Runaway Wife (35 page)

“How about we start off with some tea and cake?” Frasier said, taking Maddie’s hand and leading her into the gallery. “And no, no one will try and arrest you, I promise. I must say, young Maddie, I have never played such an expert and intricately complicated game of I Spy before.”

“I’m not an expert,” Maddie said proudly, clearly thinking that was exactly what she was. “I just like to describe things accurately, which does mean that sometimes I do have to use a lot of initials.”

“I would never, ever have got that the bluish, greenish, tinted-with-pink thing was C for cloud, one that we last saw about thirty kilometers ago!” Frasier said with remarkable goodwill, considering that Maddie had spent most of the journey testing him to his limit. Rose smiled; it was nice that Maddie had another adult to call her friend. Her next task must be to find her someone of her own age who would understand her.

“That was because you weren’t concentrating properly,” Maddie said, content to leave her hand in his as he led them into the gallery. “I did keep telling you to!”

Behind the reception desk, a pretty red-haired young girl beamed at Frasier, coming round the desk to greet Maddie and Rose. For one horrible moment, Rose thought that this
charming young creature, in the full flush of beautiful youth, might be Cecily, but it turned out her name was Tamar and she was an art student who worked here part time, to help fund her studies. It was clear she had an enormous crush on Frasier, by the way she fluttered her lashes at him and giggled when he asked her to arrange some tea and cake, but happily Frasier was completely oblivious to her admiration. He probably had eyes only for Cecily, Rose thought.

“Come and look at some art,” Frasier said after dispatching Tamar. “Maddie, I want you to tell me what you think of my latest acquisitions, which ones will make me money and which I will be reluctantly returning to the artist.”

Rose and Frasier hung back as Maddie walked around the large room, which must have once been about four if not five separate rooms and which Frasier explained he’d gone to great trouble and expense to open out into his main showing area, with a few smaller rooms leading off it.

“It’s really very impressive,” Rose said in hushed tones, feeling that for some reason she ought to be whispering. “Did you have all of this when you came to see me in Broadstairs?”

“Good Lord, no.” Frasier shook his head. “I barely had two pennies to rub together when I came to see you. Not that I would have wanted you to know that. I was very keen to impress you. I knew you wouldn’t want to talk to just any old two-bit con man—which I wasn’t, by the way. I was just . . . starting out on my own after years of working for other people.”

Rose stopped as Maddie stood nose to canvas with a painting that seemed to her to depict mainly a large purple blob, and yet her daughter seemed fascinated by it, examining it minutely.

“You certainly did make an impression on me,” Rose said, glancing at him shyly. “More than you will ever know, really.”

“Me? Really?” Frasier replied softly. “And to think for all those years since, all I’ve been doing is thinking how crass and rude you must have thought me, turning up like that out of the blue, dragging up all sorts of terrible memories for you, and all so I could chase down a painting and make some money.” He turned to look at her and, sensing his gaze on her cheek, Rose met his eyes. “There was so much I wanted to say, to do that day. There was something about you that was so . . . compelling. You’ll laugh, Rose, you’ll think I’m foolish, but you’ll never know how hard it was for me to just leave you there. I didn’t want to. I barely knew you, and yet . . . Oh, well, there are only so many times a man can regret a thing. Can regret not saying or . . .”

He stopped himself, dropping his gaze from Rose, who on impulse reached out and took his fingertips in her hand.

“What you don’t know,” she told him in a barely audible whisper, suddenly spurred on by the look in his eye, the timbre in his voice, and the need to tell him the truth, “is that those few minutes you spent with me on that day have kept me going ever since, all these years, through the hell of my marriage. I was thinking about you and the way you looked at me and spoke to me that day. Every time I thought about you I became a little stronger, and the reason I—”

“Darling, there you are!”

Frasier tugged his fingers abruptly from Rose’s hand and turned to greet a tall, slender, perfectly put together natural blonde who was striding across the gallery toward them in a pair of pressed white linen trousers and a lacy white camisole top that left little to the imagination. She had a great body, Rose had to grudgingly concede, one that positively begged to be shown off.

