AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER
25
Joey watched Kirsty walk out of sight past the chook pen. Maybe he should’ve introduced her to the valuer the other day, instead of leaving her to make her own way back. He’d been too focussed on going into full schmooze mode for the bank, trying to lead Alicia and her minion away—far away—from the old shed.
And for what? They’d seen his ute and followed the track down from the honeymoon paddock (Who could have guessed Alicia was a local? In that power suit?) and taken forty thousand photos of the war relic while he’d been losing his heart in the rockpool.
He stepped towards the shed to put the wire coil away.Six hundred thousand dollars.
He still couldn’t believe it. And sure, that was the bank putting its optimistic spin on the Wirraway’s value; he’d googled it himself and seen the last recorded sale of a restored (and airworthy) Wirraway had been half that.
But still. Three hundred thousand dollars was also a massive chunk of change. When the valuer had announced his estimate, Alicia Pickard’s cold eyes had sported dollar signs.
Kirsty had no idea, he was sure of it … just as he was also sure that she’d been upset when she walked away from him.
Should he go track her down, or leave her be?
He was still trying to decide when Daisy pounced on him. ‘What do you think? I’ve finished; they just need to dry.’
He looked at the artwork she was gesturing to, lined up along his workbench. ‘These are amazing, Daisy. Is this the sort of stuff you’re selling at the gallery in Byron?’
She shrugged. ‘I’ve kept these a little simpler. Those cottages you’re fitting out are sweet, but they’re never going to be anything but tiny. I didn’t want the canvases to be too busy.’
Her artworks weren’t busy, they were beautiful. Flat imagery, retro in style, one was a girl in a coloured dress with a white collar bending to scatter some grain for a chook. Another was a scruffy little horse—a dead ringer for Dobbin—stretching his head through rusty fence wire to reach a dandelion. The third, a standout favourite, was a tiny, weathered railway station, iron tracks leading into it, with the heavy flowers of a jacaranda in bloom filling the sky above.
‘What do you call this style?’ he said.
‘Daisy Miles’s style.’
He pulled her ponytail. ‘Itsactualstyle.’
‘Minimalist, matte paint, flat blocks of colour, a fascination with geometric forms … there. That’s what my last review said, anyway.’
He’d have to throw some photos of her artwork up on his farmstay website; maybe link it to the gallery where she sold her work, add a little description of each piece. Warming to his theme, he turned to her. ‘Your artwork, how do you brand it?’
Daisy narrowed her eyes. ‘How do Ibrandmyart?’
Uh-oh. He’d made some fatal error, if only he knew what. Must be his day for it.
‘Not everyone in the Miles family is addicted to big shiny dollars like you are, Joey. I don’t “brand” my art. I create it. With my heart and my fingers, with my blood, sweat and tears, not with my calculator and a slogan.’
Wow. Where did that come from? ‘Studying economics and becoming a stockbroker isn’t an addiction to big shiny dollars,’ he said.
‘Really,’ she said, in the loving sisterly tone that actually meant ‘bullshit’.
He sighed. ‘Okay, maybe there was a bit of shininess involved. But I’m done with that life. I’m a farmer now.’ Now and forever.
She bumped his shoulder with hers. ‘Wannabe farmer.’ He’d apparently been forgiven for his slur on her art.
He grinned. ‘And as much as I’d like to tell you I’m making all my farming plans using my blood, sweat and tears, there’s been a fair bit of calculator work going on in the background.’
‘No-one resents you for earning a living, Joey.’
He returned a spool of wire to the nail on the wall where it lived, but this comment made him pause. ‘Why am I sensing a “but” in that comment?’
Daisy busied herself pouring turpentine into an old coffee jar. ‘Nothing. Forget I said it.’
‘It’s what you didn’t say that I want to hear.’
