Impossible Page 0,31

sacrificed, for the sake of art. She'd heard it all before. “I could give him a small advance if it would make a difference. I'll see what he says at dinner. Maybe that would help him out with her.”

“It would probably mean a lot. The timing is pretty good for him. His oldest boy is going to college next year. He'll need the money.”

“Hopefully, we'll make him a lot of it. But it doesn't happen overnight.” Although they both knew that sometimes it did. After what Xavier had just told her, she hoped that it would happen that way for him. His family surely deserved it as much as he did. Particularly with a boy going to college. Liam didn't look old enough to have a child in his late teens. He seemed like a teenager himself.

Xavier hugged his mother then, and promised to have breakfast with her the next morning. They agreed to meet at ten, as she knew she'd have business calls to make in the morning. She was planning to leave for the airport at noon, and she wanted to spend her last few hours in London with him.

“Behave yourself tonight,” she said with a mock serious tone, issuing a motherly warning, and he laughed as he walked away. At least this time Liam wouldn't be with him, Sasha thought to herself. But now that she had met Liam, she was less worried about his influence on Xavier. And she suspected Xavier was right. Liam seemed juvenile, and immature perhaps, but harmless.

“See you in the morning!” Xavier waved, got into his car, and a moment later he drove away, pleased with himself. They had done good work that afternoon. Liam was off and running. His fledgling career had just taken a dramatic upward turn.

Chapter 5

Sasha's car and driver picked Liam up at precisely seven-thirty, and came to pick Sasha up at Claridge's at seven forty-five. As promised, she was waiting downstairs, and slipped into the car next to Liam when they arrived. He was wearing a decent-looking black suit, and a red shirt he had painted himself that had once been white. He had forgotten that was what he had done with his other good shirt, the one he had not used to wax his car. He painted it one night when he was drunk, and thought it was funny. Now, as he had discovered that night, it was the only shirt he had. He hoped Sasha liked it. She didn't, but didn't comment. He was an artist. So was her son, and if he had worn something like it to Harry's Bar, she would have killed him. But Liam was not her son.

Without appearing to, she glanced at his shoes, which were almost respectable, but not quite. They were serious, grown-up black shoes, meant to have laces, and for some obscure reason, he had thrown the laces out. He realized while he dressed that he had probably used them for something, maybe to wrap a package he had sent somewhere, but he could no longer remember what. He thought the shoes looked better without laces anyway, and he preferred them that way. He was clean shaven, freshly showered, smelled delicious, and had impeccably clean hair, tied with a plain black ribbon he had wound around the rubber band on his long blond ponytail. He looked handsome and immaculate, and except for the shirt and absence of laces in his shoes, he would have looked respectable, but he was an artist after all. Liam didn't follow the rules, and never had. He saw no reason to follow anyone else's rules but his own, which was partly why his wife had stayed in Vermont, and hadn't seen him since July. In spite of the painted red shirt and ponytail, there was something distinctly handsome and aristocratic about him. He was a beautiful man, and a man of contrasts. In another lifetime or profession, he could have been an actor or a model, a lawyer or a banker, but the shirt he had painted red said that he was not only an artist but a rebellious child. It said, “Look at me. I can do anything I want. And there isn't a damn thing you can do about it.”

“Do I look all right?” he asked Sasha nervously, and she nodded. She didn't want to hurt his feelings, and the shirt was, after all, a work of art. She didn't notice the lack of shoelaces until they were standing in