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‘Only indirectly. I bought it retail from a gallery. My mother often gives me a painting for my birthday or for Christmas. But when I asked for this particular one she refused—sold it outright to the gallery instead…’
‘Why?’
Anne knew all about artistic temperament. It was prone to flights of illogic that could verge on the ridiculous —which she and Ivan could thank for their current sojourn in the city. In Katlin’s view the artistic ends justified the means. It was left to Anne to endure the pangs of conscience suffered by less talented mortals.
She had smothered her deepest doubts about what they were doing by insisting on an absolute minimum of outright lying, enrolling at the university under her own name and simply saying, ‘Call me Anne,’ whenever someone addressed her as Katlin. It usually worked—they accepted the correction politely, without question… except for this man, of course.
But it was tough. Not least because she still worried about whether she was doing the right thing for Katlin and Ivan in the long term.
Anne herself could never envisage a situation where she would put her career ahead of the needs of her own baby, but neither could she condemn Katlin for being different. Her pregnancy had been a very difficult one and mother and child had almost died during Ivan’s premature birth.
Afterwards, when Katlin had taken the baby back to the tiny, isolated cabin on the coast that she called home, she had found to her horror that the words that had once flowed so easily from her pen had completely dried up. With another’s needs taking precedence over her own she could no longer achieve the necessary physical and mental peace that she required for her writing. She had stubbornly resisted Anne’s pleas to contact the baby’s father.
Anne, who had stayed with her sister to help her through the first month of solo parenthood, had been alarmed on later visits by her sister’s deepening list-lessness. She had been thrilled when the recipient of this year’s Markham Grant had been finally announced, thinking that it might be just what Katlin needed to bounce her out of her slough of despond.
It had, but not in the way that Anne had fondly en-visaged. She had been a great deal less thrilled with her sister’s brilliant solution to the problem of her ongoing writer’s block but, after discreetly consulting Katlin’s doctor about his concerns for his patient’s mental and physical health, she had reluctantly allowed herself to be persuaded.
Hunter was regarding her morose expression thoughtfully. ‘My mother doesn’t like this painting either. She regards it as a depressing aberration in her abstract style.’
Anne perked up at the realisation that her faux pas hadn’t been quite so bad after all. ‘Then why did you buy it?’
His square-cut mouth pulled into a mocking curve. ‘To annoy her. She lives in a rarefied environment of more or less undiluted praise these days. She sometimes needs reminding that she’s as human as the rest of us.’
‘A very expensive way to make your point,’ said Anne disapprovingly, thinking that Hunter Lewis evidently didn’t have to struggle along on a mere lecturer’s income, to be able to indulge
such an expensive whim. ‘And not very filial either.’
‘Do I take it you believe that family loyalty should override other ethical considerations…like personal integrity or honesty, or expecting people to accept responsibility for their own actions?’
Anne’s eyes skated away from his. He was speaking idly and at random, she reminded herself. ‘Blood is thicker than water,’ she muttered uneasily.
‘Ah, yes, I forgot you have a cliché for every occasion. So you believe that the rights of the individual are paramount over the rights of the state?’
‘I didn’t come here for a political discussion,’ she said gruffly, feeling guiltier than ever before.
‘No, that’s right.’ He strolled over to the kitchen and lifted the lid off her pasta sauce, giving her a cynical smile as he bent to inhale the smell of the contents. ‘You came to deliver the poor bachelor a wholesome, home-cooked meal—purely out of the goodness of your heart…A bit heavy-handed with the dried basil, weren’t you?’
‘I’ll have you know I only use fresh herbs when I cook and there’s exactly the right amount of basil in there,’ Anne said, infuriated by his casual criticism. ‘I’ve made that sauce hundreds of times and no one’s ever com-plained before…’
‘Perhaps country palates aren’t as discriminating as city-bred ones—’
Anne said a rude word, then blushed when his eyebrows rose.
‘What makes you such an expert anyway?’ she said defensively.
‘I was taught classic cuisine by an Italian chef.’
Anne resisted the urge to snatch back her modest offering. ‘You took a cooking course?’
‘Not as such. Maria gave me lessons purely out of the goodness of her heart.’
Irony threaded the innocent statement and the wicked glint of anticipation in his black eyes warned Anne not to make the obvious mistake of enquiring further into Maria’s identity. She had a feeling that he would enjoy embarrassing her by telling her that it was not only as a chef that the woman had excelled.
‘Naturally you don’t have to eat it if it’s not up to your impeccable standard,’ she said stiffly.
‘No doubt I’ll manage to choke it down.’
She felt a very strong desire to empty the sauce over his supercilious head. The amount of best-quality beef mince that she had used in the sauce would have lasted her three meals.
