“You asked me to secure it for him after the auction,” she said. “Whatever piece he wanted. He identified lot thirty-eight. Early-career artist.”
Dex had chosen Andrea’s piece?Did he even know? I’d talk to him about it when he got back from his latest trip to the States in a couple of weeks.
“But seventeenthousand?”
“You didn’t give me a specific cap, Liam. I kept it within advisory authority.”
“Fucking hell.”
Bonnie scrolled. “Expensive month. Three other artwork purchases, two client gifts, and a gallery deposit. Nothing that would have triggered a separate sign-off. Entirely above board.”
So Andrea was right.
I couldn’t fix this.
Unless I could sort this out, she’d never agree to see me. And what did that mean—was that it? I’d never see her againbecause of a mix-up over a seventeen-thousand-pound painting? The most important thing that had ever happened to me just… broke… because something on an invoice didn’t stack?
I wasn’t going to entertain that.
“Bonnie, just because we paid seventeen, doesn’t mean we led with that bid.”
“Of course not. Ashfern always gets us the best price. There were several active bidders.”
“How many?”
“It went to the wire. We won by a narrow margin.”
“How narrow?”
“They don’t disclose that.”
“See if you can find out anyway.”
Andrea wasn’t going to reply to my texts, that was obvious, but if I could just explain it to her, show her I had nothing to do with this, then she’d have to talk to me—wouldn’t she?
The Novexia issue wasn’t something I could deal with so easily—the redundancies had already been announced, and there was no room for negotiation now—but if we could just sit down together and discuss it, surely we could work through it.
We’d dealt with worse between us, hadn’twe?
Chapter 45
Andrea
HiAndrea,
For clarity. The gallery shared the bidding summary with us this afternoon. There were eight active bidders. Final bids were tightly grouped and the second-highest bid closed at £16,500. The piece would have cleared within a narrow rangeregardless.
I didn’t want you thinking the result wasn’tgenuine.
Liam
I stared at the email on my screen. Around me, keyboards clicked, and the printer by the window spewed out a proposal.
Eight bidders. It had gone for sixteen five. It was so close it might as well have been the same.
He’d texted me eight times since Friday, called too, and it was only Monday. Asking to see me, to talk it through. The first five or six times, my heart jumped when I heard onecome in, and I rushed to open it, hopeful of something that made sense.
But none of them really said anything—he just denied it over and over, with no real explanation. No apology either. After that, I’d muted the conversation and told him to leave me alone. I didn’t want to look at them anymore, because it hurt too much.
