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‘Thanks, I had quite a crick in my neck,’ she said, from the gleam in his eye not quite hiding her flustered awareness. ‘I usually take a shake break every half-hour or so, because if you get a sudden cramp when you’re doing close work…’
She was aware she was babbling as he subsided back onto the stool at the other bench, leaning his elbow on the polished top beside her open notebook and regarding her with a mocking amusement that immediately put her on the alert. He was casually dressed in fawn trousers and a classic navy polo shirt, which contrasted with the piercing lightness of his eyes. He hadn’t shaved, and the dark shadow on his chin added a raw, unfinished edge to the aristocratic features. He looked lazy, but he was radiating a hidden resolve, which in her experience was a bad sign.
‘How long have you been sitting there?’ she asked, turning to wipe down the tools she had been using, taking the opportunity for a quick check in the shiny surface of the magnifying-glass stand. Allowing for the distortion, she was satisfied that she was presentable, her freshly washed hair spiking up in scrunched curls, her naked face unblemished by any embarrassing smudges. Now that some of her clothes had been washed and re-washed several times to rid them of their smoke-infused toxicity—she couldn’t yet afford to follow the firemen’s advice and get her entire wardrobe dry-cleaned—she at least had a respectable pair of jeans and a tailored short-sleeved shirt in cheerful cherry to boost her confidence.
‘A while,’ Ethan replied with irritating vagueness. It wasn’t the first time he had invaded the studio. On his previous visit he had taken to wandering in to observe and ask questions as she had begun her preliminary examinations and was dealing with the items that only required dusting and light cleaning to be brought back to their best. Since she was on a grace-and-favour lease, she felt she could hardly order him to leave, especially as she had never quibbled at Peter dropping in for an occasional chat.
‘You must have an incredible amount of patience to be able to work at such a slow pace. Don’t you ever get the urge to hurry up the process?’
Emily’s blue eyes widened in such instinctive horror at the idea that he lifted up his hands in surrender. ‘I take it that the answer is “no”.’
‘If you’re impatient you can do more harm than good. There are no short cuts to proper conservation,’ she said sternly.
‘I stand corrected.’ He watched her subside a little at his unaccustomed meekness, the outraged colour in her eyes shading back to a more pacific blue. ‘Do you usually work on Saturdays?’
‘I work whenever there’s work available. That’s one of the big advantages of being self-employed and having a studio at hand,’ she said shortly. ‘I enjoy what I do, so it doesn’t bother me if there are stretches when I’m in the studio seven days a week.’
‘So your work is your pleasure and your pleasure is your work?’ he interrupted with a soft murmur. Why did that sound indecent coming from his lips? ‘It’s not just that you’re trying to impress everyone with your dedicated industry?’
Meaning himself, no doubt. She gave him a look of utter disparagement.
‘Or that you’re using work as an excuse to hide away in here,’ he added silkily, aiming a far more accurate dart, ‘hoping to avoid the inevitable.’
‘The inevitable what?’ she said, even though she knew it was asking for trouble.
The dark auburn whiskers on one side of his jaw indented with the corner of his mouth. ‘Me.’
She fought down a betraying blush. ‘I have a lot of lost ground to make up. Unlike you, I don’t have a load of employees to take up the slack if I decide to take some time off.’
‘Hmm.’ It was the truth, but the deep vibration in his chest expressed his scepticism as to whether it was the whole truth.
‘You seem to keep very detailed notes,’ he said, turning his attention to her open notebook, flicking over the pages of the thick folio, filled with dense writing and drawings, in which she kept a meticulous description of every item worked on and every step of the treatment it received at her hands.
It was her Bible, and fortunately it was her habit to take it to bed to review her notes and make plans for the next day, or to research older jobs that could assist with a current work. The night of the fire she had had all three volumes in her bedroom, and several of her grandfather’s, in preparation for the anticipated delivery the next day, and they were the first and only things she had grabbed as she had staggered out. The rest of James Quest’s notebooks, a priceless record of a lifetime of experience, had burnt on the studio bookshelves with her other reference texts, and no amount of compensation would be able to reimburse her for that loss—even supposing the insurance company accepted that they had any real monetary value.
‘I need to,’ she clipped, annoyed by the suggestion she wasn’t thoroughly professional. ‘Would you build a house without a survey of the site or a construction plan? If there’s any dispute by the owner about the way something’s been done, or question about a repair, or a job has to be redone or done in gradual stages it’s essential to have everything down in black and white.’
Ethan turned the pages back to the one featuring the vase she was working on, fingering the p
aper pocket that held the photos she had produced with the brand new digital camera and printer that she had found in one of the studio cupboards—another example of Peter’s suspect over-generosity, she supposed!
‘I hear my disreputable brother has turned up,’ he commented idly.
She wasn’t fooled by his offhanded remark.
‘Yes. Coincidentally, on the very day that you left,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Complete with bags and a long story about him having to lend his apartment to some incognito movie star and his family, here to make a high-budget commercial for his advertising agency.’
He eyed the scalpel she was briskly polishing. ‘Actually, I believe he rented his apartment at an exorbitant fee,’ he said drily. ‘Dylan is always open to the opportunity to make a fast buck.’
‘You mean you had absolutely nothing to do with him suddenly deciding to come and stay with his dear old uncle?’ she said, placing the scalpel back on the bench, out of the way of temptation. Actually she had found Dylan West fun. Flirtatious and good-looking, he was obviously a happy-go-lucky optimist who liked to skim through life without looking too deeply for meaning and motives. None of his teasing or interested questions provoked the kind of instant antagonism a mere raised eyebrow from his older brother could induce. He also had a very active social life, and did a lot of ‘nipping out’ in the evening, and it would usually be the early hours of the morning before she heard his Porsche throatily announcing itself in the driveway. So if Ethan had intended him as a chaperon he had fallen down on the job, she thought maliciously.
‘I may have mentioned you in a fashion that might have given rise to a certain curiosity on his part,’ said Ethan, picking his words with care. ‘Dylan is impulsive that way. He always likes to think up ways to get the jump on me.’
Emily stared at him. What did that mean?
On second thoughts, maybe it was safer not to ask!
‘At least he doesn’t sneak around trying to catch me in flagrante with your uncle!’
