Page 120 of How to Get Even

‘Oh my God, what happened?’

‘What do you mean?’ Bella asked on a hiccupped laugh, eyes puffy and red from crying and her mother wiping her own tears back.

‘Did someone die?’ Bea demanded.

‘Hopefully onlyGood Bella,’ her father said laughing and her sister stared at them all like they were mad.

‘Here,’ Derek, Bea’s fiancé said to Bella, as he pressed a signed-for envelope into her hands. Bella frowned, tearing it open as her parents tried to explain to her sister what had happened.

You are invited to the opening of the Nayak New York, a contemporary gallery opening under the directorship of Chase Miller on behalf of Tejvir Nayak.

There must be some mistake, Bella thought, scanning the invitation that shouldn’t have come to her. She wasn’t on the mailing list. Nor did they send out invitations via signed-for mail. She turned the invitation over and saw,Please Come,written in Chase’s handwriting.

‘What’s that?’ her father asked.

‘An olive branch, I think,’ Bella replied and her father’s eyes twinkled with a hope that matched what she felt in her heart.

* * *

Chase had never been more nervous in his entire life. Not when he’d first left for London, not his misplaced wedding day, not even his first exhibition.

‘Are you okay, man? You look like you’re gonna be sick,’ Tej asked, genuinely concerned.

Chase nodded and rolled his shoulders. ‘Fine.’ The word turned into a cough when Tej slapped him on the back a little too hard.

‘She’s gonna show,’ Tej said with a confidence Chase didn’t feel.

He smiled and nodded as a smartly dressed couple passed them, the woman wearing nearly half a million in diamonds, and Chase couldn’t have cared less. Ali came bounding up to them, her excitement irrepressible, no matter how much Maurice tried to iron it out. Chase was beginning to suspect that most of Maurice’s attempts were for show, because they all secretly enjoyed her eternal optimism.

‘Sascha just sold three paintings,’ she whisper-hissed, as Maurice appeared at her side, with ashhhand a, ‘Keep your voice down.’

Chase scanned the heads of the rich, famous and just lucky enough to be here at the opening of Nayak New York, and found Sascha staring wide-eyed at a man who seemed to be in the process of telling her about her own work. She caught his gaze and her expression read, WTF? Not about the guy, but about selling her paintings. He could read it because he knew it, that feeling.

Christ, he’d love to be at the beginning of this journey all over again. Would he do things differently? He wouldn’t marry Annalise, he thought. He hadn’t been right for Annalise and that had made her angry and resentful, not his fault, but not entirelynothis fault either. He’d buried his head in the sand and ploughed on, ignoring the warning signs, just like Bella had said.

But not any more. He was making changes, starting tonight, whether Bella was here or not. But Christ, he hoped she would be.

Chester C. Carlton swanned past superiorly, ignoring Chase so hard it defeated the man’s objective. When he’d found out what Bella had done, he hadn’t bothered trying to correct the record. Because, in rereading the article, there was nothing in there that couldn’t have been found without a bit of digging. Bella might have pointed him in the right direction, but the man was a gun loaded from four years before, because Chase had been moody, arrogant and dismissive of the way the art scene worked. The only way to change Chester’s mind about Nayak was to bring him in, rather than alienate him more, so Chase smiled at the man who promptly squeaked and disappeared into the crowd.

‘Making friends and influencing people?’ Tej asked with a smirk.

‘Always.’

‘Your dad not making it tonight?’

‘No, he’s got a big job on in the morning. He wished us all good luck.’

Chase had gone to see him a few days ago. They’d sat down and finished the heart-to-heart that Bella had started here in the gallery. Chase had wanted to ask about the child he’d been before his mom had been hospitalised. Before he’d taken her dreams and made them his own. He’d been doing it for so long, he couldn’t remember what had come before.

‘You’d always wanted to paint. You didn’t know it was a job, then. But yeah. Paint, pencils, you’d always been covered in some kind of colour. But Chase, she didn’t say that to you to put pressure on you.’

‘I know,’ he’d replied and he did.

‘She really struggled with it. How much to say, what to tell you, how much to love you, knowing that she wouldn’t…’

His dad had trailed off and looked away until he’d got his feelings back under control. He’d wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to do that. He didn’t have to hide them from him, but he could see how uncomfortable it made him. Chase just had to make sure that he was different.

‘She wanted to write you a letter. You know, open when you get married, open on your fiftieth,’ his dad admitted. ‘But she got too sick,’ his father said with a nod. ‘But honestly, the only thing she wanted for you was to be happy.’

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