“Cecily, what a surprise!” Frasier said, going to greet her
and seeming a little caught off guard when she kissed him full on the lips. “I didn’t expect to see you today. I thought you had that thing—”

“The PR networking lunch, you mean,” Cecily said, beaming at Rose and Maddie in turn. “I do have that, but as you were showered and gone before I got up this morning, and I missed you, I thought I’d pop in and say hello before I have to spend hours pretending to care what other much less interesting people than me have to say!” Cecily winked at Maddie, who smiled at her.

“Everyone I know is less interesting than me,” Maddie said eagerly, as if she’d just met a soul mate.

“It’s a terrible bore, isn’t it?” Cecily said, smiling warmly at Maddie. “So, my darling, are you going to introduce me to your guests?”

She turned to Frasier, the questioning look in her eyes enough to let Rose know that Frasier hadn’t told Cecily anything about them.

“Of course. This is Maddie, and this is her mother, Rose Jacobs,” Frasier said, introducing them formally. Cecily took her hand and shook it once, with firm confidence. “John Jacobs’ daughter. She is staying with her father and wanted to see the gallery. Well, as John contributes about sixty percent of our annual turnover, I thought it was only right that I obliged.”

“Rose!” Cecily said warmly, taking Rose by surprise by hugging her as if embracing a long-lost friend. “How nice to meet you at last. I’ve often wondered what it must be like to be the child of a great genius, which your father undoubtedly is. I think in many ways it must be as much a creative struggle for you to be his daughter as it is for him to be an artist.”

Rose blinked. “Um, I don’t know really. We haven’t spoken to each other in about twenty years.”

“Oh, of course,” Cecily said, dismayed. “I can be so crass. I’m so good at putting my foot in it, I sometimes think I need to employ my own PR company. I hope things work out, for both of you. I know I’m an old romantic, but I’m always hopeful of a happy ending.”

“Me too,” Rose said, utterly dismayed that Cecily, whilst being a little over the top and inappropriately dressed, seemed to be a very nice, decent, not to mention beautiful, woman.

“One day,” Cecily said, putting her arms about Frasier’s waist and holding him close, “we will both get our happy endings, I’m sure. I’d like to know what your dad is like when he’s happy. He scared me to death!”

“You’ve met my dad?” Rose asked her, intrigued.

“Well, once. Frasier took me with him once. He made a great show of pretending to loathe me!” Cecily’s laugh tinkled like shattering glass. “Who am I kidding? He really didn’t like me at all.”

“I’m not sure he likes anyone very much,” Rose said, feeling a surge of affection for her father for succeeding where she was so far failing. If there was any choice to be made between small, broken Rose and beautiful, overblown Cecily, Rose knew whom she’d choose, and it would be herself.

“Well, endless hours of pointless talking await me. I’d better leave you to it.” Cecily hugged Rose once again. “So nice to meet you, Rose. Make sure Frasier takes good care of you. And as for you, my darling, will you really not be home for dinner? I’m making one of my famous stir-frys.”

“I . . . no,” Frasier said apologetically. “I’ll be taking Rose and Maddie back to Cumbria. It will be a really late night, I’m sorry.” He kissed the top of her head.

“Well, then, I shall wait with bated breath until you return,” Cecily said flirtatiously. “I might even put on my best pajamas.”

“You’re already wearing pajamas,” Maddie said, but Cecily was striding out of the gallery, the sound of her heels ricocheting off the wooden floor.

“So that’s Cecily,” Rose said. “Frasier, she seems lovely.”

“She is lovely.” Frasier looked after Cecily as the door swung shut behind her. “Probably a lot more lovely than I deserve.”

“Well,” Rose said, struggling to compose herself and remember her manners. She had the distinct feeling that before Cecily had appeared and proceeded to be so charming, something was happening between her and Frasier, that in that moment she could have told him anything, and he would have been ready to listen, might even be ready to feel the same way. Now Rose couldn’t see any way of getting that moment back again, not when she had seen with her own eyes the kind of woman that Frasier went for. She could not be more different from Cecily, which meant she was light-years away from ever catching Frasier’s eye. “What’s next?”

•  •  •

Rose tried her best to keep Cecily’s visit out of her head as they sat and talked over tea and cake in the middle of the gallery, on a blanket spread out on the floor for an indoor picnic, an idea that Maddie was enchanted by.

