Unbroken (7 page)

Zoltan
wouldn’t do that. Would he? He switched off the shower and doubts crowded her mind. He’d asked her if she had enough money not to go back to modelling, and she’d said yes. She’d heard of artists who had muses, women they used to inspire them,
then
dumped them when they’d had enough. Some of the models had killed themselves, others had lived a half-life. That wouldn’t happen to her. It couldn’t. She’d fight it every inch of the way.

But now she let herself relax as he patted her dry, lifted her and carried her into the bedroom, before tucking her between the crisp, clean sheets with an instruction to, “Sleep now.”

She opened her eyes. “Aren’t you joining me?”

“No, I have
work
to do.” He crossed the room and grabbed a clean pair of jeans from a drawer. “I’m flying to
New York
next week, to plan the Guggenheim exhibition. They’re going to have to change their plans now.” He glanced at her and grinned. “They’ll probably hate me.”

He continued to the door and, as if on an afterthought, said, “I won’t need you to model for much longer. Maybe we should decide when you’re leaving? You can stay here as long as you want to, of course, but I’m visiting the foundry for the next stage in the sculpture, and
New York
, and probably the London venue, too. Don’t expect to see much of me from now on.”

Dismissed, just like that.
Vashti
lay completely still, stunned by the callousness of his casual announcement.

She’d been so close to telling him more about her aversion to medical procedures. Revealing her inner horror, one that amounted to phobia, had been her declaration of trust, but perhaps he thought differently and saw her as needy, something she hadn’t been for a very long time. He wouldn’t know the battles she’d had with her overprotective mother. The way
Vashti
had insisted on making her own decisions on her career after she’d hit twenty, tried to break away before the final argument and the moment’s inattention that had led to the car accident. The way she gritted her teeth and got on with her recovery, suffering numerous operations to put her body together until she thought she’d go mad with tension and her therapist had advised her to take time off before she had a complete breakdown.

Perhaps she was a coward, after all. Perhaps he was right and it was time she got on with her life, found out what came next. It wasn’t going to be
Zoltan
.

So why wait? His comment left
Vashti
shocked and humiliated. She had never let anyone into her life that far before. And if this was the result, she never would again. She could start the game of ‘maybe,’ but it wouldn’t change anything.

He’d never seen her as a permanent fixture in his life, never considered the possibility. And she wasn’t about to wait around to find out. No more. Fuck him.

When
Zoltan
returned to the studio with a tray, he found an empty room and a note.

“
I need to go. V.
”

Nothing else.
He tried to go back to work, but he couldn’t manage it so he called it a day.

Chapter Four

Three months later.
The
Guggenheim
Museum
,
New York
.

Standing outside the retrospective with his agent,
Zoltan
felt a moment of dread, something he was unaccustomed to. He’d always presented his art for what it was—take it or leave it—but this time he felt undeniably nervous. Not because of the art, but because of her. He’d sent her an invitation, but she hadn’t replied. He deserved that.

Three months hadn’t been long enough to get her out of his heart. Three years wouldn’t be enough, or thirty for that matter. After she left, it had taken him a month to stop reaching for her in the night. When he’d tried to contact her to apologise, to fucking beg her to come back, her agent had refused to say where she was, except that she was not at home. He’d made other enquiries, without result. Until last week, when his agent had received a cool little email informing him that she would attend the Guggenheim opening night.

Right now that was all he cared about.

Crowds were gathering, and some recognised him. He gave his agent a quick smile, trying to relax, but Tom knew him better than that.

His first comment had been, “You haven’t been eating, but that’s nothing new. What’s wrong, Ed?”

Zoltan
hadn’t replied, only ordering Tom, yet again, not to call him Ed. Tom never did it when anyone could overhear, but once he’d discovered
Zoltan’s
first names, he’d howled with laughter and had used the derivative constantly. Deep down,
Zoltan
liked it.
Usually.
Not today.

Dressed in a black mandarin-collared jacket, with hidden bright orange satin lining and slim trousers, his unruly hair cut by an artist into a sleek, backswept style,
Zoltan
knew he looked every inch the enigmatic artist. He always used suits in this style in public, but he had them in a myriad of colours, making up for the lack of colour in his abstract work. Today had been a black day, but he’d kept the orange shirt and jacket lining as his symbol of hope.

So far she hadn’t come but he wouldn’t stop looking for her. Perhaps she’d appear after the opening, when he was busy talking to the public.

He turned to his agent with a smile. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m nervous, I guess. They might hate what I’ve done.”

“Would that make any difference to what you do?”

He shrugged. “No. I’ll go my own way.”

“I think it’s fantastic. It’s more accessible and it’ll bump you up another level, I’m sure of it. I can sell this much easier. Your fame comes from the top down, you were an artist’s artist, but this is something everyone will love.”

His smile turned wry.
“Because I used a naked model?”

Tom laughed. “That’s part of it.”

“It wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to show the inner woman. A model is all surface—it’s her job. But this one had scars that might have ended her career and I wanted that flaw.”

Tom snorted. “You artists are fucking ruthless.” But he smiled when he said it. He could hear the cash registers ringing in his head.

The whirring of cameras and a series of staccato flashes heralded the arrival of another guest and without turning around,
Zoltan
knew who it must be. Although this opening contained many distinguished visitors, none of them drew the cameras like she did.

When he finally turned around, his face was calm and
composed,
his eyes as cold as he could make them. No way would she see what she’d done to him. Not until she’d seen what was inside the gallery.

