Chapter 14
A n hour later, standing in Declan's apartment, Tara said, "I meant it when I said this sounded like an excellent place to start, but I had no idea you lived in the lap of luxury. This is an excellent place to start in a whole different way than what I meant! Look at that view!"
Declan chuckled, sounding almost embarrassed. "It's a new build and I was lucky enough to get in on it early." He was in the kitchen, but the space was open-plan, the kitchen flowing to a dining area that led on to the living room where Tara stood at one of the huge windows, delighted with how the city spread out to one side and the docks, with a park, stretched the other way. There were three bedrooms down a hall, although Tara hadn't gone to check them out. The entire place was bright and beautiful, with clean modern lines that were kept from being too boring by the art on the walls, which ranged from abstract paintings and photos of local sites to a ridiculously huge print of familiar pop art that almost covered the living room's entire back wall.
"You were lucky enough to get in on the penthouse apartment early," Tara said dryly. "I'm going to stop feeling badly about letting you pay for my park entrance fees and dinners. But your studio isn't here?" She turned toward him, pausing to study the enormous print on the back wall. "I love that piece of art. Iconic. No idea who the artist is, but you see that image all over the place. Advertisements and graffiti and everywhere. Album covers. I didn't know you could get prints that big, though."
"The studio is…" Declan waved a hand toward the city-side end of the apartment. "A fifteen minute walk that way. The National Sculpture Factory rents spaces to artists. And you can't." He came out of the kitchen with a couple of sandwiches that looked like they'd been made by a gourmet shop: thick brown bread, layers of lunch meat, rich red tomatoes and piles of lettuce.
Tara's stomach rumbled. "Can't what? I didn't know I was hungry until I saw that." She joined him at the table as he ate most of one half of a sandwich in a single bite.
"I'm starving ," he said apologetically when it was safe to do so. "That shift to white really took it out of me. You can't get prints that big. Or, well, that one, I suppose you probably can. It's pretty well-known."
"Well, it was very impressive," Tara assured him. "Worth you ending up hungry. I think she was suitably chastised." After a moment the rest of what he'd said caught up to her, and she paused halfway to taking a bite and glanced toward the wall art again. Then she rose and went to look at it more closely. It was textured in a way the prints she'd seen weren't: brush strokes and paint layers building up the iconic image of a fierce young woman that had always reminded Tara a bit of that one Che Guevara painting, but mixed with Van Gogh's surreally beautiful and brilliant color palate: in this case, peacock blues and purples. She turned back toward Declan. "Um."
He'd sounded a bit embarrassed about the apartment. Now he looked full-on mortified. Tara, incredulous, said, " You painted this?"
Declan, all but squirming in his seat, said, "I did say I'd had some commercial success."
Tara spluttered, "Some—! Some comm—! Some! This! This !" and Declan actually put his sandwich down so he could also put his head down and fold his hands over it, ears burning red. Tara managed to say, "This is—you painted one of the most iconic images of the decade and you call it 'some' commercial success?!"
"I didn't mean to!" Declan howled from inside his arms. "I didn't know it was going to be licensed and reproduced and sold on t-shirts and everything forever! I just got really, really lucky!"
"Well, no wonder you could take the day off randomly and play tourist guide! That's amazing! You're amazing." Tara came back to the table to coax him into lifting his head, and kissed him. "'Some commercial success,' my Aunt Fanny. Why are you embarrassed?"
Declan groaned but leaned into the kiss, then gave her an almost-shy smile as she returned to her seat. "Because I didn't mean to make an iconic image. It was just for my sister, on her birthday. I was twenty-two. Nobody wants to think a kid painted it, so I stayed anonymous, but…yeah, that's me."
"And you said you worked with wood!" Tara said, more amused than accusing.
"I like to! I mostly do! I just…happened to do that one painting…"
"Which just happened to set the world on fire. I mean, if you're gonna do just one…" Tara beamed at him. "Well done. I will now feel zero guilt about letting you pay my way into the wildlife park."
Declan laughed. "Good. Because I've got loads of other places to bring you. The only problem is it's going to take more than two weeks to show you everything Ireland has to offer."
"Well." Tara's eyebrows rose. "I'm going to have to go back to America long enough to tell them I've found a successful, kind, handsome Irish boyfriend and quit my job, and after that…I have no idea what it takes to move to Ireland. But we can figure that out, right?"
"We can." Declan beamed at her. "Because we've a happily ever after waiting for us, and it's time to get that started."
~the end~