Page 52 of His Untouchable Heart

“Let me guess… you’re pregnant.”

Her lips parted. Then trembled.

And then she started to laugh. And cry. At the same time.

I caught her before the tears could fall, pulling her into my chest and wrapping my arms around her as she buried her face in my shirt. Her laughter shook against me, soft and breathless. She mumbled something I couldn’t quite make out until she leaned back and wiped at her cheeks.

“How did you know?”

I smiled. “Intuition.”

Her eyes searched mine like she didn’t quite believe it—but she didn’t press. She just leaned back into me for another second.

“Are you okay?” I asked, brushing her hair away from her face.

“Much better now,” she said. And I believed her.

We stood there in the sun, the gallery behind us and something entirely new in front of us, and for a moment, the rest of the world didn’t matter.

Gabrielle stepped back from our embrace and wiped her eyes again, this time with a little smirk tugging at her lips. The joy was still there, but something had shifted in her expression—calculated, focused.

“That’s not the only surprise,” she said.

I arched a brow. “There’s more?”

She turned, unlocked her car, and opened the back door.

Inside, resting in a custom crate that looked almost too pristine, was a canvas wrapped in layers of archival tissue. My breath caught before I even reached for it.

“I had a visit,” she said. “Curtain.”

That name tightened something behind my ribs. “You must have gone to your apartment?”

She nodded. “To take the pregnancy test and he was waiting by my car.”

I moved beside her and stared down at the crate. “He just gave it to you?”

“After some persuasion,” she said. “He wants it sold. Said the deal’s with me, not you. Typical ego.”

My jaw ticked, but I kept my reaction contained. The painting demanded my full attention now. Carefully, I reached in and lifted the crate, Gabrielle steadying the door open for me.

Even before we unwrapped it, I knew what it was.

“Femme au Collier Vert,” I said softly. “Picasso.”

Gabrielle nodded as we carried it inside together. “He had no clue what he was holding.”

We moved through the gallery’s intake hallway in practiced silence, Gabrielle unlocking the doors as I adjusted my grip. In the scanning lab, the light was cool and crisp. Controlled.

We laid the crate on the padded table and began the careful process of unsealing it.

The canvas inside was stunning. Bold greens and soft, uneven brushstrokes framed the woman’s neckline, her expression subtly melancholic in the way Picasso had mastered. The signature placement, the texture of the linen—at first glance, it was textbook.

Too textbook.

Gabrielle handed me a pair of gloves, and I loaded the painting onto the Burker Tracer’s platform. The machine came to life, and the screen lit up, feeding the scan line by line in pale green and red tones.

We stood there together, side by side, watching it all unfold.

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