The coach was cool. Valmont had opened one of the windows and the night air was a refreshing breeze upon her heated skin.

She closed her eyes, at peace with the decision that had been conceived in instinct and—after all these months and so many occasions—was borne in conviction. She adored Monsieur le duc de Remy, prince d’Aumale, Andre Claude Marceau. In that realization, she rested secure and happy.

The streets at this time of morning were quiet. Though the bon ton traversed the boulevards, to and from the theaters, the cafes or the boudoirs of their loved ones, their sounds were muffled, discreet. The clop of matched horses. The whisk of a coachman’s whip. The footfalls of pedestrians on their way home denoted that all was well.

Her journey would be short. A good thing since her heart was unable to beat a steady tattoo since she’d entered the brougham and sunk to the plush squabs. Inside the cozy cab, Valmont had strapped a silver ice bucket to the tiny drop-down table. He’d poured her a full measure of crisp champagne into the crystal flute upon the inlaid polished wood. She took one drink, unwilling to cloud her mind for the scintillating experience she welcomed with all her heart.

She alighted at an impressive home, two stories high. In milky Parisian limestone that gleamed in the lamplight, the house reflected Remy’s personality in its elaborately carved robin’s egg blue front door and the multitude of huge paned windows that marched along the first and second floors. She put out her hand to knock upon the varnished wood and it fell open.

A half bare mighty arm reached out into the night and drew her in.

She giggled.

Andre caught her up in his arms and whirled her about, laughing himself. In his foyer, the chandelier above blazed in tiny lights. She could see him. See him as she’d never seen him before.

Wildly happy. With the broadest grin on his chiseled lips. The merriest twinkle in his incomparable eyes.

“You must put me down,” she told him, her hand to his chest.

“Why?”

“You’ll get dizzy. I am.”

“I’ve been dizzy since I met you.” Panting, he stopped and fell back against the wall. “If I want to make you as lightheaded as I am, you cannot blame me for trying.”

She put her palm to his cheek. His strong jaw lay in her hand and she marveled at his perfection. “I’ll blame you for my joy. An exhilaration I haven’t had since I was a child.”

One side of his mouth hooked up in a rogue’s grin. “I’ll take that, ma chou.”

She winced. “I do not approve of being your cabbage.”

“Very well. My star. My moon. My sun.”

“Use them all. Why not? Now put me down before you injure your back. Show me the house.”

He set her to the floor and put his hands on his hips. “What would you like first?”

She pointed toward the road. “Actually, I could do with the rest of that fabulous champagne.”

He snapped his fingers. “I have more. Come with me to the kitchen.”

He took her hand and led her down the massive hall, adorned with brightly colored paintings on the walls. They depicted ordinary women and men at parks, dancing, drinking, picnicking on verdant grass. “Do you like them?”

“Very much. I like you more.”

He wiggled his brows. “I dismissed my maid for the night. My assistant too.”

“We’re alone.” She was pleased, struck to the quick once more by his kindness.

“We are.” He stopped in the middle of the long hall. “You like these?”

“I do. Who painted them?”

“My friends whom you met last night. Renoir for this one. Du Bois, this one. And this—” He stood beside her as she marveled at the simplicity of a painting of a blond-haired baby, fat and jolly, rolling in his lacy crib. “You like this one?”

“Oh, I do.”

“This is by another friend of mine. Louise Antoine. If you wish, I will take you to meet her.”

“Do others like her work? They should. I can almost hear his burbling about how he loves his fat little toes.”

“Louise exhibited with us last April and sold a few paintings. Enough to pay her rent and buy a few rounds for us all at the Agile Rabbit.”

“Did you ever starve for your work, Andre?”

“No. I am fortunate.” He picked up her hand and kissed the back. “Starving the body is not always the best way to find a path to your true self.”

How well she knew that. “Starving is never the best way to do anything.”

He circled his arms around her, his impressive hard body a firm reminder that she was not here for the remembrance of bitterness. “I want you to be happy with me here.”

“If you don’t give me that champagne, how can I proceed?”

He hugged her and took a few steps into the kitchen. It was a cavernous room lined in big white cupboards, a huge trough for a sink, and a long wooden worktable in the center. “Viola!”

“You could feed an army from this place.”

“Never will. Not my intention. This is for the cook. Or cooks. I’ve had perhaps ten friends at most to dinner. And never as formal as what you’ll have when you come to the house in Rue de Rivoli.”

