Now dividing walls had been pulled down and it had been modernised into a sophisticated living space furnished in tones of grey and black leather. Declan’s domain. Beyond the living room was a door she could only assume was his office and others led to a small kitchen and a bathroom. Framed black-and-white photos of an attractive young woman with a cap of dark hair, a small, sharp face and a huge smile lined the walls. Lisa.
As she knocked on the door to Declan’s office Shelley realised her hands were trembling. He had been so angry, so dark—as black in his mood as the storm clouds that gathered over Sydney before a violent summer storm.
Yes, she was a little afraid. Afraid of the man she was falling in love with. Afraid of the man she had planned to seduce this evening. No. Not afraid. Not in a million years would Declan hurt her. She was nervous. Nervous of his reaction when he realised she had broken her promise to him and invaded his sacrosanct, private space.
There was no reply to her knock. But she was convinced he was in there. An earlier quick glance through the window to his basement gym had shown it to be empty.
She turned the handle of the door and pushed it open.
Declan sat intently in front of an enormous computer screen, a black headset over his head covered his ears. He wore large black-framed glasses. They were hot—made him appear even more attractive to her. But they also made him look like a stranger.
This was a bad, bad idea.
She turned to leave, to scurry back down those stairs as fast as she could. But her movement must have caught Declan’s eye. He turned. For a long moment their eyes met—his dark and shuttered, hers no doubt wide with terror.
‘Shelley, what the hell?’
He took off his headset and his glasses. But even then he looked dark and forbidding.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude on you in your...your bat cave.’
He frowned. ‘My bat cave?’
She looked around her at the banks of computers and high-tech equipment. ‘It does look like a bat cave—a movie–super-hero bat cave, not a real bat cave. If it was a real bat cave it would be dirty and smelly and...’ Her words dwindled to a halt. She turned again. ‘I’m sorry. I’m going.’
Declan leapt up from his chair. ‘Shelley. Don’t go. Don’t apologise. I’m the one who should be apologising for the way I behaved down there. I—’
When he said ‘down there’ her eyes went automatically to the window, which looked over the fountain and the sweep of the back garden. There was a large artist’s easel standing there, poised to catch the light, and a drawing board with a series of charcoal drawings clipped to it.
She took a step further towards the windows and she dropped her shoes with a clatter. Her hand went to her mouth but that didn’t stop her gasp. ‘What’s this?’ she said. ‘Who is this?’ Her heart thumped even harder and her mouth went dry.
‘It’s—’
She stepped closer. ‘It’s me. Paintings of me. Drawings of me. What does this mean?’
In the large canvas on the easel she rode bareback astride a white unicorn. She wore something so skin-tight it was practically nothing, and long green boots with her hair flying behind her like a banner against a background of a forest. The painting was magnificent. Breathtaking. But she felt...violated.
She turned to the drawing board. The sketches were of her too. Declan was talented; she recognised that through her shock. Just a few lines and some shading brought to life the curve of her jaw, the sweep of her hair and an action series where she was lassoing something outside the image.
‘It’s not you, Shelley,’ he said. ‘It’s...it’s Estella.’
‘Estella? Who the heck is Estella? The only Estella I know is the character in Great Expectations. Is that the link? Miss Havisham. This creepy house.’
‘Princess Estella is a character for a computer game.’
‘Princess Estella? So where do I come in?’
‘You’re...you’re my muse. My inspiration for a beautiful, kick-ass warrior princess.’ He closed his eyes, shook his head from side to side in a gesture of deep regret. When he opened his eyes again it was to look deep into her face. ‘I should have told you. Wanted to tell you.’
She looked to the screen where an animated character—who didn’t look as much like her as the painting did—was on her unicorn and fighting an army of some kind of mutant creatures.
She turned on Declan. ‘You were using me. So that’s why you...you made friends with me. Why you...why you let me think we could be more than friends?’
She had to swallow down hard on a sickening sense of betrayal that made her want to double over. Thank heaven she hadn’t slept with him. Having shared the intimacies of love with him would only have intensified his treachery.
He took her arm but she shook him off, unable to bear the touch of this man who was suddenly again a stranger. She had trusted him to be honest and straightforward with her but he’d thrown her back deep into that dark pit of distrust as brutally as the other men who had hurt her.
‘Not true, Shelley,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t let myself near you—though I realise now I wanted you from the get go. Maybe...maybe that’s why I created Princess Estella. As a device to keep you at a distance.’
Bitterness and disappointment made it difficult for her to speak and she had to choke out the words. ‘You mean so you could make even more millions.’
His face contorted in anguish. ‘No. You can’t believe that.’
She didn’t care if her words hurt him. ‘Why not? Was this why you hired me? To...to use my image behind my back? Not for the garden at all.’
Now she began to doubt the veracity of everything he’d told her. He had lied and misrepresented himself the way Steve had told her he was single, the way her father had denied his mistress was anything more than a work colleague. She had thought Declan was different. She had believed in him.
‘Was there really a complaining neighbour? Or did you invent all that to observe me for that...for her?’ She pointed at the painting with a finger that wavered and trembled despite her best efforts to make a dramatic gesture.
‘No,’ Declan exploded. ‘The neighbours’ complaints were only too real. I needed you to do the garden. But unwittingly you unlocked my creativity. Just by being you. Your strength, your beauty, like a modern-day warrior. You inspired me like nothing or no one ever had.’
His blue eyes blazed with sincerity. She wanted to believe him. If she wasn’t feeling so angry and betrayed she might even have felt flattered. But he should have told her all that long before this. Before her blundering into his bat cave had forced the issue. Had he ever intended to tell her? Or to just wave goodbye when the garden was finished?
‘And yet you didn’t say a word to me,’ she said.
‘You have to believe me, Shelley. I wanted to but...but I couldn’t. I hadn’t invented a game since...since...’
He didn’t have to say the words. Since two years ago.
Would it always come back to that—the tragedy he could never put behind him?
Her shoulders sagged as she felt overwhelmed by the inevitability that she was fighting a battle she could never win—even if she were to be mounted on a unicorn and armed with a magic lasso.
He deserved a second chance at love and she yearned to give it to him. But she was ill-equipped to bring down the barriers he’d built around his heart to punish himself for the loss of his wife and baby.
She couldn’t risk losing her heart in