Page 77 of The Chase
“This was her place.”
He looked around the room and then gave me a comforting smile.
“Logan texted you?”
“I’m glad she did.”
“That’s why you were so close to Christie’s?” I asked.
“Thought I’d surprise you at the auction house and take you out to dinner.”
My tea was a golden brown and tasted how it looked, brewed to perfection and soothing. “You shouldn’t be seen with me.” I realized. “Not with this scandal. Your gallery in LA will suffer. Not to mention your reputation.”
Perhaps...before this revelation there might have been a chance for us.
I scolded my rambling thoughts as I realized Tobias was just a friend who’d caught me midfall and had merely paused his day to be here.
“I can handle it.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Let’s wait and see what they say before we condemn you to a life of cleaning chimneys.”
“Cleaning chimneys?”
“Isn’t that what happens to English people when they’ve fallen on hard times.”
I burst out laughing.
He gave a shrug as he grinned his mischief. “Maybe I do admit to reading too much Charles Dickens as a boy.”
“Why were you at The Otillie?” I said. “The night we met?”
“I was invited.”
“By who?”
“Miles Tenant.”
Of course, the director of the gallery.
“He’s always been kind to me.” I raked my fingers through my locks to tame them a little. “Not sure how he’ll react to this. Probably give me backMadame Rose.”
“I’ll talk to him. Still, you’ve nothing to worry about as far as I can see.”
Yet Tobias had trusted my ability to spot a fake when he’d taken me to the palace with him.
I pulled the blanket higher. “Miles was so generous to hold that reception. God, it was also meant to be a celebration of all my dad did for the art community.”
“Let’s not condemn him just yet.”
No amount of regaling how my great-great-grandmother had been the toast of the royal Russian court would soften the strike of this current scandal.
It wasn’t as though I’d seen behind the veil of Tobias’s personal world, either; his mercurial, complex nature was as compelling as those beguiling hard edges that he never failed to show.
These unfolding moments where he revealed his true nature felt like a rare gift. This man was letting me in.
“You were very quiet that first evening we met at The Otillie?” he said.
“I was a little intimidated.”
“By me?” He looked surprised and finished the rest of his tea and set his mug on the side table. “I’d borrowed the staff room to get changed. I’d have used Miles’s office but he’d had it painted.”
