Artistic License

by Elle Pierson

  “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 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 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 rush of gratitude.

  She didn’t think it was.

  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 grace or good manners.

  She was inviting herself to an event, which went against every retiring instinct she possessed. In fact, 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 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 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 amused tolerance. Mick’s Bohemian bit of fluff, she 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 she was in a bar somewhere, clutching a glow-stick in one hand and a dancer’s g-string in the other. Having met the groom, though, she suspected 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 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. She might be an artist, with all that the emphasis implied, but she was still eligible to vote. “I see you’ve decided 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 in 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 entertaining about 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.”

  Sophy blinked. Yikes. The claws were out, and they were still in the cocktail portion of the evening.

  She stood tensely at Mick’s side, her nails digging into the stem of her wine glass. She hated situations like this in general, and she was discovering it was exponential
ly worse when someone you loved was involved.

  Loved. Liked. Cared for. She wasn’t quite ready to mentally tackle that point yet, and she thought it was best to keep her focus on the immediate scene.

  Here there be dragons.

  “It’s like you said at the time, Dad,” said Marcus softly. He hadn’t bothered to get up at all, but continued to lounge in an armchair, one foot dangling negligently in an Italian leather loafer. In looks, he was a tanned, slightly less faded duplicate of his father. They both had profiles that wouldn’t be out of place on an ancient coin.

  The entire family, with the exception of Mick, was actually quite similar in appearance: a coterie of sleek, aristocratic greyhounds against Mick’s grizzly bear brute strength. Physically, he dominated the room. The Hollisters were all tall. She felt like a lone Lilliput in a land of Gullivers; even the shorter doctor had a good six inches on her. But Mick was at least a head taller and considerably wider. She suspected that any sort of personal disadvantage would not sit well with men like Michael and Marcus Hollister.

  The elder brother proved it by going on in silky accents, “A wise man plays to his strengths. Mick has two working fists.”

  And no functioning brain cells, was the clear implication.

  Sophy stiffened. For a moment, her anger was far, far stronger than her shyness. She opened her mouth to retort, and Mick’s fist closed gently around her forearm. She looked up at him, and he shook his head once, just slightly.

  Her fierce breath subsided in a rush. The whole point of her being here was to try to make the weekend as easy on him as possible, to return the favour for his many acts of caring and kindness to her. She would take her cue from him and, in this instance, keep her mouth shut. With her free hand, she reached out and slipped her fingers into his.

  But… Mick was a top security consultant. He had a commerce degree and a portfolio of apparently successful investments. He had served his country in the military, for God’s sake. He seemed like the dream son to her. What more did his family want? A knighthood? A royal marriage?

  She was completely at sea in the undercurrents here.

  The atmosphere was no more cordial at dinner. When they had taken their seats around a beautiful antique dining table, set with white linens and candles, a server appeared from the kitchen. An actual servant. Like they were in a period film. The whole evening was starting to feel a bit surreal.

  A basket of warm artisan bread was passed around, and Mick’s mother, playing the helpful hostess, placed a lightly steaming roll on his plate, scattering crumbs across the surface and effectively rendering it useless for him with his condition.

  Sophy could give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they didn’t know about the Coeliac Disease, but she suspected it was more likely they’d either forgotten or didn’t care enough to educate themselves. Without a word, she picked up her own clean plate and switched it with his.

  A faint warmth touched his eyes.

  “Are you still based in London?” Michael Hollister asked abruptly.

  This was supposed to be Marcus’s celebration dinner, but he didn’t seem at all worried that it was turning into an interrogation of his younger brother. His lips were turned up into a repellently smug sneer, like a reptile basking in the sun.

  “I still have the flat in London,” Mick said evenly, accepting a platter of roast lamb from the server with a polite acknowledgment and offering it first to Sophy, then Hayley and his mother. “But there’s a lot of travel involved, as our team accompanies William Ryland on his business ventures. We’re on assignment in Queenstown at the moment.”

  “Dare we hope that you’re picking up some business acumen by second-hand exposure?” asked Marcus silkily. “Or is it all guns and glaring?”

  Sophy could cheerfully have leaned over and stabbed him with her fork. And there were at least six to choose from.

  Amazingly, a smile twitched at Mick’s mouth and his dimples appeared in a brief flash. “Oh, there’s a little more to it than that,” he said, and he glanced sideways at Sophy. “You never know what kind of situations are going to fall at your feet.”

  She quirked an impudent brow at him, and for a moment it was as if they were alone at the table.

  Mick’s father gave a dismissive sort of snort and sliced vigorously into his lamb. “Damned nonsense,” he muttered. A slight tightening of Mick’s lips was his only reaction.