“Hello,
Vashti
.”

“
Zoltan
.”

Was it his imagination, or did that beautiful jaw firm a little too much as if she’d clenched her teeth? The carefully made-up face and the perfume that wafted around her, creating her own private atmosphere, spoke of exclusivity and expensive taste. He hated it.

He wanted the woman who woke him in the morning by trailing her hair across his cock, the one who laughed with him, loved him. Not this ice queen. But this was her, too. She had a public face, just as he did.

He leant in and kissed her cheek. “Where have you been?” Even that touch of the honey skin against his lips floored him. But he kept his expression calm, and only gave her a friendly smile before he glanced at the photographers going wild around them. “You’ve brought your fan club.”

“They try to follow me everywhere. They don’t know where I’ve been, either.” She returned his smile, wintry and cold. “I’ve been on vacation.
Somewhere hot and private.”

That sounded plausible. After she’d left his studio, she’d gone back to her apartment only briefly. He knew because he’d called her a few hours later, ready to beg her forgiveness. Only she’d already left.

Pathetic bastard that he was.
He touched the small of her back, urging her forward. “Then I have to thank you for breaking your vacation to do this. Shall we go in?”

“Of course.”
He let her walk slightly in front of him so he could watch her. She wore a pair of navy slacks and a crisp white blouse under her butter-soft leather jacket. She looked untouchable, perfect. Her hair was swept up into a swirl that he’d bet took every inch of the hairdresser’s art, although at first glance it looked deceptively simple, but not a hair lay out of place and it shone like glass.

Her frighteningly high heels made her almost dominatrix-like, and she moved in them like a dancer, swaying slightly,
showing
off her gently rounded hips. So she hadn’t lost weight, not down to model skinniness.
Zoltan
frowned, but he wasn’t sure why the sight didn’t feel right, then the public were on them.

It took an hour to walk up the long, sloping spiral inside the gallery, and all the way he kept his public face, only talking to the VIP’s that Tom carefully funnelled his way. He’d already decided to pay a surprise visit another time when the public attended and make some time to talk to them. Their dollar was as good as anyone else’s and he resented the fact that money gave some people superior rights. Come to think of it, the VIP’s probably hadn’t paid to get in. He wouldn’t give a formal talk. He never did. The art spoke for itself, or it didn’t. His work passed by, like his life. The sloping part of the gallery was still a retrospective exhibition, but at the top
lay
the new work, and the reason nerves gnawed at his stomach right now.

He passed one of his favourites and had to stop to speak to someone who asked him about the gleaming aluminium structure—four cubes placed haphazardly on top of each other, each one burnished to a different level of brightness, then invisibly welded together. “
Inseparable
,” he’d called it. His most recent work was a deliberate echo. He would not explain it to the elegantly dressed elderly woman at his side. He gave her his charming, meaningless smile. “It is what you want it to be. A design for a skyscraper, a man with a silver blanket over his head, or something that heaven and earth hasn’t yet seen. It’s up to you.”

As he guessed, Tom interrupted immediately, getting him away from the lady before he went past subtlety to blatant rudeness. It delighted him to see that he’d unnerved Tom to a state of jittery frenzy, but he decided not to play the temperamental artist anymore. He continued to answer their questions, some dumbass ones, some more perceptive, and tried to concentrate. The investors had spent a lot of money on this exhibition and he owed them something for that.

Vashti’s
scent and the sight of her body swaying in front of him maddened him the whole way up. Before now he’d loved the space in the Guggenheim, longed for a big exhibition, and now he had one, all he could think of was her. It sucked.
Big time.

But he smiled and chatted and answered people as civilly as he could, or as civilly as he ever did.
And kept walking.

Finally, they reached the top. At the threshold to the rooms that held the new work, he paused and she turned back to him.

“I want to talk to you,” he said.

“So talk.”

He laughed and made it look like an easy social exchange, although it nearly killed him to do it.
“Privately.”

She looked at him then, raked him with a cold glance. “You don’t get more private than this.”

“I want to apologise.”

In the middle of this press of people, they were suddenly alone, and her flash of hurt before she repressed it, seared him. “You do?”

“Yes. Please,
Vashti
.”

“Okay. Lunch, tomorrow. I’ll call you later.”

He had to be content with that, because it was all she gave him. His foolish heart soared. Perhaps he hadn’t blown it, after all.

They walked in together. Because he had his hand at the small of her back, he felt her freeze.

Vashti
stared at the figure dominating the room. There she lay, in the seductive pose of Titian’s Venus, subservient, ready to serve her man. Perfect. No scars. Her hair lay over her shoulder, each strand separately delineated with care and precision. Her figure was polished and gleaming, with not a hammer-mark, not a scar.
An icon.
He’d made her an icon. One for men to use and abuse, worship and mock, but not to understand, not to love.

Around her stood white cones of various heights, rounded at the top, slightly slanted, like the essence of phalluses, their shape without the details, so the viewer could decide what they were—worshippers or indiscriminate cocks, ready to fuck her.
A ring of them, three deep in places, in others, four or five.
Outside that ring lay chaos. Sketches hung on the walls, haphazardly strewn, showing leering, laughing faces. Pieces of broken marble stood on the floor, mingled with shards of bronze, all, she guessed, carefully arranged although it looked as if a bomb had dropped, so that vaguely obscene shapes surrounded her. They pointed at her. She lay in an erotic pose, displaying her languid, teasing beauty.