By Request Collection Part 2. Natalie Anderson
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Four
THE little art gallery was peaceful and soothing on Grace’s jangling nerves now that Beth had closed up for the day and gone home; Grace needed peace as much as she needed some sleep after a day doing battle with the likes of Seth Mason.
Left to her unexpectedly four years ago by the father she’d scarcely known, the gallery had been a run-down little shop selling artists’ materials, and had come with a sitting tenant in the flat above and a whole load of debt.
Never a fan of Matthew Tylers’ for abandoning his daughter as he had, Lance Culverwell had urged Grace to give it up.
‘It will only bring you heartache, child,’ she could still hear her grandfather saying. ‘Which is all that man ever brought you while he was alive.’
But something deep down inside Grace hadn’t been able to let the gallery go and, refusing any help from her grandfather, she had started to pay the outstanding mortgage herself. Which had seemed quite feasible until Culverwell’s had started getting into difficulty. Then her grandfather had died, leaving everything to Corinne, and Grace had been forced to give up the bright, modern apartment she had been buying and move into the rather dowdy and suddenly vacant flat above the gallery in a much more modest part of town.
Struggling to meet the cost of her planned refurbishments for the flat and gallery, she’d looked like losing both. But her father’s paintings, virtually unnoticed while he had been alive, had already started to gain unexpected popularity, as had his sculptures, several of which Grace had seen change hands in various auction houses for surprisingly high prices over the past couple of years. But it had been that one special bronze of Matthew Tyler’s that had brought all her fears for her gallery to an end, helping her to clear her debts and carry out her renovations after it had sold to a telephone bidder and fetched a mind-blowing sum.
So, even if Seth Mason had taken Culverwells from under her nose, at least this gallery was hers, she thought fiercely, looking around at the fine paintings and ceramics. Lock, stock and barrel!
The fact that she had had to part with what the art world claimed was her father’s prize piece to achieve it brought on those familiar feelings of regret, as well as a whole heap of conflicting emotions whenever she thought about her father.
With tears threatening to sting her eyes, she tried to banish any sentimental feelings towards Matthew Tyler from her mind.
Just looking at that little figurine had always made her feel sad—and angry too—hadn’t it? she assured herself. Anyway, she’d had to sell it to stay solvent, and that was that.
The phone was ringing in the flat as she started up the stairs.
Exhausted from the day, she considered leaving the answering machine to take the call, but as it hadn’t cut in by the time she crossed the lounge she picked the phone up, then wished she hadn’t when Seth’s deep tones came disconcertingly down the line.
‘Just checking that you’re in and planning on an early night,’ he remarked with that infuriating audacity that had Grace instantly snapping back.
‘No, as a matter of fact I thought I’d pop up to the West End, take in a show and then do a bit of clubbing for a few hours. I’m tired, jet-lagged and, if you hadn’t noticed, my grandfather’s company was taken over today! A company that’s been in my family for over fifty years!’ The emotion she had managed to rein in downstairs now welled up in her again, clogging her throat, making her voice crack from the struggle she was having to keep it in check. ‘Of course I’m getting an early night. I’m not quite as robotic as you obviously expect your workforce to be.’
‘Or as well, by the sound of it. You sound distinctly nasal,’ he commented, much to Grace’s alarm. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—let him know that it was taking every resource she had not to break down after the day she had had. ‘You aren’t sickening for anything, are you? A cold, perhaps?’
‘As if you’d care!’ She had slammed the phone down before she even realised what she was doing, and stood there, staring at it, shaking with rage.
How dared he? How dared he try to control her private life as well as her business affairs? she fumed as she continued to stare at the phone, both apprehensive and fired up, waiting for it to start ringing again.
Relieved when it didn’t, yet feeling strangely as though she’d been left hanging by ending their conversation in the way she had, she went back across the tastefully though minimally furnished living room, kicking off her high-heeled shoes as she did so. They weren’t designed for a day in the office any more than her trainers would have gone with the executive image she had been particularly keen to cultivate today. But her pumps had been in the suitcase which she’d instructed the taxi driver to bring on to the flat this morning in her haste to get to the office.
Now, going into the bedroom, she slipped off her clothes, pulled her hair free of its pins and was just reaching for the champagne-tinted robe she’d tossed down onto the bed when the bleeper in the hall announced that there was someone at the front door.
‘Who is it?’ she asked into the loud speaker, shrugging into her robe. She didn’t feel up to seeing anyone tonight.
‘Seth. Seth Mason.’
Grace’s heart instantly lurched into a thumping tattoo. Had he just been round the corner when he’d phoned? ‘What do you want?’
‘Can I come up?’
She wanted to say no, but her tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of her mouth, and before she was fully aware of what she was doing she was pressing the button that opened the door to the street.
Hearing his steady tread on the stairs, Grace couldn’t get over how her hands were shaking as she fumbled with the belt of her robe, only just managing to secure it as those footsteps stopped outside the door to her flat.
‘What do you want? she demanded, wondering how he could look as fresh and vital as he had that morning, while stepping backwards to admit him since his dominating figure promised to quash any refusal to do so.
Surprisingly, he was bringing her suitcase up from the passageway. She’d been too tired to bother carrying it up tonight.
‘I thought you’d had a pretty tough day.’ Pushing the door closed behind him, he stooped to put the suitcase down in the little hallway, his cologne drifting disturbingly towards her. ‘I felt something of a peace offering might be in order.’ It was only then, as he straightened up, that her brain registered the bouquet of predominantly white-and-yellow flowers he was holding.
‘Where did you get these?’ She wasn’t ready to be placated as he handed them to her. ‘Late-night shop at the supermarket?’ And instantly she regretted her caustic and rather childish remark when he made no reply.
The bouquet was fragrant and beautifully arranged and the name of an exclusive florist on the wrapping caused her eyebrows to lift in surprise.
Had he been planning to come round with these much earlier? Was that why he had telephoned just now—to check that he wasn’t going to have a wasted journey?
‘You think that this makes everything all right?’ she uttered waspishly. ‘That I’ll be bowled over by an apology and a few expensive flowers?’
‘I’m not trying to bowl you over.’ His tone was self-assured, his jaw cast in iron. ‘And it certainly isn’t intended as an apology.’
Of course not. She laughed. ‘No. How stupid of me,’ she bit out, swinging away from him into the lounge.
‘Why is it,’ he asked, following her, his voice suddenly dangerously seductive, ‘that when I’m around you you’re always in a state of undress?’
An insidious heat crept along her skin, making her heart beat faster, her nerve-endings tingle.
Why? Grace similarly wondered and, caught in the snare of his regard, felt that same throb of tension that she’d felt from the very first instant their