The Secret Ingredient. Nina Harrington

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СКАЧАТЬ so low that he had a perfect view down her deep V-necked top into a very generous cleavage.

      Rob quickly stepped forwards, grin locked in place, his pen already in his hand, and signed a flourish of his name on the cover page while the crowd went mad behind her, screaming and calling out his name at ear-damaging volume.

      He walked slowly down the line, signing yet another recipe book—one of his early ones—then a poster from his restaurant-makeover show.

      And then the questions started. One male voice and then another.

      ‘Is Adele turning up in person tonight for the show or has she done a runner like last time?’

      ‘Where have you hidden your mum, Rob?’

      ‘Have you left her behind in that treatment centre? Is that the only kind of artist retreat she knows these days?’

      ‘Are the rumours true about her retiring after this show?’

      Louder and louder, closer and closer, the questions came from every direction, more pointed and all demanding to know where his mother was.

      They were goading him. Pushing him harder and harder, desperate for a reaction.

      They wanted him to explode. To push the camera down someone’s throat or, even better, give one of them a black eye.

      A few years ago? He would have done it and taken the consequences. But tonight was not about him and he refused to let the press win, so he pretended to have developed sudden hearing loss and politely ignored them. This of course made them goad him even more.

      Nine minutes later he had walked the whole of the line, smiling and laughing towards the waiting crowd, leaning in for the compulsory mobile phone shots.

      Then just like that the press turned away as the next limo pulled up and, without waiting for permission or a good-behaviour pass, Rob turned his back on the crowd and photographers and strode purposefully down the last few feet of red carpet, through the open door of the art gallery and into the relative calm of the marble atrium where the other specially invited guests were already assembled.

      This preview show was the one exclusive opportunity for the art critics to admire and study his mother’s work without having to share the gallery with the general public. That was the good news. The less-good news was that it had been the art critics who had descended on his mother like a pack of rabid wolves when she had imploded at her last exhibition in Toronto.

      Having a screaming and crying nervous breakdown in public was bad enough, but for her tormented and terrified face to be captured for ever by the press had made it worse.

      Instead of defending her for her fragile creativity, they had condemned her for being a bad example to young artists for her excessive lifestyle.

      But that was eight years ago.

      Different world. Different faces. Different approach to mental illness. Surely?

      Rob paused long enough to take a flute of chilled champagne from a passing waiter and was just about to launch into the media crew clustered around the gallery owner when he caught sight of his reflection in the installation light feature.

      A sombre dark male face glared back at him, his heavy eyebrows low above narrowed eyes and a jaw that would be a better fit on a prizefighter rather than a patron of the arts.

      Yikes! Maybe not.

      He didn’t want to terrify the critics before they had even had a chance to see the artwork. And most of them seemed to be enjoying the refreshments.

      A quick scan of the room confirmed that unless there was a back door through the kitchen, he was trapped. Unless... Yes! There was one person who was taking time to actually see the paintings instead of networking over the catalogues and free booze before the food was served.

      A pretty blonde woman. Correction. Make that a very pretty blonde. She was sitting completely alone at the far end of the gallery, away from the hustle and noise from the street. Her gaze appeared to be completely engrossed in the artwork in front of her.

      Rob turned away from the other guests, nodding to people as he passed, and started strolling down the gallery space, taking the time to scan some of the twenty-two paintings that he knew inside out.

      He could give the critics a full history of each and every brush stroke. Where and when and what mood his mother had been in when she painted them. The hours spent debating locations and the quality of the light. Desperate for each work to be perfect. Flawless. Ideal.

      The despair that came when they did not match up to her exacting standards.

      The joy and delight and laughter of walking along beaches day after day, which only seemed to make the darker ones blacker. Like the time he was called out of a business meeting when she set six of his favourite canvases on fire on the hotel patio in a barbecue pit. That depression had lasted weeks.

      These paintings truly were the survivors.

      Especially the canvas that the blonde was looking at that very minute.

      Rob exhaled long and slow. He should have known that a critic would be drawn to such a totally over-the-top sentimental and emotional piece.

      It was good—no doubt about that.

      But it was so obvious that his mother might as well be standing there waving a banner telling the world that she had painted it in a dark time when the depression had almost become too much and she’d had to go back on the much-hated medication again.

      It was probably the only piece that he had suggested to his mother to leave behind in her villa in Carmel, California. It was just too personal and way too deep to show to the world.

      Too late. Because there it was. Not the biggest painting but the most intimate and revealing in the whole collection.

      But just who was this woman who had obviously spotted the best picture in the room?

      Rob stood to one side, sipping his champagne, and watched her for a few minutes in silence, his gaze scanning her pose, her body, her clothing, taking it all in and trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

      She certainly didn’t look like one of his mother’s art critic pals or the hyenas back in Toronto. Failed artists every one of them. Far from it.

      Straight blonde hair falling to her shoulders, she was wearing a sleeveless aqua dress and he could just make out a line of collarbone above a long, slender, elegant neck, surprisingly overlaid with muscle as opposed to starved thin like most fine artists he had met.

      And she really was stunningly pretty. A break in the clouds outside the window shone a beam of sunlight onto the cream-coloured gallery wall, which reflected back from her skin. It became luminescent and pale. No artificial tan for this girl. She truly was all white peaches and cream.

      But what were her hands like? At the moment they were pushed flat against the bench on either side of her body, palm down, but as he watched she lifted her shoulders and her hands clasped around her arms as though she was cold. The air conditioning was certainly chilly but it was more than that. She was holding on to herself.

      Totally wrapped up in her thoughts. Contained. Calm. СКАЧАТЬ