Free New Year’s Kisses by Rhian Cahill Page A

away.
    Carefully, she replaced the bottle of water at the base of her easel. “I thought you were buying clay.”
    Nick was a potter. It was his studio she shared in the heart of the port city of Fremantle. The marina where he kept his yacht was only metres away. Tourists ambled past daily and her vivid paintings of the Australian landscape lured them in just as much as Nick’s pots with their incredibly sensuous shapes and stunning glazes. It was a perfect set up, but one she knew Nick hadn’t wanted to share with her. When his previous studio partner, John Li, headed for Europe, she’d forced Nick to overlook the fact she was female—and therefore, in his experience, susceptible—by a nifty bit of emotional blackmail.
    And she wasn’t ashamed, nope, not one little bit.
    “I’ve got the clay. Claude came through with terracotta from a different supplier. It’ll work for the chunkier pieces I’m planning for summer.”
    “Huh.” She turned back to her painting. Like Nick, she was already planning for summer although it was only early spring. She’d chosen beaches for her theme this year: the blues of the sea and sky, the warm browns of driftwood, white sand and the grey-tinged green of dune grasses. She never painted people into her pictures, although a swimsuit or towel would add a focal point of bright colour. The dilemma of ‘to people or not to people’ was the reason she’d been chewing her paint brush. On the whole, she thought she’d stick with pure, unsullied landscapes, leaving it empty for people to colonise with their own dreams.
    “Do you want a cuppa?” Nick headed for the kettle and mugs tucked in a corner of the room.
    For all that it exuded an untidy, casual welcome, every inch of the studio was planned with care. The two front rooms displayed Nick’s pots and her paintings, plus coffee and tea facilities for customers, art reference books and the reception desk—a century old, solid jarrah office desk that wore its scars comfortably. She and Nick had separate work spaces in these public rooms—hers defined by her easel and corkboard, and his by a potter’s wheel and blue tarpaulin laid out to catch the messiness of his craft. When they worked out here, they were like performance artists. People enjoyed the sensation of looking ‘behind the scenes’.
    Not that customers ever got to see the real back rooms. Nick had the use of most of them for his clay, pots and kiln, but she had her own snug room with canvases and paints, sketch books and photos. She had photos everywhere. She’d sorted through them and pinned her favourite beach snaps to the public corkboard. She took photos wherever she travelled in Australia—and she loved to travel through Australia’s varied landscapes, from tropical beaches to desert and the snowfields that everyone forgot were part of Australia, too. Although she never painted a picture directly from a photo, she liked the reminders of colours and shapes. The photos sparked her memories of how the various landscapes felt. How they smelled, their immensity, the feelings that she wanted to evoke via her paintings.
    Nick handed her a mug of tea and took his own with him to the sofa. Its battered leather was stained with paint smears and clay dust. It suited Nick as he lounged there in his faded jeans and a grey corded cotton shirt. He’d rolled up his sleeves.
    He usually did, but she was as distracted as always by the sight of his powerful forearms. They spoke of his mastery of clay, the pursuit of his craft and the sheer strength that was Nick.
    She didn’t even care that there were traces of clay under his nails that even the nailbrush he used couldn’t eradicate. Today’s clay was orange, the terracotta he’d mentioned.
    “Earth to Zoe.”
    She took a hasty sip of tea. Normally, she was more discreet in how she watched him. A girl couldn’t wear her heart in her eyes.
    He set his mug on the floor and leaned his elbows on his knees. “I’ve been