She didn’t want to talk of friends or dinner parties. “I’d just like my champagne, good sir.”

“Pardon e moi, Madame.” He bent to his task of opening a bottle, popping the cork and pouring her a large draft. Before her, he plunked down a mug. “Are you hungry, too?”

“No.”

“Then let’s go up.” He grabbed the bottle of champagne and hooked his other arm around her waist. “Madame must see the rest of the house.”

Along the corridor, he pointed out his tasteful salon. Then he led her up the granite stairs. “When I bought the land here, I decided not to excavate the hill, but to use it to my advantage.”

“What do you mean?”

“This appears to be a second floor here in the rear of the house, but it is in fact the first floor. I had the builders pour a firm foundation because I needed stability in my studio floor to support the marbles.” he said as he paused before a massive door. “And I wanted wonder of the universe each time I walked in to my studio.”

He flung the door wide and the glory of the starry night fell over her. She put down her mug on the nearest bureau, needing no wine to intoxicate her with the moment or the man. Her head back, she could not get enough of the black sky, the flickering stars in the firmament, the infinity of the universe. Tears obscured the view.

Andre was beside her, his arms around her, his lips tracing the whorl of her ear.

She spun into him and choked back the clog in her throat. “You’ll have to help me disrobe.“

Wordless, he began with the crocheted frogs at the collar of her coat, his gentle fingers sliding open the closures, sliding the garment over her shoulders, down her arms and draping it over a chair. He came back, his pale eyes afire, and walked around her, his tender ministrations counterpoints to the pounding of her pulse. The cooler air rushed in to lick her skin as down, down, down he opened her simple day gown and pushed it to the floor.

She stepped out of the pool and bent.

But he said, “No,” and picked up the piece to place it upon the same chair as her other garb.

Planning for this moment, she’d not donned a chemise. Only her most comfortable corset, one petticoat, her finest stockings, garters and shoes. Drawers she’d left home, too. Boldness was an adventure, one she’d ignored for more than a decade. Tonight, she wished to show this assertive man she could be his equal. If only for one night.

Behind her, he pulled and tugged at the lacings to her corset. Made of soft white cotton, the garment was cut low, skimming the swell of her breasts. The whalebone could cut into her flesh, but before supper she’d ordered her maid to lace her loosely. To dance with Andre, she’d needed breath. To make love with Andre, she wanted speed.

The corset undone, she inhaled deeply.

He swept it away. Her breasts fell free and she sighed. He unhooked her petticoat tapes. Her last modest covering slid to her feet.

He sucked in air, the sound at once invigorating and soothing to her senses. She waited for his next move.

But he did not.

She gazed down at her naked body, her nipples pointed, aching for his hands, his lips, his tongue. She swayed and he caught her by the shoulders.

She turned to him.

He gazed only at her face. His expression was reverent, matching her own emotion.

“I’ve imagined this rendezvous for months,” she told him, her own voice surprisingly even, if raw. “Each time, I began by admiring you. As I do whenever I first glimpse you.”

He raised a hand, shaking, to release two combs that held up her curls. Her hair fell around her shoulders, a few strands draping over her breasts. He still did not look at her body, a twitch to his left eye told of his tension.

“May I undress you?” she asked him, her tone shockingly one of a schoolgirl asking favors.

He held out his arms, his breathing deep and fast.

Tonight to the Moulin de la Galette, he’d worn casual clothes. A dark linen jacket, cream linen trousers and a soft white shirt. Upon return here, he’d discarded his coat, kept the shirt and changed to loose dove grey pants. These, she surmised, were his work clothes. This was who he wished her to see. The sculptor. The man with ambition and substance.

She stepped toward him and undid the ties at the neck of his shirt. She gathered up the material, loose and giving in her hands, and pulled it up over his head. She spun and placed it atop her own clothes in the chair. When she turned back to him, his gaze flowed over her hair, her mouth, her nose, her eyes. His pants were secured round the waist by a leather belt, the fabric gathered haphazardly to keep them up. With her gaze holding his, she undid the leather, a loop of supple leather, and pulled it away. The garment whooshed to the concrete floor. As he had done, she did not fill her eyes with his nakedness.

