Rin

The stairs of The Met looked taller than they ever had before.

My gaze climbed the span of low stone steps, dotted with people sitting, talking, watching the traffic on Fifth Avenue. A chill still clung to the air in a final echo of spring, one of those crisp, clear mornings that would soon give way to the sweltering heat that accompanied summer in New York.

I breathed in that sense of possibility as I took my first step, the sharpness in the air filling me with hope and promise that the next twelve weeks of my internship would change my life.

Which was my last thought before my toe caught the edge of the step, and I pitched forward, throwing out my hands to stop me from breaking my nose. My palms hit the stone with a slap so loud, everyone in a twenty-foot radius turned to gawk.

A laugh shot out of me in a surprised snort, but my cheeks were so hot, I knew they were as red as a stoplight. I ducked my head, hiding behind my dark hair as I picked myself up and carried myself up those damnable stairs, wishing I could pull an Amelia Earhart and disappear.

But as I took another breath, this one to calm me, I reminded myself that I was walking—tripping?—into a dream. And I found a smile. It was small, but I found it all the same.

Once inside the doors of the museum, I spotted the information desk in the entry, a grand, seven-sided marble countertop, the dais in the center boasting a magnificent flower arrangement that looked to be seven or eight feet tall. One of the attendants brightened when I approached.

“Good morning. What can I do for you?” he asked, smiling.

“I’m here for the first day of my internship—”

“I’m sorry, could you speak up?”

I glanced down at my sneakers, swallowing before meeting his eyes again. “I’m here for my internship, but I’m not sure where I’m supposed to go.”

“Oh, of course. What department?” he said, reaching for the mouse to his computer.

“European Paintings.”

“Perfect.” The keyboard clicked. “I’ll let Dr. Nixon know you’re coming,” he said as he gathered up a pass and a map of the museum. “The offices for the European Paintings department are on the second floor in gallery six twenty-eight.”

I smiled. Van Dyck. One of my favorite galleries. Fitting that the offices would be there.

“Let me show you where it is.” He laid open the map, directing me through the museum, and I let him explain in detail even though I knew exactly how to get there. “Dr. Nixon will be there waiting for you. Show this pass at the ticket check-in, and they’ll wave you through.”

“Thank you,” I said, taking the map and pass from him before slipping away.

To the guard I went, my heart thumping and chin high as I tipped my pass, brushing away the unfounded anxiety that he’d turn me away, tell me I didn’t belong, which was extra ridiculous, given that the museum was technically free to visit. But he waved me on, just like the attendant had said he would, and I sighed my relief, finding hope again as I climbed the grand staircase, heading for the Van Dyck gallery.

The doors to the offices were nestled discreetly between two full-length paintings of English aristocrats, and standing in front of them was, presumably, Dr. Nixon. She was younger than I’d anticipated, smaller than I’d imagined, though her size didn’t detract from her power. The air about her was sharp, accentuated by her packaging—a high-waisted pencil skirt, tailored shirt, and heels that made my ankles ache just looking at them.

When her eyes met mine, my hopes sank.

It was a look I’d seen a thousand times, one as cold as it was scathing, one that told me she was not only unimpressed, but disappointed.

She glanced down at the paper in her hand. “Hyo-rin Van de Meer?”

I nodded, my tongue fat and useless in my mouth.

“This way,” she said without introducing herself and turned, swiping her key card on the panel on the door to unlock it.

I followed her through the hallway, the office space quiet and still, deserted but for the occasional museum employee. We wound through a spur and into her office, a neat, tidy space with a beautiful desk and shelves of books lining two of the walls. Everything about it was professional and classic, touched with the elite air of intellect and academics, and she fit perfectly in the space, as if it had been made for her, built to showcase her beauty and strengths just as an exhibit in the museum would a priceless work of art.

And there I stood, a gangly Korean-Dutch leviathan in baggy jeans, a lumpy, old sweater, and sneakers that had seen their prime at least two years ago. The sense that I didn’t belong twisted around my heart and squeezed.

Dr. Nixon hadn’t said anything, giving me her back to sort through the papers on her desk, her neatly coiffed blonde hair shining under the glow of the overhead lights. I wondered if she was collecting herself, and I put in a solid effort to do the same.

When she finally turned, her face was schooled, her blue eyes icy and her smile forced. “Congratulations on being awarded the internship here at The Met. I’m Dr. Bianca Nixon, assistant curator to Dr. Lyons and your supervisor. For the next three months, you’ll learn the ins and outs of our department and what it takes to work in curation and conservation of art.” She reached behind her, retrieving a packet, which she handed over. “Our biggest focus this summer is preparation for our exhibition in the fall, which is being led by our department. It centers on Italian Renaissance, and the bulk of your role will be to assist in the continued research of the pieces we’ve acquired.”

