Stroke of Love

Chapter 7: Gallery Giants

Karen was horrified. She knew it was a compliment to her but she considered Basil to be a friend and an upstanding art connoisseur. If she had known that Jay Madison was going to insult him, she might not have encouraged this visit.

She watched as Basil looked up from vast desk in anger. His outrage gave way to surprise and then pleasure.

"Jay, my friend! You dog... I told you not to do that!" he turned his head to take in Madison's companion with a smile. "Karen, darling, how are you and what on earth are you doing with Jay?"

Jay Madison crossed the room and the two men shook hands heartily. Karen was still by the door taking it all in, with relief flooding through her. Both men had an obvious, genuine affection for one another. Jay, she realised, had been teasing Basil.

As was her habit, she observed what was in front of her through her artistic lens. The two men were tall and blue-eyed and both of them were handsome, but the similarities between the two gallery owners ended there, she thought. One had curly blonde hair and the other's was almost black and much straighter.

Basil looked rather like a playboy, completing the bad boy image with a sixteen carat stud in one ear, an open necked shirt sporting a finely wrought gold chain lying against his throat. Jay, Karen thought, looked like a classic English GQ model. Serious and sexy. His companion could had been French, she mused with his fine features and metrosexual sense of style. Jay... well, Jay...

Before she could finish her analysis, Basil called her name.

"Karen, why are you just standing there? At least come say hello."

She moved forward with an easy smile.

"What has Jay done to you?"

"Noting I didn't ask for," she said, kissing the younger art collector, who snorted.

"I can believe that." He glanced at a relaxed Jay, who was now sitting in an armchair away from the desk. "My cousin's always been a sucker for a pretty face."

Karen gasped. "You're related?"

"Distantly," Jay interjected drolly.

Basil laughed. "You know you love me. His mother is my father's second something or other. But don't you tell anyone. We enjoy the hype."

"She wouldn't dare tell."

Karen and Basil looked at Jay with questioning looks on their faces.

"Not while you're under my roof, Miss Fox," he teased, one brow raised.

"You're living with Jay," Basil groaned. "Bang goes your professional focus, your brilliant productivity... his house is like a circus."

Jay laughed at his cousin. "And you're the show master!"

"I can't draw anyway, darlin'. My hand's broken, remember?"

"Ahh," it made sense to Basil then. "He's doing the honourable, is he?"

They didn't stay for a very long time, but Karen could tell the two of them were quite close and the media obviously exaggerated any competition or animosity.

"See," Basil said at one point, "the two of you would have met a long time ago if Jay had been in the country when we opened your exhibition. Not that you stuck around too long, yourself, Karen." He shrugged. "Well, now you'll have plenty of time to get acquainted over Brownie's breakfasts."

Jay sent him an unfathomable look and Basil returned it with a falsely innocent blue gaze.

"Is she staying in Ro-?"