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‘My ex-wife.’ He reached into his pants pocket. ‘Do you want to call her or shall I?’
‘Hey, no!’ Sarah cried, and then she sucked in a breath that was half-outrage, half-laugh. ‘Oh, you … you villain! I believed you!’
‘Smarty-pants. Villain. What next, thesaurus girl? Meanie-beanie?’
‘How about knave?’
‘Not bad.’
‘Dastard.’
‘Better.’
‘Rapscallion.’
‘Now you’re talking.’
‘You weren’t really going to call her.’
‘No, but I promise Margaret really does think I’m nice. So come on, cheer me up: take advantage of me.’
She blinked at him. ‘Take what?’
‘Take advantage of me. Of my niceness. Indulge my White Knight Syndrome.’ He gave her his most innocent look. ‘Why, what did you think I meant? Do you want to take advantage of me in some other way?’ He flexed his dimple-power again. ‘I’m game if you have designs on my virtue.’
‘You’re being deliberately disingenuous.’
‘Disingenuous!’ he said admiringly. ‘Can you give me a really hard word, and use it in a sentence? Like, really, really hard?’
Another of those chokes, but she straightened her shoulders and picked up the gauntlet. ‘“Absquatulate”. Sarah Quinn had been trying to “absquatulate” from the storage room for quite some time!’
‘I’m such a sucker for a girl with words. Sorry, but you can consider your fate sealed. You’re not absquatulating from the storage room, Sarah Quinn—not without giving me my White Knight fix. I’m saving you whether you want me to or not.’
‘You’ve ably discharged your White Knight duty by offering me your handkerchief.’ She smiled, proffering his handkerchief on one upturned palm. ‘Which I hereby return to thee with gratitude, Sir David, unused and snot-free.’
Damn! He was losing her. ‘Yeah, you might want to use it before you face the crowd,’ he said, thinking fast.
She started to wave that suggestion away—but he twisted his face into a theatrical wince, and that stopped her.
‘Oh, how could I forget?’ She dropped the phone into her open evening bag and pulled out a compact. ‘It’s why I was trying to sneak out in the first place. Instead, here I am, standing around, talking to you. All I can say is thank God you’re not him.’
‘Er … not who?’
‘Him. The man of my dr— Oh, never mind!’ She started to open the compact. ‘It’s bad enough that even you should see me looking like— Oh. My. God!’ She stared in horror into the little round mirror for one frozen moment. And then she started manically dabbing at her cheeks with his handkerchief. ‘I need to invest in some waterproof mascara.’
‘Even though you don’t generally cry?’
‘Oh, you!’
‘Here,’ he said, taking the compact off her. ‘I’ll hold it while you do the repair work.’
‘I can manage.’
‘Hey, I’m a nice guy, remember?’
‘Sorry but I’m not sold on the whole “nice guy” thing,’ she said, but she let him hold the compact while she recommenced dabbing at the black-streaked tear tracks on her cheeks. ‘Don’t think I’m not grateful, but shouldn’t you be out there mingling with the bank’s clients?’
‘I’ve done my quota of mingling.’
‘Then shouldn’t you be out there looking at the paintings?’
‘I looked at the paintings out there. Now I’m looking at the paintings in here.’
‘And you got a bonus—Edvard Munch’s The Scream come to life.’
‘Except you didn’t scream.’
‘I was speaking figuratively. I generally don’t scream.’
‘Generally don’t scream. Generally don’t cry. Don’t throw phones—new ones, anyway. And you know big words. I might be falling in like with you.’
‘I have more than enough people in like with me already, thank you.’ She dipped into her bag again and pulled out a lipstick. She smeared on a layer of what looked like glossy rust, then rubbed her lips together. ‘It’s the other part I’m missing.’
‘Other part?’
‘Never mind.’ She turned her head to one side, then the other, assessing her face in the mirror. ‘I’m going to have to put on more mascara.’
‘You look fine without it.’
‘I’m blonde, in case you haven’t noticed. Which means my eyelashes are almost invisible.’ She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. ‘Mind you, you’re blond, too. How did you manage to score such dark eyelashes? Are they tinted?’
‘No they bloody well are not.’
‘Hey, there’s no shame in an eyelash tint.’ She examined his face. ‘Or a facial.’
‘My eyelashes are the result of genetics. And so is my skin, so do not mention the word “facial” to me again if you value your life.’
‘Oooh, touchy,’ she said, and her eyes were doing what he’d never thought possible and dancing. ‘Seriously, though, do you know how much it hurts when a guy gets that combination? Blond, with dark eyelashes?’
