He walked in a circle on the spot, sensing the excitement in her voice and the way she held herself in her blue dressing gown, arms crossed as if holding her breath while she waited for his reaction. She needn’t have worried. He didn’t know a hell of a lot about art, but he knew what she had was amazing. Even the four of him in various stages of undress – including the one of him on the bed, where she’d included a sizeable slice of his butt cheeks—he couldn’t remember agreeing to that, but he was pretty impressed she’d managed that from memory—worked in with the whole. “You’ve nailed it, Ava.”
“I think so too,” she admitted, taking a sip from her mug. “Two weeks early too. That’s a record for me.”
“So what does your agent think?”
Her head tilted to the side. “What makes you think I have an agent?”
He shrugged, taking his time to look at each of the pictures in more detail. “I dunno. I assumed all artists had agents – to handle all the admin and organise stuff like exhibitions or something.”
“No,” she said tightly, rearranging the order of some of the paintings. “I had one. It didn’t work out.”
“Fair enough,” he said, wandering around the space, finding the one with the lemons she’d had trouble with that night and that now looked almost three dimensional, it was so real.
And just behind was stack of canvases stacked together, and what he saw there made him frown. He’d got used to Ava’s style, the detailed, precise brushstrokes, and this was something completely different. It was dark and ominous, the strokes of the paint like mad slashes across the canvas, and there in the centre – he peered closer – was a naked figure curled up in the foetal position on a bed, and, for the life of him, he’d almost swear it was Ava.
“I haven’t seen this one before.”
“What?” she said, looking around. “No!” She abandoned her rearranging, rushing to his side, wrestling the canvas away from him, turning it around and shuffling others behind it. More still lifes, he noticed the others were, and they were good too, though maybe lacking the same vibrancy as the others she’d included in the collection. But there was nothing like that first, mad one.
“Not that one. It’s rubbish.”
“The girl on the bed – she looked like you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She tucked hair behind her ears, then wrapped her arms around her. “It was an experiment. I was trying something different.” She screwed up her nose. “It didn’t work out.”
“Fine,” he said with his hands in the air. It was no skin off his nose. He was only asking, even if it did look like her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “it’s embarrassing for people to see work that isn’t up to scratch.”
And then she smiled, placing her hands on his naked chest and her lips curled up provocatively. “And now, I need to have a shower. Care to join me?”
There were times when Caleb didn’t think about whether to answer in the affirmative, and being asked by a woman to share her shower – especially when she was this woman – was right up there on the list. And Caleb decided that there were more important things in life than lunch and his rumbling stomach and the mystery that was this woman.
At least, for now.
Chapter Seven
Caleb had just finished sweating up a storm in the gym and was about to hit the showers when Mike gathered the shift together for an impromptu group meeting. A shower would have to wait. He slung his towel around his neck and joined Richo at the back of the group.
“Listen up everyone,” Mike said in his booming voice when everyone was present. “I’m sorry for the short notice but I’m looking for some volunteers to help out at a function tomorrow night.”
“That’d be right,” grumbled Richo, rolling his eyes in Caleb’s direction, clearly worrying about losing valuable time when he could be at the pub chatting up the ladies, but Caleb was too busy hanging out for what was coming next to react. Tomorrow night was Ava’s show, and he had a horrible suspicion...
“This is all for a worthy cause, I can assure you. Most of you will probably have heard of local Adelaide Hills artist, Ava Mattiske, who is also the face painter at the Ashton Show...”
Crap.
There were murmurings of recognition. Caleb just stared at the floor. So much for nobody he knew being there. Then Richo elbowed him in the ribs and said loudly, “Hey, isn’t that your friend, the one who painted you as Peppa Pig?”
Chuckles rang out. Someone guffawed.
“Yeah, thanks for remembering that little detail, Richo.” But who wouldn’t remember, when the evidence was still stuck up on the noticeboard in the kitchen for all to see?
“Settle down, Peppa, settle down,” Mike continued with a smirk. “Anyhow, it turns out Ava’s having a big exhibition of her works in EJ’s Gallery and Café, and EJ’s had a word in her ear about how we came to his rescue the other month when his kitchen caught fire and so she’s kindly agreed to donate ten per cent of the proceeds from her artwork sales to the Burns Unit at the local Children’s Hospital. So I’ve told the gallery owner that we’ll turn out to rattle a few tins and support a local artist and this worthy cause, and he’s agreed to match the funds raised dollar for dollar. And so if you fancy buying yourself a painting to hang on a wall, I won’t go stopping you. Okay, so I need four volunteers...”
Caleb sighed. God, what were the bloody chances? “I’m in,” he called from the back, shoving up his hand.
Mike looked at him and frowned, checking something on his clipboard. “I thought you took yourself off the on call list for tomorrow night.”
Caleb nodded. “Yeah, but I figure this’ll only go for a couple of hours and it’s
