Chapter 21
21
In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack; the direct and the indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of manoeuvres.
THE ART OF WAR , SUN TZU
Bella waited for the guilt to start. The shame at her wanton behaviour. But it didn’t. And she was beginning to suspect that she wouldn’t. At some point in the night, Chase had pulled her to his side, cradling her hand against his chest, and possessively claiming her thigh that was draped across his body.
She relished how much he wanted her, enjoyed how much she wanted this. And she marvelled at who she was with him, exploring wants and desires she’d never have before admitted. Or even behaving in ways she’d have never allowed herself to. Arguing with him, being loud, not just in bed, but in the office, on the street. She didn’t care what people thought and…
Oh.
She didn’t care what people thought.
‘You’re doing it again,’ he groaned as his body began to move beneath hers, his hand sweeping up and down her thigh as if trying to soothe her.
‘Doing what?’
‘Thinking. Shhhh. You’re too loud with it.’
She smiled into his side, and he groaned again and pulled her over him. He growled into her neck and bit her playfully and she giggled from it.
‘No, you can’t make me,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I won’t do it.’
‘Won’t do what?’ she asked.
‘No more sex!’ he exclaimed, holding her to him with strong hands around her middle. ‘I can’t take it any more. All you want to do is fuck me senseless.’ She squealed at his language and he laughed, but carried on. ‘You only want me for my body. Admit it,’ he said, digging dextrous fingers into her ticklish ribs.
‘No!’ Bella cried out.
‘Admit it,’ he demanded as he tickled her even more.
‘Okay, yes I admit it,’ she cried with laughter.
‘Say it,’ he demanded, pinning her with his gaze.
‘I did.’
‘No, say it,’ he stressed.
And she pressed her lips together to stop herself, but he only tickled her more.
‘Say it.’
‘All I want to do is fuck you senseless,’ she cried out, a flush across her cheeks and heart.
And he laughed, victorious. ‘I love it when you talk dirty, Carmichael,’ he said, taking her mouth with his before tossing her to the other side of the bed playfully.
He slapped her bare ass, hard, and told her to get up.
Shock, delight and the brief sting of pain short-circuited her brain and he, unknowingly, left her panting in surprise on the bed as he started the shower.
‘Come on!’ he called from the bathroom. ‘We have places to be.’
* * *
‘Places to be’ turned out to be a six-mile Saturday-morning run, followed by breakfast back at the diner that he’d taken her to before. The waitress smiled, remembering them, and they had exactly the same order, even though Bella complained about the calories, but not hard enough to keep her from the chocolate milkshake, the burger, the fries or the onion rings.
That was followed by a trip to the Met and even though it should have seemed like a working holiday, they browsed exhibitions that spanned hundreds of years, art, architecture, installations, ceramics, and cultural exhibits, relishing the sense of hushed awe and appreciation. They avoided crowds who ignored the ban on photography and snapped pictures like strobe lighting. They smiled at pieces they liked, argued over pieces they didn’t, and she enjoyed watching Chase take in art, but felt the distance between him and the work. As if he was taking a step back from it, from allowing himself to have it, or be near it.
‘Are you in here?’ she asked impulsively.
‘I am standing here, so technically, yes.’
She slapped his arm. ‘That’s not what I meant, and you know it. Are you, your paintings , in here?’
He closed his mouth, trying to keep the smile – she could tell – but the light had gone from his eyes. He nodded.
‘Can we go see it?’ She didn’t need his permission, but it felt like something she wanted.
He sighed, checking his watch and she already knew his answer.
‘I was really hoping to get to the market before it closed,’ he said, his disappointment feigned.
‘Another time,’ she said, and he said, ‘Sure,’ pulling her slowly back towards the exit.
As they pottered around the market, picking up bits and pieces for dinner that evening, Bella didn’t forget the way he’d avoided her answer, the urge to fix the hurt, the need to make it better for him growing in her like a flower.
She wasn’t blind to the way he had never talked about his art or his paintings, or how they didn’t fill his apartment. It was as if he, rather than her, had only been there for three months. His apartment was impersonal and undecorated and somehow, for an artist, that struck Bella as so very wrong.
She was still thinking about it several hours later when she was finishing up the pasta sauce she was making for dinner while he poured himself a glass of wine.
‘Would you like one?’ he offered.
‘Please,’ she said, nudging an empty wine glass toward him. He filled it and passed it back, leaning against the countertop to watch her.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘Bella Carmichael, domestic goddess. It suits you,’ he observed, raising his glass to hers in a toast.
They’d spent the whole day together, laughing, teasing each other, arguing about paintings and carbonara versus spaghetti vongole; they’d talked about everything and anything that wasn’t about work or the future.
The future she didn’t want to imagine where he discovered that she was the one behind the article, that she was friends with his ex-lover. She knew what that future looked like in her worst nightmares. But Chase was running from something else, and she didn’t know what, but she wanted to fix it, to help him.
