Artistic License (14 page)

It wasn’t exactly the most gracious response, but she wasn’t at her best with spontaneity.

Her uneasiness grew as they drove out of the suburbs and headed into the CBD. When Mick eventually pulled into the parking garage of a glass-tipped high-rise, she looked from him to the large gold sign emblazoned with a popular banking logo. She couldn’t imagine what he thought she would want to see in a financial conglomerate. Unless they had underground bank vaults like in
Harry Potter
’s Gringotts and Mick was going to do a Scrooge McDuck dive into his savings account, in which case she was completely on board.

“Er…”

Mick halted at her obvious reluctance.

“Trust me,” he said, which really made it all quite simple.

She followed him into a ritzy glass elevator with only minor trepidation. They stopped at the eighteenth floor and exited into yet another waiting area. This one was designed to exude plush wealth rather than intimidating bureaucracy, however, and the receptionist’s smiling face was a nice change after her predecessor’s evil eye. Mick went up and spoke to her in low tones and she nodded, putting a phone receiver to her ear.

Sophy watched him walk back to her through narrowed eyes.

“Do I need to start guessing?” she asked dryly, and he shook his head with a small smile and gestured behind her.

“No need.” He reached out and shook hands with a newcomer, a tall man of about sixty with patrician features and a slight paunch. He looked a little like the marble bust of Cicero that she’d seen in the Capitoline Museums on an excursion to Italy.

And she’d just realised her habit of finding artistic doppelgangers for strangers.

“Mick Hollister?” The man clasped Mick’s hand and subjected him to a sharp, twinkle-eyed scrutiny. “Good to meet you. William Ryland called and said you would be coming in today.” He turned his attention to Sophy with easy charm. “And this must be Sophy James.”

She shook his hand, feeling totally at a loss.

“Sophy, this is Patrick Kirkland,” Mick murmured, and she froze.

Kirkland smiled at her.

“I understand that you’d like to see my Alicia Kemp collection,” he said.

She blinked, tried to sound out words, failed. In the middle of her best impression of a hooked trout, she turned and stared full at Mick. He was waiting patiently, his return look affectionate.

Oh my God.

Oh Jesus.

She was completely in love with him.

And she didn’t know what to do with that.

Kirkland had fortunately chosen to be flattered rather than put off by her stunned silence. He kept up a running commentary of mostly interesting and occasionally inaccurate modernist anecdotes as he ushered them into a personal office suite that boasted, among several hundred thousand dollars worth of art, the largest single collection of Kemp paintings in the country. She kept a tight hold of Mick’s hand as they strolled, stopped, peered and listened. The banker probably thought the visit was a nice treat for Mick’s poor mute girlfriend, but she was so overwhelmed that she couldn’t even force herself to make the usual stilted efforts at conversation.

The artworks were wonderful.

The sweetness of the gesture seemed beyond comprehension.

Kirkland let her take some digital photos and make some notes for her essay, and she managed to thank him warmly as they made to depart. When they descended the elevator into the dark garage, she came to a stop, tugging on Mick’s fingers. He turned and looked at her questioningly.

“How…” Her voice trailed off. “How did you…?”

“I just asked Ryland if he happened to know the name of the banker who owned substantial holdings of Alicia Kemp’s work. It turned out they were at Cambridge together,” he said wryly. “He said that he would give Kirkland a call and set things up since we were going to be in the city anyway. Apparently he’s not usually that forthcoming with his collections, but it seems that Ryland once supplied him with a highly suspect alibi during his first divorce proceedings, so he was owed a favour. It was really all the boss,” he added firmly, as if anticipating a disconcerting rush of gratitude.

She didn’t think so.

Sophy wasn’t good with effusive sentiments and she knew that Mick found them downright uncomfortable, so she settled for wrapping an arm around the side of his waist and squeezing him in a brief, fervent hug. His hand clasped her shoulder.

“Thank you.”

“It wasn’t –”

“
Thank you
.”

“You’re welcome,” he said softly. He held her a minute longer in the enveloping dimness, then he straightened away from her and released a long breath. “I suppose I’d better get going.” Not a hint of agitation touched the words, but his big body was suddenly tense. “I have a few things to do back at the hotel before I head to dinner. What about you? Do you want to go back to your hotel or is there somewhere else I can drop you?”

It would be
so easy
to take the cowardly route. Mick wouldn’t expect anything of her. He might even superficially
prefer
that she just asked to be dropped off at the nearest mall. Sophy looked at him, looked at the car, looked back at where they’d just come from. The request to go shopping hovered on her tongue. She swallowed it with a sigh and threw all her cards down on the table.

“Should I come with you to the family stuff?” she asked – bluntly, without style, grace or good manners.

She was not only inviting herself to an event, which went against every retiring instinct that she possessed, but she was inviting herself to
two
events that she’d rather poke herself in the eye with a pencil than attend.

