AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Seb shrugged, not paying him attention.
“You can’t think you’ll make money on them?”
“My asset manager was talking about buying some and then lending them to a museum, it’d be a neat little scheme. But, Louisa was very interested when I was talking about them the other night. I might get one for her.’
A storm raged inside Theo as two entirely separate worlds collided. All those evenings in Mena’s room had been special times, and now they were spilling out in the impersonal auction room. He pushed down the urge to tell Seb he was an idiot andnone of these were bones, they were all fossils. But that would mean acknowledging how he knew that.
Seb’s words caught with him.
“Get one for her? As a gift?” he asked, not quite able to keep up with the direction of this conversation. It wasn’t that Sebastian was cheap, it was just that his focus was on making money, Theo hadn’t thought he’d spend so much on something frivolous.
Seb nodded slightly, then looked around, clearly not wanting to answer any more questions. He wondered if the man was embarrassed to be caught doing something for his girlfriend. If love was such a new thing for him that he hadn’t figured out these new instincts. Theo knew that feeling well enough.
“Usually there’s champagne at these things,” Seb said brightly.
“The server’s over there,” Theo said, turning to catch the server’s eye, she grimaced and then ducked her head to hide her face.
It was definitely not a professional reaction, but Theo had snapped at her when he first arrived. It had not been intentional, he hadn’t seen her as he walked in and then she’d appeared out of nowhere, demanding he take a glass of champagne.
Still, he felt oddly remorseful. Usually he wouldn’t have given the interaction a second thought, but now he thought about what Mena would have said about it. She would have told him off, in her gentle way, for being rude.
It had been six years since she left, and he’d done his best to bury all thoughts of her. He was never successful, but this last week had been worse than usual. The memory of her kept pricking at his mind, refusing to leave him in peace.
Seb waved the server over, took a glass from her tray and turned to ask Theo if he was drinking too.
Theo nodded and took a glass.
“Thank you,” he said to the server, trying to hide gruffness in his voice and hoping that counted as an apology for his earlier rudeness.
“This one looks distinctive,” Seb said, angling the catalog so Theo could see he was still talking about the dinosaur fossils. The one he’d picked out was quite small, a lumpy little thing that seemed entirely useless. It seemed to Theo that it would make a rather obnoxious present, for any normal person.
“What would Louisa do with it?” Theo asked.
“The same thing everyone does with art,” Seb said, pulling the catalog back. “Put it on a shelf and glance at it every now again as it appreciates in value.”
Theo grunted. It was a relief to hear that Seb wasn’t a completely changed man; love had not turned him into a stranger with fanciful romantic notions. He was just as shallow as ever.
“How useful,” Theo muttered.
“No,” Seb said, with a smile that, if Theo had seen it on anybody else, he would have called wistful. “But… it would make Louisa happy.”
Theo took a large gulp of champagne.
“And,” Seb continued, “if she really doesn’t like it then I’ll loan it to a museum. Holby, that’s my asset manager, was telling me about a local place. Some private collector died a few years ago and he set up a little museum in his will.”
“Of course. You already have a back up plan.”
“You make that sound like a bad thing, I’m only being practical.”
Love, Theo decided, had not made Seb a romantic. He turned his attention back to the catalog, looking over the names of the various dinosaurs. Despite all the years since he’d given any of this a thought, since anyone had lovingly lectured him about themany different types of dinosaurs, the name all looked vaguely familiar..
Acheroraptor.
His eyes latched onto that name, and he was transported back to an evening, years ago now. They’d got take-out and were hanging out in his apartment, just off campus. She’d been wearing that baggy white top which she favored when she was relaxing at home. They’d been eating fried chicken and she’d started talking about how birds were the descendants of dinosaurs and Theo had stared at her, in awe of her passion. He would have been content to listen to her for hours at a time, her enthusiasm contagious.
Now, all he could remember was she’d once told him that Acheroraptors were about the same size as a turkey.
Of course, Mena’s greatest ambition had been to work in a museum. She would probably hate the idea of fossils being kept in a private collections. In fact, she’d probably hate everything about this auction.
