Free Yesterday's Sun by Amanda Brooke Page A

Holly, Holly, Holly. What suspicious creatures you countryfolk are,” he admonished. “So you think as soon as you traded in your stilettos for wellies, I’d be putting your artwork out to grass, too, do you?”
    “Well …” grimaced Holly, feeling guilty that she would even suggest that Sam wasn’t taking care of her best interests.
    “There’s one of your pieces over there,” Sam sniffed, pointing to the window front. Holly wasn’t sure if his stance reminded her of a schoolteacher or an air steward.
    “Another to the right there and two to the left, there and there.”
    Definitely air steward, thought Holly, suppressing a grin. “And the rest?”
    “S-O-L-D, sold!”
    “All of them?” gasped Holly.
    “All of them,” confirmed Sam. “The recession is officially over. You heard it here first.”
    Holly grabbed his arms and they did a little celebratory jig in the middle of the gallery.
    “Well done, Sam!”
    “Well done, Holly!” corrected Sam. He stopped still and peered at Holly’s face. “Is that a black eye I see beneath the camouflage of makeup? Has that man of yours been beating you up?”
    “Why does everyone keep saying that!” demanded Holly. “Of course he didn’t. I fell in the garden; that’s all.”
    “Hmm,” replied Sam. “Well, you can tell me all about your new country life later. First we need to deal with your favorite client,” he whispered.
    “Oh, God, is she here already?” Holly broke out in a cold sweat at the thought of what she was about to face. “Is Bronson Junior with her?”
    “Thankfully not,” replied Sam, who shared Holly’s relief.
    Holly was of course referring to Mrs. Bronson’s offspring or, as Holly tended to view the baby, her latest fashion accessory. Holly might not be an expert in maternal matters, but each time she saw Mrs. Bronson with her son it brought to mind a precocious child playing with a new kitten. She wouldn’t have been surprised if her client had turned up with the poor child peeking out of one of her oversized handbags.
    “Onward and upward,” Sam told her, directing her up the stairs to his private office.
    The meeting with Mrs. Bronson went better than expected. Holly had two fully worked-up designs to show her client, but there was only one that she felt able to put her heart into and fortunately for her it was the one Mrs. Bronson opted for. It was a spiraling form, depicting not just a mother cradling a baby in her arms, but a whole series of figures below them, symbolizing past generations swirling up through the black stone base toward the two white figures. She would still need to complete a scaled-down version first for Mrs. Bronson to sign off on, but for Holly the hardest part was now over. She had managed to create the concept and she was as happy with it as she could be under the circumstances, and given the struggles she had put herself through.
    The bell above the door of the gallery settled into silence and both Holly and Sam breathed a sigh of relief as Mrs. Bronson disappeared into the distance.
    “Well, that went well,” Holly said cautiously.
    “Don’t sound so surprised. The design is beautiful. Well done, you. I know it can’t have been easy.” Sam knew Holly better than most and he knew all about her troubled childhood. “I did wonder if it was the right thing for you to take on, but you pulled it off. I don’t think I could have bluffed my way through it. Remind me never to play poker with you.”
    “What do you mean, ‘bluff’?” Holly demanded. Although she knew exactly what he meant.
    “Holly, I love you dearly, but, well, you’re not exactly into motherhood, are you? To pull off an art piece of this scale takes some insight into all that mother-and-child nonsense and I’m afraid you’re just as bad as me: clueless on the subject.”
    “New home, new life. Who says I’m not mother material?” Holly argued. She could feel the color rising in her face. A week ago she would have agreed