The depressing memory of the broken violin and broken wrist came back to her, and she sighed into her fringe again. “Is there any way we can work this out?”
“Absolutely.” The condescension in his voice made her teeth ache. “Pay the three and a half thousand dollars and contact your solicitor.” Another one of those deliberate pauses followed, and then the man continued, his thin voice no longer prissy but snide. “May I suggest, however, you don’t use the same man who represented your father?”
Hot anger yanked Sienna out of her self-pity. “Thank you for that advice, Mr. Fenchurch. And may I suggest you remember exactly where my father is at this moment. Annoying the daughter of an inmate of Long Bay Jail isn’t overly smart. I’ve met some of his new associates, and they would delight in making your acquaintance, I’m sure. In fact, Steel-bar Tony is due for parole tomorrow. Perhaps I can give him your number?”
“Uh…uh…”
Not so snide or prissy now, are you, Fenchurch? “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she put a wide smile in the dismissal, “Hugh Hefner himself is supervising the photo shoot. Have a good day.”
She killed the call halfway through Fenchurch’s flustered but, but, but.
“Damn you, Zach.” She tossed her phone onto a nearby chair and stormed around the various easels and drawing boards in her small studio, clenching and unclenching her fists. “Damn you.”
Stopping once more in front of the large blank canvas, she studied its untouched purity. Over the next six weeks, she’d planned to transform it into a portrait that would, hopefully, win her the Barton National Portrait Prize and elevate her once flourishing career to a wider public level. Now, however, it was likely to stay a blank square of white. The money required to enter the prestigious art contest, pay for materials and framing, plus entertain a prominent Australian figure while they sat for her had just disappeared in one phone call.
She dragged her hands through her hair and stared at the canvas. She didn’t know who she was angrier with—Zach, her father, Mr. Fenchurch, or herself. What the hell was she to do now?
It didn’t help that neither she nor Zach had received any normal kind of upbringing. Zach had been raised by a series of nannies hired more for their bust size than their parental skills. Their father had done him no favors by giving him whatever he wanted and never disciplining him, while his mother had spent every day in a drug-induced haze until the night she’d drowned in their guitar-shaped swimming pool. Great role model there.
She shook her head and crossed to her drawing board. At least her mother had tried to instill some morals in Sienna. However, she’d been fourteen when her parents divorced. The subsequent custody dispute for which she was the prize had ended months later when her mother died in a car accident. Joseph Roberts had turned to the first in his series of voluptuous nannies to raise his daughter and Sienna’s life had become somewhat surreal.
Which left her in a disadvantaged position with Zach now. She was twenty-six years old and attempting to raise an angry, sad, and moody fifteen-year-old boy without a clue how. But as long as their dad was in jail—four years and six months, if he made parole—that’s exactly what she was going to do. Somewhere in amongst the war zone, she’d try to rebuild her struggling art career.
What career? With the exception of mysterious businessman Mason Xavier, my work seems to be the artistic equivalent of Ebola.
Staring at the drawing board, she chewed on her bottom lip. How things had changed. Only six months ago, her work was beginning to gain respect, curators were approaching her about exhibiting her paintings, she was beginning to make ends meet, and then…nothing. Buyers vanished, dried up. No one seemed interested. Apart from Xavier.
Perhaps it was time to cash in on her father’s fame and notoriety? People would buy anything if it was attached to such a famous—infamous—public figure, and her dad definitely fell into that category.
Damn, that was a depressing thought. Had things sunk that—
Someone knocked on her studio door. She shot a quick glance at her watch.
Since when had Carrie ever been early? Especially for an afternoon of chocolate-biscuits therapy? She wasn’t due for another half an hour.