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She was freaking him out with this ‘dying swan’ routine, Nick decided impatiently as he put the rest of the bottle of water back in the fridge neatly disguised as an oak filing cabinet.
Who really fainted nowadays? People who were ill, hungry or had been hit over the head! He could rule out the former, because Hebe certainly wasn’t ill. Nor had she been hit over the head. Except maybe metaphorically. That just left hungry.
‘Have you had any lunch today?’ he prompted suspiciously.
‘Actually—’ she swung her legs to the floor to sit up and take a sip of the chilled water ‘—no.’
He gave a shake of his head as he moved back to the fridge. ‘Why haven’t you?’ he demanded as he took a chocolate bar out and handed it to her. ‘Eat it,’he instructed, when she just looked at it. ‘You’ll feel better if you do.’
Hebe somehow doubted that, but the chocolate certainly couldn’t do any harm. She had heard it was good for shock too. And she was certainly in shock.
She glanced at the portrait again as she slowly ate two squares of the chocolate.
The woman in the portrait was beautiful, much more so than her. Couldn’t Nick see that? And that woman had a sultry air about her, a sensuality, those golden eyes half closed with a secret that only she possessed.
Hebe felt herself begin to shake again as she took an educated guess at what that secret was.
She ate another two squares of chocolate before speaking huskily. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘I told you—the north of England.’ Nick moved restlessly about the confines of the office.
Hebe gave him an impatient glance. ‘Can’t you be more specific? Who did you buy it from? Where did they get it?’ It was suddenly imperative she knew these things.
Nick raised dark brows at her intensity. ‘I bought it from a young couple who had just inherited an old house from the guy’s great-uncle, or something like that. They had never seen the painting before he died, because the old man had the portrait hung in his bedroom, of all things,’ he revealed, with a certain amount of distaste.
He couldn’t say he felt exactly comfortable with some old man drooling over a portrait of a woman—Hebe!—who was certainly young enough to be his daughter, if not his granddaughter.
But the couple hadn’t known anything about the woman in the portrait—who she was or how the great-uncle had come to have her portrait. Nick had known who she was—he just didn’t have any idea what her portrait was doing in some old guy’s bedroom and not in the possession of the man who had painted it with such love.
Hebe didn’t look as if she were about to answer that question for him now, either!
She moistened dry lips. ‘What was the man’s name?’
‘Hell, Hebe, what difference does it make what his name was?’ Nick snapped his impatience. ‘He had your portrait, isn’t that enough?’
‘No.’ She shook her head slowly, turning to look at him with dark gold eyes. ‘Because, no matter what you might think to the contrary, Nick, the woman in the portrait isn’t me.’ She gave a humourless smile at his obvious scepticism. ‘No, Nick, it isn’t,’ she insisted. ‘Andrew Southern couldn’t possibly have painted my portrait because I’ve never met him! But it looks as if my mother may have done,’ she added, so softly Nick had trouble hearing her.
Her mother?
Hebe was trying to say the woman in the portrait was her mother?
How stupid did she think he was? Of course the portrait was of Hebe. It couldn’t be anyone else.
Could it…?
Nick gave her a dark frown. ‘You’re telling me that you look exactly like your mother did at that age?’
‘Ah.’ She gave a grimace. ‘Now, that is a very difficult question for me to answer—’
‘Why is it, damn it?’ he interrupted irritably. ‘How difficult can it be to know whether you do or do not look like your mother?’
Hebe eyed him ruefully, understanding his incredulity at the situation, sympathising with it, even, but at the same time knowing she didn’t have the answers that he wanted.
Except for one…
She raised silver-blonde brows. ‘How about if you’re adopted?’
Nick stopped pacing the room, looking down at her with disbelieving eyes. Was she seriously trying to tell him, expecting him to believe—?
But why not?
Hundreds of kids were adopted every year.
He moved to stand in front of the portrait, studying it closely. He had quickly seen the mirror-like similarities, but now he looked for the differences.
