Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 82698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 413(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 413(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
All the time, he’d honestly believed Gareth had burned all his paintings. But Clay saw the truth. Gareth couldn’t bear to destroy his work. His heart and soul lived in those paintings. He was finally seeing the true Gareth again after so long. The one whose art still inhabited him.
Saskia said on barely a breath, “This is amazing.” She knew art. She worked for San Holo.
Clay couldn’t stop himself. He had to see the painting Gareth had shown her.
He barely swallowed a gasp.
It was the self-portrait. But a completely disjointed self-portrait—the nose in the wrong place, the eyes too far to the left, everything off-kilter. It was this painting the critics had trashed.
Clay could still remember the comments.
Do you think you’re van Gogh or Picasso?
This is just mimicry.
The artist is merely blending other people’s styles. He has no style of his own, and I doubt he ever will.
But Saskia knew none of that. “Wow, this is a self-portrait, isn’t it?” She looked at Gareth as if she saw him in a way Clay hadn’t for years. “Looks like you felt all twisted up about which direction your life should take—law or art?”
She was spot-on.
It was how Gareth had sometimes felt back then, beneath the happy-go-lucky façade, forced into law school by his parents but wanting only to paint. With Clay pulling him in the other direction, wanting him to put his art out there.
Saskia saw it all in only one self-portrait.
Stepping back, she surveyed Gareth, her face glowing. “This is brilliant. Why aren’t you doing this?”
Gareth shrugged again. “Because I’m a lawyer.”
She laughed that beautiful laugh. “Well, you need to dump the day job and get into one of Clay’s studios.” She turned to Clay, her smile as brilliant as Gareth’s self-portrait. “And you need to find a new lawyer.”
He expected Gareth to fob her off, but his incredible artist friend said, “You know, you make me think maybe it’s time to try again.”
Clay wanted to hug her, kiss her, grab her up in his arms and whirl around the room with her.
Here was a woman he could be with for more than a few weeks, a few months, or even a year.
Here was a woman he could fall for.
Clay turned to her the moment the door closed behind Gareth and the contracts. “You’re amazing.”
His statement stunned Saskia. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that Gareth hasn’t talked about his art in ten years. I didn’t even know he’d kept all his canvases.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean—”
“You just did an incredible thing.” His voice dipped low, as if emotion had overtaken him. “He even said he’d think about painting again.”
His big, warm hands cupped her face, his lips on hers. He kissed her with fervor and yet with reverence, then whispered against her mouth, “Thank you for doing that for him.”
She had to back off a step. “I didn’t do anything but look at his paintings.”
Clay guided her to the couch, pulling her onto his lap, his arms wrapped around her. “Let me tell you what happened when we were at university. Then you’ll understand what an extraordinary thing this is.”
She heard the ache in his slow tones and saw it in his eyes, which had gone a paler shade of blue. “He was such a fantastic painter. That self-portrait was the tip of the iceberg. He was happiest when he was working on a new painting. But his parents wanted him to be a lawyer.”
She ran her hand through his hair. “He’s the friend you mentioned the other night, the one whose parents didn’t like his art?”
He nodded. “They said he’d never make a living as an artist. That he’d be, quote, a starving artist, unquote, and they wouldn’t pay for a starving artist to go to university. That if he wanted a Harvard education, it was to be at Harvard Law, like his father.”
Her heart went out to Gareth, and she thought of how her parents had said her art would never be good enough. But it just wasn’t good enough for them. The rest of the world didn’t agree.
“I’m so sorry for him,” she said, her voice breathy with emotion.
“They never actually belittled his art. They never said it,” he emphasized. “But it was there in the way they harped on him, comparing him to van Gogh, who died a pauper. Nothing about how great his art was, only that he’d starved for it. If only he could paint more like this artist or that artist. Gareth was too offbeat, too out of step.” He leaned his head back against the sofa, sighing heavily.
She felt his heart break for his friend. Her heart broke, too, for Gareth, another soul whose parents just couldn’t handle who their kid really was.
“I hear how much it hurt you to watch him with his parents,” she murmured, her voice soothing.