Chapter 11
The words sounded a little bitter and Tiffany instantly wished she could recall them.
Theo Callisthenes – her boss – did not need to know about the saga of the Wainwright family.
He already knew too much about her as it was, and family stuff was private.
Not even Kelsey knew the full story. But given she’d only just been thinking about home, it was hardly surprising she’d be envious.
‘I know.’ He shoved his hands in his pockets and fixed her with his cool blue eyes. ‘I take it your parents don’t have a great relationship?’
That was putting it mildly. ‘No.’ A husky note in her voice betrayed the emotion behind that one simple little word.
‘They’re divorced?’
‘Yes.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I was fifteen.’
‘Tough age.’
She shrugged. In a lot of ways it had been a relief not to have to keep her father’s secrets any more; she just hadn’t thought her mother would lash out the way she had, accusing Tiffany of collusion.
Hadn’t been prepared to be so brutally sidelined when the married man who’d slept with half the women in the district had not been.
‘You have brothers, right?’
Pleased to be veering away from the topic of her parents, Tiffany nodded. She’d told Rufus a bit about her brothers when he’d asked her about Balmain Downs, which Theo had been present for, and she’d occasionally mentioned them at the table the times they all ate together. ‘Four,’ she confirmed.
‘And you’re the youngest?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Gordy, Mack and Trapper are older by a few years. Mikey is a year younger.’
‘And they’re all still at home helping to run the ranch?’
Tiffany smiled at the Americanism. ‘Station,’ she corrected. ‘And no. Mikey left home.’
‘It wasn’t for him?’
The understatement choked a hollow laugh from the depths of her throat. ‘Living with a bunch of old-fashioned, He-Man cowboys in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere on a cattle station when you’re arty, gay and vegetarian isn’t necessarily mutually exclusive, but in Mikey’s case it was.’
‘Ah.’ He nodded. ‘Your family weren’t… understanding?’
‘The family were okay, they were more disturbed about the vegetarian thing to be honest. My dad had a harder time understanding why Mikey wanted to leave. He never understood why anyone would want to live anywhere but the outback.’
Once upon a time, Tiffany had thought that, too.
‘They argued about that most of all. He tried to persuade Mikey to stay, offered to build him a studio, but as my brother was fond of saying, sometimes at the top of his lungs, an artist needed to experience life, so in the end he left without my father’s blessing or support and predictions that he’d be back with his tail between his legs. ’
‘And your mother?’
Beverly Wainwright had become Beverly Martin, moving on to a new life as a trophy wife to a man twenty years her senior. ‘She was… busy.’
Clearly taking her brevity as a hint, Theo changed the subject. Sort of. ‘What kind of artist is he?’
Tiffany’s mood brightened instantly. She could rave about Mikey’s art all night. ‘Landscape,’ she said. ‘But with a modern twist.’
And then because no matter who asked, Tiffany would always pull out her phone and scroll to examples of her brother’s art, she did the same for Theo, pulling up the gallery website of which she was a silent partner.
‘This is him.’ Leaving her laptop on the sun lounger, she crossed to where Theo was standing and handed over her phone. Their hands accidentally brushed and the familiar prickle of awareness that zapped from his fingertips to hers reminded her not to get too close.
The screen displayed her favourite piece, which hung permanently in the gallery and was not for sale.
It was of Balmain Downs, although only very few looking at it would know its exact rural origins.
Figures on horseback and cattle were blurred and indistinct, the haze of ochre-red dust being the predominate feature almost sparkling in rays of bright sunshine flooding the canvas.
Tiffany had been on many a muster before the wet season had doused the parched earth, where cattle hooves had kicked up so much dust she could taste it dry and gritty in her mouth and wedged so deeply between her teeth only flossing could remove it.
‘This is impressive,’ he said, glancing up from the screen.
Tiffany felt the usual swell of pride in her brother at the compliment and, maybe she was biased, but she agreed wholeheartedly.
She was hardly a connoisseur but every cruise ship she’d worked on had its own art gallery that ran auctions, and most of those paintings were nowhere near as good as Mikey’s.
Of course, he could just be being polite, because what possible connection could a rich Greek playboy who’d grown up around the sea and boats have to such an arid landscape?
But it seemed genuine. ‘He’s crazy good with light.
’ Mikey would love the Med, and they’d often talked about him coming over when he got his first big sale.
