Despite the last-minute repairs Sonya had made to her, Kim still felt out of place at the gallery party. These were not her people. These were the rich and famous, and not just the rich and famous from Chicago—she thought she just saw Johnny Depp in the corner. She didn’t belong here. She wished the party would finish, and she could get to work. That was where she belonged, cleaning up after these people.

Sonya came up to her. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. You go off and have fun. I’m fine just watching from the corner.”

Sonya went back to her friends. A person wouldn’t think Kim and Sonya were the same age. Kim felt so old—older watching her friend across the room. Perhaps it was being a mother and all of the responsibilities that went with that. But she knew too that she’d made some bad choices.

She and Bruce met in high school. Like some sort of cliché, she was the cheerleader, him the star football player. Of course they would get married; that was how these stories went. He got the job managing the ranch in Montana, a dream job for him. But for Kim it meant leaving her bereaved mother—her father had died the same year—and her friends in Chicago. Montana was so far.

When she got there, she understood just how far. They were in an isolated area away from other people. Bruce was drinking too much. In a short time, Kim was pregnant. At first Bruce was happy about it, but soon he began to see it all as a prison— the marriage, the pregnancy, and the pending fatherhood— and he took out his frustrations on Kim. She withstood his mental and physical abuse for months, but after Derek was born, she realized she couldn’t raise her son in that place, with the monster Bruce had become. One day when he was out in the far pastures moving cattle, Kim packed up their few possessions, the amount that could fit in a backpack, and she and Derek escaped. She took a bus back to Chicago. She was broke, had nothing more than a failed marriage, a three-month-old baby, and fifteen dollars in her purse, but she was back home with her mother, and she knew things would work out.

That was five years ago, and she’d been struggling ever since working minimum-wage jobs trying to raise money to improve their lives. Slowly, slowly she was making progress.

Looking at Sonya across the room, throwing her head back laughing, whispering into the ear of the handsome man next to her, living as if she hadn’t a single care in the world, made Kim envious. Immediately she felt guilty. If she had Sonya’s life, it would mean Derek would not be a part of it, and she could never live like that. She’d made her choices, and now she needed to live with them.

She blinked back the tears her thoughts had generated. When she looked up, she saw a man watching her from across the room. She was surprised to feel excitement— sexual excitement —when she looked at him. She wondered where that was coming from. He was very handsome, it was true, but when last had she felt anything like that? She couldn’t even remember—years perhaps.

He had dark wavy hair and crystal-blue eyes, piercing even from this distance. He wore a tuxedo, but you could see he was a man who took care of his body. His strong arms, wide shoulders, and ripped thighs couldn’t be hidden by his eveningwear. Kim couldn’t stop looking at him, so she turned her body away and found that she’d been holding her breath. What was happening to her? This was not meant to be happening.

The room was crowded, and people jostled into each other trying to move around to view the paintings. People were bumping into her, but Kim ignored them. But then she felt something else. Someone stood against her. She could feel a hard flat stomach, the edge of a shoulder, something hard at her waist and getting harder. She turned around and there he was, the man from across the room. He smelled amazing and looked more handsome up close than a person should, like a dream.

“Hello,” she said. “I thought I saw you looking at me from over there in the corner. Did you want something?”

“No,” he said. “Only to meet you I guess.” He held out his hand. “Hi, I’m Robert.”

She shook his hand. “Hi, Robert. I’m Kim. Kim Davidson.”

He stepped to the side, ushering her with his hand in the small of her back, and created a small area open between them, a small intimate circle.

“Do you like the show?” he asked.

“I love it. I’ve not been to anything like this for a very long time. The paintings are wonderful. I hope the artist sells all of them. The colors and the bold confident strokes, the subjects, so intimate and loving... I can’t stop looking at them,” Kim said, surprised to hear herself speaking so honestly from her heart to this stranger.

“Really? Which one is your favorite?” Robert asked.

“You know, the big ones are lovely, almost too much in a way. My favorite one—I’m not even sure if you noticed it, most people probably haven’t—is that small one in the far corner. The woman on the bed with the crumpled red blanket. I don’t know... I don’t know anything about art, this is not really... I mean, I’m not actually meant to be here, but... I don’t know. I just love that one. It seems so honest somehow. She’s so vulnerable but not scared in any way, like confidently vulnerable. Is there anything like that?” She laughed slightly at herself. Robert smiled at her.

Kim wasn’t sure why this man was mixing her up so, making her speak from her heart when she didn’t know him at all. There was something—maybe it was the awakened sexual feeling in her that pushed her off balance slightly. It had been a long time since she felt such an attraction to a man. It was unsettling, and she was acting uncharacteristically because of it.

“You’re right. It’s exactly like that—a vulnerable confidence. And about the honesty—you’re right about that too.” He smiled at her. “That’s my favorite also. The woman seems so unpretentious and un-self-aware. She doesn’t care or maybe she doesn’t know that she’s the most beautiful woman in the room. Like you I think.”

Kim knew she was blushing. How did a man say such a thing? Her? The most beautiful woman in the room, when the room was full of every kind of beauty? Kim assumed he must be playing with her. He was obviously very wealthy and apparently slick as well. He knew how to work a woman, and he seemed to be trying his charms on her. He would not succeed, despite what her body was trying to convince her of.

A middle-aged woman, who might have been pretty had she not pulled her graying hair back into a severe bun, came up to them. “Please excuse me for interrupting,” she said to Kim and then turned to Robert. “Sir, there’s someone who needs to speak to you. Mr. Karradin, he says it is urgent.”

Robert turned to Kim. “This is Debra, my PA. If you could excuse me for a moment?”

“Yes, of course,” Kim said.

Kim watched the two walk away. She stayed put not knowing yet that he would not return and she would not see him for the rest of the party.

“Do you know who you were talking to?” Sonya said, bouncing up to her, already drunk from the free-flowing champagne.

“He said his name was Robert.”

“Yes, Robert Miller. Don’t you know him? He’s a billionaire, inherited loads of things from his parents when they died in a plane crash a few years ago. A hotel chain, a diamond mine in Africa, property all over the country. He’s the most eligible bachelor in the country. What were you talking about?”

“Nothing. The paintings. He asked me which one I liked and I told him.”

“Yes, he has a big art collection. He bought one of the paintings.” She pointed toward the far corner. “Do you see that small painting? The one with the red, I think it’s a blanket or something?”

Kim smiled. She couldn’t believe it. “Yes, I see it.”

“That’s the one he bought.” She rubbed Kim’s arm. “Lucky you, catching the eye of Robert Miller.”

Kim watched Sonya go back to her friends and thought, yes, lucky me. And then reminded herself that nothing would come of it—just a man trying his luck. She wasn’t interested. She had more important things to take care of than stroking some rich man’s ego.