Millionaires' Destinies(198)

She shivered in the morning chill and then made herself shut the door. If Ben left her feeling edgy and discombobulated, his aunt had the capacity to strike terror in her. Because it seemed that Destiny could see into the future…and saw a very different picture from the one Kathleen envisioned.

Kathleen was dreaming of a wildly successful showing of Ben Carlton paintings in her gallery, while Destiny was clearly picturing the two of them living happily ever after. Kathleen didn’t even want to contemplate that image, because it was quickly becoming far too tempting to resist.





Chapter Eleven


With Destiny’s visit still fresh in her mind, Kathleen made a decision that she needed to seal this deal with Ben to show his paintings. The sooner that was done, the sooner she’d be able to get him—and his clever, matchmaking aunt—right back out of her life. Of course, solitude no longer held the appeal it once had, but she’d get used to it again.

She was sitting at her desk trying very hard not to look at her half-finished portrait of Ben, when the bell on the outer door rang. Heading into the gallery, she plastered a welcoming smile on her face, a smile that faltered when she found not the expected customer but her mother.

Shocked, it took her a moment to compose herself before she finally spoke, drawing her mother’s attention away from the most dramatic of Boris’s paintings.

“Mother, this is a surprise. What on earth are you doing here?” she asked, trying to inject a welcoming note into her voice when all she really felt was dismay. She’d expected that if her mother ever did show up in Alexandria, it certainly wouldn’t be without warning.

“I decided to take you up on your invitation to visit.” Prudence tilted her head toward the large painting. “I can’t say that I like it, but it’s quite impressive, isn’t it?”

“The critic from the Washington paper called it a masterpiece,” Kathleen said. She still had the uneasy sense that her mother was merely making small talk, that at any second the other shoe would drop and land squarely on Kathleen’s head.

“I know,” Prudence replied. “I read his review.”

That was the second shock of the morning. “You did?”

Her mother gave her an impatient look. “Well, of course, I did. Your grandfather finds every mention of your gallery on the Internet and prints the articles out for me.”

“He does?”

Her mother’s impatience turned to what seemed like genuine surprise. “What did you think, darling, that we didn’t care about you?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Kathleen said. “I thought you all thoroughly disapproved of what I was doing.”

Her mother gave her a sad look. “Yes, I can see why it must have seemed that way, since none of us have come down here. I’m sorry, Kathleen. It was selfish of us. We wanted you back home, and we all thought this would pass, that it was nothing more than a little hobby.”

Kathleen felt the familiar stirring of her temper at the casual dismissal of her career. “It’s not,” she said tightly.

“Yes, I can see that now. The gallery is as lovely as any I’ve ever seen, and you’ve made quite a success of it. You obviously inherited your grandfather’s business genes.”

Kathleen had never expected her mother to make such an admission. The morning was just full of surprises, she thought.

“I have to wonder, though,” her mother began.

Ah, Kathleen thought, here it comes. She should have known that the high praise couldn’t possibly last. She leveled a look into her mother’s eyes, anticipating the blow that was about to fall.

“Yes?” she said, her tension unmistakable.

“What about your own art, Kathleen? Have you let that simply fall by the wayside?”

“My art?” she echoed weakly. Where on earth had that come from? If everyone back home had thought the gallery was little more than a hobby, they’d clearly considered her painting to be nothing more than an appropriate feminine pastime. Not one of her paintings had hung on the walls at home, except in her own room. She’d taken those with her when she’d married, but had soon relegated them to the basement when Tim had been so cruelly critical. Most had gone to the dump even before the marriage ended. She couldn’t bear to look at them.

She met her mother’s gaze. “Why on earth would you ask about my art? You always dismissed it, just as you have the gallery.”

“I most certainly did not,” her mother replied with more heat than Kathleen had heard in her voice in years. “I always thought you were quite talented.”

“If you did, you certainly never said it,” Kathleen pointed out. “Not once, Mother.”