  The single most uncomfortable meal of Sophy’s life continued in a similar vein. The Dark Side of the Hollister family took it in turns to make comments and ask questions that ran the gamut from uninterested to openly aggressive. Mick replied like an emotionless automaton, which she knew he was not, and only rose to something approaching anger on two occasions.

  The first was in her own defence, when his mother made a slighting remark about the moral behaviour of artists – “Not, of course, meaning you, Sophia.” He had responded sharply, and his mother had subsided immediately, with an almost nervous glance at him.

  Sophy, too, managed to keep her cool and remain silent, unhappily aware of the inadequacy of her passive support. She couldn’t help feeling that had their situations been reversed, Mick would have silenced all of her opposition with a few short, pointed sentences.

  At one point, Michael questioned her about her sculpture, and she stumbled and mumbled something about the upcoming competition and Mick’s role in her piece. There had been a stupefied silence at the idea of their brawny offspring acting as a model, eventually broken by a hastily smothered snicker from his sister, whom Sophy had long since written off as a complete pill.

  She was more exasperated than anything else by then. She gave up. His family were a bunch of blockheads. Mick seemed to share that view. His entire game plan appeared to be to keep cool, not ruffle the waters, and get the hell out as soon as possible.

  Unfortunately, there seemed to be about twenty-five different courses, and most of the mouths around the table were too full of bile and snark to make much progress in chewing.

  They were finally done with the dessert, slices of obscenely delicious chocolate cake for those not intolerant to wheat or fattening foods, which basically came down to Sophy and Marcus, and Mick excused them from the liqueurs in the drawing room. Sophy tried not to let an actual audible sigh of relief. Frankly, she thought he would be far better off heading back to his hotel room with an enormous bottle of Scotch.

  Michael took immediate offense at their reluctance to continue the emotional battery over a postprandial sherry. He launched a full-scale offensive at Mick, seeming determined to provoke him into retaliation. It failed, until he ended with a disgusted, “Good Christ, between you and your sister…”

  It was as if Mick literally froze at her side. Suddenly she was standing next to a human popsicle. He took one step forward, and his voice was brittle with anger. “Don’t you d – ”

  The moment he moved, his mother reacted as if she had been prepared for the action all evening. She flung an arm between her husband and her son, and glared at Mick almost defiantly. Her suspiciously plump, carmine lips were trembling. She was…frightened.

  Sophy stared at her in astonishment.

  Annabel was afraid of her son.

  She was staring at Mick as if she expected him to just let loose, turn a sickly shade of lime, and start tearing off his shirt with his fists.

  Mick.

  Mick, whom Sophy was absolutely certain would be voluntarily stripped of his service medals before he would ever use unnecessary violence against another person.

  And this was his mother.

  Totally bewildered, she looked up at Mick, and flinched. There was an expression there of almost unbearably tragic resignation. It was the most dominant emotion over the hurt and justifiable exasperation. She tucked a firm hand through the crook of his arm, and felt him jerk slightly against her. He made no other movement.

  Sophy scanned the row of Hollisters, standing shoulder to shoulder, facing off against them.
>
  Next move: pistols at fifty paces.

  “Thank you for dinner,” she said at last, lamely. “It was delicious.”

  And easier to stomach than the company.

  There really didn’t seem to be anything else to say.

  Chapter Eight

  The bride looked more like she was waiting for a bus than anticipating her vows. She kept shifting from one foot to the other and peering impatiently at the clock on the back wall of the church. Her obvious agitation had earned a degree of interest from the bored-looking teenagers in the side pews, who were probably hoping she was going to do a last-minute bolt.

  From his unwelcome position in the family pew – his father was all about keeping up appearances – Mick studied his imminent sister-in-law. She was a fairly young blonde with a sharp chin and a stroppy expression. He knew absolutely nothing about her except that her father was a backbench Member of Parliament who had insisted on an iron-clad pre-nup. Score ten points for Sean. The ceremony appeared to be keeping her from something more important.

  Holding her hands loosely in his, Marcus was sleepy-eyed, slack-jawed, and obviously hung-over.

  What a picture of wedded bliss.

  A strand of silky brown hair brushed his shoulder, and he glanced down at Sophy. She was sitting quietly by his side, one knee jiggling slightly. She was wearing another new dress, a silky blue-green fabric that draped distractingly over her breasts and thighs, and one of those silly things that women attached to the side of their head at weddings and racecourses, as if they’d lost ninety percent of the hat on the way in.

  He had looked down at her several times since they’d arrived at the churchyard, ridiculously feeling as if he was making sure she was still there and hadn’t subsided bashfully through the floor. She was so bright and funny when she was among friends that he already tended to forget how uncomfortable she was around strangers. He was constantly taken aback when his wise-cracking companion got out of the car or entered a building, and suddenly seemed to shrink in both size and personality. He suspected very few people knew the real Sophy.