‘If you keep scrolling, you’ll see what I mean. ’
But he didn’t scroll on, he just returned his eyes to the screen. ‘Is this what it’s like? The Top End?’
‘Sometimes.’ Tiffany’s desire to look at the painting again warred with her need to keep him at a distance but ultimately, she couldn’t resist, stepping closer as she turned to plant her ass next to his.
Their arms brushed as she leaned in a little, and goosebumps coursed from her elbow to shoulder blade, but Tiffany’s eyes were busy caressing every detail to pay them much heed.
‘And then the rains come and everything is lush and green and the creeks flood and the billabongs fill up and the rivers rise and the gum trees flower and the wattles bloom like fluffy bursts of sunshine and it smells fresh and green and lovely.’
‘You miss it.’
The heat of his gaze scorched the top of her head.
‘Yes,’ she murmured, because sometimes she missed it so much it hurt to breathe.
‘And no.’ Because mostly she really didn’t miss all the bloody drama.
She turned then to face the sea, resting her bent arms on the edge, a sigh escaping into the sultry Aegean air. ‘It’s complicated.’
Theo turned too, resting his elbows next to hers.
They weren’t touching, but Tiffany was excruciatingly aware of the heat pouring off his body.
As if sensing she didn’t want to talk about her contradictory answer, Theo scrolled on, the light from the screen illuminating the planes and angles of his face and the way the hollows beneath his cheeks gave way to the granite cut of his jaw.
‘Is this a current exhibition?’
‘No, he has his own gallery he leases in Sydney. Well, gallery-slash-studio-slash-apartment. He lives upstairs in a cramped flat, paints out the back and has a small area in the front where he displays his art.’
‘And does he make a living out of it?’
Tiffany gave a half laugh, thinking about the amount of debt her brother was in.
‘Not yet, no. But he will.’ She’d never had any doubt about that.
‘He’s not exactly a starving artist. He makes ends meet.
But it’s tough getting a toe hold in the art space even if you are insanely talented.
Especially if you have to split your focus between creating and selling. ’
Add to that a relationship that had cleaned him out and a couple of other bad financial decisions when he’d first hightailed it to Sydney, and Mikey had been in quite the hole when Tiffany had started working her first cruise ship.
He’d been facing down the possibility of fulfilling their father’s prophecy of doom and returning home with his tail between his legs and, still angry with her dad, Tiffany hadn’t been able to bear the thought.
So she’d offered to help, sinking most of the money she’d earned the past seven years into a gallery that barely broke even.
‘Sounds like he needs a benefactor,’ Theo mused as he scrolled.
‘He has one.’
Of sorts. Maybe that was giving too much away, but she was proud that she’d been able to help Mikey get back on track. And not just because she knew that one day he’d be a super-rich, super successful artist in his own right but because it would be a big screw you to their father.
Immature? Sure. But no less valid.
He didn’t say anything for a beat or two but, even looking out into the dark abyss of a moonless sea, Tiffany felt the fan of his gaze like a searchlight on her profile. ‘You?’
Lifting her chin, she turned to meet his eye. ‘I co-own the gallery, yes.’ And she was honoured to be a part of Mikey’s artistic enterprise.
‘That’s very generous of you.’
She shrugged. This was her kid brother; what else was she going to do? ‘It’s not as glamorous as it sounds.’
He chuckled as he handed back the phone, and Tiffany shivered at the low rumble of air despite the warmth of the night. ‘Maybe not but I know how much you earn on a cruise ship.’
It was true; work on a cruise ship wasn’t exactly money for jam, but with no food or accommodation costs, no utility bills to pay, no car to upkeep, no need for expensive holidays when every day the ship docked in a different port, outlays were minimal. And a lot of money could be earned in tips.
‘But I don’t have any real expenses. And I’m hardly going to let Mikey sink when I can help him swim. My father might think that’s okay, but I don’t.’
A slow smile pulled at the corners of his generous mouth and put a sparkle in his eyes. ‘I’m getting the feeling you and your father don’t get… on so well?’
Tiffany found herself smiling at his deliberate understatement and at the deftness of his approach. If he’d asked her outright she might have told him to mind his own business, but that smile slipped under her defences. ‘You could say that.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Tiffany blinked at the unexpected apology. The situation with her father was not his fault, yet there was compassion and empathy in the silky blue depths of his eyes.