There was that birthmark, of course. But that didn’t prove anything. It was a pretty birthmark, and perhaps Andrew Southern had used a little poetic licence—a lover’s rose-coloured glasses—when he’d painted it there above the woman’s breast?
There was that air of sensuality, too, he supposed. But, God knew, he knew just how sensual and sexual Hebe was. He’d seen her look just like that the night they’d spent making love together. No, that proved nothing.
Neither did the lean length of her body, those thrusting breasts and delicately arched throat.
The ring!
There was an emerald and diamond ring on the third finger of the woman’s left hand. Nick assumed that it wasn’t Andrew Southern Hebe had been engaged to, but the now deceased owner of the painting. Why else would someone have kept a piece of art worth so much? Especially if keeping it had been to spite his future wife and her lover. Hebe didn’t wear a ring like that anymore. But if Hebe’s fiancé had realised that she was having an affair with Andrew Southern—and how could he not, with the evidence of the portrait in front of him?—then he would have had every right to break off the engagement; apart from the fact that she was wearing such a revealing dress, Hebe looked as if she had just come from her lover’s arms. And Nick, better than most, knew exactly how she looked at that moment!
No, there was nothing about this portrait that said Hebe was telling him the truth.
But what reason would she have to lie?
Because she had been found out?
Because, having already let two wealthy men slip through her grasp, she still hoped the two of them might have some sort of relationship?
His mouth twisted derisively as he turned back to her. ‘It’s an interesting idea, Hebe, but not very plausible, is it?’ he dismissed.
She straightened defensively. ‘Why isn’t it?’
Damn it, why couldn’t she just let it go? Admit she was the woman in the portrait and tell him where the hell he could find and speak to Andrew Southern?
He shook his head. ‘Because it’s too damned convenient, that’s why,’ he snapped.
‘For whom?’ she challenged shakily. Because it certainly wasn’t convenient for her.
Her parents had told her long ago that she was adopted, of course. They were such wonderful parents, and because of this, and the fact that she never, ever wanted to hurt them, she had never even attempted to find out who her real parents were.
What would have been the point? Obviously they hadn’t wanted her when she was born, so why should they want to know about her as an adult…?
‘Look, Hebe, I don’t give a damn if you’ve posed nude for the guy. I just want a way in to Andrew Southern, past his guard-dog of an agent!’Nick told her with brutal honesty.
Hebe flinched slightly at his callousness. ‘Well, when you find it,’ she said evenly, ‘please let me know—because after this I would like to talk to him too!’
Nick’s mouth twisted derisively. ‘You’re right; talking isn’t something you do too much of when you’re in bed, is it?’
‘Insults are going to get us nowhere, Nick,’ she told him shakily, the chocolate seeming to have done very little to allay her shock. In fact, she felt decidedly sick now.
But then, it wasn’t every day you were confronted with a painting possibly of the mother you had never known. A painting, moreover, that was everything Nick said it was.
Whoever the woman was, Andrew Southern had been in love with her when he’d painted her portrait. It was there in every brushstroke, every soft nuance of the woman’s sensual beauty.
Did that mean that the artist was Hebe’s father…?
Or had that been the man who had owned the portrait all these years and kept it hidden from view?
They were questions that Hebe certainly wanted answers to.
But for the moment she had to deal with Nick’s disbelief…
She drew in a deep breath. ‘You can think what you like about the portrait, Nick. Your opinion is really of little interest to me. I know that woman isn’t me, and that’s what’s important.’
He looked at her frustratedly for several seconds. ‘You’re seriously expecting me to believe, if that portrait is of your mother, that it’s—what?—twenty-six, twentyseven years old?’
She shrugged at his sceptisism. ‘That timescale would certainly fit in with the period when Andrew Southern was still painting portraits, yes. And for the record, Nick,’ she added ruefully, ‘I’m not expecting you to believe anything. I told you, it’s what I think that’s important.’
And what she thought was that she had to see Andrew Southern herself, and ask him about the woman in the portrait…
But if a man like Nick Cavendish, with all of the prestige of the Cavendish Galleries behind him, couldn’t get past the reclusive artist’s agent, then how did she expect to do so?