With both hands, she framed his face. “I spent nearly two years of my life tending the wounded and the dying first in my own home and afterward in a Rebel hospital. They came in, walking, hobbling, some on stretchers. Filthy, starving, ragged, they were torn by bullets and ripped by bombs.”

Andre ran two hands through her hair, his expression pained and reverent.

“I learned the human body in my parlor and that church. That the perfection God created can be blown open, desecrated by other humans in the name of some cause, some purpose. I saw that blood can rush and muscles cramp, that arms and legs can be blown away, and the result is a man, deformed and reduced, sobbing for his mother. I never wish to see that or hear it. Never again.”

Did he have tears in his own eyes?

She stepped against him, her skin on his, warmed by his body heat. “I want to memorize your body, feel your strength, absorb it if I can.”

He brushed his thumb over her bottom lip. “My darling, whatever you wish is yours.”

She felt suddenly young, terribly young, as if she’d never despised her cowardly husband, never suffered war, never nursed any man through amputation or blindness or madness. “I want to admire how perfect you are.”

He pressed his thumb to her mouth and stepped backward.

Beneath his skylight, the moon washed pale rays over him. He was big. She’d relished that from first sight of him. He was tall and stately, standing as he was nonchalant, but intent on her, a tender smile upon his lips. His neck was thick, strong, his blond hair, white in the moonlight, curling around his nape. His chest was wide, corded with muscle from the years of chipping stone and lifting marble. Tapered and rippling over his ribs. His arms were long from shoulders that bunched with movement, to massive hands and elegant fingers, the nails short.

His hands hung lax at his side and she was tempted, so very tempted to slide her gaze to his groin. Years of etiquette caught up to her. His thighs, heavy and roped with long hard muscle, sent ripples of excitement to her stomach. His legs were shapely, his ankles lean. His feet, bare, were long and broad.

This was a glorious man. A noble man. Huge and powerful in form and spirit. One who had breeched the confines of his own class to become what he wished.

And there at the juncture of his massive thighs was the essence of his manhood. The element of his body she craved as much as she needed his smile, his laugh, his touch. And he wanted her. Desired her with a passion living in his eager assessment of her.

She strode up to him and plunged her fingers in his hair. Thick and silken, his heavy mane filled her hands. His scalp was wide, his forehead high, his temples pulsing with desire for her.

She caught his gaze, permissive of her folly to define him with her touch. She etched his pale expressive brows, brushed the edges of his blond lashes and ran both her forefingers along the Gallic arch of his nose. His cheekbones were broad, the hollows beneath them deep. His mouth—his wide appealing sensuous lips—curved up as she traced the outline. His chin, his jaw, a square declaration of his heritage. Warrior, Norseman, Celtic, king, emperor—they’d all been his forebears and he represented them with a noble visage.

But his throat was sure symbol of his strength. His shoulders, cut with cords of honed muscle, put her in mind of Atlas who held up the world. He had a sculpted torso, ribs prominent, hips too. She traced the line of his thighs with the flat of her hand and strolled around him, her fingers skimming the indentation of his waist and the leanness of his hip. His back was broad, more impressive than his chest, his bulging muscles rippling with tension as she splayed her full hands wide to measure him. She glanced down. His derriere looked firm and when she smoothed her palms over him, he flinched.

She pressed her naked body flat to his back, her arms circling round him, her lips against his scapula, offering a kiss in homage to his strength.

He caught her hands against his stomach, his head arching back. Then with a sharp inhalation, he grasped her wrists and led her hands down to his penis. She squeezed shut her eyes, blocked out all but the feel of him. The thick hair of his groin and the long rigid form that was his manhood. And he was not shy about leading her to define all of him. He took her index finger and smoothed it over the tip of his cock. Drops of moisture beaded there, thick and hot.

Desire whirled through her, her loins pulsing, demanding. She held him and swooned a little, wanting all of him inside her.

He spun in her arms, a rogue’s smile upon his lips.

His huge hot hands crushed her close. His skin was fire, his might the bulwark she’d always assumed it would be. He embodied protection against hell. Salvation in heaven.

He pulled back to cup her face between his hands and took her lips in a slow sweet declaration of his need. “Come learn more of me as I do you.”

“Yes, oh yes.” She took a step.

But he caught her up in his arms and carried her to a large bed. There he laid her down so that when he loomed over her, she saw him as light within the black of night. He swept her hair from her cheeks, then lay along her length. Up on his elbow, he traced her brows, her nose, the outlines of her mouth with his fingers. His lips followed.

