The Mistress

by Danielle Steel

  Her eyes bored into his with all the soulfulness of many Russians; they had a penchant for tragedy and sorrow, which came out in their literature, music, and art. “I had no idea you were such a talented artist,” she said softly.

  “Thank you for being kind.” He smiled at her, embarrassed that she had caught him with the visible sign of his obsession with her. He had gotten over it, but the portrait was ample evidence of how taken with her he had been. She was not just a random subject or a model, or an interesting face to paint. She was a woman he had been falling in love with at the time, even if he had come to his senses since. But everything he had felt for her was in the painting, he had given it his all, which was why Gabriel and Marc thought it was his best work. Gabriel was at the opening that night, but Marc couldn’t afford to come to Paris at the moment, and had refused money from Theo to get there. He was planning to come up sometime during the course of the show, but couldn’t make it to the opening. “It was wonderful painting you,” Theo said, not knowing what else to say to her, to excuse himself for intruding on her and exposing her, “although I had a hard time with your eyes.” He felt like an idiot standing there, talking to her inanely, and just looking at her he could feel a vise around his heart, and his stomach start to slide. She did something to him every time he saw her. He had seen her only three times in his life before that night, and on his easel in his studio every day and night for months. The painting of her had become his passion, and the culmination of his work and technique at the time.

  “I’d like to buy it,” she said quietly. “And the eyes are perfect,” she said, and he knew it too. He had sensed it when he finally got it right, and he could see now, looking at her, that he had. He had captured her expression perfectly.

  He had looked around when he first saw her, and seen that she was alone, Vladimir wasn’t there, so he couldn’t insist on buying it at any price. He was tempted to tell her it wasn’t for sale but didn’t. “I’m sorry. It’s already sold.” There was no red dot on the wall next to it, to indicate that it had been purchased, and she looked at him quizzically. “We just sold it. They didn’t put the red dot up yet.” She looked shocked and disappointed as he said it. She didn’t want a portrait as intimate as that going to a stranger and hanging in their home. And neither did he.

  “Have they paid for it yet? I don’t want someone else to have it. I’ll pay you more.” She had learned some of Vladimir’s habits, which usually worked. Few merchants were loyal to their customers, if someone else offered them a better price. And seeing the disappointment and sorrow on her face, Theo realized that he should have offered it to her before this, but he had wanted to keep the painting for himself. He just hadn’t been able to resist putting it in the show, and Jean had wanted it at the gallery when he saw it, at least for the opening, to demonstrate Theo’s skill.

  “They paid for it just a little while ago. I’m truly sorry,” Theo said apologetically, looking down at her, wishing he could put his arms around her. She was tall, but he was taller, and despite her height, she looked vulnerable and frail. She was the kind of woman you wanted to protect, and be sure no one would hurt. He had never felt that way about anyone before. “Are you in Paris for a visit?” he asked, trying to get her off the subject of the portrait, which made him seem like a jerk for not having offered it to her privately before the show.

  “No.” She smiled at him wistfully, sad to have lost the portrait. “I have an apartment here now. We do. On Avenue Montaigne. It’s been fun decorating it, and I’m still looking for art.” She glanced back at her own likeness. “This would have been perfect. But I’ll look at your other work.”

  “Maybe I could come and see the spaces you have, and the light, and we could pick something together,” he said hopefully, not sure why he’d said it. Given the art collection he had, Vladimir didn’t need his advice. He wondered where he was. “Where are you located?”

  “Number fifteen. I’ll contact you through the gallery,” she said simply. “I’m here for another two weeks. Will you be here for a while?”

  “Another day or two before I go back down South, but I can make time.” He would have flown to her side at the merest invitation, but he doubted that she’d call him.

  “It’s a wonderful show,” she complimented him, and she had noticed a number of red dots, indicating that several pieces had sold. She smiled at him then. “Thank you for painting me. It’s a great compliment,” she said graciously, forgiving him for selling her portrait to a stranger without ever offering it to her. He almost told her the truth then, that he didn’t want to part with it. Giving it up would be like losing her, even though he had never had her, and knew he never would.

  She walked around the show for a few minutes then, and when he looked for her again a few minutes later, she had left. And he had gone back to stand with Inez and the others, and tried to seem casual about it when he reappeared after talking to Natasha. Inez gave him a chilly, suspicious look, and spoke to him in a cold tone the moment they were alone.

  “I’m not blind, you know. I saw you with the woman in the portrait. You told me you didn’t know her.” Her eyes were questioning and hard.

