“Or, if you’d rather I didn’t come in, you couldn’t just have a quick look around for my mobile?”
“Mobile?” she said, frowning.
“Sorry, cellphone.”
“Oh, no, it’s okay to come in.” Everly pulled the door back and Edward realized why she hadn’t wanted to open the door too wide to start with.
She stood there in the pajamas he’d picked out for her, looking so adorable Edward thought his heart was going to melt right there in his chest. His mouth worked like a landed fish as he tried to look everywhere except right at her. He felt like he was intruding on her space, on her alone time, and didn’t want her feeling anymore uncomfortable than she already did. He’d go in, grab his phone, and head straight back to his penthouse.
Walking past her into the room, Edward caught a whiff of the perfume he’d seen her applying earlier, mixed with the moisturizer he’d gifted. She must have taken her make-up off, but Edward hadn’t even noticed, her skin was so luminous. The moonlight pouring in through the skylights silvered her cheeks and made her look like an angel. He faltered at the threshold, aware of his feelings but not quite able to comprehend them. Was it safe to be here? Could he hold back from blurting out his thoughts?
“Um…” was all he could manage.
Everly stood with her arms crossed over her body, her eyes fixed on the floor. He didn’t want to make her feel awkward for any longer than he needed to. He rushed over to the bed where he thought he’d left his phone earlier that day. It had fallen to the floor, out of sight, and he scooped it up, noticing the notepad and pencil that lay beside it. He lifted the pad and stared at the drawing.
“You did this this evening?” he asked, aware that the answer was painfully obvious as she’d only been in the house for a little while.
Everly nodded.
“This is amazing,” he said, his gaze not leaving the drawing. “It’s my favorite view. It’s why I always stay in this room if I’m using the house.”
He leaned over the bed and up through the skylight, then back down at the paper gripped tightly in his hand.
“Incredible,” he said to the picture, now acutely aware he’d spent far too long in Everly’s room, holding her artwork, standing near her bed, while she was still hovering near the door in her pajamas.
Straightening, he turned to put the picture on the desk and walked straight into Everly.
“Oh my,” he took a step back, forgetting the bed was now right behind him, and ended up sitting down on the mattress. “Oh,” he said, even more sheepishly. “Gosh, sorry!”
Everly laughed, the noise twinkling around the room like moonlight.
“First you open a door into me, then you nearly stand on me,” she said, through giggles.
“I guess maybe we can call it quits now, for you calling me old and boring and dusty,” he replied, relieved that Everly wasn’t angry with him.
She sat beside him on the bed, her arm touching his. Edward’s senses were so heightened that goosebumps exploded on his skin. He passed her the sketch that was still gripped firmly in his hands, hoping his damp palms hadn’t ruined it.
‘Here. Sorry I picked it up, I should have asked. Only, it took my breath away.”
He plucked up the courage to face her. She was so close, he could have reached out and stroked her face, like he had with her painting earlier. Her eyes seemed to shine, the pupils dilated.
“Like you do,” he said before he had a chance to stop the words leaving his lips.
Everly’s eyebrows shot up and little pink dots appeared in her cheeks. Her lips opened slightly, and her eyes darkened for a flash as her breath quickened. She leaned in to him. Edward leaned in too. The electricity between them was palpable. Neither of them said a word. Neither of them took a breath. Edward could feel the heat coming from Everly’s lips now, he could smell the minty toothpaste. They leaned in again, their lips almost touching.
A loud crash came from downstairs. Edward stood up immediately, wide eyed and panting—more from the shock of what he had been about to do than the loud noise. He grabbed his phone and ran from of the room.
“Please, Everly, excuse me,” he called over his shoulder.
He took the stairs two at a time, swinging himself around the landing and down to the next set of stairs in no time at all. The noise had come from the somewhere at the front of the house and Edward headed for the living room. The front door was shut, he could this see as he passed through the hallway and into the front room. He heard the crunch under foot before he saw the broken glass. Luckily the glass hadn’t poked through his thick socks and he quickly backed out of the room and slid into his shoes.