Of course, it couldn’t be so perfect that in one moment Frasier would look at her, realize he loved her too, and they’d live happily ever after. Rose didn’t really know why she’d allowed herself to think that that was even possible. Perhaps too many years of dreaming of Frasier, of always imagining him as the handsome Prince Charming in all of the fairy tales that she had read to a mostly disinterested Maddie, had truly given Rose rose-colored glasses. At least embarking on her own quest to follow her heart, full of folly as it might have been, had freed her from the tower that Richard had kept her
locked up in and brought her home to her father. That was what she had to focus on, and that Frasier obviously cared for her a great deal. If she could only get this idea of being in love with him out of her head, and hating his girlfriend, then she would have a really good friend, and Rose knew that she needed as many of those as she could get right now.

It was time for her to grow up, to be the mum that Maddie needed and deserved, to be the best daughter she could be to a man who was trying his level best to be her father, and to stop letting younger men kiss her on a rock under the moon. Rose sighed to herself as she watched Maddie question Frasier on the works that hung around her. It was just as well that she wasn’t in love with Ted, she supposed, since he’d gone off her so completely and abruptly, but it was a shame, especially as Frasier was so very taken, that there would be no more kissing Ted, even if she wasn’t in love with him. Maybe that was the ultimate test of being a grown-up. Being able to exist from day to day without having to be in love with anyone at all, even if only in your head.

“Come with me,” Frasier said, standing and holding a hand out to Rose. “I wanted to save this room until last. It’s just for you.”

Rose elected not to take his hand this time, deciding that someone had to draw a line between what was acceptable behavior for just good friends, and it might as well be her. Nevertheless she followed him across the length of the gallery to a closed door on the other side.

“It’s one of the very few pieces I have by John Jacobs that weren’t already sold before they were painted,” Frasier told her, his hand on the door handle. “He did it a few weeks before you arrived, which is why I think you are going to love it. He hates it, of course; I caught him trying to burn it in the yard one day. But I told him that if he did that he’d be basically
burning money, which made him want to burn it all the more, but I managed to stop him in the end and it’s just as well . . . as I’ve just sold it for a hefty five figures.”

Frasier opened the door onto a long, brightly lit white room, the whole of the far end of which was taken up with a John Jacobs painting, a vast landscape, half created from what rose around Storm Cottage, and half clearly from his imagination, giving it a magical, dreamlike quality, which made it feel just a little surreal to Rose, as if she had walked into her father’s dream playing out on a screen.

“It’s beautiful,” Rose said, utterly absorbed by what she was looking at. “I just don’t see why he hates this stuff so much.”

“There is a very interesting use of orange in the sky,” Maddie said. “Granddad is very clever at color. He wrote a book about it you know.”

“Look at this,” Frasier said. He reached for Rose’s hand and then thought better of it after her last rebuttal, beckoning her over to the painting. On the crest of a hill she was just able to make out a tiny figure, the figure of a child, sitting curled up on the hillside, gazing at a view far away. Rose stared at it for a long time, tears filling her eyes, her heart swelling with emotion as she realized what she was looking at. It was an exact reproduction, recreated in miniature, of the painting her father had done of her as a child; it was
Dearest Rose
who was sitting alone on the mountainside, a tiny vulnerable figure abandoned to the elements. It was the way that John pictured her, lost and alone.

“It’s me,” Rose said quietly as Maddie came to stand next to her, peering at the image that could almost have been completely dwarfed by the expanse and scale of the painting unless someone pointed it out to you. “He painted
me
.”

“Or it might be me,” Maddie said, a touch jealously. “It looks a bit like me, actually.”

Rose turned to Frasier. “That means, even before I came here, even before he knew that I was here, he was thinking about me. He
did
care. He did feel
something
.”

“I think he always has,” Frasier said, putting an arm around her shoulders, making Rose instantly tense. “I’m so glad that you got to see this before it gets shipped to Texas. It’s proof, I think, of what your father might never be able to truly convince you of himself. That he’s sorry, so sorry that he lost you, and that you were never out of his thoughts.”