Page 115 of The Art of Sinning
She was still reeling from the wordsmy lovewhen he set the box on the table and opened it.
As he lifted it, she began, “Jeremy, I don’t want to...”
Then she saw the painting, and her mouth dropped open.
He’d repainted whole parts of it. It had clearly been hastily done, but the changes were still quite obvious. He’d turned the figure of his father back into himself, and instead of holding aloft a knife dripping blood, he gripped the post of a tester bed, which was what he’d turned the banker’s counter into.
The background still worked, with its columns and lush curtains, but he’d altered her clothing to make it a nightdress by adding lace around the edges and changing the top half. And he’d not only painted over the wound but had given her a lower neckline to show a generous portion of bosom.
Heavenly day.
And those weren’t the only changes he’d made to her figure. He’d painted over the arm that shielded her features and had made her face more prominent. This time the womanwasclearly her. She looked sensual and erotic. Where before she’d been gazing up at her attacker in fear, now she looked up at him adoringly.
Like a woman in love. With a man who also looked to be in love.
She checked the impulse to leap into his arms with all the joy filling her heart. She had to be sure first. “What does it mean?”
“It means I love you. I probably have for some time. But I was so busy trying not to love you that I couldn’t hear the cry of my heart. Because although you were mostly right aboutArt Sacrificed to Commerce, you were wrong about one thing.”
His intent gaze speared her. “Perhaps it did start out as a work about my past, about my guilt over Hannah’s final hours. Father’s death had dragged me back into my anger, and that anger needed an outlet. So I felt compelled to paint this. Or rather, this as it was.”
He stared down at it. “After I met you, however, things began to change. No matter how I tried, I could never get your face right. I worked on it and worked on it, and somehow it came out wrong every time.”
Her blood chilled. “Because you were trying to paint Hannah.”
“No.” He smiled. “I considered that, but no. It was always you I wished to paint. But I was trying to fit you into an old paradigm where you didn’t belong. And the more I tried to make you fit, to turn you into the victim necessary for my lofty image of what the work was to be, the less it worked.”
He caught her hands in his. “Because you, my Juno, have never been a victim. You’ve always chosen your own path, even when Ruston threatened blackmail. Hannah let my father and me push her into what we wanted; you would never do that. Hell, you wouldn’t even let me marry you after I ruined you.”
As her heart began to soar, his voice thickened with emotion. “That’s why I couldn’t get your face right. Because somewhere in the depths of my artist’s soul, I realized that you would never fit. That if I ever got your face right, the rest of it wouldn’t fit. Nothing would fit anymore. And I wasn’t ready to face that—ready to have a new purpose.”
He drew her into his arms. “But I’m ready now. Ready to look forward and not back. With a new wife. With my only love. So, are you ready, too?”
If nothing else had convinced her, the heartbreaking sincerity in his face would have done so.
“I’ve been ready for a very long time,” she whispered.
Relief flooded his features. Then he was kissing her with the sweetness of a lover newly born, a man who had finally found his purpose. Found his Juno.
After he’d lightened her heart and curled her toes and done any number of things to the rest of her parts, she pulled back to cast the painting a regretful look. “You can never exhibit it, you know. Edwin would shoot you.”
He flashed her one of those smoldering looks she adored. “I don’t intend to exhibit it. It’s mine. And yours. Our private painting, if you will, depicting our passion. And our love.”
“I like the sound of that. Though it definitely needs a new title. The old one won’t suit.”
“It certainly won’t.”
She viewed it carefully, enraptured by it. Lord only knew where they would hang it. Perhaps in their bedchamber?
Then inspiration struck. “I know what the title should be.”
“Oh?”
She grinned at him. “Lessons in the Art of Sinning.”
He burst into laughter. “Sounds perfect.” He slid his arm about her waist to draw her close. “Because I intend for us to have a great many of those.”
Epilogue
