Zoe set out plates and glasses with no idea of what to expect. Would Aaron be joining her for dinner? Were they actually going to sit down and have a meal together, like some bizarre, instant happy family?
Despite her decadent afternoon, she felt exhausted. Maintaining a cheerfully insouciant facade—for she knew that was all it was—with Aaron was emotionally and physically draining. But it was also armour, a way to protect herself. To show him she wasn’t bothered by this unusual living arrangement, that she wasn’t remembering how he’d taken her right on that rug, with the lights of the city streaming over them. How for a moment, when he’d been inside her, she’d looked into his eyes and felt far more emotion than she ever wanted to feel…Even as she craved that connection once more.
Thankfully the intercom buzzed, calling a halt to that unhelpful line of thinking. By the time Aaron came out of his bedroom she was opening the steaming cartons of fragrant Chinese food, inhaling the blissful aroma of pork lo mein.
‘You look like you’ve just died and gone to heaven.’
‘It feels like it,’ she admitted, and couldn’t resist eating a forkful of noodles right from the carton. ‘And normally I don’t even like Chinese food.’
Aaron let out a rusty laugh. ‘Those pregnancy hormones must be something.’
‘I guess so.’ She swallowed and smiled. ‘What do you like? We have the lo mein, General Tsao’s chicken, moo shoo pork…’
The slight smile that had softened Aaron’s features disappeared and he reached for a plate. ‘I’ll just have a bit of everything. And I’ll eat in my study. I have work to do.’
Zoe felt the words like a rejection—and one she wasn’t prepared to accept. ‘You’ve been working all day,’ she said mildly. ‘And, not to sound like a nagging wife, but I’m not going to last if I have to stay in this morgue of an apartment by myself twenty-four-seven.’
Aaron frowned more in perplexity than irritation. ‘What are you suggesting?’
‘I think we can manage to eat dinner together,’ Zoe said lightly. ‘And, in any case, I want to talk to you about your decor.’
The look of patent disbelief on his face was both funny and satisfying, Zoe decided. ‘My decor? Are you serious?’
‘Completely.’ She took her plate over to the sofa and sat down cross-legged, slurping another forkful of noodles before she resumed. ‘I want to get some more things from my apartment.’ His eyes widened and she held up one placatory hand. ‘Don’t freak, this isn’t a permanent measure. But I like my things. They’re colourful.’
‘I wasn’t freaking,’ Aaron answered as he sat across from her, his own plate balanced in his lap.
‘An eye flare is freaking for you,’ Zoe tossed back. ‘You are the master of control.’
‘Now that’s a compliment.’
‘In your world, maybe.’ She realised she was enjoying this banter, and the smile that twitched Aaron’s lips made her heart sing. ‘Anyway, back to the decor thing. I need to get some things from my apartment.’
‘I can have someone take care of that.’
‘I’d like to do it myself. God only knows what one of your minions would pick out.’
Aaron raised his eyebrows. ‘My minions?’
‘I need to go through it and see what I can bring back here. Not too much, just a few more paintings and things.’
She watched him process this, wondered how alarming it was for him to have her moving more of her stuff in. And, while it made sense, Zoe knew she was pushing just a little. She didn’t really want to examine why.
‘Fine,’ Aaron said after a moment. ‘I’ll arrange a car and driver. But I don’t want you to exert yourself. No lifting things.’
‘Yes, sir.’ She smiled, his concern warming her heart—even if it shouldn’t. He was just dealing with the situation. She was the one painting rainbows.
Three days later Zoe sat at a table in the East Village’s community centre art-room, watching as Robert, a very self-contained boy of six, surveyed the materials she’d set out.
‘What do you feel like doing today, Robert?’ she asked gently. ‘Crayons, markers, paints?’ Robert had been coming to the centre for nearly a month, ever since his dad had walked out without any warning and hadn’t been in touch since. He had barely spoken, had never touched the art materials, yet his mother kept bringing him in the hope that something would ease the pain he held so tightly inside.