‘That must be hard,’ he continued. ‘I’m very close with my father. And it seems like from the little I’ve gleaned these past few weeks that you were once close to yours, right?’
‘Yeah.’ She nodded. ‘I was.’ As she turned back to the ocean, a slight breeze picked up a stray lock of hair that had escaped the up-do and blew across her face.
It also wafted a hit of aniseed in her direction.
‘And then I walked in on him… in flagrante in a shed with a neighbour’s wife when I was twelve and it ripped the blinkers right off my eyes. ’
‘Tiffany.’ It was a hush, a whisper laced with empathy, and she shut her eyes to squeeze back the hot prick of tears. ‘I’m sorry you had to see that.’
Her breath got tangled around the lump in her throat.
Again with the apologising. She knew this man barely at all compared to her father and yet Theo had apologised to her twice within a few minutes about things that were not of his doing.
Unlike her father, who had never apologised for anything that had rippled from that day onwards.
‘It probably would have been all right if it had been just that. But he begged me not to tell my mother. He said if nobody knew then nobody could be hurt and that it might break the marriage up, that he’d probably have to leave or that Balmain Downs might even have to be sold and it would be all my fault. ’
The brief flattening of his lips in her peripheral vision told Tiffany exactly what Theo thought about her father’s emotional blackmail, but he was obviously trying to be measured in his response. ‘That was not very nice of him.’
‘No, it wasn’t.’
Tiffany still remembered the anguish of the time. She remembered the shock of her discovery and the realisation her father was actually just a man like any other, a mere mortal. It had been a bit like when Trapper had told her at the age of six that Santa wasn’t real, except multiplied by infinity.
‘But I did what he asked. He’d assured me it had been a one-off and ultimately, I couldn’t countenance the thought of my mother, of anyone, knowing the truth about my father.
’ It had been hard enough for her to bear.
‘Except I soon realised that Mrs Garrity wasn’t the only woman he was screwing.
I’d see him with other women at district functions, or he’d be talking at the dinner table about some landowners meeting or other he was going to, or some cattle auction or a business trip to Darwin, and he’d wink at me like I knew what was going on and it was our little secret. ’
The sharp twist in her gut was almost as visceral as it had been during those few years she’d been ensnared in her father’s web of infidelity, the hot coil of dread like a lead weight in her stomach, and she hadn’t realised she’d been wringing her hands until the fingers of his left hand were lacing through the fingers of her right.
So caught up in the past was she, she stared at his long strong fingers for a beat, trying to comprehend why they were there. It was such an unexpected gesture. Not sexual or flirty despite the continued buzz of awareness coursing through her body. It was… comforting. And just what she needed.
‘Your mother found out?’ he prompted.
‘Yes. I don’t even know how. But there was an almighty row and, when playing down his sexploits didn’t work, he tried to tell her she was overreacting. He told her that I knew about it and didn’t have any issues so why should she?’
His thumb set up a soothing tempo rubbing rhythmically along the back of her hand.
‘She felt I had betrayed her.’
‘You were twelve.’ His voice was almost a growl. ‘And even if you’d been a fully grown adult, your father’s actions were on him, not on you.’
Tiffany shrugged. ‘I guess it’s easier to lash out and blame someone else than confront the fact your husband couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.’
He didn’t say anything then, just lifted their joined hands, and Tiffany’s gaze snared on him as he pressed a light kiss to her knuckles. It was sweet and made her chest ache and, absurdly, she wanted to turn, she wanted to slide her hands inside his jacket and around his waist and snuggle.
Theo wasn’t her boss right now. He was another human being offering comfort.
‘She left?’ he asked, their eyes meeting, the warmth of his breath playing over her knuckles.
Tiffany nodded. ‘She left. And I stayed until I was so resentful people were tiptoeing around us like we were unexploded bombs. Then I went travelling and eventually found myself on a cruise ship.’
‘And the Top End’s loss is our gain.’
She smiled at the wry humour in his tone and part of her wanted to stay up on deck with him for the rest of the night, but she knew she was too emotionally vulnerable right now and she’d probably already told him too much.
‘Anyway.’ Tiffany disentangled. ‘It’s late…’ They stared at each other for a beat before she smiled and said, ‘See you tomorrow.’
He nodded and turned back to the view as she gathered her laptop and departed.