‘Chase—’
‘Don’t. Please don’t,’ he said, looking down at his glass.
She didn’t try to pretend not to know what he was asking. And she felt mean, because she was going to push him, because she knew how important this was.
‘Why aren’t you painting?’
* * *
Chase clenched his teeth together. He’d known she wouldn’t be able to let it go. She wasn’t that kind of person. She liked to fix things and he liked to leave them the hell alone. It was the Miller way.
And he knew that he could push it off, her question. She’d let him if he really didn’t want to talk about it. But for the first time, he realised that he did . It had been pressing against his mind, the back of his tongue, ever since he’d been helping Sascha find her way through to her collection, and even before that. Ever since Bella had stormed into his life and demanded more from him.
‘It’s block. Creative block,’ he admitted. ‘I haven’t been able to pick up a paintbrush in over a year.’
He couldn’t meet her gaze, so he locked his sight onto his hand, swirling the pale Citrine wine around the glass.
‘I’m so sorry, Chase. That must be extremely painful.’
He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. As if it didn’t feel like more than half of him, of who he was, had been AWOL for twelve months.
The silence between them wasn’t awkward, but it wasn’t peaceful either. Her presence was like a gentle press of a palm on his skin. Gentle, but insistent.
‘It started after I found them in bed to—’ He bit his lip, knowing what he’d been telling himself, what he’d told Tej, but unable to lie to Bella. She didn’t deserve that from him. ‘No. It started before that,’ he admitted. He’d been blaming Dan and Annalise for far too much for far too long. ‘It started about eighteen months ago. At first, I just tried to ignore it. Pretend it wasn’t happening.’ He rolled his shoulders, trying to shake off the guilty feeling in the pit of his stomach.
‘I became pretty unbearable to be around when the painting started to fizzle out,’ he admitted, hating the shame and the guilt and the memory of those months. The arguments with Annalise, the way he’d shrug things off with Dan. Because how could he tell his wife that he was worried about his painting when her career had disappeared at the expense of his? How could he tell his best friend that he was struggling when, as his agent, he was as much dependent on him for income as his wife? Christ, no wonder they’d sought solace in each other while he’d been behaving like an adult-sized child throwing a tantrum.
He nodded to himself. ‘Completely unbearable. I was angry, I shouted, I kicked things. Trashed my studio,’ he remembered with shame, rubbing his chin with the palm of his hand, hating how terrible just the memory of it made him feel.
‘Then, when I found Dan and Annalise together… I was devastated. I literally had no clue it had been going on,’ he admitted, shocked even now, still unable to quite believe it. ‘Everything began to slip through my fingers. And for a while, I tried to pretend that it wasn’t. I attended pre-existing exhibitions. I spent a few months travelling between them. I even met someone. She was pretty great, but even then I knew I wasn’t ready or able to give her the more that I knew she was looking for. But I ignored that too,’ he said, guilt and bitterness heavy on his tongue.
‘And then, when Annalise managed to ruin that, I just… She hated me so much. For not being able to give her the life she’d wanted to have with me. And after she scared Astrid off, and after the divorce came through, it just became easier to blame them for my lack of painting. And really, it wasn’t long before I nearly forgot that it had started before I’d found Dan and Annalise together. Because… because then it wouldn’t be my fault,’ he tried to explain.
‘Your fault? The marriage?’ Bella asked, turning off the stoves and coming round to where he’d backed himself up against the counter.
He shook his head. ‘My fault that I didn’t live up to what my mother wanted,’ he admitted, clenching his jaw to hide the way his lips trembled, blinking back the wet heat that pressed against his eyes. The way that the sliver of pain near split his heart in two.
Bella’s hands swept back the hair that had fallen across his eyes, to gently lift his gaze to hers. Eyes open, accepting, understanding. Christ , he didn’t deserve her. There were plenty of things he did deserve, but not Bella Carmichael.
‘I’m pretty sure that your mother would have just wanted you to be happy,’ Bella said, looking sadly up at him.
‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘She would have wanted that. But she also wanted more for me.’ In his mind’s eye, he saw it, her hand marking an arc in the hospital room. You’re going to be famous.
‘I think that every parent wants the world for their child,’ Bella offered. ‘And I think your mother tried to plant for you the seeds for a future she would never see outside of her imagination. And I think that if she knew for even a second that would become a burden rather than a hopeful dream, she’d be devastated.’
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Because she was right. He’d been so focused on being the success his mother had always wanted him to be, that he hadn’t really thought about just being happy, about what that even looked like to him.
Instead, his creative block had latched onto anything as an excuse to make the guilt and anger at not being able to paint so much worse. It was a kind of sadomasochistic self-flagellation, thoughts that came so thick and fast that they choked him, leaving him utterly overwhelmed and incapable of anything.