‘Maybe you could try a mandala today,’ Zoe suggested, taking one of the simple designs of curved shapes that children often found soothing to colour. She placed it in front of him and Robert stared down at it silently for a few seconds before he finally selected a crayon and began to carefully colour in the shapes.
Zoe watched him, occasionally making some encouraging observation, when about halfway through Robert thrust his crayon away and reached for a black marker. She watched him in silence as he vehemently scribbled black marker all over the paper, obscuring the careful design. When the page was nearly all black, ripped in some parts from the force of his scribbling, he put the marker back in the jar and sat back, seemingly satisfied.
Zoe rested a hand on his shoulder. ‘Sometimes we feel like that, don’t we?’ she said quietly. In truth she could relate to Robert’s deliberate destruction. There was your life, all carefully set out in pleasing shapes, and something happened that cancelled it all out, scribbled over your careful planning.
Robert had felt like that when his father had upped and left. And Zoe felt like that now, pregnant and alone. Despite the friendliness of that first evening, Aaron seemed determined to avoid her whenever possible. Zoe had tried to draw him out, but the emotional effort exhausted her. She didn’t want to have to try so hard. She wanted something to be easy, she acknowledged ruefully. But there was nothing easy about Aaron Bryant.
That morning she’d taken a few more things from her apartment, pangs of both worry and regret assailing her as she had looked around the space she’d made her own, now empty and forlorn. A few weeks ago she’d had a home, a life, had been in control of her own destiny. Now she felt as if she were spinning in a void of unknowing and uncertainty.
Kind of like Robert felt now. She reached for a large piece of paper and the finger paints. ‘Maybe,’ she suggested, ‘you’d like to do something messy?’ The little boy was almost unbearably neat. ‘Mess is okay here, you know. Everything washes off.’
He hesitated and she opened the paint pots, waited with a smile. A second later he carefully dipped one finger in the yellow paint and drew a single, cautious line on the paper, like a ray of sunlight. Zoe murmured something encouraging.
It was a start to unlocking the little boy’s pain, to freeing those tightly held parts of himself. And she needed to start, too. She wasn’t going to drift through the next few weeks like some desperate ghost. That had never been her style, even if men tended to bring out clinginess in her. She wouldn’t be clingy with Aaron; she’d be in control. She’d claim her life back, even if it wasn’t on the terms she really wanted.
She spent the rest of the afternoon arranging some of her things in Aaron’s apartment, nerves battling with determination. She ordered Indian—she was methodically working through the takeaways—and set the table for two. Aaron made it home for dinner most evenings, and he almost seemed to enjoy the chatter she kept up resolutely, even if he sometimes seemed bewildered by the whole concept: dinner. Conversation. Company.
The lift doors swooshed open and Zoe turned. ‘Hey there,’ she said brightly and watched as Aaron’s gaze moved around the apartment, taking in the plants lining the window sill and the two paintings she’d put on the walls, replacing some of the soulless modern atrocities he’d had hanging there. One canvas had been six feet of blank white with a single black splodge in the corner. Ridiculous.
‘I see you’ve made yourself at home,’ he said neutrally and Zoe gave him a teasing smile.
‘I warned you, didn’t I? At least this place has some colour.’
He stopped in front of an oil painting of a jar of lilacs on a kitchen table. The paint had been used liberally, creating, Zoe hoped, a messy yet welcoming feel.
‘This is rather good, I suppose,’ he said, sounding a bit grudging, and he turned to Zoe. ‘Who’s the artist?’
‘Oh…no one famous.’ She felt herself blush.
Aaron arched an eyebrow. ‘Well, I didn’t think it was Van Gogh. Is it a friend of yours?’
‘Umm… It’s mine, actually.’ Both of the paintings were, and she suddenly realised how arrogant it might seem to hang her own art on his walls. She hadn’t thought of that at the time; she just liked to be reminded of what she’d done, what she was capable of.
‘I thought you were an art therapist, not an artist,’ Aaron said, his brow furrowed, and Zoe shrugged.
‘One’s a profession, one’s a hobby.’
‘Did you ever want to be a professional artist?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t really have what it takes. In any case, I like helping people.’ She saw him frowning at her, as if she were a puzzle he didn’t understand.