A Scandalous Engagement

by Cathy Williams

  ‘He was a child when I took over the running of the company! What can you expect? I never had the time to get to know him. I was too busy running a company and looking after his educational needs! And his sister’s!’ He shook his head and looked at her with accusation, as though she had somehow manoeuvred him into this position when he hadn’t been expecting it. ‘Then things started to go pear-shaped in our New York branch. Fraud, embezzlement, you name it. I had to get out there, fast, and by the time it got sorted out the years had rolled by.’

  ‘What were you doing before…your parents died?’ Jade asked curiously, and was surprised to see that the look he gave her was almost sheepish.

  ‘Getting used to not studying,’ he said, shrugging. ‘I’d done the university bit and was in the process of bumming around, taking time out for a few months before I got my teeth into taking over the business.’

  ‘You were bumming around?’

  ‘Yes, well, it’s not that inconceivable,’ he said with a certain amount of annoyed defiance. ‘Believe it or not, I wasn’t born wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase.’

  ‘But you always knew that you would wind up taking over the running of your father’s company?’

  ‘Nosy little thing when you get going, aren’t you?’

  ‘Makes a change,’ she muttered by way of response, and he grinned at her.

  ‘No, I didn’t know from the age of five that I was destined to head the family firm, but, yes, I can’t say I’m shocked and appalled to find myself in the place where I am now.’

  ‘But didn’t you ever want to…stretch your wings? Do something different?’

  ‘You mean like live in a commune, or write poetry, or take up transcendental meditation?’

  ‘All those things, yes,’ Jade said gravely, and this time when he laughed she found herself laughing back.

  ‘You should be thanking me…again,’ he murmured huskily, his eyes not leaving her face. They were not always the colour of winter sea, she thought distractedly. Their colour shifted and changed according to his mood. Right now they were a deep, true blue, more the shade of Andy’s but without the transparency.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For making you laugh.’ He looked at her seriously and gently. ‘Why have you found laughter difficult…?’

  She felt the breath catch in her throat. She knew, from what her counsellor had said, that she had to relinquish her need to keep her emotions to herself, nurturing them like hothouse plants, carefully tending them even while she felt the sharp prickles on their stems cutting into her skin. But it had never been in her nature to pour her soul out to anyone, and ever since Caroline had died she had dried up completely. She stared at him mutely, then finally hung her head, biting down the urge to cry.

  ‘Is this to do with another man? Because if it is, your energy is misspent. Speaking as one of the species, I can tell you that they are very rarely worth the tide of emotion that can linger on after a relationship goes sour.’

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘It’s nothing to do with a man.’ She wiped an errant tear from the corner of her eye. ‘I must go. I’m very tired.’

  She stepped towards him and he reached out, blocking her path out with his hand, which lay flat-fisted against the opposite doorframe. With his other hand, he tilted her face up to his.

  ‘I haven’t made things very easy for you here. If you’re going through a rough time and I’ve added to it, then please accept my apologies.’

  She couldn’t deny that he was being utterly sincere. He would rant and rail at Andy’s decision, and at the mess he seemed to think would dog his brother’s footsteps, but she knew that if he were to be proved wrong then he would be humble in defeat. She smiled wanly and grimaced.

  ‘I understand; I really do. It’s just that…’

  ‘That what…?’

  ‘Things are never as simple as they seem,’ was all she could find to say.

  ‘Some things are.’

  She hadn’t been expecting it, so when his mouth covered hers, her initial reaction was not to pull away. He cupped the small of her back and pulled her towards him, and the small fire which had been burning ever since she’d seen him standing on the doorstep turned into a conflagration. She gave a small, surprised, helpless moan and kissed him back, releasing passions she had never suspected were there. She felt as if she was being engulfed in wetness. The wetness of their mouths greedily uniting. The wetness that was telling her how much of her womanhood she had put into hibernation.

  It felt like hours but it must have only been a matter of a minute, then she was pushing against him, struggling and half sobbing.

  She wouldn’t, couldn’t, let herself capitulate. Not to him, not to anyone. The thought of it alone felt like treachery.