‘Yes. Margaret, who is also blonde, used to tell me all the time. Which is how I know I’m not going to win the mascara fight. So go right ahead and slap it on.’
Sarah dug in her bag again and pulled out a tube of mascara. David was starting to think that tiny bag of hers had mystical qualities, given how many objects went in and came out of it. She brushed on the mascara with the speed and accuracy of an expert cosmetician. ‘There,’ she said, putting the tube in her bag along with his handkerchief. She batted her eyelashes at David as she retrieved the compact he’d been holding for her, popped it in with everything else and snapped the bag closed.
‘Hang on, there’s a clump at the corner,’ he said, and reached out to pinch one of her outer eyelashes between his thumb and forefinger. Did she jump a little? He wasn’t sure, but he thought—hoped?—she had. He stood back to examine her. ‘Better.’
‘Your ex-wife teach you that?’
‘Let’s just say I know my way around a tube of mascara.’
‘Oh you do, do you?’
‘Not from personal use, brat!’
‘If you say so,’ she sing-songed, and tried to move past him.
‘Hey—what about my handkerchief?’
She stopped. ‘You want it back?’
‘Yes.’
‘Even though it’s not a Galaxy-esque pocket square?’
‘Even so.’
‘Fine. I’ll wash it and … and … Oh.’ Her eyes widened. Surprise? Fear? No—guilt! ‘I’ll wash it and give it to Lane for you.’
Ah. Lane. The fly in his ointment. ‘I’d prefer you to wash it and bring it back to me yourself.’
Sarah eyed him warily. ‘Why?’
Out of options. ‘Because I want you to pose for me.’
And at last he had her full attention. Which had him questioning why he hadn’t led with that straight off the bat. But he knew why: the possibility of being turned down flat. Her initial animosity had been almost palpable, whereas now, he had something to work with. He’d work with anything she gave him to get her to agree.
‘Can you repeat that?’ she asked.
‘I want you to pose for me.’
‘What does that mean? “Pose”?’
‘Pose as in for a painting. As in I’m entering the Langman Portrait Prize and I want you to be my model.’
‘But you’re a banker.’
‘Who also paints.’
A moment of staring, and then she sucked in a breath and … and bristled? Yes, bristled. ‘Oh, I see!’
‘Oh, you see what?’
‘You want to paint me naked, don’t you?’
‘Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of—’
‘Lane mentioned your interest in paintings when she introduced us, remember?’
What the hell? ‘Lane doesn’t know I paint.’
‘Or should I say your “etchings”? I’ve heard nudes are your favourite kind.’
David could actually feel a blush start to heat his face. And he never blushed. Talk about old pick-up lines coming back to haunt a guy! ‘That’s different.’
‘Are you telling me you don’t want to get Lane naked?’
‘Yes, I’m telling you that.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Let me put it in context,’ he said. ‘I did want to get Lane naked, but now I don’t. It’s what you might call a past-tense situation.’
‘That sounds like an obfuscation to me. Only an hour ago, I saw you look at Lane in that … that way. And an hour isn’t exactly past tense!’
‘I may well have looked at her in that “way” an hour ago. But fifty-nine minutes ago, she introduced me to your brother Adam, and it became very clear to me that nobody except him was going to be seeing her naked from now on.’
‘I’m not so sure about that,’ she said darkly—and she was looking at him like he was the enemy again. Ah well, one step forward, two steps back.
‘If you want to talk about people looking at each other in a certain “way”, let’s talk about the way your brother looked at me,’ he said. ‘Like he was visualizing tearing me limb from limb with his teeth.’ He gave an extravagant shudder. ‘I have the strongest objection to being gnawed on by jealous men.’
She looked at him for the longest time, and then said, ‘What if I told you Lane likes you better?’
‘I’d say you’re wrong.’
‘What if I’m right?’
‘You’re not.’
‘They—Adam and Lane—have a very specific relationship.’
‘Which has nothing to do with me.’
‘It might have something to do with you.’
‘It doesn’t.’
She made a huffing sound. ‘Look, can you give me something to work with here?’
Something to work with? One step forward. ‘All right. I’ll say to you that whatever the case, however Lane feels about Adam, or about me, I’m no longer interested in her.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because that would complicate things between you and me.’
She pursed her lips, looking uncertain. ‘You mean …? What do you mean? That painting me is better than having sex with Lane?’
‘I haven’t done either yet, so that’s impossible to answer.’
‘Aha! You said “yet”! That’s a prevarication.’
