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No,hecould always buy more brushes. But she was in his world ofnothing but the bestnow. If he wanted to supply her with ridiculously high quality art supplies, she probably shouldn’t try to talk him out of it. Saskia didn’t know what compelled her to keep pushing, but now that she was on a roll, she couldn’t seem to stop. “I thought you wanted me to suffer for my art.”
He was becoming clearly exasperated now, and she wondered if she’d gone too far. Maybe the plan for the day would change to punishment instead of painting if she continued to be so belligerent.
“I don’t want you to suffer, Saskia. I want you to have an experience and a feeling deep enough and raw enough so you can translate it to a canvas and make collectors care. Otherwise no one will give a shit about you. There are too many artists, and the world doesn’t care that you want to be one, too.”
He really wanted to teach her.
She let that thought settle in her mind for a moment. He wanted to paint her. And he wanted to teach her. Maybe he also wanted to punish her, but that motivation seemed a distant third to the other two things. Even the idea that punishing her was little more than background for the art felt like too much to hope for.
“Okay, but won’t it take forever to dry, thinning the paint that way?”
Quill laughed again, this time more of a deep rumbling chuckle. At least she amused him. “You certainly do have a deep-running masochism, don’t you? It can, yes. There are simple ways around that, but it won’t be necessary. We’ll be painting wet-on-wet.”
“But I can’t paint that way.”
“You can’t paint that way,yet,” he said.
Quill took a large portfolio from beside the wall where all the art supplies were stacked and organized. Saskia hadn’t noticed it leaning there before. Or if she had, she hadn’t given it any thought. It had been just more background shrubbery in Quill’s artistic landscape. He laid the portfolio on top of the island.
Saskia gasped when he opened it. “Where? How?”
This washerwork. Work she thought she’d lost in the fire. All that had remained in her cramped bedroom studio had been charred remains.
“I don’t understand. Were you following me? Did you set the fire?” Her hands clenched at her sides as tears of rage moved down her face. If she were looking for the thing that could finally wake her up and make her hate him, this might be it.
“I didn’t set the fire. How could you think that?”
“I honestly don’t know what the hell you’re capable of. And it scares the shit out of me.” She edged closer. The paper and canvas were unmarred. There was no sign any fire had ever happened. In the portfolio were charcoal sketches, some watercolors, some paintings in both oil and acrylic on canvas board. It was less expensive than pre-stretched and primed canvas, and she didn’t have the tools or help she needed to stretch her own. Something on canvas board was unlikely to ever sell or hang in a gallery, but who was she kidding anyway?
There were landscapes, portraits, still lifes. She’d dabbled in a bit of everything except modern abstract, trying to find her way, figure out who she was and what it was that she wanted to paint. She’d even done a few pieces that mimicked Quill’s style and subject matter. And, of course, the fire had spared it to mortify her later.
“I couldn’t save everything, but I got what I could before the fire got out of control.”
Saskia gaped at him, certain the confusion had tied her face into knots. He couldn’t have this stuff. He didn’t know her then.
Quill sighed. “After the night you met Derick, I kept tabs on you.”
“You mean stalked me. Just say stalked.”
“I mean it’s complicated. You thought my assistant was me. I couldn’t tell you the truth. I saw some of your work and thought you had potential, that I’d like to mentor you.”
Was that what he called all this? Mentoring?
“I was deciding how I wanted to handle things. You were out. Your idiot neighbor on the main level under you had an electrical fire. I knew your place was next. I climbed the trellis, busted the window, and took everything I could save.”
Well, that explained some things. Given the origination of the fire, the busted window hadn’t made much sense to anyone. The fire department had utilized it for their purposes, but swore up and down they hadn’t done the damage themselves. And in all the chaos and destruction, the police had never gotten any clean prints.
“You couldn’t have given me my stuff then?”
Quill laughed. “Right. And how would that conversation go down? ’So, I’ve been stalking you off and on for a while and happened to notice your apartment going up in flames. Here’s your art.’ The media would have had a field day with that.”
So he was admitting to the stalking.
Saskia thumbed through her work again as if she couldn’t believe it was all really here. “Imournedthis stuff. Of all people, as an artist... you should understand what I went through thinking I’d lost everything. I couldn’t bring myself to paint anything new after that.”
“I know.”
“And then, before the fake heist, you had the gall to ask me why I didn’t do original work when you knew why!”
