AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What about you, Flora?” He gazed at her, trying to gauge where she was at with all this.
“What do you mean?” She looked suspicious.
“Have you ever been in love?”Please say no or I’ll have to murder the dunderheid.
She slowly shook her head. “I don’t believe I have.”
He turned to stare at the fire.Thank gawd.
“The closest I came was probably when I first got to London. He was my age and studying art at university. If it was going to be anybody, it might have been him.”
He sniffed and frowned at this revelation. “When did it end?”
“Fifteen years ago, give or take.”
He inwardly growled. Fifteen years wasn’t long enough.
“When ye were like twenty, then?” She nodded. “What happened?”
“I was working full-time and it wasn’t getting me anywhere, so that’s when I started looking into the possibility of doing a degree alongside work.” He nodded he was following. “I was desperate to get things for myself. A nice place. Respect at work. It felt like he was trying to dampen down my ambitions. He said if I went to night school or whatever, I wouldn’t have time for him. And he was quite insecure, I think.”
“In what way?”Sounds like a cock.
“I don’t think he liked it that I wanted to do stuff for myself.” She tapped her lip with a finger as she thought about it. “He said we’d get a flat together with money his mum and dad would lend us. But I said no. He could do that if he wanted to, but I’d pay my way. He said I wouldn’t need to pay my way. You see, he was quite an exceptional artist and thought I was his muse. You might’ve seen some of his work. He hangs all over the world now. Paul Thornton.”
Caelan gulped and wondered if he would have to commit murder, after all. Not him. Not that prick! His most famous piece was a naked woman. Caelan didn’t have to think very hard to picture it, not with a photographic memory, and from what he remembered of the headless woman from the neck down, she sure did seem to share some resemblances with Flora.
The bastard.
But she wasn’t with him now. Caelan sat up straight at the thought. “So, you refused to let a man to look after ye?”
“I did then,” she chuckled. “I still had something to prove. But more than that, he was shit in bed. You’d never know, would you? Not when his paintings make him seem so passionate.”
“Ha! Eejit.” He hid his smile.
“Well, I guess a lot can happen in fifteen years. Maybe he eventually found someone more forthright and she finally pointed out where the clitoris actually is.”
Caelan nearly spat out his precious whisky! “In my experience men who are no good at it, are never good it. And for one reason.”
“Oh, yes?”
“They’re selfish.”
“True. Or, they’re married and don’t really care. But they also don’t make their wives come, either. For them though, the illicit sex is better. Something warped in their brains, I think.”
“Hmm.” It was blatantly obvious something, somewhere in her past had taken place.
Since he’d been following her around Europe, saving her from gunmen, poisoners, kidnappers and dodgy waiters with cheese wire in their pockets, he’d also noticed her take a lover occasionally. Usually a married man.
“You grew up in a place like this, I can tell,” she said, keeping on with the interrogation.
She’d had wine, so…
A muscle in his jaw feathered and he was scared she’d unfurl his entire history. “How can ye tell?”
“I watch people and know things. I can just tell.”
“Aye, I joined the army for bigger adventures, I suppose. But Flora, you left home young because you hated your father’s enterprise?”