Mesmerized by his care, she lifted her knees and rolled into him. He snatched hair pins from her coif, dropped them to a night table. He swung back to kneel over her, hovering there, to grasp her hair in handfuls and drape it over her shoulders and down her breasts. Her hair tickled and she squirmed, arching her hips up and discovering the hot imprint of his penis and balls upon her core.

She groaned and he bent to take her chin between two fingers and hold her there as he kissed her and took all that her mouth could grant him.

“Mon bijou,” he murmured and a thousand words more as he savaged her mouth countless times.

He stroked her breasts, round the bottom, along the tops, and bent to suck one nipple into his mouth and make her gasp. He cupped her other breast, his thumb rubbing her nipple until she bucked and cried his name.

Grinning, he rose and winked at her, then took the other nipple into his mouth with a ravenous pull.

She was lost.

He sat back on his haunches and whirled his palms over her breasts and her ribs. Bending over her prominent hip bone, he kissed his way down to the juncture of her thighs. He placed his mouth at the hollow of her groin and dropped a brief kiss there. She gasped in anticipation of his journey to her core, but he surprised her and ran one hand down her thigh to the garter of her stocking.

He sat back, a wicked crook to his mouth. With a sound of satisfaction, he lifted her leg in mid-air, flipped off her slipper, then toyed with her garter. He pushed her leg farther back and kissed the back of her knee.

She groaned, laughing.

He unwound her garter with one twist and peeled down her stocking. The next moment, his mouth was to the arch of her foot and then the fiend bit her.

She yelped.

He chuckled and reached for her other shoe, her other garter, undid it with practiced ease and stretched himself out atop her. His body was frightfully heavy as he pinned her to the mattress. “Before the dawn, I will taste each inch of you.”

She grinned, her desire at once ravenous. “I will permit it.”

“Will you now?” he teased. “Thought of it, have you?”

She pulled at a lock of his hair. “Every night. But know, I will have the same.”

“I demand it.”

She tipped up her hips, opened her thighs and his cock fell along her seam. He was so massive and rigid, so very hot, she quivered. He clasped her more tightly.

She clamped her arms around him. He considered her, his eyes narrowed, his brows knit. And then he moved against her.

In that second, everything she knew of a man with a woman was tested by this man, his tenderness. She’d lived for years hoping such gentleness existed in a man. Having waited so very long, she had been ready to abandon the dream.

No need to run now.

He curled against her, his lips against her cheek, the corner of her mouth. He fought for air, maybe sanity too, and flowed his cock against her, seeking, finding the opening to her core. He paused, took her lips in a tremulous kiss and slowly sank inside her.

And oh, he was huge. His girth stretched her. His heat blazed within her. She undulated, taking him deep, deep, deeper still. She gasped at the fullness of him. She saw the stars, the moon. But she closed her eyes, trusting that she could discover a new universe in his arms.

He moved inside her and she had her proof. With measured precision, he delved inside her. His movements smooth, his rhythm sure, he drove her up into a frenzy for some elusive goal.

Her breath stuttered. The rapture he brought her, the objective he dangled before her with each arch of his body, enflamed her. He picked up his pace, her heartbeat did too.

And then he slowed, hooked his arms beneath her knees and brought her legs up to drape around his hips. Smiling down at her, he began a deliberate joining of their cores as he gazed at her and lured her with a smile.

Until she could no longer look at him, no longer count or measure how he pleased her, until she tensed and he caressed her with his talented fingers and she burst apart, gasping and joyous. Calling his name.

He cradled her close, her shaking body seeking more of his, as he whispered words of delight and lost himself in the bliss they had created.

He drew away from her, loathe to stay lest he frighten her by how fiercely he wished to bind her to him.

Running a hand through his hair, he fought with his instinct to roar like a savage that he’d finally claimed her. Yet the past months’ experience had taught him that to keep her, he’d need not brawn, but wits.

He found a blanket and draped it over her. She lay upon the sheets, her ivory skin more satin than any marble he’d ever polished, her lithe form so much more supple than he’d ever sampled. Her ardent response to him, so much more spontaneous than he had predicted.

That shocked him. But gratified him. She could make love to him eagerly. That she trusted him so much meant he had less work to do to keep her by his side.

He made to go.

She caught his arm, her exquisite face aglow with drowsy satisfaction.

