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“Four years ago.”
“You were seventeen and he was thirty-seven?” August asked.
“You have run the numbers correctly,” she said. “Well done.”
“I’m not just a pretty face,” he said. “Though I am that, too.”
Lia smiled, hoped he’d drop it. He didn’t.
“Go on, Lia. Tell me all.”
Lia wanted to tell him. It shocked her how much she wanted to tell him, though she’d told no one in her life about her and David. Not a soul.
August came and sat at her feet, then kissed her bare thigh.
“What was that for?”
“For you.” He smiled up at her. “I need to know the truth and you need to speak it. This is what therapy is, Lia—telling our story to someone who will listen and understand. Tell me your story. Let me help you.”
Hard to say no to a beautiful man sitting at her feet. Hard to say no when she thought maybe she had finally found someone who she could maybe, possibly, trust.
“David couldn’t make it in New York apparently. Art scene’s murder there, I hear. Mum met him at a showing and took pity on a fellow New Yorker exiled to England. She and Daddy invited him to dinner one night,” she said, pressing on before she lost her courage. “Mum absolutely loved his work, so...to surprise her, Daddy hired David to paint a mural in Mum’s bedroom. He worked for weeks on it the summer I was seventeen. A mural takes forever, especially a big one. They moved him into the house. They set up showings for his work, paid his travel expenses, set him up with potential clients. They were perfect patrons, the sort any artist dreams of having. Daddy even got him a commission from Prince Charles for a mural at one of his charities.”
“What about you?” August asked.
“He taught me some sketching techniques,” she said. “Every evening. He said I was good.”
“Ah, the art teacher. That old story.” August nodded sagely.
“He was so...” She stopped to catch her breath. “Oh God, he was handsome. He called me Ophelia. Made it sound so pretty the way he said it. I wanted to marry him,” she said. “How insane is that?”
David Bell was a perfect-looking man. Her ideal. At least, he had been when she was seventeen and good biceps in a tight T-shirt, unruly ginger hair and intense brown eyes could turn her head. His clothes were always paint-spattered. Always. Jeans and white tees covered in a rainbow of paint. She’d found that sexy once. After a few years, however, Lia realized the paint splotches on his clothes had been an affectation as ridiculous as a man wearing a tuxedo all the time—Look at me, Mr. Very Serious Artist, too busy painting to stop by Tesco and pick up a clean shirt.
“One day during our art lesson,” she continued, “I admitted to him that I was in love with him. I just said it, not expecting anything. I tried to make it a joke, told him, ‘David, you might have noticed I’m madly in love with you, but I hope that won’t make things awkward. When I try to seduce you, feel free to ignore me and carry on with your life.’”
“Very smooth. That would have worked on me.”
“It worked on him, too,” Lia said. “He came to my room that night about midnight.”
“How was the sex?” August asked. She appreciated his matter-of-fact manner about the whole ordeal, asking questions, not judging her.
“Painful,” she admitted. “And I didn’t come. He was nice about it, though. He promised it got better with practice. He held me after. That was lovely.” She gave August a wan smile. “He didn’t stay long, though. Said he needed to get back to his room before we got caught together. Mum and Daddy are pretty open-minded about sex, but their seventeen-year-old daughter with a thirty-seven-year-old man? Daddy would have killed him. Then Mum would have resurrected him just to kill him again.”
“Twenty-year age difference,” August said. “Hard for modern parents to swallow.”
“It happened in Ancient Greece all the time. Right?”
“So did exposing unwanted baby girls to the elements.”
A fair point.
“Did you get caught?” August asked.
“I wish. I wish that’s all it was. I’d be fine today if that’s what had happened.” She blinked back tears.
August took her hand in his. He turned it palm up and caressed the lines on her hand, traveling them as roads with his fingertips.
“Once wasn’t enough, of course,” she said. “I was in love with him. The morning after, I even gave him a lock of my hair.”
