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Liar, liar, pants on fire, the troll said as it walked through the room.
“Well, then, that’s good,” Grace said gently, sounding like she didn’t believe Donna.
“Honestly, I’ve just been looking out for him, for Fiona. That’s what she would have wanted.”
She’d come into the studio every day to leave a rose for Fiona. She wasn’t quite sure why. At first, it was because she was sad that Duncan missed her so much and his studio was languishing because of it, but then she’d begun to feel a kinship with the dead woman, as though looking after Duncan had given them something in common. Sometimes, she’d even felt like she was taking care of him for Fiona.
She blinked several times before looking back at Grace. “He’s painting again, and he’s thinking about teaching too. I think he’s coming out the other end of his grief. He doesn’t need me so much anymore. That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Aye, it is.” Grace got up and patted Donna on the cheek. “If you need anything, let me know. I’d best get back and watch those women. Or they’ll be pocketing the silver.”
As the door closed behind her, Donna let her head rest on the back of the sofa.
And a single tear ran down her cheek.
She wiped it away. There was no time for self-pity. She had a mansion to run...and jobs to apply for. There was nothing keeping her in the mansion any longer. Duncan had moved on and she needed to do that too. With one last glance at Fiona’s painting and a whispered apology, Donna left the room.
Chapter 11
Duncan was avoiding his housekeeper, which made him feel like he was twelve years old again and didn’t know how to talk to girls. He’d hated that awkward age, and he didn’t want to relive it. It seemed he had no choice in the matter though. After their posing incident, and a heavy workout in the gym that had nearly killed him, he’d locked himself in his studio and hidden in his work. He was painting up a storm. It was a creative frenzy the likes of which he hadn’t experienced since the weeks before his final degree show in college. But it hadn’t brought him the peace he’d hoped for.
It seemed that, although he’d managed to dodge Donna in reality, he couldn’t get away from her in his art. She was everywhere. In drawings pinned to the wall and on canvases he’d painted well into the night, before falling asleep on the sofa. Only to find upon waking that the first thing he saw was Donna’s face smiling out of the paintings around him.
He was a man obsessed. Even when he slept, she invaded his dreams. Sometimes, he saw her in the compositions he painted when he was awake. At other times, he had blazing arguments with dream Donna, ones he would never have with her in real life and couldn’t remember when he woke. But it was the third type of dream that bothered him the most: those were blistering hot. Donna naked, lounging on the sofa in his studio, all glorious curves and willing woman. Donna undressing as she sauntered towards him across the kitchen, before pushing him back onto the table and climbing on top of him. Donna beckoning to him from the shower, water trailing over her skin...
He groaned at the thought. The variations were endless, but they all ended up in the same place, with him suffering a hard-on that would not be sated by his own hand. But the worst part of all was the guilt. Every day he walked into his studio, the first thing he saw was the half-finished painting of his dead wife. And it was a punch to his gut every time. He felt like those dreams were betrayals of her memory, of the promises he’d made. He hated that he had no control over his mind and when he slept it was Donna, not Fiona, who returned to haunt him.
It had been over a week since that day in the studio when she’d stripped in front of him. Seven days of suffering, every single minu
te. His body was desperate for her, while his mind screamed in protest, and his honour was affronted by the whole thing. This couldn’t go on. And he feared that the only way to solve it was to either fire the woman who had saved his sanity these past two years or give in to temptation and sate his hunger—assuming Donna would have him.
It was this thought that brought his painting frenzy to a dramatic halt. In all these days of thinking about what she was doing to him—how she was torturing him with her presence, with his need for her—it had never once occurred to him that she might not feel the same way. He sat down on his stool, in his studio, in front of the latest painting of the woman who tormented him. To add insult to injury, she’d practically turned him into a portrait artist.
With a groan he covered his face with his hands. He needed help. And he wasn’t sure where to get it. He’d cut off his friends when Fiona got sick, unable to cope with their sympathy and well-meaning advice. His only brother lived in Australia, and Duncan had barely spoken to him over the past few years. Each time Hamish had tried to talk to him, Duncan had been brusque with his replies, and the phone calls had become less frequent. But brothers could be forgiving, couldn’t they?
He reached into his pocket for his phone, only to remember Donna had thrown it off the first-floor landing and hadn’t replaced it yet. With heavy legs, he walked to the landline in the corner of the room, lifted the receiver and slid down the wall to sit on the floor while he dialled.
“Is everything okay?” Were Hamish’s first words, and Duncan couldn’t help but smile. It wasn’t until he heard his brother’s voice that he realised just how much he’d missed him.
“Are you going to answer me? Is my brother okay?” Hamish demanded.
“I’m fine, Hamish,” Duncan said.
There was silence for a beat. “Then what the hell are you doing phoning me in the middle of the night, you arsehole? I nearly had a heart attack.”
He wasn’t sure who was the most surprised when Duncan burst out laughing.
“It’s good to hear your voice,” he admitted once he’d calmed down.
“It would help if you picked up the phone sometimes.”
There was no arguing with that. “How’s the family?”
He heard the grin in his brother’s voice while he filled Duncan in on all the things he’d missed with his nieces and nephews. Hamish had four kids under ten, and his house sounded like a war zone. Still, there was no denying he was happy, which made Duncan feel a whole lot better about neglecting him.
“You going to tell me why you phoned?” Hamish said when they were all caught up on his kids.
“Does a man need a reason to call his brother?” He was stalling and knew his brother would hear it.