“I return. I have a few things for you.”

“Hurry.”

He grinned, triumphant. Naked, he padded away. In the kitchen, he grabbed the elegantly wrapped paper tent, his purchase from the patisserie, and strode back upstairs.

“Sit up,” he said to her when he was beside the bed.

Her brows wiggling in glee, she pushed herself back against the pillows, gathered the blanket to cover her breasts and stretched up to see his offering. “You baked!”

“As I do each day!”

She laughed. “Certainement! You have so much time for that.”

Sitting beside her, he placed the package in her lap. “I’ll get the champagne. You tear it open.”

“Ohhh, thith is scrumthous,” she said, her mouth full of chocolate mille-feuille.

Chuckling, he left then quickly returned to her with the wine and her mug in hand. He took a drink, thirsty for all the night had to give. “I’m happy to humor you.”

“Messy.” She put a finger to the corner of her mouth to gather cream.

Inspired, hungry himself, he put the champagne and mug aside. He took her hand, lifted it away and licked chocolate from her finger and then from her lips. When he pulled away, her eyes were closed, her mouth open.

He loved her.

The reality dawned on him, gentle as the silent starry night. But he’d known. He’d known months ago.

He’d been patient for good reason. The reward was this. Luscious Marianne Roland in his bed gloriously naked at last was now his enchanting amour. He tore his gaze away and poured more champagne into the mug. With satisfaction, he took a drink of the wine and watched her devour the pastry.

“What is that one?” She pointed to a crusty tart.

“Tarte Tatin. Apple. Try it.”

She widened her eyes and picked it up to bite in. “Mmmm. You know how to please me.”

In pastries. In bed. He arched his brows. “I have macarons in the kitchen. Would you like them now or—?”

She went up on her knees to cup his neck and kiss him on the lips. “For now, I’m content with these and you.”

His body shot through with ferocious need. He wanted her again, now, so soon.

Her humor died. She met his silence with her own.

He held his breath.

She put the pastry to the floor and turned toward him. Still up on her knees, the sheets rumpled around her, she resembled a mermaid rising from a frothy sea. Her breasts were full, her nipples hard rosy mounds. She panted as she scrambled toward him, sank her fingers into his hair and kissed him with all the ardor he’d sought from her for months.

Ravenous, he seized her and brought her across his lap. Her body lay before him like a pagan’s prize, her elegant throat, her full breasts, the slope of her stomach, the point of her hip bones, the golden thatch of hair over her mons. The crevice, the long dark line that led to the part of her he needed again, was a thin dark valley he longed to savor with his cock and his mouth.

He opened his hand and caressed all of her offered up to him. The chords of her neck, the sweet points of her round breasts, the succulent heat of her folds, the lush wet cream that coated her sex.

At his tender touch, she arched, her whole torso a gift. That she could allow him to satisfy his appetite for her astonished him. She was new to rendezvous. New to him and love. He could conclude only that she did indeed trust him. Implicitly.

She was his to pleasure.

He gently pushed her thighs apart, his fingers tracing the line of her chat. She made a little noise of contentment, her face nuzzling his chest. He watched his hand caress her, what he felt so much more electrifying now that he could see what he caressed. Her legs fell open. He caught his breath, proud in his conquest. Humbled in his hunger for her, he found her center and sent two fingers up inside her. She arched up off his lap, moaning. He gentled her with deft strokes, a massage to enchant her, an invasion to possess her. She whimpered, her lips upon his skin. He slid his fingers from her core to find her swollen nub. He pinched her and she bucked. He swirled his fingers around and round, her cries louder, her nails digging into his hips, her lips parting, frantic.

His body screamed for him to bury himself inside her. Yet he wanted to imprint himself on her in indelible ways.

He slid from beneath her so that she lay flat upon the bed. Bending down to her, he licked her lovely breasts, kissed her belly and opened her fragrant folds to lick her and kiss her. Her lips had tasted of wine and chocolate. Her breasts had tasted of eau de camellias. Her creamy chat tasted of thick passion and of him. And she let him have all of her, every bit he desired, unrestrained. She lay quivering, panting, crying to have him. And when she pulsed in completion, he pivoted around and sank his cock inside her to revel in the last throes of her climax. And then he gave her his own.

The moon was high, the stars merrily twinkling when she rose from their bed.

She’d slept a little, enough to sate her.