The speech was rehearsed and clinical, as if she’d read it from a brochure.

“Any questions?” she asked.

I shook my head.

Her gaze tightened. “Your desk is over here. Put your things down and come with me.”

I kept my eyes down, properly intimidated and completely unsure of myself as I moved to the desk, deposited my bag, and followed her out of the office. I lamented my choice of apparel, not that I had much else to wear. I’d been in college for the better part of a decade—which meant my wardrobe consisted mostly of pajamas—on top of the fact that dressing all six feet of me was next to impossible. So, I wore a lot of men’s sweaters, my jeans always shrank, and I generally did my best to be invisible everywhere I went.

Which was also impossible. Ever seen a six-foot-tall Korean girl? Because trust me when I say it’s not something you see every day. And to answer your questions—the one time I ever played basketball, I broke two bones and bloodied my nose, I could get a sunburn in the subway, and yes, I will get that off the top shelf for you.

But stupid me hadn’t even considered dressing up. I’d worn what I wore to lectures and to the library. It quite honestly hadn’t even crossed my mind, which I berated myself for with all my mental strength, wondering if Bianca would have treated me differently had I been…well, not me. Or at least, not packaged as me.

We left the department and wound our way through the museum to a more administrative part of the museum’s hidden circuit of hallways. Bianca never said a word. I mean it, not a single word, and I spent that five minutes trying to think of something to say, anything at all.

How about the Michelangelo they found in that guy’s basement in Buffalo? Or, Who knew Renaissance women covered their ears because the Virgin Mary supposedly got knocked up through her ear when God spoke to her? Or, There are dozens of paintings of Mary shooting people with her breastmilk, what’s up with that?

I wisely opted for silence instead.

Once inside another administrative office, she approached a desk where an older woman sat typing with her reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose.

“Hi, Phyllis,” Bianca said. “Just need to get our new intern a badge.”

“Yes, of course.” Phyllis smiled eagerly as she stood and moved around her desk. “Come with me.”

Bianca fell in step behind her, and I followed.

“So,” Phyllis started, “where do you go to—” She glanced over her shoulder, and on finding Bianca behind her, she slowed to take my side.

Bianca’s eyes could have bored through the outer layer of the planet.

“Where do you go to school, dear?” Phyllis asked.

“NYU,” I answered, my voice too small. I swallowed and tried to draw myself up. “I’m working on my PhD in art history.”

“What’s your specialization?”

“Renaissance art.” I realized absently that I’d smiled.

“Well, you’ve managed an internship in the right department.”

A warm flush brushed my cheeks. “My professors were too generous in my letters of recommendation.”

Phyllis gave me a wink. “Must have been some letters.”

I’d been fortunate, and I knew it. But I’d also worked hard, which was honestly the easy part. If I was known for one thing—besides being too tall or too quiet—it was for my devotion to academia. It was the peopling that eluded me.

We stepped into a small room set up with a camera, and my heartbeat ticked up a step.

“If you could just stand against the wall right there,” Phyllis said while Bianca oversaw, arms folded across her chest.

I stepped in front of the camera, instantly and thoroughly aware of every single muscle in my face. I locked each of them in place in the hopes that I’d look normal in the photo, all the while knowing how futile that wish was. Of the hundreds of photos I’d been in over the course of my life, not a single one looked like me. Sometimes, it was my eyes, either frozen in terror or half-shut. Sometimes, it was my smile, either stretched too wide so that my teeth looked huge, or my lips were together, which only served to bring attention to their shape—too full, too narrow. And every single time, without fail, I looked like a Botox experiment gone wrong.

My parents had tried to turn my propensity for taking horrible pictures into a well-meaning joke, designed to make me feel less self-conscious about it. And bless them for trying.

“Okay, ready? One, two—”

The flash shot right as I blinked in an effort to get it out of the way before—

“Three!” she chimed.

“I…um, I think I was blinking.” I hated the idea of taking another photo only slightly less than the idea of looking like I was drunk.

“Oh, I’m sure it’s fine,” she said. “See?”

She turned the monitor so I could see the picture; my eyes were a quarter-closed, and my smile was just shy of reaching a tight, unnatural stretch. It looked a little like I was trying to read a sign that said someone had discovered my secret porn stash from twenty feet.

“Maybe I should take another one…” I halfheartedly started.

“Don’t be silly,” Phyllis said. “You’re beautiful.”