Bella’s lips pressed against his, the heat of her body pushing away the darkness and the voices. A moment of calm in the chaos that he didn’t deserve but clutched to like a lifeline.
‘Thank you for sharing that with me,’ she said against his lips and as if being given a green light to end the conversation, he turned from receiving to giving and before he knew it they were in bed and the dinner was left on the stove for the next two hours.
* * *
Bella teased the hem of her rollneck a little higher hoping that no one could see what was hidden beneath.
A love bite .
She had a love bite. At twenty-six.
She felt a knowing gaze on her, but it wasn’t coming from Chase. She looked up to find Maurice staring at her. Perhaps she and Chase weren’t being discreet enough. Maurice raised a wry eyebrow as if to say, ‘You think?’
Ali entered Chase’s office just ahead of the man who had given her more orgasms last night than she could count and Bella fought the blush on her cheeks hard. And failed.
‘Are you okay? You’re looking a little?—’
Maurice cut Ali off before she could finish. ‘It’s a little warm in here.’
Ali looked between them and shrugged before dropping down next to Bella, who was absolutely refusing point-blank to make eye contact with Maurice who was now fully smirking.
Chase was the last to enter, muttering about never making coffee again, and Bella remembered that she still hadn’t fixed the sugar sachets in his room. The problem was that she rarely had time here alone. She and Chase would leave together after the others had gone home, not because they waited for the opportunity, though there was maybe a little of that, but mainly because they’d been working so hard in the run-up to the pre-opening event, which reminded her.
‘Maurice, Ali? Can I have the final list of your invitees for the pre-opening by the end of today?’ she asked. ‘And Maurice, if you could speak to Ye-Joon?—’
‘I’ll do it!’ Ali cried, bouncing on the sofa, with her hand practically in the air, delighted by any excuse to speak to the crush who now blushed every time she looked his way.
‘Okay,’ Bella replied with a laugh.
Chase sat down, eyeing his coffee warily, as if it may or may not commit grievous bodily harm at the first sip.
‘Okay,’ he said, finally dragging his eyes away from the coffee. ‘I wanted to let you know about an email I received from Zadzisai a few days ago.’
Bella smoothed out her features before the frown she felt gathering could take place. Chase hadn’t mentioned it, but it wasn’t like he had to. It wasn’t some secret he wasn’t telling her. Not like the secret she was keeping from him about Astrid and the girls and why she’d first come here.
She bit back a mental curse. Having a good-girl conscience was a real pain sometimes.
Maurice nudged her with his knee and she refocused.
‘It seems that they have changed their minds and would like to return as featured artist for the opening.’
A whoosh of air left Bella’s mouth, not quite a gasp, not quite a sigh. Maurice did manage to frown and Ali looked a little confused.
‘What about Sascha?’ Ali asked. ‘What about all the material that’s ready to go out? And the website?’
‘Can we peddle it back at this point?’ Chase asked Bella.
Even while she reeled at the thought of dropping Sascha, Bella ran through the amount of work needed. ‘Nothing has actually gone out to the mailing lists, the website is live, but hasn’t reached phase two of the update in terms of specific artist details, beyond the current images. But…’
How? How could he consider doing that to Sascha?
‘I’m not making any decisions right now,’ Chase assured them, ‘I just want to know if a) we can do it, b) whether we want to, and c) what would be the right thing for the gallery. So. Thoughts. Maurice, take it away.’
After a beat, Maurice leaned into it. ‘Technically we can do it. Technically it would be the most sensible thing for the gallery – Zadzisai brings a lot of attention and kudos, not just with clients and guests, but other artists too. But do we want to?’
‘No,’ Bella said. She blinked when all eyes landed on her. ‘I know that it would make the most sense, I know that…’
But it would sell out everything that Chase stood for. She didn’t want to watch him turn into one of the corporate raiders that he had been so disdainful of, just because he’d been forced into it by that shitty article she’d practically written herself. She didn’t want to sell out Sascha who had worked day and night, pushing herself, to get ready for the opening.
‘I get that this could cost the gallery in the short term,’ she pressed on. ‘It doesn’t make the most business sense, turning them down. We’d obviously do initially much better with Zadzisai. But I can’t help but worry about what it would cost us in the long term.’
And why was she thinking of the long term? For this gallery? She had come here, hoping to ruin the life and reputation of a man she had thought a monster for making her friend suffer. And now? Now she was planning for after? With Chase? And the gallery?
‘How long do I have, before I have to make a decision?’ Chase asked as if considering both positions.
‘Twenty-four hours,’ Bella said decisively. ‘Any longer and we risk losing the momentum needed to capitalise on either Zadzisai or get enough info out on Sascha. But I don’t like it,’ she said, finally.
‘Noted,’ Chase said, making marks on his tablet and moving onto the next topic while avoiding her gaze.