marriage. Now it was getting out of hand. “Tried to take him off me, didn’t you?” Amanda was back to her sickening accusations. “It wasn’t me who made my dear husband’s hormones soar. It was you—and I was powerless to do anything about it.”
It had taken Sienna many years to recognize Amanda’s jealousies and deep resentments. People had pointed it out to her over the years but she had chosen not to listen. “Amanda, please stop this” She tried to ignore the sick lurch in her stomach. “We’ve been over it too many times. I was not attracted to Mark. Mark was your husband. If he’d been the sexiest man in the world—which he wasn’t—he’d have been totally off-limits. I refuse to be drawn into any more discussions on the subject, much as you’re compelled to bring it up.”
Amanda must have made a wild sweep with her hand, because Sienna could hear glass breaking. Probably the glass she’d been drinking out of.
“Aren’t you forgetting I discovered the two of you together?” Amanda raged on, in that upsettingly slurred voice.
“Face it, Amanda. You know the truth.” Yet irrational guilt settled hard and heavy on Sienna’s shoulders. Her conscience couldn’t have been clearer in regard to that appalling evening. Still she felt a measure of guilt for the pain that had been caused to her all too vulnerable cousin.
“He loved you—don’t you realize that?”
Sienna held the phone away from her ear. “What Mark loved was creating great disharmony. You’re upsetting us both with this talk, Amanda. My sole loyalty is to you. Look, I can’t talk to you while you’re in this mood. I’m going to hang up now. Get some sleep. I promise I’ll ring you in the morning.”
“You’d better!”
The force of the threat stopped Sienna in her tracks. “Don’t make me withdraw my support, Amanda,” she said quietly. “And by the way, Mark’s half-brother—he didn’t tell us that, did he?—is nothing like Mark tried so hard to present him. He’s a very impressive man.” The polar opposite of everything that had been Mark.
“Such camaraderie in a few short hours!” Amanda hooted. “Just tell me this. Is there any money? Did he look like he’s got pots of money? God knows, Mark left me with nothing.”
But Amanda had always had a safety net in the family. They would have been expected to pick up the shambles Amanda had made of her life. But now there was Kilcullen money. “To be fair to Mark, he did keep you both in some style. Apparently his mother proved to be a bottomless well when he needed topping up. She must have done it pretty regularly. And just look how he treated her! I’ll tell you another thing, so you can sleep on it. Blaine—”
“Blaine?”
Sienna moved the phone away from her ear again. “I can hardly refer to him as Mr Kilcullen,” she said, suddenly sick to death of her cousin. “Your late husband’s half-brother very much wants you to accompany him back to Australia. He’s assured me you will be welcomed. Mark has a twin, by the way, name of Marcia. Apparently they weren’t all that close—unlike most twins.” Now definitely wasn’t the time for Amanda to learn about the scorned fiancée.
“Mark wouldn’t have deliberately lied to me,” Amanda asserted in a thick voice, when her normal tones were soft and breathy.
“Mark had a twin, Amanda,” Sienna said. “The truth was an alien concept to him. He lied to us all the time. He kept his true self and his true life well under wraps. Probably he was laughing at us. He had a cruel streak.”
“He was a fabulous husband.”
Clearly Amanda was in denial. “Mandy, you contradict yourself all the time. Why were you always so desperate for me to join you and Mark? You never did explain. Was the marriage all but over? Was that what it was all about, Mandy? Do you ever come clean?”
Silence for a moment, then Amanda’s harsh reaction. “I need you to understand something, Sienna. If my marriage was over, it was because of you. You had to take the one thing I had.”
Sienna was too appalled to continue. Drink turned some people happy. It turned others abusive. “I’m hanging up now, Amanda,” she said, thinking things would never get better. Amanda would most probably worsen. “You’ve been drinking. You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re exhausting my good will. In case you’re thinking of ringing back, I’m taking the phone off the hook.”
“Do it. Go on—do it!” Amanda urged, her voice rising to a crescendo.
Sienna did, wrapping her arms around herself. There were only two ways to deal with Amanda. Put up with her, or remove her from her life. After all these years since decided she could never do that. Maybe a good man would come along to take care of her cousin.
Sienna was upstairs, talking to valued client and family friend Nadine Duval, when Amanda walked through the front door of the gallery.
“Sienna, where are you?”
Her voice was pitched so high and loud it was startling. It echoed right through the large open space, its white walls hung with stunning paintings from her father’s last sell-out showing. In the last fifteen years Lucien Fleury had moved on to international eminence with numerous critically acclaimed exhibitions. Sienna was enormously proud of him. He in turn was enormously proud of both his children. Both had been hailed as major talents.
“In the genes, Sienna, my darling.”
Of course he took the credit.
Nadine Duval, an extremely rich woman, who had paid a fortune for arguably her father’s finest canvas in the showing, gave her an understanding little smile. “That will be Amanda, poor girl. We all feel so sorry for her, but I just bet she’s giving you a bad time. You have to get free of her, Sienna,” Nadine warned, not for the first time. “The girl is trouble.”
“Well she’s suffering now,” Sienna explained, beginning to walk Nadine down the spiral staircase.
“Of course she is.” Nadine’s response was vaguely ironic.
“I’ll have the painting delivered this afternoon,” Sienna promised, when they arrived at the bottom.
Nadine reached for her hand. “Thank you, my dear. Tell Lucien I want to see him. Maybe lunch?”
“Will do.”
They exchanged kisses.
Amanda looked far more fragile than the strength of her voice had suggested. Indeed she looked waif-like. She had lost weight when she couldn’t afford to do so. Her skin, her best feature, was so pale it was almost translucent. She had violet half-moons beneath her eyes, and the silky curls of her pretty blonde hair had lost their lustre and bounce.
“I really don’t like that woman,” she growled.
It was a mercy Nadine had gone through the door to her waiting limousine.
“Your loss, Mandy. Nadine has so much character.”
“And of course she loves you too.” Amanda was looking hung over, and haggard for her years.
“I
