She could feel the heat from his neck on her lips and she leaned forward to nuzzle his skin as she continued. “But I’m an adult now…and I can’t overlook or tolerate anti-Semitism anymore. I won’t.”
“You shouldn’t,” he said softly, gently cupping the back of her head as she dragged her lips over his throat.
“I know I’m oversensitive. I had no right to accuse you like that.”
“It’s important to you.”
She nodded, pressing butterfly kisses along a blue vein. “Mm-hm. To be accepted for who I am. All of me.”
“I don’t care what your religion is, Libitz. I mean, I care, but it doesn’t play any role in my regard for you.”
She opened her eyes and leaned away to look up at him. “You’re Catholic.”
He nodded.
“I’m Jewish.”
He nodded again. “So?”
“Is that going to be a problem for us, Jean-Christian Rousseau?”
“For my mother, yes.”
“Yeah. For mine too,” she said honestly.
“Now ask me what I’m prepared to do about it.”
Her lips twitched with a smile that was bursting to make itself known. “What are you prepared to do about it?”
“Nothing,” he said simply. “It’s not her life; it’s mine. And for now, I choose you. All of you.” He bit her bottom lip, taking his time, letting it go with a soft pop. “But, Elsa, my darling, I will go to my fucking grave insisting that upside-down U is pi, not l’chaim.”
Her smile turned into a snort, and she hid her face back in the warm curve of his neck. “You’re a monumental jackass, you know.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “You and your sweet talk.”
“I’m crazy about you,” she said softly, whispering the words he’d said to her yesterday and feeling them deep in her soul, knowing that they were true.
“Then kiss me,” he said, his voice husky with emotion and need.
And Libitz, who had truly started to understand the workings of his heart, was only too happy to comply.
Chapter 11
Jessica texted J.C. at ten the next morning to let him know that the Kandinsky had arrived safely at the Feingold Gallery and had been signed for by Libitz. Mrs. Carnegie was arriving at the gallery at four o’clock to collect the painting, after which J.C. and Libitz had an appointment to visit J.C.’s old college professor, Dr. Niles Harkin, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Dr. Harkin, who had a PhD in art history and taught twice-yearly courses at Princeton, was also the head of painting conservation at Manhattan’s premiere art museum. He’d sent someone to the hotel concierge this morning to pick up Les Bijoux Jolis so that he’d have time to take a look at it before their meeting.
J.C. stared at Jessica’s text, thinking back to last night. After Libitz had told him she was crazy about him, they’d made out on the couch like a couple of teenagers before their dinner had arrived, the doorbell interrupting them. Smiling at the memory, he scrubbed his hands over his face, remembering the disappointment in her eyes as she’d pulled her bra out from between two couch cushions and rebuttoned her dress while he’d answered the door.
He couldn’t actually recall the last time he’d been physical with a woman when sex wasn’t in the offering, and maybe it was the promise of more intimacy on Wednesday, but he didn’t feel like any time spent with Libitz was wasted. In fact, he’d been in a ridiculous swoon since she’d told him how she felt about him…his heart throbbing like that of a sixteen-year-old girl who’d been asked to the prom by her crush.
By and large, J.C. had missed out on a lot of the conventional relationship milestones that most teenagers experienced. At age fourteen, he’d decided never to fall in love or let anyone fall in love with him. He’d get his rocks off, like his father, but he wouldn’t hurt anyone like his father had hurt his mother. It had left him physically satisfied but emotionally stunted in some ways. A woman professing her affection for him in the past had left him, as Libitz had guessed yesterday, panicked and running for the hills.
Not so with her.
He’d been terribly infatuated with her at Ten’s wedding, but now, as a thirty-four-year-old man with honorable intentions for the first time in his life, infatuation was giving way to a feeling altogether bigger and deeper—something that he still wasn’t prepared to name or admit, something that still felt too fragile and too unlikely to ever belong to him.
Before he left her apartment last night, Libitz had given him the eyeglass case that held his uncle Pierre’s emerald necklace, and with late morning and early afternoon to kill before picking her up, he made an appointment with a private jeweler in the Diamond District, where he could have it appraised.