Chapter Eight #2
I’m babbling because I’m nervous. He nods but doesn’t say anything, and I remember then that his business is property development, so he must be used to relocating tenants. Oops. Shut up, Marama.
Shelves full of books line part of one wall: books about art techniques and famous artists, nature books, because I love painting leaves and flowers and trees, and illustrated books about Māori mythology to give me inspiration, among many others.
He browses the shelves, and the circular coffee table near the sofa that’s covered with more books, magazines, and several sketchpads.
Then he walks over to the slanted desk where I do a lot of my drawing and bends to look at the sketches sitting there—stylized leaves and flowers that I’m trialing for the new series of paintings, some in pencil, some with watercolor as I practice different colors.
“These are good,” he says. “You like painting natural objects.” It’s a statement not a question, and it reminds me that he went to my exhibition and actually bought a piece.
“A lot of my work blends fantasy and reality. Real-life people or objects depicted with fantasy elements, or mythological characters with accurate flora and fauna.”
“A foot in both worlds?”
It’s a nice way to put it, and I smile. “Maybe.”
He stops to look up at one of my canvases on the wall. I sip my coffee, trying to quell the butterflies in my stomach.
Finally, he turns and wanders toward the chair that’s waiting in the bay window. “For me?” he asks.
I nod. “Do you like the room?” I ask, somewhat shyly, half-expecting him to mock the girlish colors and fairy lights.
But to my surprise he says, “I do. There’s a kind of spiritual atmosphere here, as if it’s hallowed ground. Do you consider it wāhi tapu ?” It’s Māori for a sacred place.
I’m very touched that he understands. “I do. I prefer it if people don’t come in here.
The housekeeper dusts and vacuums, and my parents can come in, obviously, although they don’t tend to interrupt me when I’m working.
But I leave the door closed most of the time, and it has a ‘Private’ sign on it to discourage any of Mum’s friends or anyone else visiting. ”
“Do you say a karakia before you paint?” It means prayer.
“I do, especially when I’m painting ancestors or powerful Māori themes. It sounds pretentious to say my work is spiritual, but I feel that creating art is a form of sacred storytelling and a way to honor my culture.”
“I don’t think that’s pretentious. It must feel godly to be an artist. Bringing things into being that weren’t there before.”
It’s exactly how I feel, and I warm through. “Right,” I say as I sit on the stool by my easel, “take your clothes off and sit in the chair.”
He stares at me.
“I’m kidding,” I say with a laugh. “Don’t look so scared.”
He scowls. “I wasn’t scared.” He sits and leans back as if it’s a throne that was personally made for him. Talk about own everything you come into contact with. “Where do you want me to face?”
“Forward is fine. Find a point ahead of you and fix your gaze on it.” I adjust my stool. I’m slightly to the right of him, with the easel at an angle, so I can see both him and the painting without moving my head. “I’m going to start with a pencil sketch, just to see if I can get a likeness.”
“Okay.”
“Do you paint at all?”
He chuckles. “No.”
“Do you write?”
“No.”
“Play an instrument?”
“The xylophone.”
“Really?”
He laughs. “No.”
I glare at him. “So what’s your creative outlet?”
“I don’t have one.”
I purse my lips. “Kingi said he thought you were a robot, and I said I didn’t believe that. I’m beginning to wonder.”
He just sips his coffee, watching me over the rim of the cup.
“There’s something you’re not telling me,” I say softly. “What don’t you want to admit?”
He looks into his cup. Then he says, casually, as if he’s talking about hedge funds, “I make doll’s furniture.”
My eyebrows rise. “Sorry—what?”
He shrugs. “From wood. Chairs. Tables. The occasional four-poster bed. I have a workshop in my house in Herne Bay. I spend most of my free time there, listening to music or podcasts while I work. It’s an escape.”
My jaw drops at this insight into his private world. The thought of the confident, somewhat aggressive Spencer Cavendish making tiny wooden objects that require finesse and care is unexpected and oddly intimate.
To hide my surprise that he confessed his secret passion, I turn to the sketchpad on the easel, pick up my pencil, and start to make light marks to get his features in proportion—eyes halfway down the oval of the face, the nose at the bottom of the middle third, and the mouth just above the halfway mark of the bottom third.
“When did you begin to make those?” I ask while I work.
“My father built dollhouses from scratch. They were things of beauty. Stained-glass windows, real parquet floors, sweeping staircases. I started making the furniture to go inside them when I was fourteen.”
“Your father?” The head is five eyes wide, the space between the eyes roughly the width of one eye. “Is that your birth father, or your foster father?”
He looks surprised that I’m aware of his situation. “My foster father.”
“How old were you when you were placed with him?”
“I’d just turned thirteen.”
I start sketching the shape of his face. Men’s skulls are different from women’s—they have pronounced brow ridges, and the areas where the muscles attach are more defined. “Your two brothers were placed with you, is that right?”
“Yeah. My sisters went to another home.” He sighs.
“It worked out well in the end. The couple who took them were both doctors. Two of my three sisters ended up being doctors too and one is a nurse, and they all love their jobs. My foster father was a businessman, and my foster mother worked from home—she was a seamstress and altered clothes, and she also made tiny cushions and bedding and curtains for the dollhouses.”
“Kingi said your father was the one who recognized your potential.”
He smiles. “Yeah, he pushed us all very hard, but me especially. He saw something in me that I hadn’t even recognized in myself. He paid for me to go to university, and invested a lot of time and money in me.”
With the proportions marked, I begin work on the finer details, starting with his eyes. It means I’m able to spend time looking at them, which is enjoyable. “What do you think he saw in you?”
