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CLAUDIA
My eyes fluttered open, and it took them a second to focus. When they finally did, I gasped.
“Oh my God!”
I was staring at an abstract painting. The edges were shrouded in shadow, growing lighter as they drew inward to form a face. Broad brush-strokes of color formed a jawline, a nose, a pair of eyes… a face that was very familiar.
“It’s me!”
Hunter squeezed me from behind as I stood there in shock. The painting was beautiful. Totally amazing. And it was me! It looked exactly like—
“You painted me?”
“Yup.”
“When!?”
I couldn’t believe it was my first question. Hunter shrugged. “A while ago.”
I floated over to the canvas, forgetting all about high heels. The resemblance was uncanny. Hunter had captured my face, my lips, the curve of my eyes and ears. He’d even captured a look, one that I knew I made from time to time. The whole thing was just totally surreal.
I turned to him with tears in my eyes. No one had ever done anything like this before. It was the sweetest, most romantic thing anyone had ever done for me.
“I… I don’t know what to say…”
He laughed. In his black dress slacks and crisp white shirt I wanted to jump him right then and there.
“Maybe say that you like it?”
I ran to him. Threw myself in his arms. “I love it!”
He seemed relieved. Almost like he’d been nervous the whole time. Hunter — my confident, handsome, alpha boyfriend. The one who was never nervous or afraid of anything.
On top of being incredible sexy, it was also adorable.
“Ever wonder why Deanna acted so strange with you in the hallway that night?” he asked.
I thought about it. “Yeah?”
“Well she saw it,” he said. “That painting. Half-finished, while she was in my bedroom.”
“Oh…”
“She was angry that night. Totally pissed. We got into a fight, and she accused me of being ‘hung up’ on you.”
I remembered. It all made sense now.
“But after she left,” Hunter went on, “I sat there alone for a while and that’s when I realized something.” He looked down at me and shrugged almost imperceptibly. “I was.”
I hugged him, and he spun me around the room. There was no one else there, at least not in that part of the exhibit. No one in the world but us.
Suddenly he pulling me, heels and all. I stumbled forward trying to keep up. Hunter kept looking over his shoulder.
“Hunter, what are you—”
He flung open a door, then shoved me inside. When he closed it behind him, it was almost like being outside. A long glass room lay open to the moonlit sky, with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the Mansion’s enormous back gardens.
“W—What is this place?”