Mick’s hands had gone to his waist, shoving back his jacket to prop against his lean hips. His eyes slowly rose from a studied contemplation of the oil-stained concrete to meet hers. His lips were slightly pursed.

He finally spoke.

“It’s going to be pretty bleak,” he said.

That was not a “Hell no, but thanks.” She was small enough to be disappointed.

She nodded.

“I kind of figured as much.”

He grimaced.

“Do you actually want to come?”

“No,” Sophy said honestly. “But I think I
should
come.”

And later when she was alone, she would try to figure out who this person was that she was becoming.

They stared at each other.

“All right,” said Mick at last.

All right.

***

She had needed to go shopping after all. Not having planned to dine and felicitate with the upper echelons of Auckland society, the dressiest item she’d packed in her suitcase was a t-shirt with a diamante lipstick on the front. It didn’t seem appropriate. Standing outside a four-storey mini-mansion in the affluent suburb of Remuera, listening to the faint strumming of a harp and wondering if there was a live musician on the premises, she wasn’t feeling all that confident about her silk floral dress either.

She pulled continuously at the hem as they waited for someone to answer the door, and Mick glanced down at her restless fingers.

“You’re always beautiful, Sophy.”

She flushed and bit her lip.

The door swung open and a woman stood there. She was of medium height and build, with one of those Anna Wintour swings of hair that cost about three hundred dollars at the hairdresser and were only achievable for the genetically blessed few born without frizz. Her makeup was perfect, down to the classy blush sheen on her fingernails, which immediately made Sophy self-conscious of the orange polka-dots on her own. She hadn’t packed any polish remover.

The woman physically blanched.

It was just for a second and she recovered well enough, but her flinch was unmistakable.

Charming.

“Michael.” A smooth cheek was inclined and dutifully kissed. “And is this Sophia?”

“Mother.” Mick slid his fingers reassuringly through Sophy’s cold ones. “This is my friend, Sophy James. Sophy, this is my mother, Annabel Hollister.”

Long elegant fingers touched her free hand in a passing almost-handshake.

“Sophy. So good of you to come.”

Sophy had the distinct impression it would have been even better of her to take in a movie or jump off a bridge instead.

“Thank you for having me,” she replied awkwardly.

Things were not off to a good start. This was already way out of her experience. Mick’s mother looked about as pleased to see him as she would have been to find a travelling salesman on her doorstep. Sophy had had a warmer homecoming the day she’d gone for her driver’s license at age sixteen and crashed her mother’s car into a recycling bin.

The reactions of the rest of the Hollister family toward her personally were not as icy as she’d anticipated. It was clear that both Michael Hollister Senior, QC, and his elder son Marcus viewed her with slightly amused tolerance. Mick’s Bohemian bit of fluff, she rather surmised. His sister Hayley and her husband Daniel, a surgeon twice his wife’s age and half her height, completely ignored them both after the initial greeting. Marcus’s intended bride was noticeably absent. Sophy liked to think that she was in a bar somewhere, clutching a glow-stick in one hand and a dancer’s g-string in the other, but having met the groom, suspected that the missing Emily was more likely to be at the reception hall harassing the caterers with last-minute changes. Annabel Hollister handed her a glass of wine and then asked in less-than-hushed accents if she was old enough to drink alcohol. Sophy thought of several witty and acerbic replies and was entirely unable to voice any of them. They clearly expected very little in the way of social graces from her, which was fortunate, since she was going to be doing well to say “thank you” if someone passed her the peas.

Overall, however, there was no overt nastiness thrown her way.

From the moment they entered the spacious drawing room, where the family sat around a spectacular bowl of pink roses, every vitriolic barb was aimed straight at Mick.

“Well, Michael,” said his father, eventually rising to his feet after observing him impassively from his wing chair for what seemed a deliberately offensive length of time. He had acknowledged Sophy in a token polite greeting, clearly underwhelmed by his son’s choice of companion but ever mindful of his political aspirations and the importance of a façade of universal benevolence. She might be an
artist
, with all that the emphasis implied, but she was still eligible to vote. “I see you’ve deigned to grace us with your presence after all.”

“Sir,” Mick replied stiffly, and made no other comment.

Sophy’s eyes flicked back and forth between the two. She could read nothing at all into Mick’s expression; he was beating his own record of impassivity by a wide margin. In his father’s eyes, though, was clear, strong dislike.

Mick didn’t merely have a troubled relationship with his family. They actively disliked their own son and brother. She couldn’t wrap her head around that. The worst she usually saw of family dysfunction was on the screen, where fractured and hostile relationships were played for laughs. There was nothing in the least entertaining about observing it in person.

“I understand you’re still with Ryland Curry,” Michael went on, as openly derisive as if Mick’s company was a backwater strip club instead of a global corporation. “Making good use of an expensive St. Dominic’s education in a position better suited to a dropout from the Police Academy.”