‘No. There’s nothing there I want. Ramsey will deal with it.’
Nothing? Really? She sat back. Where had the photograph of his mother come from? It could only have been his grandmother. She stroked her hands across the lovely desk. She’d seen one very like it on an antiques programme on the television. That one had had a secret drawer.
* * *
Darius stared at the phone for a long time before he hit end call. He’d lied about working. The horse was finished, delivered to the man who’d commissioned it and awaiting positioning in the place where it would forever be leaping over an unseen fence.
He tossed the phone on the sofa where Natasha had sat on the day she’d come to see him, promising him a whole lot more than the sale of his house when she’d looked at him with those big blue eyes and invited him to try her cake.
Senseless. Except that he hadn’t lost his senses. He’d found them. Found something he’d never truly known as a boy. Found whatever it was his father had found, because family history suggested that the ‘perfect marriage’ had been his grandfather’s idea. His way of controlling the future.
It was something he’d been running away from as a man, afraid that, like his father, he’d lose himself to something he couldn’t control. But he’d been so wrong. You didn’t lose yourself; you found yourself in love. Became whole.
He walked across to the clay sculpture that he’d begun the day he drove back from Hadley Chase, knowing that it was over. He’d worked in the foundry in the day, worked on this at night, capturing for ever that moment when she’d reached out to him in her sleep.
He hadn’t needed the drawing. His hands had worked the clay, formed the well-known curves, her shoulders, the bend of her knee, her hair tumbled against the pillow.
His fingers curled around the hand extended towards him, that he couldn’t see for the tears blinding him.
* * *
‘Darius...’
‘Natasha?’
‘I need to see you. Can you spare me half an hour?’
‘I’m at the studio. Come over.’
Tash ended the brief call. One last time, she promised herself. One last time.
It was late by the time she arrived at the studio. The studio door stood open and she looked through but the sun was low and the interior was dim. ‘Darius?’
He was taking down the photographs of the horse, clearing the decks and, as she hesitated in the doorway, he half turned and it was all still there and more. The heart-leap, the joy, only a hundred times more powerful, underscored by every touch, every kiss, every memory they had made together.
‘No cake?’ he asked.
‘No time,’ she said. ‘I’ve been rushed off my feet with work. It’s dark in here.’
He flicked a light switch and illuminated the area by his desk, sofa, and she walked across, put down the thick envelope she was carrying.
‘More paperwork?’ he asked.
‘No. I...’ This was going to be the last time she saw him and she didn’t want it to be like this... ‘I was looking at your grandmother’s desk and it occurred to me that I’d seen one very like it on an antiques programme. On the television.’