“Get downstairs,” Sebastian ordered her. “No, wait, I need to talk to you—”
“Talk to me after Stella has gone. We need her to sign up for this wedding or the whole thing will be off. I’m going to go sit with Stella and her assistant in the gallery downstairs. Be down in one minute with the contract or—”
“Which assistant?” Sebastian interrupted, looking aghast. “Not Brandon?”
“He’s Stella’s assistant, of course he’s here. And if you let your history with him become an issue—”
“What history? We don’t have history.”
Ari stared at him. “Didn’t you and Luis have a threesome with him?”
Sebastian shrugged. “Brandon and Luis had some chemistry — I let them work it out. That’s how you keep a successful marriage.”
“Through threesomes?” Ari asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Don’t sound so dismissive. It worked, didn’t it? I won, didn’t I?”
“It was a threesome. There isn’t meant to be a ‘winner’ in a threesome.”
“No? Then how come I won? Look, we don’t have time for this. Get downstairs, delay Stella any way you can. I’ll be right behind you.”
Shaking her head, Ari quickly ran from Sebastian’s room towards the stairs. She passed the room next to her own again, and this time she stopped, her mouth falling open when she sawthe men applying a thin layer of pink paint to a wall.Pink for a little girl,she thought. Marnie was redecorating an entire room just for Reine. Stella was right, Ari realised. This was odd.
Shaking herself, she ran down through the house, searching the ground floor until she came across a room that could only be the gallery. It was long and well-lit by the morning sun, a parquet floor shining cleanly beneath her feet, while on the walls were hung dozens of paintings. This was what money could buy, Ari reminded herself, trying not to gape at the pictures on the wall. One glance told her that many of these paintings were priceless masterpieces, and she reasoned that Marnie’s family had probably brought them over from Europe. Her passion for art suddenly flared, and she longed to take a long stroll through this room, absorbing the great art on the wall.
Business first,she reminded herself, tearing her eyes from the walls and walking towards Stella and Brandon, who waited by a window.
“Ari.” Brandon grinned, swooping her into his arms, and Ari hugged him back. She liked Brandon. He was good-natured and warm-hearted, open and affable, the exact opposite of his formidable employer. How Stella had ended up with an assistant like Brandon, Ari could never work out. “Where’s Reine?”
“On her way,” Ari replied warmly. “It’s good to see you, Brandon. Sebastian’s coming.”
Brandon blinked. “Yeah, of course he is, he—”
“—has exactly sixty seconds,” Stella cut in icily. “I do have other plans today, Ms Lightowler.”
“He’ll be here, I promise,” Ari said.
“Nice digs,” Brandon said, gesturing around them. “It’ll photograph well on the wedding day. Haven’t done a wedding for ages. It’ll be nice to fit one in.”
“Well, the house is lovely, but the wedding itself will be in a field outside. A forest, actually—”
Ari stopped, her eyes suddenly caught by a flash of orange in the corner. Her arms dropped to her side. She froze, her mouth running dry and her heart picking up tempo.
“What?” Ari whispered, taking a tentative step towards the corner.
“You okay, Ari?” she heard Brandon ask her, but she waved her hand to quiet him.
Stella followed her, her sharp eyes watching Ari’s until they settled on a painting in the darkest corner of the room.
A dark blue sea. A dark grey town. Whites and blues mixed with a sunset sky above. For a moment, Ari felt faint.
“That’s a good painting,” she heard Brandon say. “Atmospheric.”
A good painting,Ari thought, staring at something she never thought she would see again. She stared at it silently, until she felt Brandon’s hand on her shoulder. She watched as he ran a finger along the frame, tracing the name of the painting in a brass plaque underneath.
“The Ends of the Earth,” he muttered. “Cool name.”
Ari nodded, still frozen silent.
