Millionaires' Destinies(212)
“It should,” Destiny said without a trace of sympathy. “You’re not very popular with the females of the family right now.”
“What did I do?” he asked, bewildered. “I was honest with her. I’ve been honest with Kathleen from the beginning. She knew what she was getting into when we were together the other night.”
“Did she really? You slept with her and then you walked out on her,” Destiny accused. “Do you think she was expecting that?”
“In a very condensed version, that much is true,” he acknowledged. “But a lot went on in between.” He raked a hand through his hair as he realized that he wasn’t going to win, no matter how he tried to explain away that scene in the gallery. “What do you want from me? What does Kathleen want from me? Besides my paintings, of course.”
“Oh, forget the stupid paintings,” Destiny said. “I want you to tell that woman you love her before it’s too late.”
He stared at her bleakly, filled with dismay that this woman who understood him so well could ask the impossible of him.
When he said nothing, she walked over to his painting. “Look at this,” she commanded. When she was apparently satisfied that his gaze was on the canvas, she asked, “What do you see?”
“Kathleen,” he said. “And I’ve never painted a portrait before. Is that your point?”
“No, darling,” she said more gently. “I want you to open your eyes and really look at what’s on this canvas. It’s not just a very nice likeness of Kathleen.”
He tore his gaze from the painting and stared at her, not comprehending.
“It’s a portrait of love in all its radiance,” she told him quietly. “Any man who could paint this is capable of great passion.”
After she’d gone, Ben sat and stared at the painting. He could see the passion she was talking about. In fact, passion was something he certainly understood, but love? Only four little letters, but they added up to something that scared the living daylights out of him. He didn’t think there were enough weeks in a lifetime or enough reassurances to help him move past that terror.
Chapter Fourteen
Kathleen still couldn’t get over the way the Carlton women had rallied around her two days ago. Within moments of Destiny’s arrival at the gallery and her discovery that Ben had walked out on Kathleen that morning, she sent out an alert to the others. Minutes later Melanie and Beth had burst into the gallery like the calvary arriving. Melanie had brought a huge bag of junk food, and Beth had brought nonalcoholic drinks for Melanie and champagne for the rest of them. These women clearly knew how to prepare for a crisis.
Satisfied with the reinforcements, Destiny had locked the gallery door and they’d all proceeded to get thoroughly intoxicated on potato chips, cheesecake, ice cream and old-fashioned gossip.
Ben had not fared well, despite Kathleen’s halfhearted attempts to defend him or at the very least to make them see his point of view. She’d been amazed to find them all on her side.
“Take him out and shoot him,” Melanie had suggested with real enthusiasm. “Maybe that would get his attention.”
“Aren’t you being just the teensiest bit bloodthirsty?” Kathleen had asked weakly. “That can’t possibly be good for the baby.”
“Boy or girl, this baby needs to know that there’s right and wrong in the world when it comes to the way men treat women,” Melanie insisted. “Besides, this baby is now officially overdue and getting on my nerves. I want the man responsible for this pregnancy—no, I want all men, especially Carlton men—to pay.”
“Don’t get too carried away and do anything you’ll regret. You’ll stop blaming Richard once you hold the baby,” Beth assured her. She turned to Kathleen and added, “As for Ben, shooting’s too good for him. Tie him up and torture him. You have no idea how often I was tempted to do that to Mack, when he was being pigheaded.”
“But you didn’t,” Kathleen reminded her, then hesitated. “Did you?”
“No,” Beth said with apparent regret.
“That’s because the person you really wanted to torture was Destiny,” Melanie said, then gave their aunt-in-law an apologetic look. “No offense.”
Destiny laughed. “None taken. But since we’re obviously not going to convince Kathleen to shoot or torture Ben, perhaps we should try to focus on some more practical solutions to this dilemma. How can we get through to him? Goodness knows, I’ve tried. If it hadn’t been for Graciela, I doubt he’d be making this so difficult, but her death destroyed whatever progress he’d made in terms of having faith that people he cared about would stick around. He seems to have forgotten all about what brought on their fight that awful night.”