His expression turns quizzical. “I… don’t know.
He said my experiences had made me resilient and determined, which is probably true.
He recognized that I had a talent with figures, and he pushed me to take mathematics and economics, and paid extra for a tutor to teach me about finance.
And he was very open with his business, and let me go to work with him at weekends and shadow him, I’m not sure why. ”
“Probably because most teenage boys are smoking weed and drinking alcohol and knocking girls up.”
“Well, one out of three ain’t bad,” he says, reminding me that he got Eleanor pregnant at eighteen.
I decide that this is going to be just a pencil drawing, and start adding shading for his brows. “So… tell me about Amiria.”
The shutters come down, and his expression becomes carefully guarded.
Amiria was Scarlett’s mother, and Kingi has told me the backstory there.
Spencer and Scarlett’s father, Blake Stone, went to school together and were firm friends, until Spencer started dating Amiria, and she went off with Blake.
Kingi said there were other issues involved, with Blake also screwing Spencer over in a business deal, but he believes their thirty-year feud was mainly due to the fact that Blake stole the girl that Spencer truly loved.
“Was she the love of your life?” I ask.
He glares at me, and I’m sure he’s going to tell me to mind my own business. But to my surprise he then sighs and says, “I thought she was, for a long time.”
“Did you love her more than Eleanor?”
He tips his head to the side. “You like asking penetrating questions, don’t you?”
“I’m interested in what makes you tick. And don’t tip your head, please.”
He straightens it slowly; I can see he doesn’t like being told what to do.
“Why?” he asks.
“Why what?”
“Why are you interested?” His expression turns suspicious. “Are you supposed to report back to Genevieve?”
Part of the reason for my curiosity is due to Genevieve’s request to “paint his weaknesses.” To “strip him of that smug confidence and expose the vulnerable man inside.” He turned me down in a way that made me feel an inch high, when I had opened up to him, as sure as if I’d physically pulled my ribs apart and exposed my heart.
I hate him a little for that, and it’s the main reason I agreed to do the commission—I want to put him in his place.
But that’s not the only reason. So I say, “No.” Well, it’s not a complete lie.
The painting is going to be a representation of what I find out.
Not a report. “You fascinate me,” I admit.
“You ooze power, confidence, and wealth, and I want to peek behind the curtain and find out how you became the man you are.”
His lips curve up. “And you’re going to show that in the painting?”
“Maybe.”
“Not sure I like that idea.”
I shrug. “You bid for me. I was very clear that the portrait was The Face I See. How I choose to see you, not as you choose to be seen.”
He doesn’t reply, but I can see that makes him uncomfortable.
“Tell me about Genevieve,” I say, starting to sketch his straight, almost Roman nose. “Did you two have a thing?”
I lift my gaze to his. His humor has faded. He really doesn’t like her.
“No,” he says.
That really surprises me. I was convinced they must have had a fling, and it was the fact that he didn’t want more that has caused her bitterness.
“Seriously?” I say. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” Now he’s amused.
“So… why do you both dislike each other so much?”
He shifts in the chair. “She wanted to join the Midnight Circle.”
My eyebrows rise. “Oh… I didn’t know that.”
“Huxley personally approached six of us, and then spread the word that he was looking for an eighth member. Helen was one of the applicants, but she has no business experience to speak of.”
Ah… that explains a lot. I’d wondered why his daughter was so bitter toward him, and why she’d gone over to Lumen.
“So Genevieve applied,” I say. “Why was she not chosen?”
He doesn’t reply. He observes me, clearly thinking about what to say.
I let him ponder and concentrate on the drawing. It’s coming along well for an initial sketch. After this I might take some photos from various angles to use later in my main painting.
I’ve decided that I will do a standard-ish portrait for him, because the guy did pay a million dollars for it. But he will also be the subject of the first in the series I’m doing for the commission. And that one is going to be very different.
I glance back at him. He still looks thoughtful.
“You really didn’t sleep with her?” I ask, puzzled.
He shakes his head. “I’m not sure I should say. She’s kind of your employer now, right? I heard about the commission.”
I start sketching strands of his hair. “I suppose. If I’m honest, I don’t particularly like her personally. I admire what she’s achieved. I do think it’s harder to get on in business as a woman, and as a Māori woman especially. But I find her quite… snidey, I suppose.”
His lips curve up again. “Yeah, that’s a good description.
” He sighs, which I’m beginning to recognize as a sign that he’s made up his mind.
“She approached me,” he says. “One evening, at Huxley’s club, while Midnight was still being born, she came and introduced herself and sat at my table.
She flirted with me all evening, outrageously so.
Huxley was watching, and he quietly took me to one side and told me she’d applied for the final seat on the Circle.
When she suggested we get a room together, I knew she was trying to influence me, and I told her she’d ruined her chances of getting the seat.
I don’t like people who use tactics like that to get what they want.
” His face shows his distaste that she’d sleep with him just to close the business deal.
“Hell hath no fury,” I say. “I can understand that.”
He gives me an impatient look. “It’s very different from our interaction. She’s almost the same age as me. She wasn’t the daughter of my business partner. And I didn’t want her.”
My hand stops on the paper. My heart bangs. He didn’t want her. But he does want me?
My gaze slides to him to discover him watching me. There’s heat in his eyes now—yes, that was what he meant. Ohhh… fuck. Once again, the air feels charged, intimate, and emotional, and it’s difficult to breathe.
This sexy, confident, determined guy wants me. I guess I should be relieved he’s decided I’m out of bounds.
Not disappointed.