apartment should be furnished like,’ Wolf told her with a dismissive grimace as he seemed to guess her thoughts.
Barbara again. Cyn couldn’t help wondering exactly where the other woman fitted into his life—because she obviously did fit into it somewhere. Somehow that knowledge made her feel strangely depressed.
Wolf seemed unaware of her feelings this time. ‘Give me a few minutes to change and I’ll be with you,’ he promised lightly. ‘Help yourself to a drink,’ he waved vaguely in the direction of the drinks cabinet across the room. ‘And feel free to peruse the bookshelves,’ he added before hurrying from the room, already unbuttoning his shirt as he went.
Cyn took a few minutes to catch her breath before taking him up on either of those offers; being in the company of Wolf Thornton was a little like being ushered along by an express train!
But when she did finally look at the extensive bookshelves along one wall of the room—she wasn’t interested in the drink, she rarely drank alcohol anyway, and never on an empty stomach—she found Wolf’s taste in books as lively as his mind, the subject matter ranging from poetry, autobiographies, both historic and fairly recent, to art and history. His taste in fiction was almost as varied; thrillers, fantasy, mysteries, even the occasional novel which she would have classed as romance. Admittedly the latter were usually the classics, but nevertheless Cyn still thought it would be difficult to tell the nature of the man from his taste in books. And even in the short time she had known him, it had become very important to her that she should come to know more about him, much more about him.
But Wolf’s ‘few minutes’ stretched into much longer than that, until a glance at her wristwatch told her he had been gone at least half an hour. Surely it didn’t take him this long to change his clothes? Even if, at the last minute, he had decided to shower and shave before he put on fresh clothes, it surely wouldn’t have taken him as long as this?
‘Wolf?’ she called out tentatively. ‘Wolf!’ she said more firmly when she received no answer to her first call. Still no answer. What on earth was the man doing?
She didn’t exactly feel comfortable with the idea of going into his bedroom, but if he wasn’t going to answer her when she called...! Besides, for all she knew, he might have fallen or something, and be unable to answer her. It wasn’t very likely, she admitted, but something had to be delaying him.
The ‘something’ turned out to be a total surprise. Cyn had had no idea...!
Wolf’s bedroom—another room she would say hadn’t been decorated or furnished by him, the cool blues and heavy ornate furniture not suiting him at all—was empty of the man himself, as was the adjoining bathroom. But the other adjoining door she discovered across the room proved more fruitful.
She entered the room slowly, tentatively, her eyes widening as she found herself in a studio, an artist’s studio. Paintings finished and half finished, leant against every bit of wall-space. The roof of the room was mainly glass, to allow the maximum of light, Cyn would guess, light needed to paint the vivid scenes that assaulted all the senses, not just the optical ones, as she gazed around the room at them in increasing wonder. The paintings were good, very good, even to her untutored eye. And Wolf had painted them...
The man himself sat with his back towards her, obviously totally engrossed in the half-completed canvas in front of him, the woman in the picture lying like a siren across the grey rocks as the even greyer sea thundered around her, trying to tear her into its silky depths. Silver-blond hair swirled in the savage wind, the woman’s pale blue dress clung wetly to the sensual curves outlined beneath. Cyn’s gaze returned to the woman’s face, to the serene expression, the elfin face dominated by deeply violet-coloured eyes... There was something familiar about the woman, something— My God, she thought, it was her!
She must have gasped out loud at the realisation, because Wolf turned sharply, his gaze glazed and unseeing for a few brief seconds, and then he seemed to focus on her, shaking his head self-disgustedly. ‘My God, I’ve done it again, haven’t I?’ He stood up abruptly, wiping paint from his hands on to a cloth that looked as if it wasn’t the first time he had done so today, what had once been a white cloth now covered in— It was paint Wolf had on his shirt too, Cyn suddenly realised; he must have been working on this painting before he came to meet her. This was the reason he had forgotten their date.
And the woman in the painting was her, she was sure of it...
Wolf saw the puzzlement in her face, as he crossed the room to stand in front of her. ‘Yes, it’s you,’ he confirmed softly. ‘It’s the main reason I was late meeting you this evening.’
Cyn still stared at the half-finished painting. ‘You were busy working on it,’ she nodded dazedly.
‘I have been since I got home last night.’ He was also looking at the painting. ‘But it wasn’t just that.’ He moved to gently clasp her shoulders, his expression intense as he looked down at her. ‘While I was working on the painting time seemed to stand still, go nowhere, and I—’ He shook his head. ‘When I told you earlier I’d forgotten our date, I didn’t mean I’d really forgotten it, only that the time had slipped away from me. God, I’ve been longing to see you again since I left you last night. Do you believe in destiny, Cyn?’ he prompted forcefully, shaking her slightly when she didn’t immediately answer him. ‘I’m not sure that I did. Until last night. Painting is my life, Cyn, I’ve wanted to do nothing else—have done nothing else—since I can remember.’ He was talking quickly, desperate in his need to make her understand. ‘And I’ve been satisfied, even pleased at times—no mean feat, believe me; I’m my own hardest critic!—with some of the work I’ve done in the past. But last night, when I could finally get away from the party, I was inspired. I knew I had to put you on canvas, knew exactly how I had to put you on canvas too.’ He gazed across the room at the painting. ‘It’s good, Cyn.’ His face glowed with the satisfaction of knowing he spoke the truth.
And he did, Cyn couldn’t argue with that. The painting was beautiful, hauntingly so. But what did it mean? Why had Wolf painted her in that way?
‘I’m getting these paintings ready for my first exhibition due to take place in the summer,’ he told her now. ‘I wanted—needed—something special as the main subject of that exhibition.’ He looked back at the painting. ‘This painting is going to be it.’
Cyn dragged her own gaze away from the hauntingly hypnotic painting, looking up at Wolf as he once again became engrossed in the half-completed canvas; it was obvious, even now, that it was going to be a painting worthy of the title ‘something special’, and that had nothing to do with the fact that Wolf had painted her to look so beautiful. There was a magic quality about all Wolf’s work, but this one...! Cyn didn’t doubt that the exhibition was going to be a success for him, that the name Thornton was going to be associated with much more than the business world by the end of the year, that Wolf Thornton, the artist, was going to become known worldwide.
‘I’m glad meeting me was able to give you that,’ she told him shyly.
He turned to look at her, shaking off the hypnotic quality of the painting, a warm smile lighting his perfectly hewn features as he once again clasped her arms. ‘Oh, it gave me much more than the painting, Cyn,’ he assured her firmly. ‘It gave me the woman I’m going to marry!’
She felt as if all the breath had been knocked from her lungs. Her mouth went dry, every muscle in her body was tense with disbelief. He couldn’t really have said...
‘Destiny, Cyn,’ he reminded her teasingly, laughing down affectionately at her pole-axed expression. ‘I
