Stepping into the Prince's World (19 page)

Twenty-five minutes late.
He had to keep busy, not waste another second. Turning, he assessed once again the way the summer morning light fell on the red velvet chaise longue so carefully positioned in the middle of the room, the only piece of furniture in the large studio. His bed and clothes were up on the mezzanine, the kitchen and bathroom were tucked away behind a discreet door at the end of the apartment. He liked to keep this main space clutter-free. He needed to be able to concentrate.

Only right now there was nothing to concentrate on except the seconds ticking away.

Gael resumed pacing. Five minutes, he would give her five more minutes and if she hadn't arrived by then he would make sure she never worked in this city again. Hang on. Was that the buzzer? It had never been more welcome. He crossed the room swiftly. ‘Yes?'

‘There's a young lady to see you, sir. Name of...'

‘Send her up.' At last. Gael walked back over to the windows and breathed in the view: the skyscrapers dominating the iconic skyline, the new, glittering towers shooting up around him as New York indulged in a frenzied orgy of building, the reassuring permanence of the old, traditional Upper East Side blocks maintaining their dignified stance on the other side of his tree-lined street. He shifted from foot to foot. He needed to use this restless energy while it coursed through him—not waste it in frustration.

The creak of the elevator alerted him to his visitor's imminent arrival. No lobby, not when you had the penthouse; the elevator opened right into the studio.

And he did have the penthouse. Not as a gift, not as a family heirloom but because he had worked for it and bought it. Not one of his friends would ever understand the freedom that gave him.

The doors opened with an audible swish and heels tapped tentatively onto the wooden floor. ‘Er...hello?' English. He hadn't expected that. Not that he cared what she sounded like; he wasn't interested in having a conversation with her.

‘You're late.' Gael didn't bother turning round. Usually he made time to greet the women, put them at their ease before they got started but he was too impatient for the niceties today. ‘There's a robe on the chaise. You can change in the bathroom.'

‘Excuse me?'

‘The bathroom.' He nodded to the end of the room. ‘There's a hanger for your clothes. Go and strip. You can keep the robe on until I've positioned you properly if you prefer.' Some did, others were quite happy to wander nude from the bathroom across the floor to the chaise. He didn't mind either way.

‘My clothes? You want me to take them off?'

‘Well, yes. That's why you're here, isn't it?'

He moved around to face her at the exact same moment she let out a scandalised-sounding, ‘No! Of course not. Why would you think that?'

Who on earth was this?
Dark-haired, dark-eyed, petite with a look of outraged horror. She was pretty enough, beautiful even—if you liked the ‘big dark eyes in a pale face' look. But he was expecting an Amazonian redhead with a knowing smile and whatever and whoever this girl was she certainly wasn't that.

‘Because I was expecting someone who was supposed to be doing exactly that,' Gael said drily. ‘But you are not what I ordered. Too short for a start, although you do have an interesting mouth.'

‘Ordered?' Her cheeks reddened as the outrage visibly ratcheted up several notches. ‘I'm sorry that I'm not your takeout from Call Girls Are Us but I think you should check before you start asking complete strangers to strip.'

‘I'm not the one who has gatecrashed their way past the doorman. Who are you? Did Sonia send you?'

‘Sonia? I don't know any Sonia. There's clearly been some kind of mix-up. You
are
Gael O'Connor, aren't you?' She sounded doubtful, taking a cautious step back as if he might pounce any second.

He ignored her question. ‘If you don't know Sonia then why are you here?'

She took a deep breath. ‘My sister is getting married and...'

‘Great. Congratulations. Look, I don't do weddings. I don't care how much you offer. Now, I'm more than a little busy so if you'll excuse me I have to make a call. I'm sure you can find your own way out. You seemed to have no trouble finding your way in.'

The dark-haired woman stared at him, incredulity all over her face as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. Ignoring his unwanted visitor, Gael scrolled through what felt like an endless stream of emails, notifications and alerts. His mouth compressed. Nothing from the agency. With a huff of impatience he found their name and pressed call. They had better have a good explanation. The phone rang once, twice—he tapped his foot with impatient rhythm—three times before a voice sang out, ‘Unique Models, how may I help?'

‘Gael O'Connor here. It's now...' He glanced up at the digital clock on the otherwise stark grey walls. ‘It's nine a.m. and the model I booked for eight-thirty has yet to show up.'

‘Gael, lovely to speak to you. I am so sorry, I meant to call you before but I literally haven't had time. It's been crazy, you wouldn't believe.'

‘Try me.'