That elicited a rare laugh from my lips, and I instantly decided I didn’t care enough that I had yet another awkward photo to add to the pile to fight the inevitable. Even though I would have to wear this one around my neck all day for the next three months.

I held in a sigh with tight lungs, sipping air until the urge subsided, not wanting either woman to know how uncomfortable I was. Especially Bianca. At least Phyllis had been kind enough to lie to me about being pretty. Bianca looked like she could write a dissertation on all the ways I annoyed her. The fact that she’d only known me for fifteen minutes seemed moot—she’d already judged, labeled, and shelved me.

The card printed, and Phyllis hooked it on a lanyard before passing it over. And once in hand, Bianca led me across the museum again.

On the way, my discomfort faded as I took in my surroundings, replaced by the awe I always felt when I walked the galleries of The Met. My eyes drank in the priceless art on every wall, the feeling spectacular—not only in the truth of the existence of so much beauty, but at the realization that these rooms would be my home for a while, that I would enjoy them every day. And that knowledge was enough fuel to give me the bit of confidence I needed to shake off my fears and embrace my internship, Bianca-shaped warts and all.

Until we walked into Bianca’s office.

He was sitting on the edge of her desk, paper in hand, eyes trained on the words, the picture of grace and casual beauty. The vision was sharpened by the power and authority possessed in every line and angle of his long body, even down to his hand in his pocket, as if it had been placed there solely for the purpose of softening something so grand.

He was art, from the line of his elegant nose to the set of his lips, from the squared angles of his long face to the glint in his eyes, which were a shade of blue so colorless, they appeared gray as a storm cloud.

Eyes that I realized were now fixed on me.

And I found, as my breath turned to hot smoke in my lungs, that I couldn’t look away.

* * *

Court

The tallest Asian girl I’d ever seen stood behind Bianca, staring at me with wide, angled eyes locked open in alarm.

She was beautiful in a quiet way, the kind of beauty that went unnoticed—it was hidden under shapeless clothes was a long, lean body that seemed to want to fold in on itself, and behind her ebony hair was a small, delicate face. Rembrandt would have painted her with openness and sincerity, her face as honest as it was timid.

None of those traits would help her here. And within the span of that brief moment, I knew with authoritative certainty that she would never make it in curation.

Fear wafted off her in jagged waves, and everything in me responded, breathing in the power I held over her. She watched me like a giraffe watches a lion—she was every bit as lanky and knobby as one, and I was every bit the predator she suspected me to be.

I smiled, though I knew the gesture was neither inviting nor kind. “Is this the new intern?”

“Yes,” Bianca answered, the perfunctory syllable telling me everything I needed to know.

Bianca was not impressed.

I stood, drawing myself up to tower over both of them. “You landed this internship with some of the most impressive letters of recommendation I’ve come across, and your GPA is outstanding.” Her cheeks flushed a dusty shade of pink, and the vision spurred me to strike. “But grades don’t matter here. There’s no syllabus, no extra credit to ensure your success. You’re going to have to forge that on your own, or you’ll fail. Are you sure you’re up to the task?”

Her face said no, her eyes still sparking with uncertainty. The dissent was echoed in her bowed shoulders and spine, slouched in defeat. But to my surprise, her lips parted, and she whispered, “Yes, sir.”

I stiffened at the honorific. “Call my father, the president of the museum, sir. I’m Dr. Lyons, the curator of this department.” I started for the door. “Good luck,” I said, pinning her with a look I knew to be as intense as it was unforgiving. “You’re going to need it.”

The research and reason for my visit to Bianca’s office was still in my hand, my purpose abandoned in order to make an exit the meek, mute intern would remember. In this profession, in this museum, several things were key to survival: passion, knowledge, and the ability to communicate effectively, efficiently, and convincingly. She might have had the former in spades, but the latter was lacking so desperately, there was no way she’d succeed in this environment. She’d be better off preparing herself for the life of a professor instead, although the thought of her in front of a room of students was comical in itself. I wondered if her voice would even carry to the back row.

What she needed was confidence, if not in herself, then in her abilities. Take Bianca, for instance. When she’d walked into my office for her interview two years ago, I’d known she would get the job done. She was an alpha, a shark, determined and driven. The intern, in her ill-fitting jeans and baggy sweater, didn’t look like she could decide whether she wanted egg salad or chicken for lunch, never mind standing up to the board of directors to pitch an exhibition.

I set the papers on my desk and took my seat, opening up my laptop. The exhibition was just a few months away, and all the pieces were collecting, connecting, clicking together as they always did. There was still so much to do—publications to write for key pieces, the catalog for the exhibition to complete, fundraisers to plan. Shipments to schedule, meetings to attend, panels to sit on, press releases to submit.