  ‘Let me go!’ But in fact he had already let her go. She waited until some of her calm was restored, breathing deeply, not daring to look at him, because that would have just made her mortification complete.

  She forced a brave, brittle smile onto her lips, looked past his left shoulder, which was not nearly enough to deflect the intensity of his gaze on her, nodded as though vaguely agreeing with something that had been said, and then fled.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  JADE had decided from the start that she would avoid her own work, eight detailed illustrations which had impressed her tutor, until the last possible moment. It was the first time she had taken part in an amateur exhibition of such size. She had been expecting a much smaller and much more modest display of the course work, and she and Andy had strolled into the college to find themselves in the midst of a proper exhibition. The bright, airy rooms, with their white, clinical walls, were teeming with people. Students, friends and relatives of students, and the rumour was flying around, art connoisseurs, who were testing the ground, sizing up the talent for future reference.

  When this rumour had reached their ears she and Andy had both covertly looked around, but there were a lot of men in suits and women nodding knowledgeably, and they had both admitted, giggling nervously, that they probably wouldn’t recognise an art connoisseur from a double glazing salesman.

  The paintings and sculptures had been grouped according to styles, and it was clear that a considerable amount of time had been taken arranging the displays. From where she was standing now, in a group of strangers, all of whom looked like possible art connoisseurs, she could glimpse Sean MacFarley’s large, dramatic oil canvasses—abstract commentaries on industrial life in the North. Someone was pointing to the details of the line work and she clutched Andy’s hand with sudden, anxious panic.

  ‘I can’t go near my stuff,’ she whispered gloomily, tugging him away. ‘I can just imagine all these people standing in front of my minuscule illustrations snorting with laughter.’

  ‘Big isn’t always beautiful,’ Andy whispered back soothingly. ‘Trust me on that, darling.’

  ‘At least you look like an artist.’

  ‘Do you mean impoverished and bedraggled?’

  ‘I mean,’ she said drily, ‘Adonis-like and individualistic.’ He did too. He was wearing a pair of black bell-bottomed trousers and an eye-catching silk shirt with strange swirly designs which he had hanging loose, and he had swept his blond hair to the back in a small ponytail. He looked beautiful and stylish.

  ‘You have your own look too,’ he said, eyeing her dubiously, and she grinned at him.

  ‘Yes. The shouldn’t-I-be-at-a-business-school? look.’

  ‘Stop crying yourself down.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She giggled. ‘You’re right.’ Someone swept past with a tray of white wine and she reached out and helped herself to a glass, which she swigged down in two gulps. The restorative powers of alcohol, she thought. She could now face the prospect of viewing her own work without fearing the mental scenario which involved ten would-be art connoisseurs, guffaws of laughter and cries of Rubbish! A few more glasses and she might even find that she no longer cared one way or another who sniggered at her work. />
  They spent a few minutes chatting to some of their tutors, then meandered in the general direction of ‘Landscape’, and as Jade idly looked around her, the smile on her mouth froze.

  ‘Don’t look around now, Andy,’ she muttered, tugging him down to her level, ‘but we have an unexpected guest.’

  Even in this crowd, Curtis stood out like a sore thumb. He was suit-clad, like quite a number of the men, but even in the uniform of pinstripe charcoal-grey, he still managed to grab the eye and hold it. In fact, she noticed that quite a number of people, particularly those of the female variety, were staring at him covertly. The term ‘Art in Motion’ came to her mind, and she concealed a sudden urge to burst out laughing. Physically, he fitted the description like a glove, but spiritually she figured she would be hard placed to find someone less in line with the description than Curtis Greene.

  ‘I’m not looking,’ Andy muttered back with a theatrically conspiratorial facial expression. ‘But does she look like someone who would be interested in becoming my patron?’

  ‘It’s a he.’

  ‘He, she, it…would I have seen his face on the cover of an important arts magazine, clutching his wallet and bellowing that he needed to find good young talent to fling his money at…?’