Lights were flicking on around the house now, a murmur of confusion spreading like a fire. Heading back into the living room, Edward switched on the overhead lights and saw what had caused the noise.
Everly’s face stared up at him from the thick carpet, glass shards covering her beauty. He bent and picked up the copy of her portrait that—up until a few moments ago—had been hanging on the wall alongside prints of the other four winning pieces. Edward had commissioned them for the house, as a thank you to the artists and as a reminder to them of the skills and talent that had got them there in the first place. The rest of the prints remained on the wall, safely encased in their glass frames.
Only Everly’s had been damaged.
Edward carefully slid the print out from under the broken glass. Looking at it brought back the feelings he’d had for its creator, like a freight train thundering into his heart.
“What on earth is going on?” A tired male voice came from the doorway.
“Stop, don’t come in,” Edward shouted. He didn’t want anyone getting hurt on the sharp shards that littered the carpet.
“Edward? I thought you’d left,” Alison said, squinting through her glasses. Rory appeared next to her. They were both in their fluffy new bath robes, and Alison’s hair seemed to have developed a life of its own.
Edward crunched through the glass back to the hallway.
“I had, I forgot my phone.”
He caught sight of Everly coming down the stairs, wrapped in her bath robe, and he placed the print onto the hallway table.
“Hi,” he said sheepishly.
Her cheeks still had a pink glow to them that deepened as she replied.
“Hi.”
Jennifer stood behind Everly on the stairs, her eyebrows raised. She was still fully dressed and looked wide awake, a strange mask covering her cheeks, and her hair stretched up in a topknot.
“What’s going on?” she demanded.
“It’s okay, everyone,” Edward said calmly, not wanting his guests to feel in any way upset, especially on their first night. “Just an accident with one of the prints. It must have fallen. Probably not hung correctly, that’s all. I’ll get it reframed and back up in no time. Why don’t you all head back to bed?”
Jennifer turned and headed straight back up, closely followed by a sleepy looking Alison. Everly moved down the last few stairs and out of the way to let the others past. Rory went over to Everly to make sure she was okay before heading back up the stairs himself. Edward wasn’t sure where to look.
“I’ll just get this glass cleared away,” he said, nodding to the living room. “Please don’t go in there with no shoes.”
Everly wasn’t looking at him, she was staring at the print of her portrait, her eyebrows knotted together. Tugging her dressing gown tighter to her neck, she turned to the living room.
“The picture hook is still in the wall,” she said, finally catching his eye.
He stopped for a moment and looked over to where the print had been hanging. She was right, the hook was firmly stuck in the floral Laura Ashley wallpaper, right in the eye of a poppy.
“Oh,” he said, dropping his hands by his side. “That’s strange. It must have just slipped off its hook. Look, why don’t you head back to bed? You look tired. I’ll sort it out.”
Everly nodded s
adly, her expression wrenching Edward’s heart, then trudged back up the stairs. He didn’t want her to go, but he didn’t want her to stay here and worry. He knew the house was solid enough that a picture wouldn’t just fall from the wall, he also knew the picture was hung properly, because he himself had placed it there only that morning.
No, somebody had deliberately sabotaged it.
9
Everly’s heart felt heavy as she climbed the stairs back to her room. There was only one reason Edward would have sent her back here, and that was because he was embarrassed about earlier. Maybe even ashamed.
She was too. What on earth had come over her? She didn’t do things like that, like kissing a man she had known for less than twenty-four hours. Not that they had kissed. But they had been side by side on his bed, so close that she had felt the heat of his body through her thin pajamas, and she had wanted to kiss him more than anything. She felt crazy, as if she had only imagined the moment. Maybe he had just come to get his phone, and everything that had followed had been a strange and dreamlike illusion. Maybe he hadn’t wanted her at all.
