Kieren takes it from me, holds it up to Roark.
“Damn straight,” Roark says.
Kieren slides it onto my ring finger.
“Oh, I... I can’t take this.” The size of the ruby and the diamonds... The ring has to be worth at least half a million dollars, if not more.
“If the ring fits, it’s yours. You don’t insult a dragon when they give you gold. You have to take it, Raine,” Evander says.
“Oh, I... I didn’t know.” Then again, there are so many things I don’t know about dragons.
“Well, now you do.” Kieren kisses the top of my head. “This was great and all, but I want to show you something else.” He pulls me back down to the glass door. “I had this put in not long ago.”
“You had this put in?” Roark growls.
“Roark installed it. Mostly so his dragon wouldn’t eat the installers. I hope you like it.” Kieren pulls open the glass door. It hisses, and dry temperate air hits me: 68 degrees and around 45 percent humidity—the perfect calm in a stormy world for art.
“You have more art down here?”
“Just some recent acquisitions.” Evander laughs.
My eyebrows shoot up. “Recent? I’ve opened all the crates from earlier this summer.”
Kieren smirks at me. “These were purchased even more recently than this summer.”
“Oh, I didn’t think you had bought anything.” I cock myhead. Is it true? Are they the anonymous buyers of all the Monets this summer and fall? I’m more than curious about what he’s talking about. But there are five easels, each of them with a lightweight canvas fabric over them.
I’m shaking because there’s no way these are the anonymously purchased Monets, right? They would have just put them in the collection, not down here in their hoard. I turn from Evander to Roark, and my gaze lands on Kieren. His smile consumes his face. And in my heart, I know there’s no way thesearen’tthe auctioned Monets.
“Ready?” Kieren asks.
“Yes.” I’m trembling inside. Is it the guys all telling me they love me, or is it the paintings? Or lying on a bed of gold? It’s all so nuts, parsing through it all makes my head swell.
Kieren pulls the fabric off the first painting. And my jaw drops. Water Lilies, one of the rare sizes. This one sold at auction in Paris in late August.
Then he pulls the cover from the next one, and the next one. Another, another. One of his rare paintings,Camille on Her Deathbed—it’s been privately owned for a long time and has rarely been seen. It’s an intimate painting of Monet’s dying wife.
“Kieren!” I don’t know if I’m going to laugh, cry, or swoon.
Roark moves behind me, grabbing me around my waist, and I lean back into him. Definitely swoon. I can’t speak for a long while.
My eyes flow from the painting to Kieren, and my chat with Wren flashes back. “I owe my sister a fancy dinner.”
“That can be arranged,” Evander says. The environmental factors in the room deaden the sound.
“It’s all so beautiful. Hauntingly beautiful. So personal.It’s almost too much to look at.” Do I mean the paintings or the guys? Because they’re staring at it with such love. “It’s a wonderful addition to your collection.”
“No,” Kieren says.
The muscles in my cheeks drop from a smile to puzzlement. “Really, it is. I suppose this does make the collection a little heavy in impressionism. But I certainly don’t mind.”
“That’s not what he means, Duchess,” Roark says behind me.
I turn in his arms, staring up at his blue eyes. My heart’s in my throat. “What does he mean, then?”
“These aren’t part of our collection. That’s why we have them down here. We don’t want anyone else to see them.”
“Oh, okay. Did you buy them for a museum, then? That’s a very generous and thoughtful endowment. I’m sure you can get a good tax write-off and?—”