  ‘You don’t need the money,’ Jade pointed out, watching as Curtis moved through the crowd, pausing to glance without expression at the various pieces hanging on the walls. He looked neither impressed nor disgusted. As usual, his face gave nothing away. A tall red-haired woman came to stand alongside him, and Jade could see them conversing politely about Robert Rendall’s controversial piece of sculpture which was meant to depict Man Holding World, but looked to her very much like a large blob of clay which had been tinkered about with by a ten-year-old child and then left to gather cobwebs.

  ‘I do,’ Andy was informing her in a pained voice. ‘For my sense of self-worth.’ He angled his body slightly, followed the direction of her gaze and then released a strangled gasp. ‘God, what’s he doing here?’

  ‘Sudden interest in the world of art?’ she suggested. Right now, if someone came past with another tray of wine, she thought, she would just keep the entire tray to herself and down the contents of what was on it.

  ‘Don’t make me laugh.’ His voice was bitter but he continued to look warily in the direction of his brother, who had still not spotted them. ‘Curtis wouldn’t be interested in art if the only other option was a snake pit. For him, art comes on thin paper which can fit into his wallet.’

  ‘That’s not entirely fair, Andy,’ she said, frowning and snapping her attention back to the man at her side. ‘Give him a chance. He’s here, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. So that he can load his gun with more ammunition for another attack on his loser brother.’ Underneath the bitterness was a distressing element of pathos, and she noticed that the hand that held his glass was trembling slightly. ‘Well, I’m damned if I’ll allow him the satisfaction of sneering at me in public.’ He swallowed the remainder of his drink. ‘I’m off.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ she said sharply. ‘You’re not running away.’

  He looked at her hesitantly for a few seconds and then sighed. ‘Darling, you would remind me of my weaknesses.’ She could see him steeling himself for the encounter and loved him for it. She linked her fingers through his and gently squeezed them reassuringly, though, if she were honest, some of that reassurance was for herself as well.

  ‘Well…’ He drew in a deep breath. ‘Might as well get the ordeal over and done with. Show him the stuff I’ve done, watch him as he shakes his head sadly at the disappointment I’ve turned out to be, listen to his lecture on how I’m wasting my talents as a financial consultant for the all important family business and then let him go so he can work on his next attack.’

  He raised his arm and waved in the direction of his brother. There was a smile plastered to his face, and Jade obligingly forced one on hers as well. She could feel her heart begin to speed up, and by the time Curtis noticed his brother’s frantic waves her nervous system seemed to have joined suit. She licked her lips as he weaved a confident path through the guests, grabbing more than one sidelong glance en route. By the time he finally reached them the smile on her face was wearing a bit thin, and the muscles in her jaws were aching.

  ‘What brings you here?’ Andy said inanely, and there was a trace of desperation in him as he snatched a couple of glasses of wine from a passing waiter and handed one to Jade. Standing alongside one another, as they were, few would have guessed that they were brothers. This wasn’t so much because any actual facial resemblance between them was small but because the personalities reflected on their faces were so completely dissimilar. Both physically handsome, but there was a honed, hard alertness to Curtis which his brother lacked.

  ‘Curiosity,’ Curtis said, glancing around him before his eyes resettled onto the two of them. ‘Big affair, isn’t it? Is that normal for an amateur showing of under-grad work?’

  Jade could sense Andy stiffen in response to some hidden meaning behind the remark, but Curtis’s voice was supremely polite. She sipped some of the wine in nervous anticipation of where this conversation would end up.

  ‘The college is toying with the idea of introducing art dealers to up-and-coming artists while they’re still in the embryonic stage,’ Jade contributed hastily. ‘They think it serves the dual purpose of getting dealers interested in prospective talent and giving the students a feel of how their work might be viewed once they graduate.’

  Curtis inclined his head to one side in an attitude of deep interest, which only served to make her feel more uncomfortable, and drank some of his wine.

  ‘So here’s your big chance to become a patron of the arts, big brother, and add another feather to your cap.’

