‘It isn’t me!’ She turned to look at him, able to feel the rapid beat of her pulse in her throat. ‘Look at it again, Nick,’ she told him shakily, pleadingly, turning to look at the painting, a gut-wrenching pain in her chest as she did so.
‘Of course it’s you—’
‘No,’ she cut in quietly again. ‘She has a birthmark, Nick. Look. There.’ She pointed to the rose-shaped birthmark on the swell of one creamy breast, visible above the low neckline of the deep blue dress. ‘And look here.’ She pulled aside the open neck of her cream blouse, revealing her own creamy breast.
Completely bare of that rose-shaped birthmark…
Whoever the woman in the portrait was it most certainly wasn’t Hebe.
She knew it wasn’t.
But if it wasn’t her, who—?
No, it couldn’t be!
Could it…?
And that was when everything went dark…
NICK inwardly cursed as he leapt forward to catch Hebe before she hit the carpeted floor, swinging her up in his arms to carry her over to the leather sofa at the back of the room.
He had been expecting some sort of reaction to the portrait, but it certainly hadn’t been this!
Embarassment, perhaps—because it was obvious that Andrew Southern had been Hebe’s lover. And surprise that Nick actually had possession of the portrait had also been a possibility.
But he certainly hadn’t expected Hebe to faint as she denied she was the woman in the portrait!
That birthmark apart—a pretty rose-shaped mark—there was no one else it could be but her.
He laid her down on the sofa, and Hebe started to groan slightly as she came back to consciousness, finally opening her eyes to look up at him as he bent over him.
And instantly closing them again, as if even the sight of him was too much for her.
‘Hey, come on, Hebe. I realise I’m no oil painting, but I’m not that bad either!’ he mocked as he moved back slightly.
The painting, Hebe remembered with a pained wince, trying to collect herself. But to come to terms with the enormity of what she had seen, and what she was thinking, was going to take longer than the few seconds she’d had so far.
She swallowed hard, not sure how she felt about any of this. If that portrait really was who she thought it was, then—
‘Here.’
She opened her eyes to find Nick holding out a glass of water.
She was freaking him out with this ‘dying swan’ routine, Nick decided impatiently as he put the rest of the bottle of water back in the fridge neatly disguised as an oak filing cabinet.
Who really fainted nowadays? People who were ill, hungry or had been hit over the head! He could rule out the former, because Hebe certainly wasn’t ill. Nor had she been hit over the head. Except maybe metaphorically. That just left hungry.
‘Have you had any lunch today?’ he prompted suspiciously.
‘Actually—’ she swung her legs to the floor to sit up and take a sip of the chilled water ‘—no.’
He gave a shake of his head as he moved back to the fridge. ‘Why haven’t you?’ he demanded as he took a chocolate bar out and handed it to her. ‘Eat it,’he instructed, when she just looked at it. ‘You’ll feel better if you do.’
Hebe somehow doubted that, but the chocolate certainly couldn’t do any harm. She had heard it was good for shock too. And she was certainly in shock.
She glanced at the portrait again as she slowly ate two squares of the chocolate.
The woman in the portrait was beautiful, much more so than her. Couldn’t Nick see that? And that woman had a sultry air about her, a sensuality, those golden eyes half closed with a secret that only she possessed.
Hebe felt herself begin to shake again as she took an educated guess at what that secret was.
She ate another two squares of chocolate before speaking huskily. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘I told you—the north of England.’ Nick moved restlessly about the confines of the office.
Hebe gave him an impatient glance. ‘Can’t you be more specific? Who did you buy it from? Where did they get it?’ It was suddenly imperative she knew these things.
Nick raised dark brows at her intensity. ‘I bought it from a young couple who had just inherited an old house from the guy’s great-uncle, or something like that. They had never seen the painting before he died, because the old man had the portrait hung in his bedroom, of all things,’ he revealed, with a certain amount of distaste.
He couldn’t say he felt exactly comfortable with some old man drooling over a portrait of a woman—Hebe!—who was certainly young enough to be his daughter, if not his granddaughter.
But the couple hadn’t known anything about the woman in the portrait—who she was or how the great-uncle had come to have her portrait. Nick had known who she was—he just didn’t have any idea what her portrait was doing in some old guy’s bedroom and not in the possession of the man who had painted it with such love.
Hebe didn’t look as if she were about to answer that question for him now, either!
She moistened dry lips. ‘What was the man’s name?’
‘Hell, Hebe, what difference does it make what his name was?’ Nick snapped his impatience. ‘He had your portrait, isn’t that enough?’
‘No.’ She shook her head slowly, turning to look at him with dark gold eyes. ‘Because, no matter what you might think to the contrary, Nick, the woman in the portrait isn’t me.’ She gave a humourless smile at his obvious scepticism. ‘No, Nick, it isn’t,’ she insisted. ‘Andrew Southern couldn’t possibly have painted my portrait because I’ve never met him! But it looks as if my mother may have done,’ she added, so softly Nick had trouble hearing her.
Her mother?
Hebe was trying to say the woman in the portrait was her mother?
How stupid did she think he was? Of course the portrait was of Hebe. It couldn’t be anyone else.
Could it…?
Nick gave her a dark frown. ‘You’re telling me that you look exactly like your mother did at that age?’
‘Ah.’ She gave a grimace. ‘Now, that is a very difficult question for me to answer—’
‘Why is it, damn it?’ he interrupted irritably. ‘How difficult can it be to know whether you do or do not look like your mother?’
Hebe eyed him ruefully, understanding his incredulity at the situation, sympathising with it, even, but at the same time knowing she didn’t have the answers that he wanted.
Except for one…
She raised silver-blonde brows. ‘How about if you’re adopted?’
Nick stopped pacing the room, looking down at her with disbelieving eyes. Was she seriously trying to tell him, expecting him to believe—?
But why not?
Hundreds of kids were adopted every year.
He moved to stand in front of the portrait, studying it closely. He had quickly seen the mirror-like similarities, but now he looked for the differences.
There