She would find a way.
She had to!
There was no way she could just leave here and pretend she had never seen that portrait. The portrait of the woman who surely had to be her mother…
She would need to speak to her parents too, of course. She couldn’t just go off in search of her real parents without telling them about it first. She owed them that, and they would understand, she was sure. They had brought her up with a sure sense of how important she was to them, of how much she was loved, but at the same time had taught her independence of spirit and mind. They couldn’t fail to support her in her search for the woman in the portrait.
‘Well, if that’s all, Nick, I think I’ll go now.’ Hebe put the glass of water down on the low table in front of her before standing up.
And instantly swayed dizzily again.
In fact, she felt as if she really were going to be sick!
‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ Nick stepped forward to grasp her arm, his expression dark and brooding.
She looked up at him with slightly unfocusing eyes. ‘I told you—I haven’t had any lunch today.’She tried to move away from him. Even that light touch on her arm was enough to send a thrill of awareness coursing through her veins.
So much for hating him!
Reasonably she might do so; he had been nothing but insulting today, with none of that exciting lover of six weeks ago about him. But emotionally her body still responded to his slightest touch.
‘You’re coming upstairs with me,’ he announced grimly.
‘Upstairs?’ She stared at him with startled eyes.
His mouth twisted derisively. ‘Don’t look so worried, Hebe; I’m not so filled with lust for you that I’m dragging you upstairs to have my wicked way with you!’
‘Again!’ she came back tartly, stung by his mockery.
‘Again,’ he acknowledged tauntingly, keeping a firm hold of her arm as he walked her over to the door. ‘You’re dizzy from not having eaten any lunch, and I have food upstairs in my apartment; the logical thing to do is take you up there and feed you,’ he explained dryly.
Logic? When had logic had anything to do with their relationship so far?
‘If you’re happy to let me go for the day, I can easily go home and get myself something to eat.’ She firmly stood her ground.
She did not want to go upstairs to his apartment. Today had been humiliating enough without returning to the scene of her naïve stupidity in thinking this man seriously liked her!
Nick’s mouth tightened. ‘No, I’m not happy to do that, Hebe. For one thing, you don’t look as if you could make it downstairs, let alone home,’ he derided. ‘And, for another, I haven’t finished talking to you yet.’
That sounded ominous…
‘I’ve told you—I don’t know anything about Andrew Southern,’ she insisted stubbornly. ‘Not where he is or how you might get to meet him. I wish I did!’
Nick eyed her frowningly. Did she seriously expect him to believe that?
Yes, he acknowledged impatiently after a glance at her guileless expression, that was exactly what she expected.
It was up to him to ensure that she knew she hadn’t succeeded in convincing him of anything. Not for a moment!
‘We’ll talk again after you’ve eaten,’ he told her firmly, taking her with him out into the carpeted hallway.
Hebe glared at him. ‘Do you never take no for an answer?’
Nick gave a wolfish grin. ‘You, of all people, should know that I don’t!’
That had certainly silenced her, he noted with satisfaction. That poutingly kissable mouth was set firmly as the two of them got into the private lift to go up one floor to his apartment.
Meaning that Hebe would enter his completely private domain for a second time!
‘Is an omelette okay with you?’ he rasped tersely, releasing her arm to stride through to the open-plan kitchen with its white and chrome fixtures.
Hebe took her time following him, obviously no more comfortable being back here than he was to have her here.
He would feed her the omelette, get some straight answers out of her, and then she could leave—
Where the hell was she?
He strode back out into the sitting room, coming to an abrupt halt as he saw her holding and looking at one of the photographs that usually stood on the coffee table in front of the window. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he bit out coldly, his face devoid of all expression.
Hebe almost dropped the photograph she had picked up to have a better look at, grasping it with both hands against her chest, knowing from the furious look on Nick’s face that his question didn’t require an answer—that he knew exactly what she had been doing.