  ‘Or at least familiarise yourself with what we do here,’ Jade said, in a fit of excruciating embarrassment at the sarcastic tone in Andy’s voice.

  ‘Some of it doesn’t look as though it’s worth the effort,’ Curtis commented, his eyes drifting to the artwork on the walls.

  ‘Broad-minded to the last,’ Andy muttered under his breath, his face tightening, and Curtis threw him a cool, shuttered look.

  In a minute there’ll be an all-out scrap, Jade thought miserably. Right now they were both conducting their conversation in low voices, but Andy had already had a fair amount to drink, and it would take the smallest jibe to provoke him into something far less restrained. He was still insecure about his talents, guilty at the choice he had made even though he could never go back, and, to top it all off, carried a chip on his shoulder about Curtis. It wouldn’t take much to ignite the combination, and she had visions of the three of them being chucked out unceremoniously onto the pavement.

  ‘Oh, come on, Andy,’ Curtis said with impatience. ‘Look at that.’ He pointed to the figure of a woman forged out of barbed wire. ‘It looks like Aunt Mildred on a bad day.’

  Andy, whose shoulders had been hunched in preparation for a fight, relaxed enough to grin reluctantly.

  ‘You mean on a good day, don’t you?’

  Jade breathed a sigh of relief and finished her glass of wine. Light-headed. Seemed a very good way to be at the moment. She smiled widely at both of them.

  ‘Now that,’ Curtis said, moving away slightly and drawing them both with him, ‘is quite impressive.’ He indicated a small canvas, amidst a collection of similar sizes, which had a deep blue background, splashed with gold at the top and streaked with white at the bottom. The streaks gave it the illusion of movement.

  ‘You like that?’ Andy gasped. ‘I think this calls for another drink.’ He signalled to a passing waiter and magnanimously insisted that they all join him. ‘Isn’t it a bit too unconventional for you, big brother?’

  Curtis stood in front of the collection and appeared to give the question a great deal of thought. Andy, standing next to him, was frowning, and gulping down his wine with the ferocity of someone intent on slaking
a thirst.

  ‘You could be right,’ Curtis murmured, straight-faced. ‘I know I should stick to rivers and trees…but it’s impossible not to admire the way she’s slashed her lines across the bottom, as though she’s carving the canvas in two, asking us to treat it like separate works. It’s very effective.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ the man on his left commented. ‘Reminiscent, I think, of some paintings from the Modernist movement.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Curtis answered. ‘But without the element of self-indulgence.’

  The man nodded, and there followed a debate on the relative values of modern art, at the end of which the man strolled off and Curtis looked at them, to see Andy staring at him with open-mouthed surprise.

  ‘Now, that lot over there,’ Curtis said, as though the intervening conversation had never occurred, ‘is a little too David Hockney for my liking. And where, in all this, are you two?’

  Andy, still in gape mode, was too speechless to answer, and Jade nodded to the series of rooms behind him.

  Talk about dark horse, she thought. Curtis Greene took the biscuit. No wonder Andy looked as though he had been run over by a steamroller. Not once, since his arrival, had Curtis mentioned even in passing that he took an active interest in art. He had allowed them both to assume that his only interests lay in the world of high finance. She now wondered what else he was keeping up his sleeve. A passion for line dancing? A flair for embroidery? A wife, eight children, two dogs and a goldfish?

  ‘Since I suspect this is the moment you two have been dreading since you were forced to acknowledge me across the room, we might as well amble over and get the ordeal out of the way.’

  Andy said something in an unnaturally high-pitched voice and Jade resorted once more to her fund of large, bright smiles.

  On the way, he continued to pepper his running conversation with observations on some of the pieces either hanging or standing, and if he noticed that both she and Andy had taken refuge in yet another glass of wine then he gave no indication. It was the only way she found that she could cope with the way the evening was turning out. A week ago she had tossed the invitation at him with no expectation of having it taken up, but, having seen him at the event, she had gritted her teeth, prepared to do battle with her nerves and assumed that there was very little else he could throw at her that he had not thrown at her before. How wrong could she have been?