‘Sonia was booked yesterday for a huge ad campaign—only it was a last-minute replacement so she had to literally pack and fly. I saw her onto the plane myself last night. International perfume ad, what an opportunity. Especially for a model who is...' the booker's voice lowered conspiratorially ‘...outsize. So we are going to have to reschedule your booking I am so sorry. Or could I send someone else? We have some lovely redheads if that's what you require or was it the curvier figure you were looking for?'

With some difficulty Gael managed not to swear. Send someone else? An image of the missing Sonia flashed through his mind: the knowing expression in her green catlike eyes, the perfect amount of confident come-hitherness he needed for the centrepiece of his first solo exhibition. ‘No. I can't simply replace her, nor can I rebook. I've put the time aside right now.'

After all, the exhibition
was
in just five weeks.

‘Sonia will be back in just a couple of days. All I can do is apologise for the delay but...'

It would help, he thought bitterly, if the booker sounded even remotely sorry. She would be—he would never use a Unique model again. He hung up on her bored pretence for an apology. Once Sonia was back she would be of no use to him. Unlike his photographs Gael didn't want the subjects of his paintings to be known faces. Their anonymity was part of the point. He spent too much time documenting the bright and the beautiful. For this he wanted real and unknown.

His hand curled into a fist as he faced the bitter facts. He still had to paint the most important piece for his very first exhibition and he had no model lined up. He mentally ran through his contacts but no one obvious came to mind. Most of the models he knew were angular, perfect for photography, utterly useless for this.

Damn.

‘Mr O'Connor.'

Palming his phone, Gael directed a frustrated glance over at his unwanted intruder. ‘I thought you'd left,' he said curtly. She was standing stiffly by the elevator, leaning towards it as if she longed to flee—although nobody was stopping her, quite the contrary. Gael allowed his gaze to travel down her, assessing her suitability. Before he had only looked at what she lacked compared to the model he was expecting to see; she was much shorter, slight without the dramatic curves, ice to Sonia's fire. She wore her bright clothing like a costume, her dark hair waving neatly around her shoulders like a cloak. Her eyes were huge and dark but the wariness in them seemed engrained.

She took another step back. ‘Do you mind?'

‘It is my studio...' he drawled. That was better; indignation brought some more colour into her cheeks, red into her lips.

‘I am not some painting that you can just look at in that way. As if...as if...' She faltered.

But he knew exactly what she had been going to say and finished off her sentence. ‘As if you were naked.'

He had lit the fuse and she didn't disappoint; her eyes filled with fire, her cheeks now dusky pink. She would make a very different centrepiece from the one he had envisioned but he could work with those eyes, with that innocent sensuality, with the curve of her full mouth.

He nodded at her. ‘Come over here. I want to show you something.'

Gael didn't wait to see if she would follow; he knew that she would. He strode to the end of the studio and turned over the four unframed canvases leaning against the brick wall. There would be twenty pictures in total. Ten had been framed and were stored at the gallery, another five were with the framers. These four, the most recent, were waiting their turn.

He heard a sharp intake of breath from close behind him. He took a step back to stand beside her and looked at the paintings, trying to look at them with fresh eyes, to see what she saw even though he knew each and every brush stroke intimately.

‘Why are all the women lying in the same position?'

Gael glanced over at the red chaise standing alone in the middle of the studio, knowing her eyes had followed his, that she too could see each of the women lying supine, their hair pulled back, clad only in jewellery, their faces challenging, confident, aware and revelling in their own sensual power.

‘Do you know
Olympia
?'

Her forehead creased. ‘Home of the Greek gods?'

‘No, it's a painting by Manet.'

She shook her head. ‘I don't think so.'

‘It was reviled at the time. The model posed naked, in the same position as each of these,' he waved a hand at his canvases, at the acres of flesh: pink, cream, coffee, ebony. ‘What shocked nineteenth-century France wasn't her nudity, it was her sexuality. She wasn't some kind of goddess, she was portraying a prostitute. Nudes at that time were soft, allegorical, not real sensual beings.
Olympia
changed all that. I have one more painting to produce before my exhibition begins in just over a month.' His mouth twisted at the thought. ‘But as you must have heard my model has gone AWOL and I can't afford to lose any more time. I want you to pose for me. Will you?'

Her eyes were huge, luminous with surprise and, he noticed uncomfortably, a lurking fear. ‘Me? You want
me
to pose? For you? On that couch? Without my clothes? Absolutely not!'

Copyright © 2016 by Jessica Gilmore

ISBN-13: 9781488003219

Stepping into the Prince's World

Copyright © 2016 by Marion Lennox

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