Shaking her head, she climbed wearily to the top floor and into her waiting bed. The covers were still rumpled from where Edward had sat, but she pushed the thought away. She needed to get back to sleep, and the thought that this was his bedroom, that he slept in these sheets—although they had obviously been laundered—wasn’t exactly helping. How was she supposed to stop thinking about what had happened? What had nearly happened.
Or what hadn’t happened at all?
The further away it was, the more distant it seemed in her memory. Everly pulled the covers over her head, blocking out the sound of the front door closing as Edward left the building. What it failed to block out, though, was the painful knowledge that—kiss or no kiss—there was no way a member of the British royal family was going to be interested in a small-town girl from Kansas.
Monday could not have come quickly enough for Everly’s liking. There had been a buzz around the house over the weekend. Rumors and theories about why Edward had really been back at the property, why Everly’s print had fallen from the wall, and who was the favorite to win the full scholarship.
Everly knew why he had been back, the same as all the others, only she had first-hand experience. For a reason she hadn’t worked out yet, Everly hadn’t said anything about Edward’s story being true, she didn’t want to go into the fact he was in her bedroom. She also hadn’t said anything about the picture hook. Something was stopping her, an itch in her brain that she couldn’t quite scratch.
For two days, the rumors ate at her. She didn’t like Edward being accused of anything, but she also didn’t want to stick up for him because then she’d be seen as a teacher’s pet. James had slept through the whole thing and Jennifer relished telling him all about it over breakfast on Saturday, embellishing the story until it was unrecognizable from what had actually happened. Everly had kept herself to herself. It had been a hard couple of days. But now Monday had arrived they could all start to focus on the task ahead.
“Okay, welcome back to the studio, the lucky few. Or should I say the talented few?”
They were all back in the Museum of Art at London University, up in the eaves in the studio space. Only this time it felt different. Quieter. Of course, there were far fewer of them, but it was a different kind of quiet. The air felt electric with anticipation. Standing at the head of the room was Tiffany, a tutor with a flair for vibrant watercolors. Her love of color didn’t stop with her pictures, her hair was wondrous shades of purples and pinks, which clashed tremendously with her bright red lips and clothes. Everly had warmed to her immediately.
“Day one. New beginnings. We want you to focus on thinking through making. We want you to use your traditional techniques, so we can see your artistic interests in more of their wondrous depth. The brief for the final piece is to capture the beauty in the mundane. It may seem like a difficult topic to pin down to a single piece of work, but I know you’ll all do your best.”
The beauty in the mundane, Everly thought, frowning. That would be a tricky brief to fill.
Tiffany walked around to the whiteboard at the front of the room and lifted a sheet. Underneath was written The Mason. Everly wasn’t sure what it signified but it looked important, and a murmur of excitement filled the air.
“This,” Tiffany continued. “Is where the winning piece of work will be displayed. It is also where you will all be heading for some research later today.”
Gasps flitted around the room like birds taking flight. Everly looked at the other faces, no idea why they all looked so shocked. She looked back at the gallery name written in bold letters on the paper, her face a picture of concentration. It was obviously something to be excited about, Everly just wished she knew why. She suddenly felt very out of place sat here in a room full of locals. She chewed the end of her pencil, trying not to show the concern on her face.
“I’ll let you get on now, and start thinking of some ideas.” Tiffany clacked across the studio floor in her skyscraper heels. “Good luck, everyone. Everything you require is supplied, just take a look around your workbenches and get stuck in. See you in a few hours.”
And with a multicolored whoosh, she left the room.
“That’s amazing,” James said, heading over to his workbench and opening the drawers to see what he’d been supplied with.
Everly looked around for a name tag to show which bench was hers. She spotted her own face staring back at her, a print-out tacked to the corner of a bench at the back of the room near the window.
