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‘Well, George likes to keep up with my progress. It’s a good income for me, and I’ve always enjoyed painting plants and flowers.’
‘He lives over by the reserve, doesn’t he?’
‘Only temporarily. He’s a professor at Auckland University, spending a year’s sabbatical here while he completes his research. He’s already discovered a new species of native fern.’
‘Bully for George,’ he muttered, and watched her absently check the tuck of her green blouse in the waistband of her snug moleskins and smooth back her hair as she looked towards the door, all instinctively feminine actions that made his eyes narrow.
She caught his look and sensed trouble. ‘I’ll take him into the studio,’ she told him hurriedly. ‘If you wouldn’t mind staying out of the way—this is business.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he grunted, serving her a frisson of unease as she opened the door.
George Franklin had been extremely reserved when they first met at a working bee on one of the reserve’s many bush tracks, but as their collaboration advanced, Nina had discovered that he was more preoccupied than deliberately aloof, and in the past couple of months their mutual liking had warmed into comfortable friendship. Nina felt no excitement in his company, but she liked him and lately had been wondering if she should react to his tentative hints that he would like their friendship to ripen into something more.
Now, as he greeted her with his slightly abstracted smile and a warm kiss on her cheek, she wondered how on earth she could ever have considered him in the light of a romantic attachment. He was only a few years older than her, and good-looking in a boyish kind of way, with sandy hair, freckled face and golden-brown eyes, but there was nothing about him that would ever call to her soul.
She stiffened as Ryan came up behind her, sliding his arm around her waist and drawing her firmly back against him, his other hand extended politely to the other man. ‘Hello, George. Ryan Flint.’ He gave the automatically proffered hand a white-knuckled shake that caused the professor’s eyes to widen.
‘Don’t leave him standing on the doorstep, darling,’ he said in Nina’s ear, accompanying his words with a chiding nip of her soft lobe.
‘Would you like me to make you a coffee, George, while Nina is showing you the paintings?’ He gave the disconcerted visitor a charmingly affable smile. ‘I think you’ll be pleased with what she’s done—Nina has a real feeling for the work. In fact, she’s one of the most gifted botanical artists I’ve seen in a long while. She makes a very good argument for the superiority of botanical art over photographic reproduction.’
George looked as if he was about to cut in with something condescending, so Nina conquered her stunned reaction to Ryan’s lavish praise and rushed to explain.
‘Ryan is an art dealer, George,’ she said, surreptitiously pinching the encompassing arm until she was allowed to wriggle free. ‘He owns the Pacific Rim Galleries.’
‘Really?’ George looked warily from Nina’s flustered face to Ryan’s formidably square-jawed expression. ‘I’ve heard of them, of course, but…well, I’m afraid I don’t know much about modern art—’
‘And I don’t know much about botany,’ Ryan said smoothly. ‘But I do know that some of those paintings of Nina’s are good enough to be framed as individual works. Have you considered conducting a gallery showing in conjunction with the publication of your book? It’s a very specialised area and I know academic publications are usually slid into the market without any fanfare, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be a success if it was expertly organised. I know for a fact there are a number of notable botanical-art collectors in Australasia.
‘If you had your book launch in an art gallery, it would not only be good publicity for your book, but it would give Nina—and you—a wider audience recognition. Not to mention the potential additional profit for you both, of course.’
‘You really think I could do that?’ George looked much intrigued, and Nina was incensed when they went through to her studio and he skimped on his normally laborious study of each painting in order to spend most of his visit brainstorming with Ryan about the possibility of a showing at Pacific Rim.
