied in a murmur as he wrapped his arms around her, cradling her against his chest.
Eva heard his heart beat where her ear lay against him, could feel his pulse in his throat and the strength in his arms and the longing in his embrace. “It feels like this.”
The steady thud of Daniel’s heart leapt and quickened at her words, then she felt his lips against her hair. It was so gentle that for a moment Eva wondered if she’d imagined it, but there it was again, the ghost of a kiss.
“Is it too late?” he murmured.
“No, it never is.” Eva stroked his cheek, leaving a stripe of paint. “I love you.”
“I love you,” he replied, barely even a whisper. “And I don’t want to lose you again.”
“You won’t.” Eva tipped up her head. “Give me a big garlicky kiss, my darling man.”
Daniel laughed, then put his lips to hers and granted her wish. All of that desire, that longing that she hadn’t been able to push down, came flooding back. They couldn’t be apart. From that first time in the gallery, they had been heading here, to this moment.
Eva tangled her fingers in his hair once more, sighing into their kiss at the familiarity of the touch. She had missed this, she had missed everything about him.
“I’m a mess, but I’m working on it,” he confided with a smile in his voice, stealing another gentle kiss. When he spoke again there was that arrogance she had first glimpsed in the gallery once more, as infuriating as it was exciting. “And at least I’m a sexy mess with vintage sunglasses.”
“A very sexy mess!” Eva caressed her way across his bare chest. “I want you to know that I’m here for you, Daniel. I won’t turn tail and leave you again, not when you need someone there.”
He replied with a kiss, his hands sliding up into Eva’s hair. It was hungry and filled with fire, that same heat with which they had possessed each other in Rupert Hawley’s office. The same heat that Mr Carswell had shown for the woman he’d summoned to his hotel room.
Eva trembled with answered longing, her body opening up to his. She kissed him with all the passion she had thought would have to be hidden away forever, but now it was freed.
“When I was a kid—” Daniel drew in a breath and a shiver ran through him. His hands were still in her hair when he drew away just a little, just enough to be able to meet her gaze. “I need to tell you something, Eva.”
Eva cupped his face in her hand, gazing at him. She thought back to the last time she had been in this room, and Daniel’s insistence that he had been so bad that his mother— “Darling, what happened? Tell me, I won’t judge you.”
“It wasn’t just care.” She could feel the effort it was taking to force every word out, for the man who never talked about his youth to tell her his secrets. “I was a bad kid—really, really bad. Do you know what it means when they say secure children’s home?”
Eva nodded. “When I first started the group, one of the kids had been in one. For a few months. He’d fallen in with a bad crowd.”
“I was in one for eight years.”
Eva’s hand began to slip from his face, but she brought it back up again, even though her mind was whirling. It was years ago, but what had he done to be in a children’s prison for eight years? “No wonder there’s all the darkness in your work… But you wouldn’t be out if you hadn’t changed, would you? You were so good with the kids today, you must have chan
ged.”
“I came out when I was eighteen, and in twenty years—twenty years, Eva—the only thing I’ve done, the only person I’ve hurt, has been me.” He looked so desperate, so lost, and she caught a glimpse of that odd familiarity again, of something she had seen before. “I’ve never told anybody before, I’m not supposed to tell you, but— If it changes how you feel, I’ll understand. But I love you, and I swear to God, I’m not the same person.”
“It doesn’t change a thing. I’ve fallen in love with you, with a wonderful man,” Eva told him. “And it means so much that you trust me enough to tell me. I told you I wasn’t going to run away, and I’m not. I see it all the time in the outreach kids.” Eva’s laugh was gentle. “Right little sods, some of them, but people can change if they’re given the chance.”
“I didn’t do everything they said I did, but you must hear that all the time.” He offered her a weak, sad smile. “And when you’re ten years old and they’re telling you that you did, it’s easier to just nod and say nothing. I spent a long time saying nothing at all to anyone, and I saw that in Keiran too.”
“He was caught shoplifting, and you can imagine what happened, with his dad in prison and the bullies at school. He did it because he thought he was helping his mum.” Eva rested her head on Daniel’s shoulder. “Will you be a friend to him, Daniel?”
“I talked to his mum afterwards about what I saw in him, that raw talent. She was really proud.” Daniel kissed Eva’s hair. “But if I’m going to help him, he needs to play his part in that too, and that means no more trouble with the law. He has to behave to make the best of his talent, I have to stop shoving crap up my nose to make the best of the amazing luck life’s thrown at me in the last twenty years. And you’re the most amazing of all of it.”
Eva caught his hand and twined their fingers together. “Daniel… You have been very lucky, though it’s not undeserved. You’re such a talent. And I’m lucky too, that we found each other. Because I care about you, and I want to be with you, and I really do love you, darling.”
The Colour of Mermaids Page 17
