Page 41 of Painted in Love

Gareth shrugged again. “Because I’m a lawyer.”

She laughed that beautiful laugh. “Well, you need to dump the day job and get into one of Clay’s studios.” She turned to Clay, her smile as brilliant as Gareth’s self-portrait. “And you need to find a new lawyer.”

He expected Gareth to fob her off, but his incredible artist friend said, “You know, you make me think maybe it’s time to try again.”

Clay wanted to hug her, kiss her, grab her up in his arms and whirl around the room with her.

Here was a woman he could be with for more than a few weeks, a few months, or even a year.

Here was a woman he could fall for.

Clay turned to her the moment the door closed behind Gareth and the contracts. “You’re amazing.”

His statement stunned Saskia. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that Gareth hasn’t talked about his art in ten years. I didn’t even know he’d kept all his canvases.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean?—”

“You just did an incredible thing.” His voice dipped low, as if emotion had overtaken him. “He even said he’d think about painting again.”

His big, warm hands cupped her face, his lips on hers. He kissed her with fervor and yet with reverence, then whispered against her mouth, “Thank you for doing that for him.”

She had to back off a step. “I didn’t do anything but look at his paintings.”

Clay guided her to the couch, pulling her onto his lap, his arms wrapped around her. “Let me tell you what happened when we were at university. Then you’ll understand what an extraordinary thing this is.”

She heard the ache in his slow tones and saw it in his eyes, which had gone a paler shade of blue. “He was such a fantastic painter. That self-portrait was the tip of the iceberg. He was happiest when he was working on a new painting. But his parents wanted him to be a lawyer.”

She ran her hand through his hair. “He’s the friend you mentioned the other night, the one whose parents didn’t like his art?”

He nodded. “They said he’d never make a living as an artist. That he’d be, quote, a starving artist, unquote, and they wouldn’t pay for a starving artist to go to university. That if he wanted a Harvard education, it was to be at Harvard Law, like his father.”

Her heart went out to Gareth, and she thought of how her parents had said her art would never be good enough. But it just wasn’t good enough for them. The rest of the world didn’t agree.

“I’m so sorry for him,” she said, her voice breathy with emotion.

“They never actually belittled his art. They never said it,” he emphasized. “But it was there in the way they harped on him, comparing him to van Gogh, who died a pauper. Nothing about how great his art was, only that he’d starved for it. If only he could paint more like this artist or that artist. Gareth was too offbeat, too out of step.” He leaned his head back against the sofa, sighing heavily.

She felt his heart break for his friend. Her heart broke, too, for Gareth, another soul whose parents just couldn’t handle who their kid really was.

“I hear how much it hurt you to watch him with his parents,” she murmured, her voice soothing.

He laughed, soft yet full of derision. “Maybe I encouraged him even more because of how much they discouraged him. I wanted him to sell and be a great success. I knew his art was worth that.”

“You gave him what his parents couldn’t.”

He shook his head. “I pushed him too hard. I helped get that show together for him.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “But the critics absolutely trashed him, said his work was just a copy of much better artists. That if he wanted to be like van Gogh, he should just cut off his ear and be done with it. It was excruciating.”

She leaned into him, rubbed her cheek against his. “I’m so sorry. That must have been so horrible for him. And for you.”

She felt him swallow, how hard it was going down, and his voice choked as he said, “I found him in his room with some pill bottles lined up. He hadn’t taken anything. I just saw those bottles all in a row. I don’t know where he got them or what the pills actually were.”

“But he didn’t take them. You stopped him.”

Again, he shook his head. “Maybe he never intended to. But it hit me like a gut punch. I kept thinking how I’d pushed him to put his stuff out there. I allowed him to be subjected to what they threw at him.”

She felt everything right along with him. She understood Gareth’s despair, how badly it hurt when you weren’t allowed to be what you needed to be. She’d gone the starving artist route, while Gareth had left his art behind. That must have ripped him in half. It had ripped Clay apart too.

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