AndyetI want her. She, who is utterly outside that world, untouched by it, which is maybe why I can’t look away.
She stands with her colleagues near an easel, her hair pinned haphazardly, a smudge of something pale—chalk, plaster?—at the edge of her wrist. She hasn’t bothered to dress up as the others who work at the Louvre have. She’s merely in the middle of her workday, wanting to show her face and get back to the de Valois pastel.
She looks utterly out of place in this room of lacquered men and women, and yet somehow she belongs more than any of us because she’s of the art. She is life amongst the marble.
Our eyes lock across the gallery.
For a moment, the crowd melts.
She quickly looks away, paying attention to something Cece says, but the tension lingers like the echo of a bell.
She’s in a colorful skirt that goes all the way down to her ankles and a black shirt that stretches across her breasts.
I want her.
I force myself to continue my circuit—greetings, handshakes, banalities.
But every few steps, I glance at her. And every time, I catch her profile, her lashes lowered, her lips pressed into the careful, neutral line of someone trying not to be caught staring.
Later, when the speeches are finished and the crowd begins to drift toward the champagne, I find her alone at the edge of the gallery,looking to escape.
“Tara.”
She freezes at the sound of her name. Then she turns, polite smile in place, as if we are acquaintances and nothing more. “Gustave.”
The way she says my name.Putain! I’m done for.
“I…meant to bring it up when I met you, but our conversation….” I let my words trail away.
She jerks her chin up. “What of our conversation?”
I take a deep breath, and look around to make sure no one is close enough to hear. “I owe you an apology.”
She arches an eyebrow. “You do.”
“Yes. It was…uncouth to propose, as I did, a liaison.”
I want her.
I want her.
I want Tara Gayarre.
She swallows and shakes her head. “That…was…”—her voice drops—“both of us.”
Hope soars inside me.
No other woman has gotten to me as she has. It’s not how she looks because sheisstunningly beautiful—non, it’s more. It’s how she easily quotes Sola or talks about art or…says my name.
“I also must apologize for Simone.” The words taste bitter. “She was out of line at the Fondation. Rude, deliberately so. You did not deserve that.”
She looks down at her boots as she tucks her hands in the pockets of her skirt. By God, she’s in a paint-stained shirt at a foundation gathering, and she doesn’tgive two fucks. I envy her freedom. I wish I could stand with her and breathe the air she does, one not weighed down by centuries of expectations and responsibilities.
“She was…memorable.” There’s a glint in her eyes when she adds, “Andshe was subtle.”
“She uses subtlety like a weapon.” It’s reprehensible for me to discuss my ex-wife in a poor light with the woman I want to bed. But it doesn’t feel sleazy. It feels liberating to talk to her, tell her what’s in my heart. “I should have—” I stop myself before I sayprotected you. That sounds patronizing.
“You should have what?” she demands.
