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‘I’ll have it there in a tick…and some scones I’ve just whipped up. And let me take the little one back. I think he’s overdue for a purposeful visit to the garden!’
‘Is that what you wanted to show me?’ Nina asked Ryan as the incongruous pair vanished back into the kitchen.
‘Well, one of the things,’ he said mysteriously, and led her out past the pool and up the wrought-iron staircase to her studio.
‘What on earth…?’ She walked into the formerly bland room and stared around her in amazement at the drop cloths and pencil drafting on all four walls and ceiling. Billowing clouds were waiting to be filled in on the graduated wash of blue sky that was beginning to stretch over the upper walls and ceiling. On the lower half of the walls, painting had only just begun on a small patch of the stunningly realistic, wind-ruffled sea.
‘I thought…since you found it so inspirational to be painting on an island…that, well, you might like to feel that your studio was your private island, too. Not as magical, perhaps, but still a place for your creative imagination to soar free,’ Ryan explained with endearing diffidence. ‘Of course, if you don’t like it, we can easily have it painted over again,’ he added hastily.
Nina was revolving slowly and now she stopped, facing him, her eyes misting again, but this time with serene faith in her future with this wonderfully thoughtful, insightful man.
‘I don’t like it—I love it,’ she said softly. ‘But that’s because of the giver, darling, not the gift.’ And she felt in her pocket for his silver lighter and handed it to him as she had handed him her heart: his cherished matched set.
CHAPTER TEN
NINA placed the sheaf of flowers on the bright square of neatly clipped grass and rose to her feet, her eyes lingering on the gold letters etched into the polished granite slab.
Liam Robert Flint
Aged 12 months
Beloved son
She smiled sadly. He would have been ten years old today. She turned and walked through the sleepy cemetery next to the small wooden church in which she and Ryan had been married.
As she opened the low gate in the old-fashioned white picket fence, she saw an overweight Jack Russell terrier come scooting around from the back of the church, hotly pursued by a laughing boy and girl, a tall man jogging with loose-limbed grace up the rear.
‘Daddy says we can sail to the island tomorrow and stay for the whole weekend at the bach! And Grampa Ray is going to tell me how to catch a big, man-eating shark!’ shouted the smaller of the two children, a dainty, mop-topped little girl in a frilly pink dress and grass-stained white shoes. She skipped to a screeching halt, almost tripping over the wheezing dog, who had dropped the slobbery stick he was carrying at Nina’s feet.
‘Is he, darling?’ Nina said, straightening her daughter’s hopelessly twisted dress, now covered with biddy-bids. ‘And what are you going to do, Tony?’
The skinny, dark-haired six-year-old looked up at her with shiny green eyes, his sturdy chin jutting. ‘I’m going to paint a whale for Daddy’s office,’ he said with the dignity of one who had several works pinned up in that august establishment. Dignity was soon forgotten in the desire to score over a mere five-year-old. ‘A whale is way bigger than a shark, you know, Sara.’
The little girl poked her tongue out at him in answer.
‘It took me a while to find them,’ their father said, his blue eyes warm with love as they studied Nina’s tranquil face, his blue-black hair—now liberally flecked with what he liked to call distinguished grey—tousled by his run. ‘The vicar had them pulling weeds in his garden—or in Bandit’s case, digging a hole to China!’
‘What do you and Daddy like doing best on Shearwater Island, Mummy?’ Sara asked curiously.
Nina caught the wicked gleam in Ryan’s eyes as they glanced at each other over the top of Sara’s innocent head, and they both burst out laughing.
And despite their children’s gleeful pestering, refused to explain what was so funny.
