Her Unexpected Admirer

Elizabeth Lennox - The Alfieri Saga #4 - Her Unexpected Admirer

Her Unexpected Admirer (The Alfieri Saga #4)
Elizabeth Lennox

romance

Prologue

Fifteen minutes, Davis told himself. Show up, pretend to look and get out. He glanced at his watch, noting the time of arrival and mentally anticipating his departure time even before he walked into the studio. Damn, he truly disliked art and all the pretensions that went along with it. Davis considered paintings and sculpture to be a monumental waste of time. Why people needed something to decorate their walls was a mystery to him. His decorator, an irritating woman with too many teeth, had insisted on “investment pieces”. So there were some ridiculous “art works” decorating his walls that had cost him a stupid amount of money. He’d acquiesced on the purchases simply because he knew that they would have a good return when he sold them.

Yep, he thought as he stepped into the crowded art gallery, white walls, a lot of people oohing and ahhing about art that….Davis’ eyes glanced at the first painting and his mind stopped functioning. All the disparaging comments he’d been about to think just left his mind as he took in the spectacular colors and shapes in front of him. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was viewing, but the colors…the vivid symbols that formed images in his mind that were almost…erotic! “Stunning” came to mind and stuck. He couldn’t think of anything else to describe these paintings. They weren’t traditional paintings with a subject and background. If he had to put words to what he was thinking, he would say they were sort of flashes of something, images…or maybe feelings? He wasn’t exactly sure. It looked both chaotic and yet, still organized into one feeling. Damn! It was a stimulating sensation and, just staring at the canvas, he felt his body respond, felt his pulse pound in his head and beat throughout his body.

He’d never had a physical reaction to a painting before but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the first one. He wanted to stare at it, to figure out all the details and organize them in his mind but still just enjoy the entire experience.

As he stared, he realized that he didn’t just want this painting. He had to have it. He glanced down at the description and noticed no red dot indicating that the painting had been sold then turned to find the salesperson. He was determined to have that painting. But as he surveyed the room, his eyes caught on another painting, this one more relaxing but still causing a physical reaction in him. This one was almost serene with flashes of sunshine, flowers and…a rainbow? The artist was in an extremely happy mood when he or she painted this one and he actually felt a smile form on his face. Again, this was a painting he was determined to have. He already knew the artwork he was going to rip off of his walls so that he could put this one in its place.

Looking again, he caught another painting and his mood actually turned angry. Flashes of darkness, anguish and fury. The colors were shadier, somehow almost dangerous. He moved silently throughout the gallery, taking in each picture, each feeling and enjoying the crash of emotions that swelled up within him as he looked at each one in turn. His mind was already contemplating building an addition to his house, needing more space, a blank space with white walls just like this room with comfortable chairs in the center so he could easily move from one chair to the next, and one emotion after another.

“See anything you like?” A sophisticated woman with short, black hair and so much eye makeup, she almost looked like a raccoon sidled up to Davis, her eyes taking in all of him. She was painfully thin and her anorexic body was enhanced by the tightest dress he’d ever seen. “How many of them have been bought?” he asked, his voice deeper than usual because of all the emotions ripping through him. If his brothers and sister were here, they would laugh themselves silly because he was one of the least emotional of all of his siblings. Of the five of them, he was the most logical, the one that refused to let any sort of emotion cloud his judgment. He liked logic and common sense. He preferred analyzing life and figuring out the best path. It was how he’d created his empire, his brain