  “I don’t know her, not really,” he said almost honestly, but not quite. He wished he knew her, but didn’t. “I’ve seen her three times in my life, four including tonight. At my mother’s restaurant with her boyfriend last summer, when I delivered a painting to her, for two minutes at a London art fair, and now. And I didn’t invite her tonight. I don’t know why she came. She must be on their client list. She had a face I wanted to paint, that’s all.”

  “The portrait is a perfect likeness of her. I recognized her immediately.” And then she shocked him with her next question. “Are you in love with her?”

  “Of course not. She’s a total stranger.”

  “Artists don’t paint women they don’t know, unless they’re obsessed with them in some way, or they’re studio models.” And the portrait had that quality of obsession to it, which Inez had sensed. It was a love letter to a woman he longed to know better, and could only guess at. Inez was right. But he’d been obsessed with her six months before. He thought he was over it, until he felt as though someone had ripped his heart out of his chest again the minute he laid eyes on her that night. It was starting all over again, just as it had before. She had magic powers of some kind that he couldn’t seem to resist.

  “I’m not obsessed,” he said, as much to convince himself as Inez, who looked unhappy. And having seen Natasha in the flesh, if he was in love with her, she knew the competition was stiff.

  “Why is it that I smell drama in the air?” she said, looking at him intently. “I told you, I don’t do drama. If that’s what this is, I’ll run before you know what hit you.”

  “You have nothing to worry about,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders, but he felt like a liar and a cheat. He had robbed Natasha of her face to paint her portrait, and now he was lying to Inez about a woman he had been obsessed with and didn’t know. He felt like a madman as he left her a few minutes later, went to Jean Pasquier’s desk, took out a red dot, and put it on the wall next to Natasha’s portrait. At least he could do that much for her, so no one bought it that night.

  The rest of the opening went well, and both Theo and Jean Pasquier were pleased. Gabriel congratulated him before he left. And he and Theo agreed that it was a shame that his mother hadn’t come. She was busy doing some remodeling and repairs at the restaurant, and claimed she couldn’t leave. But they both knew she hated coming to Paris, and preferred her safe, familiar little world in St. Paul de Vence. Theo understood that about her and didn’t take it personally.

  “I’ll tell her what a success the show was,” Gabriel promised when he left. And Theo went back to the hotel with Inez after the last guests were gone. He was meeting with Pasquier the next morning to go over sales and a list of clients to send images to who had expressed interest in his work that night.

  Theo and In
ez were quiet on the walk back to the hotel, each of them lost in thought. And when they got to their room, Inez questioned him again.

  “Why is it that I don’t believe you when you say you’re not in love with that girl?” She was sitting on the bed and staring at him, as though she would find the answer in his eyes and not his words.

  “She belongs to the richest man in Russia.” He said it as though she were an object, a piece of furniture, or a slave, and hated the way it sounded and what it meant, because in a way it was true. Vladimir considered her a possession and treated her as one.

  “And if she didn’t ‘belong’ to him,” she pursued it, “would you want her?”

  “It’s a ridiculous question,” he said as he paced the room, uncomfortable in his own skin. “It’s like asking if I want to own the Eiffel Tower or the Mona Lisa. They’re not for sale.”

  “Everything has a price, if you’re willing to pay it,” Inez said coldly, echoing Vladimir’s words precisely, which almost made him shudder. He didn’t want that to be true. And in Natasha’s case it wasn’t, and his mother was right, he couldn’t afford her. “And you’re not exactly a pauper,” Inez reminded him, “even if you like to pretend you are. You may not have as much as her Russian boyfriend. But she would hardly starve with you.” Inez didn’t care what Theo had, but it was no secret in the art world who his father was and what he had left him.

  “Women like that are different,” Theo said, looking tortured as he sat down in a chair. “And I’m not looking to buy someone at auction, in a bidding war. It’s not an issue with her. She’s his mistress, she has a fabulous life, materially anyway, and she seems to be happy with him. I wouldn’t know what to do with a woman like that anyway. End of story.”

  “Maybe not,” Inez said knowingly. “Maybe only the beginning.”

  “If that were true, it would have happened seven months ago when I met her. It didn’t. I painted a portrait of her because she has a pretty face. That’s all.” But neither of them felt reassured when they went to bed that night. Inez didn’t believe him. And Theo knew it was happening again. He was haunted by Natasha again as he lay in bed with Inez.