And I was in my element.

This exhibition had been a dream of mine since college, one marked as too ambitious. Impossible. No one secured so many well-known pieces for the same exhibit—Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Da Vinci’s Last Supper and Vitruvian Man, Raphael’s Madonna in the Meadow. No one could get Michelangelo’s David.

Nothing motivated me more than being told no.

The acquisition list was impressive, and more importantly, I’d checked the box on every single piece I wanted. Except for one.

David.

It was the centerpiece for the exhibition, titled Firenze: The Heart of the Renaissance. My passion had been born of my own education at Harvard and the year I’d spent studying in Florence. Obtaining David was crucial, a keystone. A dream. And I had chased down every dream I’d ever had with the determination of a man possessed.

The hang-up in securing David wasn’t as complex as one might think—it was the fairly simple matter of being stonewalled by the director. Not only had I been barred from firming up a meeting, given his busy schedule, but my messages had been either ignored or answered weeks or months later with nothing but deflection. And getting the statue wasn’t unheard of—David occasionally toured. In fact, in my father’s days as curator of this very department, he’d brought the behemoth statue to The Met.

I was honest enough to own the truth: topping his exhibition was the sharpest spur in my side.

Bianca walked into my office, her lips flat and eyes narrowed. She didn’t bother closing my door before launching into her grievances.

“Seriously, Court, we have too much to do right now for this level of babysitting.”

“Exactly—we have too much to do. We can use the extra set of hands, and you’re the best assistant in this department. I have enough respect for the professors at NYU who recommended her to fulfill our end of the bargain. She needs to learn. Even if that lesson is that she’s not cut out for the job.”

That earned a small smirk.

“You need help, Bianca. I’m still waiting for you to submit the rest of your research for the exhibition catalog. She can help with that.”

Her smile faded. “I don’t have time to rework whatever she can’t handle.”

I leveled my gaze. “She didn’t get this far by slacking on research. It’s the most menial task you can give her, and it’ll free you up to oversee the fundraiser dinner.”

“It’s just—”

I stood, palms on my desk, fixing her with a look. “Have I made myself clear?”

Her mouth, which still seemed to hold whatever she’d been about to say, closed, and those words were swallowed. Her lips set. “Perfectly.” She drew a slow, controlled breath and let it out, relaxing her face on the exhale. “It’s just that I don’t like to be slowed down or yoked to someone who can’t pull their weight.”

“Maybe she’ll prove us wrong.”

A small, dry laugh escaped her.

I smiled in echo. “Send her to the stacks out of the way, and please, try to be nice.”

“No promises.”

I took my seat as she moved toward my desk, not missing the widening swing of her hips or the charge in the room as her smile softened. She sat on the edge of my desk, her slender waist twisting and long fingers braced on the surface as she met my eyes. Her pose reminded me of a pinup girl, artful and purposeful, its design intended to suggest, to imply, to invite.

“Want to have lunch?” she asked innocently enough.

“You should befriend your intern,” I answered, not at all interested in what was really on offer.

“We’re never going to be friends, and you know it. Come on,” she said. “We can go over the shipment schedule and work on our itinerary for Florence.” The undercurrent of the city’s name held the insinuation that we’d be there for anything but convincing Bartolino to give me the goddamn statue.

“I have plans.” Plans being to spend the afternoon working on my publication on Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Alone.

A flash of disappointment crossed her brow. “You’re determined to torture me with the intern, aren’t you?”

“Maybe a little.”

“I could eat lunch alone and have better conversation. I’m not even sure if she can compose sentences longer than six words, never mind discuss anything worthwhile.”

“Guess you’re going to have to get creative.” I turned to my computer, opening my research and effectively dismissing her.

She sighed, slipping off my desk and leaving without trying to garner any more of my attention.

It wasn’t that Bianca wasn’t attractive—she was, as well as intelligent and driven. But she was also transparent, her intentions crystal clear from the moment I’d first seen her. Which was exactly why she was safe. I knew where she stood and what she wanted; I was an acquisition to her, not a man, not a person. I was a Lyons, heir to a fortune generations old. I was the curator of a prestigious department of an esteemed establishment, one that had become my legacy and had been my father’s before me.

But Bianca judged things just as my father did—solely based on what she could see. If you held us up to each other, we made sense, looked right, had the same interests and goals. On paper, we fit.

But if I’d learned one lesson in life, it was that everything came with a price, and Bianca’s was broadcast at a frequency impossible to miss. And regardless of what she might try, I wasn’t interested and never would be.

Because I never made the same mistake twice.