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“It’s not the staff.” She let out a sigh. “I’ve been here two years, and I never even intended to take this job. You don’t need me anymore. You can run the estate by yourself. Maybe it’s time for a change.”
“I don’t need you? Where the hell did you get that idea?”
She waved a hand around his studio. “You’re painting again, Duncan.” Her eyes followed her hand, and she seemed to notice for the first time that the paintings were of her. She gasped, and her hand flew to her chest.
Duncan barely noticed. He was still stuck on the logic that said if he was painting, he didn’t need a housekeeper. Surely, if he was busy, he would need a housekeeper more, not less? Women. If he lived to be a hundred, he still wouldn’t understand them.
“You can get those daft notions out of your head right now. I am painting again, and it means I’m too busy to run the estate. That’s your job, and you aren’t leaving it.” Was it possible to legally block someone from quitting a job? As soon as this crazy conversation was over, he was calling his lawyer. If there was a way to do it, he wanted it done fast.
“These paintings are of me,” Donna said in a small, shaky voice.
His attention zoomed in on her. She seemed shocked, stunned, emotional. He cocked his head and studied her, but he still couldn’t figure out what the reaction meant. Didn’t she like the paintings? He could reassure her on that front. “They aren’t finished yet. They’ll look better when they’re done.”
“They’re all of me,” she whispered.
“You’re the one who posed, of course they’re of you.” She wasn’t making any sense.
Her shoulders slumped, and her face closed up the way it had that day in the kitchen when he’d first asked her to pose. “Of course,” she said evenly.
His heart raced. Something had gone wrong again, and he wasn’t sure what, but this time he wasn’t letting it go. “What does that mean? That ‘of course’ comment.”
She shrugged. “Just that it makes sense. I’m the only one here to pose for you.”
The penny dropped, and it hit him hard, making him think it had been launched from afar. He took a step towards her, closing the distance between them until he could almost touch her.
“I didn’t ask you to pose because you were the only person here. If I wanted to, I could pick up the phone and have my choice of models here in a day or two. I asked you to pose because I wanted, no—I needed—to paint you.”
A flicker of something that looked like hope sprang into those wide green eyes of hers before it disappeared again. “That’s really sweet of you, Duncan.”
It was clear she didn’t believe him. His mind raced over the conversation they’d had that day in the kitchen. His words came back to him in a rush: Because you’re here and Fiona isn’t. I need a subject if I’m going to paint again.
He was an idiot.
“Donna,” he said softly, “listen to what I’m trying to tell you. I don’t paint just anyone. I never have. The model has to call to me. A unique call, one that’s all them and no one else. And when I want to paint that person, no other will do. My models aren’t interchangeable. They never have been. What I said in the kitchen that day was stupid and untrue. I didn’t ask you to pose because I needed a model and anyone would do. I asked because I’d been lying awake nights imagining what you would look like on my canvas.”
She sucked in a breath. Her eyes became pools of sea green water that would drown a man, and her cheeks coloured with the softest pink. He dreamed about that colour.
“Beautiful,” he whispered.
It felt like the surrounding air had become charged. The hairs on his skin stood to attention, and he felt the ache of awareness. Her cheeks were darker now, perfectly matching the colour of her lips.
“Duncan?” she whispered, her eyes searching his.
He was vaguely aware that his nerves from earlier had disappeared. Everything had disappeared. The world had reduced to the woman in front of him. The soft, delicate woman who was looking up at him with such vulnerability in her eyes.
“I have something I wan
ted to ask you,” he said.
“Yes?”
Man, she was beautiful. Inside and out. He felt like he was falling into those pale green eyes of hers. A strange feeling of peace, of floating, surrounded him, and the anxiety and guilt that had wracked him disappeared. There was only Donna, nothing else, and the question he’d been practising and worrying over, dissolved in his mind. To be replaced by one that was much more important. It slipped out of his mouth before he could censor it—not that he wanted to.
“Can I kiss you, Donna?” he whispered. “I hear tell a man must ask first these days, and I would dearly like to taste you.”
“Oh.” The word was barely a breath, but it wasn’t the one he wanted to hear.
“Tell me I can kiss you,” he said as he lowered his head towards her, his eyes holding fast to hers. “Let me hear the word.”
