The Art of Inheriting Secrets(67)

“Ack!” Samir reared back and covered his eyes with his hands. “That’s my grandmother.” He laughed. “Oh, my eyes are burned forever.”

“This is your grandmother?” I shuffled through the pictures, and there were dozens and dozens of them, not all fully naked but all suggestive. Some when she was only a teen, maybe fourteen or fifteen, her breasts high and still small. Another was of the same woman in her thirties, her arms rounder, her hips wide, her face mature. Some in India, some clearly here in this room.

“This is—” The implications were tragic. “They were lovers.”

He lowered his hands from his eyes and leaned over my shoulder again, covering the top photo with his open palm. His eyes met mine, full of sorrow. “Think of it,” he said quietly. “All those years.” His voice was raw. “It’s so sad.”

His eyes were so close I could count individual eyelashes, see the barely visible line where his iris met the pupil. I looked at his mouth, which I knew from kissing him was soft and full. The lingering, intense connection between us flared again, and I looked away. “What was her name?”

“Nandini.”

“Nandini.” I whispered it, and to my amazement, a tear welled over and fell down my face.

“What’s this?”

I closed my eyes, trying to identify the ache. “I don’t know. It’s just heartbreaking.”

“It is.” He brushed the tear away. “Now they would just marry and be done.”

“Instead they married men. And Violet became a drunk.”

His hand, heavy and long fingered, rested across the sheaf of photos on my lap. His nails were clipped short, tidy, efficient, and even so they were beautiful. Like his tapered fingers, his broad thumb, the angle of his wrist. I pressed the tip of my index finger to the tip of his. “Neither of us would exist if they’d married.”

“Would you mind?” He lifted his hand, and our palms met, sizzling, as if the combination created a shimmering electric field. “If I did not exist?”

“Yes. I would hate that world.” Impulsively, I reached up and cupped his jaw, moved his hair away from his cheekbone, wondering how I’d missed the fact that this face, this singular face, was impossibly precious. I held it between my hands, peering down into his eyes, eyes like a night sky, eyes had that enchanted me the first time I’d seen him and enchanted me again, over and over. I brushed my thumbs down his goatee, as he so often did, and this time, it was me who angled my head and paused, looking for permission, then leaned in and kissed him.

Kissed his mouth, those soft, full lips. I fell into them, into him, and then his arms were around me, hauling me half into his lap, the photos scattering, and he was kissing me back, hard, one hand on the back of my head, the other on my lower back. We were kissing each other, plunging, exploring, hungry. I buried my hands in his hair, and he hauled my body into his chest. I ran my hands over his shoulders, powerful and broad, and he slid his hands beneath my sweater to touch my back, my sides.

Abruptly, he stopped, captured my hands. “Wait.” He swallowed. “Not here, with them watching.”

“Oh.” I laughed. “No, that would be weird. You’re right.”

He brushed my hair away from my mouth, his eyes following the path of his fingers. “We need to get things right here, too, before we leave.”

“I know.” I touched his nose, feathered my fingers over his heavy eyebrow. An ache made of equal parts lusty hunger and a piquant yearning filled my body, heart and throat and mind and fingers. Now that we were touching, I didn’t want to stop. “I feel like an iron shaving stuck to a magnet.”

He smiled, ran his hands down the outside of my legs. “Believe me, I know the feeling.”

I glanced at the box, then back to him. “You won’t change your mind?”

“No.” He caught my face in his hands, fiercely, and kissed me again. Hard and deep. His eyes opened, and they were close, close, close. “No. Will you?”

I couldn’t speak. Only shook my head.

Gently, he pulled away. “All right, then. Let’s get this business done.”

I opened one of the paintings, expecting it to be one of my mother’s early paintings, but instead, it was an exquisite portrait of a young woman in sixteenth-century dress, her hair curled on one shoulder, her breasts pressed into the square bodice of her blue gown. The painter had captured a sense of mischief about her, and his command of light—cascading over her skin, tangling in her hair—was magnificent. “This looks important,” I said. “Do you know artists?”

“Not really, but I agree that it is very high quality. Is it an ancestor?”

“I don’t know, but she could be.” I looked at the wrapped paintings and made a decision. “I don’t want to leave them, but I also don’t want to look at every single one of them. Will these fit in your car?”

“Not all at once.” He gestured to the bed, where other things were waiting transport as well. “I can call someone, perhaps.”

“No, no. I know who to call.” I scrolled through my favorites on my phone and found Peter’s number. He was available. “He’ll meet us in front in an hour. We can drop the paintings and the box at my flat.”

One side of his mouth faintly, faintly lifted. “And then we can go to my house, if you like.”