Chapter 50 – True Love in Her Revenge

“You’re giving this to me?”

“I am. You can even keep the frame.” She smirked, “it’s hollow and lightweight so it may need to be replaced.”

Realization coated his features and he smiled suddenly. “The frame is a simple wooden frame and definitely not worthy of displaying your magnificence. I’ll get a great frame made. I know a gallery in town which does custom work.” He winked at her.

She giggled. “I bet it’s on my way to work.”

He laughed holding up the artwork to examine it in the sunshine while she locked the storage unit back up. “I would very much like to go through your entire collection when we’re not as pressed for time.”

“It’s not great to be honest. Many of these pieces I shoved in here because they lacked inspiration.”

“This one is good.” He frowned at her.

“You like it because it’s my boobs,” she laughed when he shrugged his agreement.

He paused, “I can’t wait to hang it in the bedroom at home.”

“You’re going to hang it in the bedroom?”

“Yes. Isn’t it where you hung it at your house?”

She made a face, “no. The day Merlin saw it he told me to get rid of it. He said my body was for his eyes only and I was never allowed to show any work like this ever.”

“He’d put a loin cloth on Michelangelo’s David.” Isaias shook his head regretfully, “how the hell did you live with his conservative misogynistic views? The man is dull. You deserve excitement and passion and to be able to freely express your creativity in any manner you see fit. If painting your breasts is what inspired you, then good for you. Most women in this country are ashamed of their bodies. I’m proud my woman is happy with her shape.”

His words touched her heart and then they caught up to her and she lifted her eyebrows, “your woman?”

“Mm,” he grinned and tugged her close to kiss her lips again, “you are all mine. Merlin might have fucked up by not appreciating you, but it is not a mistake I will make. You can rest assured I take far better care of the people who are important to me than any of the McGraths could ever dream. They might want you back, but they’ll have a hell of a fight on their hands if they try to take you from me.”

She blinked at the possessive tone to his spiel, “Isaias. I don’t know what to say.”

“I know it’s only been a couple of weeks, sweetheart but I meant what I said last night. Committed, exclusive or whatever you want to call it, it is what we are. You are mine. I am yours. We’re in a relationship which is very important and very valuable to me, and I will not let you go without a fight.”

She stood on tiptoes and kissed his cheek, “come on my oversized caveman. I need to get to work. You need to attend a board meeting.” She grinned cheekily, “you know if you have any other meetings today where you need a competitive edge, you should leave the painting out. It might make people uncomfortable enough to lose focus.”

When he threw his head back and laughed loudly before swinging her in a circle in his arms, Liesl considered this might be the happiest she had felt in forever.

She was standing in her grandmother’s living room and groaned, “Granny, the light in here is terrible. I wish we could open the curtains.”

“I’m naked under this robe. I don’t want the neighbors to see me until the great unveiling.” She snickered with her voice raspy from the cigarettes she’d been chain smoking before Liesl arrived. According to Granny, cigarettes and coffee were life’s elixir. Personally, Liesl hated the smell of the tobacco, but her Granny was her Granny.

“Well, I still think we should go to the back yard where there is lots of light. You could pose on the bench for me so I can take a couple of photos.”

Her grandmother shivered, “it’s September. It’s cold.”

“It will take only a few minutes.”

“The neighbors will see my hoo-ha. Did you know I had my first Brazilian wax for this? They even waxed my asshole.”

“Oh my god,” she felt nauseated thinking of her grandmother getting such a thing done.

“When your grandfather was alive, he was into the seventies porn bush.”

“Granny!” she chastised the woman with a single shake of her finger.

Her grandmother was incorrigible and unstoppable, “he called it his secret garden.”

She suddenly wanted more vengeance against Craven and her video for putting her into the situation where she owed her Granny this favor. It wasn’t that she expected her grandmother not to have been a highly passionate woman with an attentive lover for a husband. No, she had seen firsthand how much her grandfather had doted and loved her. She simply did not want the specifics. Thinking of them doing the nasty felt, well, nasty.

She set up a light she’d brought from home and then motioned for her grandmother to sit on the settee. When she was a young girl, she used to come to Granny’s house, lay on this specific piece of furniture to read and sketch. She could lay there for hours. Now the memory was tainted because Granny had said she wanted the settee in the photo because it was her grandfather’s favorite place to make love. She shuddered as she looked at the velvet covered furniture wondering what a blue light would show.

“Do you truly intend to hang this up in the dining room?”

“Yup. Can you have it done for Thanksgiving? Make it as big as the last supper painting, I have in there now. I’ll take it down and put this up for Thanksgiving. It’ll boil your mother’s blood. She was the one who gave me the painting in there now.”

“Why do you want to boil her blood?”

“Because she’s doing what she always does and it’s bullshit,” Granny dropped her robe with no hesitation and stretched out languorously on the settee. She was draping herself over it in a way Liesl suddenly imagined she had seduced her grandfather a thousand times in his lifetime.

Liesl couldn’t help but the happy smile tugging at her lips at the notion this home had seen a lot of love. She began clicking with her phone.

“What do you mean, it’s bullshit?” her Gran’s words caught up with her.

“When you were a kid, she was always saying you were the older one, the stronger one, the sane one, so it was up to you to take the high road and back down from Sandy. She would give us the crap about how she never had to worry about you because you were so tough, but Sandy’s mind was so fragile. She was far needier, so she gave her time to her. It was bullshit. Strong people need support too. Your mother played into Sandy’s games from the day the kid could walk and talk. She’s still doing it and it’s wrong.”

“Fred says the same thing. I know Dad and Mom used to fight over it a lot when he was alive.”

“Your dad left her once, you know. He took you and Fred and brought you here with me. You stayed a whole month.”

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