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His artistic gift lost before it had the chance to soar.
I’ve never seen his art, but Kathryn Tremont has. To hear her describe it, Nick’s talent was extraordinary, among the best she had ever seen. His rage over losing that part of him was deep and volatile. Until now, given all of his success in business and the fortune he’s amassed because of it, I believed Nick had come to terms with the loss of his art.
This room says otherwise.
It screams Nick’s pain with an agony that staggers me.
“I had a gun with me that night,” he says, no emotion in his deep voice. All I see in his eyes is raw, terrifying truth. “I was tired and angry and . . . Christ, so fucking empty. I remember thinking that night that I just wanted it to stop. I needed it all to end.”
A knot of ice-cold fear lodges in my throat as I listen to his confession. Dominic Baine, who to the rest of the world has everything he could possibly want or need, is telling me that the last time he stepped foot in this room he could think of no good reason to live.
I swallow past my dread, barely resisting the urge to offer him comfort. He won’t accept it. I can see that in the stoic way he stands, well out of my reach. If I try to close the distance between us right now it will only push him further away.
And he’s not finished telling me everything he needs to say.
“I passed out in the gallery at some point. I don’t remember leaving the room, but when I eventually came to, I still had the gun in my hand. I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was a black-and-white portrait hanging on the wall out there.” He slowly swivels his head in my direction. “Your painting.”
I nod faintly, because I know this part of the story. The first painting I ever completed had been on display at Dominion months before I met Dominic Baine. More recently, on our way to Paris last year, I discovered that same painting hanging in in Nick’s state room aboard his private jet.
“I didn’t realize I was looking at a self-portrait at the time.” His gaze holds me with such open admiration it steals my breath. “All I saw was an arresting beauty—and a hauntedness—that refused to release me. I couldn’t look away from it. Couldn’t look away from you, Avery.”
As unsettling as it had been to realize in Paris that it was some degree of obsession that brought Nick into my life, right now the primary emotion I feel is relief. Relief that he is standing here in front of me at all. Relief that he found some reason to hang on that night, even if the price was my own heart.
“I took your painting home with me. For the next three days, all I could think about was the face on that canvas and that fucking forty-five in my hand. I knew that sooner or later, it was going to come down to just one of them.” He walks toward me, his movements slow, but far from uncertain. “I can’t tell you all the things I felt when I looked at your image in the painting. Fascination. Adoration. A powerful, irresistible desire for a woman I thought was too incredible to be real. Things I feel every time I look at you.”
He reaches out and I hold my breath as his fingers brush gently along my cheek. I didn’t come here to be seduced, maybe not even to forgive, but intentions and boundaries have always been blurred when it comes to Nick and me. The soft sigh that slips past my lips only confirms that truth.
“I wanted the woman in the painting more than anything, Avery. Even death.” His touch leaves me, his hand drifting down to his side. “As for the talent I saw in that particular piece, it amazed me. Your gift was so raw, yet unmistakable. I looked at your art in that one painting and I felt awe and respect. Jealousy. Even rage. What I didn’t feel was empty. I threw the gun away, and that next day I went back to the gallery to find out everything I could about the painting. When Margot told me the artist and the model were one and the same, I had to know more. I had to know you.”
“Nick . . . I’m not sure how to respond to all of this. I’m not sure what to think.”
It’s going to take some time to process everything he’s saying and how I feel about it. Inside I’m breaking at the knowledge of how dark his life had gotten before we met. I’m humbled to think that I had anything to do with bringing him back from that brink.
My life had been dark before Nick too. My past had a grip on me I hadn’t been able to break on my own. In so many ways, he saved me every bit as much as I saved him. It was our mutual secrets that destroyed us. If we stand any chance of moving past them, we have to drag them all into the light.
I shake my head, trying to c
ling to the reason we’re both here. “You lied to me. From the very beginning and for all those months afterward, you let me think our meeting was purely coincidence when you orchestrated every facet of our relationship. You made certain that every path I took would lead me straight to you. For God’s sake, you even bought the apartment building I was living in and turned it into expensive condos to ensure I couldn’t stay there.”
“Yes, I did.” His expression is sober, but hardly contrite. “I learned that you were living in a dump at the mercy of a slum lord. It was unacceptable, so I gave you a reason to leave. And then I gave you someplace better to go.”
I tilt a wry look at him. “You hired Claire Prentice to come into Vendange where I was working and pretend she needed a house sitter. In your high-priced Park Avenue building where you also happened to live.”
“I wanted to know you were somewhere safe and comfortable. I wanted to remove the obstacles that stood in the way of you and the potential of your art. I wanted to see your talent set free to become what it has now. Most of all, I wanted you close to me, so I could get to know you.”
“You’re serious.”
“You wanted the truth,” he says softly. “Now, you have it.”
I had convinced myself that he had played me for a fool, that all of his manipulations and the efforts he took to conceal them from me had been some kind of sick game. I thought he used me simply for his own amusement, but it’s hard to reconcile any of that now. It’s impossible to ignore the earnestness in his eyes. As twisted as his actions were, there’s no denying that they came from a place of genuine concern.
“How can you make something so fucked up sound so well-meaning, as if what you did is the most reasonable thing in the world?” I heave a conflicted sigh. “Why not just ask me out like a normal person?”
He gives me a smile that’s full of irony. “I never said I was normal. You know that better than anyone.”
“I can’t make jokes about this, Nick. Jesus, not after everything you just told me. Not after everything you put me through.”
“I know, and I’m sorry about that. All of it.” His gaze searches mine, tender but unflinching. “I told you in the beginning that I wasn’t prepared for how much I craved you, how much you meant to me. I wanted the woman I saw in your painting. I wanted to help shape the talent I saw in your art, the talent I no longer had. But I wasn’t prepared for you, Avery. I sure as hell wasn’t planning on falling in love with you.”
