of mumbo jumbo is that?” He followed her into the house, a whipcord-lean young man just short of six feet, dark-haired, with hypnotic dark eyes and handsome if rather hawklike features. His hands, not as attractive as his face, clutched the back of the sofa. His dark eyes glittered with contained contempt. “You can’t mean that, Ally?”
“I do!” Her voice sounded stricken. “These last six months have been awful. It’s truly the end for us.”
His response was to take her forcibly her by the shoulders. Alyssa considered any sort of violence, especially violence toward women and children, totally reprehensible. She had often had occasion to express her views, working pro bono for a women’s refuge during her short career as a lawyer. He was well aware where she stood on domestic violence. “Every time you come back from visiting that bloody woman, you’re different,” he accused, his face tight. “Zizi egged you on to do this. Zizi’s always overstepping her role—ridiculous bloody name. Okay, you might’ve called her that when you were a little kid but it sounds stupid now. She’s never liked me, has she? I could kill her.” The expression on his face carried real threat.
“That’s appalling!” She shook him off angrily. “And you a man of the law!”
“I’m a man first,” he reminded her, anger flashing in his eyes.
“So, does that mean you have the right to lash out?” she shouted at him, although shouting wasn’t her style.
“Zizi is not at fault here,” she said, trying desperately to calm herself. “She had nothing to do with my decision, so keep her out of it. It’s about the two of us. It’s not working, Brett. You’re becoming intolerable to live with.”
He released a sharp whistling breath through his nose. “I’m becoming intolerable? You’re the who’s up until all hours of the night when I want you in bed with me. Goddamn that bloody woman!” he exclaimed, his handsome face ugly with hate. “She’s had far too much influence on you. She works on you until she takes over your mind.”
It was all so unfair! Zizi’s influence had always been good. Zizi was her confidante and dearest friend.
“Oh, spare me!” he groaned at her defense of her great-aunt. “The facts contradict your judgment. Your great-aunt’s never had the guts to live in the real world, floating around that old plantation house like some bloody witch. Hell, she’s more than a touch mad. Your grandmother, her own sister, has said as much.”
It was regrettably true. “Gran and Zizi are different kinds of people,” Alyssa said quietly, putting more space between them. “Zizi’s living the life she wants. Without her I wouldn’t be what I am today. She taught me not only how to paint and see beauty in so many different places, but about life in general. I don’t know what I’m going to do when she leaves me.”
“The old bitch will live until she’s ninety!” Brett scoffed.” You have me! Aren’t you supposed to love me? You have your parents, plenty of friends. You’re supposed to be such a fine painter—”
Alyssa rounded on him, saying the words she’d long held back. “You’re jealous of what I do, aren’t you?”
He didn’t even attempt to deny it. “I’m jealous of anything that takes you away from me. When you’re working you don’t even remember I exist. Couldn’t you have stayed a lawyer? You know how upset your parents were when you left the firm.”
“That was two years ago, Brett. Mom and Dad came to terms with it. I was always a dutiful daughter. I did what they wanted. I just never got any satisfaction out of practicing law. That’s your world, their world. It’s not mine. I’m an artist, but you don’t want me to be one. My painting’s only made you resentful. You’d be thrilled if I said I was going to stop painting altogether.”
“You bet!” He spoke with frightening grimness. “It was Zizi who managed to convince you that you had the gift!” He couldn’t resist the note of parody. “She even managed to pull a few strings to get you a showing. She chucked her own career—it didn’t give her satisfaction or fulfillment—yet she pushed you into it.”
“I’m making money, Brett.” She was regaining a little of her composure.
“You’re making money at last, you mean,” he reminded her sharply, totally overlooking the fact that he was living in her house. “Your parents bought you this place.” Obviously that devalued her standing in his eyes.
“So you got some acclaim. You have more going for you, that’s all. You’re young. You’re beautiful. You come from a distinguished legal family. Even dotty old Zizi was a name in her day. Elizabeth Jane Calvert! What happened to her? How come she burnt out overnight?”
Alyssa tried slow, deep breathing. “No one knows the answer to that one.” Not family, friends, agents, dealers. While still in her twenties, Zizi’s brilliant talent had earned her considerable renown. Those were her glory days, the ten-year period between 1960 and 1970. But Zizi had retired at the very early age of thirty to a reclusive life in an old sugar plantation house in tropical North Queensland. It had caused a sensation in the art world.
Alyssa’s eyes rested on the middle distance. Other famous artists had fled to the North to escape the rat race and gather the beauty of the tropical environment into their souls. North of Capricorn was glorious. She and Zizi had often cruised around the dazzlingly beautiful coral cays and emerald islands of the Great Barrier Reef in Zizi’s little sailing yacht, Cherub. It was Zizi who’d discovered that she had talent as a sailor. Indeed, by age sixteen she far outstripped her mentor much to Zizi’s amusement and pride. She loved the sea. She loved sailing. It was in her blood.
From time to time, other prominent artists who’d belonged to the colony had emerged from their rain forest sanctuaries to travel south to the big cities to show the civilized art world what masterpieces they had created. Zizi, however, had stayed there.
Infuriated by Alyssa’s inattention, Brett seized her by the arms. “Snap out of it, Ally! You can’t think I’m going to let you walk away from me! Not after what we’ve been to each other. I love you. I can’t possibly let you go. I hold your precious Zizi responsible for the change in you.”
She stared into his dark eyes, seeing a tiny red glow in their depths. “All Zizi wants is for me to be happy. I tried, Brett.”
“You shouldn’t have to try!” He shook her as if she were a child and a good shake would bring her to her senses.
“Take your hands off me.” Flinching, she broke away, rubbing her shoulder.
He came after her. “You’re everything I want, Alyssa. I’d kill anyone who tried to take you from me.”
Alyssa saw the violence in him, but she was driven by a risk-everything determination.
They stood a few feet apart, regarding each other like the warring couple they’d become. “You’re very needy, Brett. You want my undivided attention and if you don’t get it I have to tread my way through a minefield of scowling and sulking that goes on for days. It has to come to an end. I’m an artist. I’m going to remain an artist all my life.”
“Like Zizi?” His voice was full of contempt.
“I hope I’ll be like Zizi one day. I certainly haven’t reached her level of excellence yet.”
Brett threw up his hands in an impotent gesture of rage. “Who the hell even remembers the genius’s name these days?”
She sighed wearily. “Everyone in the art world knows of Elizabeth Jane Calvert. The private collectors who have her early paintings treasure them. They won’t part with them. That’s why they never come on the market…something did go seriously wrong in her life.”
“She hasn’t told you all about her nervous breakdown, has she?” he sneered. “Your grandmother said she had one. The trouble with you is you’re brainwashed!”
“And you’re a coward, attacking a woman in her absence.”