The Mistress(39)

“No.” She smiled at him wistfully, sad to have lost the portrait. “I have an apartment here now. We do. On Avenue Montaigne. It’s been fun decorating it, and I’m still looking for art.” She glanced back at her own likeness. “This would have been perfect. But I’ll look at your other work.”

“Maybe I could come and see the spaces you have, and the light, and we could pick something together,” he said hopefully, not sure why he’d said it. Given the art collection he had, Vladimir didn’t need his advice. He wondered where he was. “Where are you located?”

“Number fifteen. I’ll contact you through the gallery,” she said simply. “I’m here for another two weeks. Will you be here for a while?”

“Another day or two before I go back down South, but I can make time.” He would have flown to her side at the merest invitation, but he doubted that she’d call him.

“It’s a wonderful show,” she complimented him, and she had noticed a number of red dots, indicating that several pieces had sold. She smiled at him then. “Thank you for painting me. It’s a great compliment,” she said graciously, forgiving him for selling her portrait to a stranger without ever offering it to her. He almost told her the truth then, that he didn’t want to part with it. Giving it up would be like losing her, even though he had never had her, and knew he never would.

She walked around the show for a few minutes then, and when he looked for her again a few minutes later, she had left. And he had gone back to stand with Inez and the others, and tried to seem casual about it when he reappeared after talking to Natasha. Inez gave him a chilly, suspicious look, and spoke to him in a cold tone the moment they were alone.

“I’m not blind, you know. I saw you with the woman in the portrait. You told me you didn’t know her.” Her eyes were questioning and hard.

“I don’t know her, not really,” he said almost honestly, but not quite. He wished he knew her, but didn’t. “I’ve seen her three times in my life, four including tonight. At my mother’s restaurant with her boyfriend last summer, when I delivered a painting to her, for two minutes at a London art fair, and now. And I didn’t invite her tonight. I don’t know why she came. She must be on their client list. She had a face I wanted to paint, that’s all.”

“The portrait is a perfect likeness of her. I recognized her immediately.” And then she shocked him with her next question. “Are you in love with her?”

“Of course not. She’s a total stranger.”

“Artists don’t paint women they don’t know, unless they’re obsessed with them in some way, or they’re studio models.” And the portrait had that quality of obsession to it, which Inez had sensed. It was a love letter to a woman he longed to know better, and could only guess at. Inez was right. But he’d been obsessed with her six months before. He thought he was over it, until he felt as though someone had ripped his heart out of his chest again the minute he laid eyes on her that night. It was starting all over again, just as it had before. She had magic powers of some kind that he couldn’t seem to resist.

“I’m not obsessed,” he said, as much to convince himself as Inez, who looked unhappy. And having seen Natasha in the flesh, if he was in love with her, she knew the competition was stiff.

“Why is it that I smell drama in the air?” she said, looking at him intently. “I told you, I don’t do drama. If that’s what this is, I’ll run before you know what hit you.”

“You have nothing to worry about,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders, but he felt like a liar and a cheat. He had robbed Natasha of her face to paint her portrait, and now he was lying to Inez about a woman he had been obsessed with and didn’t know. He felt like a madman as he left her a few minutes later, went to Jean Pasquier’s desk, took out a red dot, and put it on the wall next to Natasha’s portrait. At least he could do that much for her, so no one bought it that night.

The rest of the opening went well, and both Theo and Jean Pasquier were pleased. Gabriel congratulated him before he left. And he and Theo agreed that it was a shame that his mother hadn’t come. She was busy doing some remodeling and repairs at the restaurant, and claimed she couldn’t leave. But they both knew she hated coming to Paris, and preferred her safe, familiar little world in St. Paul de Vence. Theo understood that about her and didn’t take it personally.

“I’ll tell her what a success the show was,” Gabriel promised when he left. And Theo went back to the hotel with Inez after the last guests were gone. He was meeting with Pasquier the next morning to go over sales and a list of clients to send images to who had expressed interest in his work that night.

Theo and Inez were quiet on the walk back to the hotel, each of them lost in thought. And when they got to their room, Inez questioned him again.

“Why is it that I don’t believe you when you say you’re not in love with that girl?” She was sitting on the bed and staring at him, as though she would find the answer in his eyes and not his words.

“She belongs to the richest man in Russia.” He said it as though she were an object, a piece of furniture, or a slave, and hated the way it sounded and what it meant, because in a way it was true. Vladimir considered her a possession and treated her as one.