Andre snored. The manly abandoned sounds amused her.

She tiptoed behind a Chinese screen searching for a basin and towels to wash. Smiling, she saw what she needed. He’d prepared so well, charming her with every need fulfilled. She washed in the fresh warm water and picked up the robe draped across the nearby chair. It was of heavy ebony satin, lined in white wool. His, it was so large she had to roll back the sleeves and pick up the hem as she strolled around the room.

The heavens above had greeted her in his haven. But what drew her now, here on his earth, was the wealth of his work before her.

Much like the shelves she’d seen in the gallery in the Rue Dauphine last February, his studio was a treasury of his efforts. Large, small, clay, plaster, paint, brushes, pens, ink, lay hither and yon upon wooden or granite topped tables. The figures were scattered among them about the huge room. And much like the exhibition in the Rue Dauphine, in the center stood a monolith of white marble upon a massive plinth. This however had little shape.

Intrigued, she marched around it.

Across the room, she saw him push back to the headboard and smooth back his long hair.

“Do you know yet what this will be?”

“I have a few ideas.”

“Do you have sketches?”

“Of this? Oui.”

“Do you ever show them to anyone?” she asked, her hands sliding over the thin yellow veins in the Carrara, evoking images of what might emerge under his vision.

“Not usually, no.”

She would not ask. She understood his need to privacy. She only ever showed anyone her best work.

She strolled away and on the top of his bureau, she spied his hair brush. Picking it up, she approached him and brandished it. “You first.”

He rose from the bed, naked like a glorious Neptune, snatched the blanket from the bed and twirled it around his hips. He sat in one of the two chairs and pointed to his head. “Do your best.”

It was a tangled mess. Knowledge that it was their romp in bed that made it so had her grinning as she drew the brush through his hair from crown to nape. The rhythm of it soothed her, the satin of his hair upon her fingertips arousing her hunger for him once more.

“Do you still draw me?” he asked.

“I do. Whenever I have a free moment. I get better. Seeing you each day affords me the chance I may one day get you right.”

“Would you show them to me?” he asked.

“I could.” But when? That made her pause. Had she made a hideous mistake to ask for only one night with him?

“Tomorrow night.” He rose up, took the brush from her and put it down, then marched to the bed. There, he flung the blanket to the floor and sat. “Bring them.”

If she came, what would she risk? If she brought them, what would she gain?

In the moonlight, she detected compassion in his smile.

“Come here, ma cherie.” He beckoned her with waggling fingers.

She drifted across the room on her bare feet, the cold of the concrete floor chilling her dreadfully.

He reached out.

At once, she shrugged out of his robe. The heavy silk slid away and took with it her old resolve to find a lover who was temporary.

She put a knee to the bed and his hand stroked up her thigh, around to her core where his talented fingers drove up inside her. She melted to him.

“You must come tomorrow night.”

She was floating in the wonder he created, his fingers beseeching her to surrender to the intimacy, the relationship. Agreeing with him should be the last thing she should do. “You persuade me unfairly.”

Against her skin, he laughed lightly. “Don’t object.”

She hung in his arms, seduced. “I can’t.”

He laved her nipple. Nipped her, licked her to quietude. “Say you’ll come, ma cherie.”

“I think I do already.”

He laughed at her double entendre, but the hilarity died. He massaged her feminine folds with a frenzy that drove her higher, made her needier. “We are not finished, you and I.”

She burrowed into him, her nails digging into his shoulder.

“Well you know it.” He kissed her between her breasts while his fingers did their magic. “First there is the matter that I have not brushed your hair.”

Her lips curved in a grin. Her body vibrated with the first pulse of an orgasm.

“And then there is that matter that I have not yet kissed each inch of you.” He tipped up her chin, laid her down beneath him and flowed inside her. “Nor you me.”

She grabbed his hair, her need to have him finish their joining so primal that she groaned. He obliged her and brought her up to a strangled cry as she fell over the edge to quake in his arms. Within the next minute, he followed with a long moan.

As they lay there, he stroked her hair.

She’d acted boldly tonight and flourished. She could do it again—and perhaps grow. Conceding was not difficult. “I want to know what that marble will become.”

“Bring your sketches. I will tell you.”

She slid her head back into the crook of his arm. He was strong man, charming, romantic and a formidable opponent. “You lure me with prizes I cannot resist.”

“May I be so wise as to find more of them.”