About Last Night

Judith folded her arms over her chest. “Let’s hear it.”

So Cath told her. She’d worked it out around dawn—what she needed to do to bring in the stream of visitors required to get their catalog into print. It would involve writing some new copy, and they’d have to tweak the displays a little, but mostly it would be a matter of putting herself out in the public eye and using the only currency she’d ever been any good with: sex. Only this time, she’d be smart about it. She’d channel Amanda’s showmanship and Judith’s ruthlessness, and she’d do it in the service of something she really believed in.

“It will work,” she said finally, still unsure whether Judith’s lack of expression was a good sign or a bad one.

“It might. It’s both our asses on the line if it doesn’t.”

“Yeah.” She hadn’t thought of that. But she could do this. She was smart enough, savvy enough to pull it off. Stupid at love, but competent in her work. The work would save her. She needed it if she was going to keep herself from flailing around in pain. She needed to prove to herself that she could do something right.

“I’ll talk to Christopher this morning. If he approves it, you can give it a shot.”

Christopher would approve it. He’d been after them to sex up the exhibit from the beginning.

“I won’t disappoint you.” She grabbed Judith’s arm on an impulse and found that her skin was as warm as anyone’s. Why that surprised her, Cath couldn’t say. Maybe this was what it was like to lose your mind. You still felt perfectly lucid, but you had crazy-person thoughts and a body as twitchy as a rabid raccoon’s.

Judith gave her hand a pat. “You never have.”

“It’s the wrong color. This wall is meant to be Honeyed Almond. It’s the far one you were to paint with the gray. Do it again,” his mother said. “Do them both again.”

When the workman opened his mouth to protest, she said, “Tonight, or you won’t be paid. And do it properly this time, with two coats.”

Evita walked away from the laborer, who sighed and checked his watch. Clearly, he’d been hoping to get his work approved so he could knock off by four o’clock. Now he’d be here half the night.

“Honestly, these people are idiots,” she said, loud enough for everyone in the cavernous space to hear. Her heels tapped as she crossed the concrete floor to badger the lad Nev had hired to do odd jobs. “Gary, tell me you aren’t touching those price lists with your filthy hands.”

Nev turned to his father. “If she carries on harassing them this way, I’ll have to hire all new people before we open.”

“Don’t worry,” Richard said. “She’s excellent at buttering them up after she’s destroyed them. By Friday, they’ll move heaven and earth for her. Now, where do you think you’ll hang the work portraits? Over there? I think the light’s better on the east wall …”

Nev let his mind wander as his father offered his opinion about the best placement for the pieces. He couldn’t be bothered to care, really, so long as the five paintings that mattered most went up front and center.

A hand gripped his shoulder, and his father said, “Nev?”

He looked up into brown eyes as familiar to him as his own. “Sorry. I’m rather distracted. Hang them wherever you like.”

“Have you invited her?”

It was the first time Dad had mentioned Cath since the morning she’d left, when Nev had walked back into his

parents’ house, packed up their things in silence, and returned to London. He’d phoned her over and over again, knowing all along that she wouldn’t pick up. It was a mercy she hadn’t. He’d left messages, rambling incoherently, too dumbfounded and enraged by everything that had passed between them to make any sense. Finally, the battery on his mobile had gone flat, and he’d opened a bottle of whiskey and drank until he passed out.

When he woke up, he’d had a hell of a headache, but he’d also had the presence of mind to understand what he’d somehow missed the day before. He’d been acting like a complete and utter wanker.

Twenty-eight years old, and he’d behaved no better than a spoiled child. Where did he get off suggesting he was entitled to know every detail of her sad, difficult life story? Cath had been right to call him a despicable coward. Why should she have trusted him when he didn’t even possess the courage to be honest with her about what he wanted from life? To be honest with himself about it?

He’d sat down at his computer, typed a letter of resignation, and faxed it to Winston and every member of the board. In the course of ten minutes, he became a painter. Maybe a bloody awful painter, though he hoped not. It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t waste the rest of his life dancing to someone else’s tune. Not the board’s, nor any member of his family’s.

“Yes, of course I invited her,” he told his father. “Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“Well, if I send her an invitation, she won’t turn up. I phoned her for days. I went to her office and her flat. I hung around the station waiting for her to show. She won’t speak to me.”

He’d pounded on the door of her flat for so long, she’d opened it eventually, but her politeness had been the sort reserved for door-to-door salesmen. Regardless of what he said, she’d behaved as if they were the next thing to strangers. She said “please” a lot, and she offered him polite smiles, and every word that came out of her mouth meant “no.”

“Pardon me if this is a stupid question, but given your lack of success in all those attempts, what makes you believe she’ll come to the show?”

“She’ll be here. I haven’t given her a choice.”