AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Its mother is probably down there looking for it.”
There was a silence and then a muffled curse. Mick seized her rod, removed the trout from the lure with a gentle twist and tossed it overboard. Turning back to her, he unsnapped the two halves of the rod and stowed it in the side of the boat.
“That’s it,” he said, resigned. “We can never come out fishing again. My nerves can’t take it.”
He sat down and Sophy leaned back into her corner of the boat and propped her legs up on his lap.
“I don’t know why that would be,” she said, grinning. “I’m very relaxed. You were right. This was a good idea.”
She had arrived at Mick’s house in an absolutely foul mood after a day of endless minor catastrophes in the studio. He had been in the process of making dinner, but had taken one look at her thunderous expression and marched her out to the boat for a twilight troll around nearby Lake Hayes. After half an hour of sitting in the balmy summer air, feeling the light tug of the trailing fishing line and the muted thrum of the engine, the tension had started to drain out of each twitching muscle in turn.
Mick had been renting a home near the lake for the past six months and they both enjoyed the evenings on the water so much that they had decided to look for a permanent base in the area now that they were house-hunting. House-hunting with some difficulty, due to their widely different budgets and their opposing ideas for the use of a garage. So far they had seen three possible properties, all of which had a large airy garage that would make an excellent studio with the addition of a few windows. Mick, however, seemed to think he could actually store vehicles in them.
It was an indication of how far she had come, Sophy thought, that she could contemplate their impending move together with excitement and no fear. Ninety-eight percent excitement and two percent fear, tops. Her mother, as usual, had been right. Mick was overprotective, bossy and more safety-conscious than the diagrams in the back of airplane seats, but he was also intensely respectful of her need for solitude to work and recharge. They had been apart for lengthy stretches of time in the first half of the year, while he worked out his notice with Ryland Curry. Every so often, she had breathed a sigh of relief and enjoyed the silence and the extra room in the bed. More often, she had missed him terribly.
He had sold out his holdings in the Napa vineyard six months ago and bought a full half-share in the Hidden Oak winery, not far from Silver Leigh. Effectively rendering him the dreaded competition, but having him settle in town was worth the relentless raillery between he and her father at family dinners. Hidden Oak at least hadn’t diverged into cheese production yet, which kept things relatively civilised, although dinner conversation had become completely single-minded since the grape harvests. They were a bit like two little kids arguing over whose train set was the fastest. When they’d gone out for her twenty-fifth birthday, Sophy had requested a glass of wine from the distant Marlborough region which she’d always liked and had been all but ousted from the table, the recipient of mutual disgust from both sides.
Leaning her head back against the seat now, she gazed across the shaky play of light on the darkening water and the festive twinkling along the shore. Somebody had decked out some of the trees along the bay with fairy lights for Christmas next week. Her eyes returned to Mick and she watched the shadows create further grooves and hollows in his craggy features. She remembered the first time she had seen him, at the exhibition that seemed a decade ago now, and how beautiful she had thought him from a purely artistic, aesthetic point of view. She couldn’t see him objectively like that anymore; his face and body were just facets of Mick as a whole.
He looked up and caught her smile. His own cheeks creased easily in response, his eyes relaxed and happy.
“What’s that look for?” he asked.
“Just you,” she said lightly, and he shook his head slightly.
“Artists,” he said. “Odd way of looking at the world.”
“No,” she replied. “I think we see things a bit more clearly than most people.”
He finished knotting a new lure to his line and cast it back out. It landed with a soft plunk and a silvery splash, sinking out of sight. Poor fish.
“By the way,” she said, “I had a call from Patrick Kirkland today. He definitely wants to buy my sculpture.”
“What? Sophy, that’s fantastic.” Mick reached out with his free hand, cupped the back of her head and planted a hard kiss on her mouth. “I hope you haggled on the price.”
“Oh, he was very generous,” said Sophy. She pursed her lips, not looking at him. “The other offer, the one from the gallery, was almost as much, but Kirkland swung the deal with the location.” She raised her hands and made a frame with her fingers, peering through it. Her face was carefully blank. “He’s going to put it in the courtyard of the new bank building, right smack on the waterfront where thousands of people will see it every single day.”
She had placed eighth in the finals of the sculpture competition in June, with what the judges had called a “deliciously repellent triumph” of a Medusa sculpture. It had been the greatest technical feat of her life thus far to craft the head snakes, which extended out to almost one and a half metres from the skull. And it had been, if she did say so herself, an inspired piece of work.
In her defence, it wasn’t an exact likeness of Jennifer Nolan. After all, she never used sketches of people without their permission. And not only did she not want to get that intimate with the other woman’s features, but she didn’t want Mick to have a constant reminder either. It had been extremely difficult to convey a definite likeness while leaving some ambiguity over the identity. People might not look at it and think that it was Jennifer, but an idle thought would almost certainly come to anyone who knew her and who saw the piece in its very public glory. “Doesn’t Jennifer look a bit like Medusa? How funny.”
How beautifully apt.
It was the most childish thing she’d done in years and she felt no remorse at all.
Mick had examined the work from all angles after its completion and eventually, with faint amusement in his eyes, had solemnly complimented her on her skill.
Sean had proposed marriage on the spot.
“Who would have thought that such a dark soul resides beneath that sparkly pink exterior?” Mick mused now, but he didn’t sound particularly bothered by the thought. He didn’t even flinch at the oblique reference to the other woman. Sophy thought he’d largely forgotten her existence. His family was another matter and a continuing problem, but thankfully it was a problem separated by a large stretch of water and most of the country.
“I told you I could be awful,” she said, yawning. The motion of the boat was beginning to lull her into a doze.
“I know,” he replied, tugging on his line. “I’m still waiting on the proof.”
She smiled without opening her eyes.
The tiny waves lapped gently against the hull and created a soothing rock. She really was going to fall asleep.