My portrait is certainly doing the rounds, she thought as she pulled on her apron. People will be sick of my face soon enough!
Rory’s bench was next to Everly’s, and Alison was in front. She was glad she had support nearby if she needed it. James was next to Alison, with Jennifer’s desk on its own by the window at the front of the room. Everyone was busying themselves with the contents of their bench, the drawers positively overflowing with art supplies. The room smelled deliciously of paint, and Everly thought her heart was going to burst with excitement as it always did when she knew she had to shop for new supplies. The fact they were giving them to her for free made it feel surreal. Mind you, the whole of the last few weeks felt surreal.
Especially the weekend.
Everly felt her face heat at the thought of Friday night. She shook it off, squatted down behind her workbench, and started opening the cupboards, a little squeal emitting from her mouth as she did so.
Never, in all her twenty years, had she seen so many shiny new art supplies. There were pens, pencils, unsqueezed tubes of oils, brushes, papers, canvasses—so much to feast her eyes on.
“It’s like Christmas and my birthday all rolled into one,” she said to Rory, who was also rummaging around in his cupboard. “I feel as though we’re being treated like royalty with all these goodies.”
Rory held up a handful of what looked like modelling clay. The smile on his face could have lit up the whole room.
“I know!” he mouthed in reply.
“You’ll find more supplies in the other cupboards around the room, mostly the ones under the window. They are for sharing, so don’t be too greedy to start with.”
The sound of Edward’s voice from the front of the studio sent her heart into overdrive. Everly didn’t want to stand up for fear that he would see the embarrassment in her eyes. She kept her head firmly inside her cupboard, as though there might be something hidden at the back she hadn’t seen yet. Rory’s eyes were boring into her, she could feel them from across the room. She looked at him and he smirked kindly at her, nodding his head in the direction of Edward. Both of them were still hidden from the front of the room by their workbenches. Rory fanned his face with his free hand, laughing quietly as he mocked her. Everly looked back in her cupboard, her face even hotter now.
“Um, hi?”
Everly couldn’t look up, she shifted her eyes sideways and saw a pair of
shiny shoes that could only belong to a man who had impeccable dress sense. That, along with the familiar husky voice, could only mean that Edward was now standing at her workbench peering down at her, waiting for a response.
“Hi,” she squeaked into the cupboard.
“Can I have a quick word?”
Everly’s heart sank to the bottom of her feet. Those fateful words could only mean one thing. And that one thing was definitely not going to be, “I love you and I want to marry you.” Although that was two things, and two things that had sprung into Everly’s brain without permission. She breathed a sigh into the cupboard, willing those two things to suddenly come true. Then she realized he was still waiting for her to get her head out the cupboard and say hello properly.
Come on, Everly! she ordered herself. You can’t hide here like an ostrich all day!
“Sorry,” she said, brushing down her dusty knees and standing up. “There’s just so much to take in, I can’t tear my eyes away from the art stuff.”
Even as she said it, she looked directly into his eyes and a bolt of electricity ran all the way up her spine. She could quite easily tear her eyes away from anything if it meant looking at Edward. He hadn’t shaved, and a dusting of dark stubble lined his jaw. His hair looked like he’d climbed out of bed and ruffled his hands through it, but he didn’t look unkempt. In fact, he looked even better than Everly remembered. His blue woolen jumper—with a crisp, white shirt peeking out the collar—looked soft enough to stroke. Everly had to hold onto the desk to stop herself from throwing her arms around him and reconnecting where they left off on Friday.
Behind his head she caught Rory raising his eyebrow at her, his hand still fanning his face as if he was about to swoon. The glare she gave him back would hopefully stop him saying anything to embarrass her.
Edward looked perplexed.
“No need to apologize,” he stuttered. “I can understand the excitement. I was just wondering if we could maybe talk about what happened on Friday?”
My Dashing Billionaire: A Clean Billionaire Romance (My Billionaire A-Z Book 4) Page 5