Impossible

“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 Harry's Bar. And as he hopped onto a stool at the bar, she saw that he wasn't wearing socks either. The headwaiter knew her well, and without saying a word, he handed Liam a long black tie, which actually looked fine with his shirt, once he put it on. She helped him tie it, as she had for Xavier when he was a child. Liam said he hadn't worn a tie in years and had forgotten how to tie one. He looked completely unconcerned. The fact that everyone else in the room was exquisitely dressed, the men in beautifully tailored suits and shirts custom made in Paris, the women in cocktail dresses by important designers, didn't bother him at all. One thing Liam didn't lack was confidence, except where Sasha was concerned. He wanted to impress her, and was not at all sure how. She looked so capable and confident, so quietly poised as she chatted with him, that he suddenly felt like the innocent he was. She treated him like a child. She told him he looked fine when he asked, and she walked into the restaurant proudly beside him, and acted as though every man in the place should have looked like that. It made Liam almost giddy to walk beside her, and he felt like Picasso when he sat down.

He had already asked her about the contract twice in the car. To spare his nerves and her own, she handed it to him at the table. He signed it without looking at it, despite her warnings to do otherwise, and then he beamed at her. He was a Suvery artist now. It was all he had wanted and dreamed of for the past ten years of his life. It had finally happened, and he was going to savor every moment of it. He knew this was a night he would never forget, nor would Sasha. She suspected that one day they would laugh about this evening, when he had walked into Harry's Bar in a shirt he had painted himself. Despite his youth and zany looks, there was an aura of greatness about him.