He couldn’t.
“Meaningless” was the right word. For all his life, he’d been meticulous in keeping every potentially romantic relationship purposely shallow, ditching his partner at the merest hint of her wanting more.
And yet he couldn’t stop thinking about Libitz—hadn’t been able to shake her from his mind since the night he’d kissed her in the moonlight—and his feelings for her didn’t show any signs of slowing down or retreating. If anything, they were growing, they were strengthening—he had the strangest premonition that they might even be here to stay. There’s an exception to every rule, he thought, staring at her profile: at the severity of her bobbed black hair and the gleaming emerald stud that glistened in the lobe of her ear like some sort of cosmic sign.
He huffed out a breath of annoyance and looked away from her. He could say nothing that would prove to her that he was changing, wildly, every day. There was no evidence, no obvious change of behavior, no solid example to prove that a brain he’d wired one way at age eleven was suddenly rewiring itself more than two decades later. If he wanted her to see that he was becoming a different person, he’d have to show her.
Challenge accepted, he thought as the red light changed to green. He pressed down on the gas and zoomed toward the city.
***
Half an hour later, Libitz found herself standing in the middle of a small but very posh gallery in downtown Philadelphia. The walls had been painted dark gray and the floors were made of black marble with tiny bits of embedded crystal that twinkled in the dim light. Over her head was an original Anthony Primo blown glass chandelier, suspended like an aquamarine medusa, and the eclectic art on the walls ranged in movement from impressionism to neo-minimalism.
Jean-Christian disappeared down a back hallway for a second, telling her to look around, and Libitz closed her eyes, breathing in the scent of his gallery. There was a hint of fresh paint, the slight, pleasing odor of old canvas, the heat of the lights, glass cleaner, and shipping boxes or crates. As she breathed deeply, she heard music playing—low, sexy jazz—from hidden speakers, and she opened her eyes to find Jean-Christian standing no more than a foot away, staring at her.
Her lips parted, and she released the breath she’d been holding.
“Your eyes were closed,” he murmured, the way one would whisper in a sacred place, like a chapel or shrine.
“I was breathing it in.”
“Do you always do that?”
Her bottom lip slipped between her teeth. She was so aware of him, standing so close to her. She imagined she could feel the heat of his body, smell the leftover scent of the leather jacket he’d been wearing in the car and a faint hint of mint, maybe from brushing his teeth. He didn’t smell like vanilla, she realized as a weight lifted temporarily from her chest.
“Yes,” she said, still looking up at him.
His eyes traced her face, and she wondered if he was keeping himself from dropping them to the green silk blouse she was wearing with dark-blue jeans and nude patent-leather slingback pumps. Her nipples tightened, the memory of his hand cupping her bare breast making her cheeks flush with heat.
“Why?”
She gulped, feeling her flesh bead against her bra, no doubt pushing against the flimsy fabric of her top. “It gives me a sense of place.”
“And…?”
Standing in his gallery, surrounded by pieces he’d carefully curated, was turning out to be more erotic than Libitz would have ever guessed. She cleared her throat, damning her fierce attraction to him and wishing it away. “You have excellent taste, but I suspected that before walking in. I think you—I think you love this gallery.”
“That surprises you?”
“Very much.”
“You didn’t think I was capable of love?”
Tough question.
She knew that he was capable of loving his siblings—she’d seen it in his eyes at étienne and Kate’s wedding and last night at dinner with his brother and sister. But familial love was the easiest kind, wasn’t it? Loving other people and things that didn’t organically belong to you was much harder.
“I don’t know you well enough to answer you,” she hedged. “But from what I do know, romantic love has certainly never been a priority.”
She didn’t mean it as a dig, so she didn’t like it that he looked wounded, that she’d inadvertently hurt him. She slid her eyes away from his face and looked at the careful lighting over a Jackson Pollock, the near-perfect matte and frame, the artful way he displayed a modern sculpture on a pedestal beside a famous Van Gogh.
“You love art, Jean-Christian. I can see that.”
His face had cooled, however, and this assessment didn’t warm it.
“Come on, Elsa,” he said, giving her his back as he stepped away. “You’re here to see a Kandinsky.”