“After my mother,” Sienna contradicted. “I am no way as beautiful as my mother.”
“Who would believe you?” Amanda’s voice was brittle enough to break.
Sienna sat back, feeling defeated. “Amanda, we’ve all done our best for you, yet you keep slamming us with insults even when you put your hands out for money. I do care for you, Amanda. But I need your definite answer now.”
Tears sprang into Amanda’s eyes. “Do you have to be so dictatorial? You have to give me time.”
Sienna shook her head. “There’s little time available.” She rose as she heard the buzzer signalling someone had entered the gallery.
“If that’s another client get rid of them,” Amanda’s tears miraculously dried up.
“It might take a minute or two. Stay here.”
She walked out into the main room, startled to see the visitor to the gallery was none other than Blaine Kilcullen, cattle baron. She couldn’t help noting he looked marvelous: handsome, powerful, successful—someone very special. He had been studying her father’s remaining paintings—many had already been delivered—and now he turned his raven head to her. “Good afternoon, Sienna.”
She felt heat sweep her body when all he had done was say good afternoon.
“I thought, while I could, I’d take a look at the gallery,” he explained. “Your father has an international reputation, I understand? Looking at these paintings, I can see why. This portrait of you is stunning!”
He stood directly in front of the bravura portrait—a homage to a young woman’s beauty. The canvas shimmered with light. The treatment of her flesh was so good he had an urge to stroke, to check if the bloom was real. Her long hair had unfurled all around her face and cascaded down her back. The exactness of the colour of hair and skin was amazing. She was posed tucked into a roomy gilded armchair, clearly French, so the lovely pattern of the silk upholstery added to the arrangement. One bare arm hung over the side, her fingers curving over the gilded wood. She was wearing a long strapless dress in palest gold. Citrine and diamond drop earrings picked up the colour, as did a matching citrine and diamond pendant enclosed in swirls of gold that drew his eye to the high, youthful curves of her breasts.
“It’s not for sale,” she explained. “My father won’t part with it.”
“I don’t blame him.”
She felt the flush that came to her cheeks. “He looks on it as a lucky talisman for opening nights. I was about to turn twenty-one when he painted it. The earrings and pendant were my parents’ gift to me. I should tell you my mother is the real beauty in the family. I thought the portrait was going to be a present for me, but he kept it himself.” She laughed at the memory. “One never knows what to expect with Lucien. It flatters me.”
In no way was she fishing for compliments, he thought. She genuinely believed the portrait did flatter her. “I disagree.” He remained in place, studying the luminous canvas. “Have you had an opportunity to speak to Amanda?”
“I have, actually.”
“And?” He turned to her with his diamond-sharp gaze.
It was at that precise moment Amanda chose to appear—an actress entering from the wings to take centre stage. In the interim she had somehow managed to transform herself. From looking like a rag doll she was now looking almost perky. She had fluffed up her blonde curls and applied some make-up to good effect. She might even have used eyedrops because her blue eyes were wide and strangely bright.
“Blaine, at long last we meet!” She came forward with not one but two arms outstretched.
Award-winning material, Sienna thought. Not that she hadn’t seen such transformations in the past.
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