  Every time he got near Natasha, she got under his skin, and he could no longer think straight. He felt confused and disoriented, and he couldn’t sleep for a long time. And he and Inez lay on opposite sides of the bed, already disappointed by what was happening. There was a space between them big enough for the girl who was bewitching him. Natasha might as well have been in the bed with them. They could both feel her powerful presence in the room.

  And on Avenue Montaigne, Natasha was lying on her bed, thinking about him too. There was something so intense about him, although she couldn’t figure out what it was, and she liked talking to him. She took the sheet of paper out of her bag, to look at his biography, curious about where he had studied art, and at first his last name didn’t strike her, and then she read the third paragraph, which mentioned whose son he was, and that he had trained at his father’s side as a boy. She was shocked to realize that he was Theo Luca but had never said anything at the restaurant, or when he dropped his father’s painting off at the boat. He was humble and modest, and acted like an employee and a messenger and nothing more.

  She read the biography again several times…grew up in St. Paul de Vence…born in his father’s studio…and trained at his father’s knee from the age of five…École des Beaux-Arts in Paris…second-largest collector in the world of his father’s work…talented artist in his own right…his first gallery show…and she was in it. He had obviously worked hard on her portrait, and she couldn’t understand why. Why had he painted her and how had he seen so much in her eyes? He had seen all the pain of her childhood…the terrors of the orphanage…the heartbreak of her mother abandoning her…he had seen it all. It was all in the painting he had done of her, and it was as though she could feel him inside her now, embedded in her soul. He had slipped into her unnoticed, and she could feel that he was still there, silent, waiting, knowing her, and she didn’t know whether to run from him or not. But he had no place in her life. She belonged to Vladimir. And she could sense that Theo Luca was a danger to her. Just being near him put her whole life at risk.

  Chapter 8

  When Theo and Inez got up the next morning, neither of them mentioned Natasha again. They had exhausted the subject the night before. They had a breakfast of café au lait and croissants at a café nearby, and he told her he’d be free by lunchtime and would call her. And then he went to the gallery for his meeting with Jean Pasquier, to discuss how the show had gone, any reviews they’d had, and the sales of the night before. He had sold six paintings, which Jean said was excellent, and had a very favorable review in Le Figaro, which reminded Theo of what he wanted to tell him, since the art critic had been particularly impressed by Natasha’s portrait.

  “By the way, I’m taking the portrait out of the show,” Theo said quietly. “I shouldn’t have put it in without the subject’s permission.”

  “She was here last night,” Jean commented. “I saw her. You captured her perfectly. Was she upset by it?”

  “Shocked, I think. I felt like a jerk not having told her about it.”

  “You’re an artist. You can paint whoever and whatever you want.” Theo didn’t tell him that Natasha had offered to buy it. He didn’t want her to, and he suspected the gallerist would have. He was in business after all. But they both agreed that for a first show, it had gone very, very well.

  “I’ll take the portrait with me today, and back down South tomorrow,” Theo said, trying to sound casual about it.

  “I can ship it to you if you prefer,” Jean offered, but Theo shook his head.

  “I’ll carry it. I don’t want it to get lost.” It was a reasonable explanation, and artists were notoriously paranoid about their work.

  They talked about the show for about an hour, and Theo thanked him for doing such a good job and hanging it so well, and giving him such a great opportunity for his first gallery show. And then he left, carrying Natasha’s portrait, walked to Boulevard St. Germain, and hailed a cab. He gave the driver the address he remembered on Avenue Montaigne. He knew he couldn’t just ring her doorbell and show up, but there would be a concierge, and hopefully he could call her from downstairs and hand it to her. He wondered if Vladimir would be there.

  The building was as fancy as he expected it to be in that neighborhood and particularly on that street, and it was small, with a single apartment on each floor, and some occupying two floors, like theirs. There were only six stories in the building. And there was actually a security guard outside as well as a concierge. And there was an intercom to each apartment. He buzzed where it was marked VS, knowing it was them, and a Russian maid answered. He asked for Natasha, and the woman went to get her, then he heard Natasha’s voice at the other end.

  “Hi. It’s Theo. I came to drop something off.” She hesitated for a long moment while he waited, and then he heard her voice again.

  “You can come up. Fourth floor.” She buzzed him in, and he went through a glass door, and got into a mirrored elevator big enough for four people, which was large for Paris. The elevator stopped, and he got out. She was standing in the doorway, in blue jeans and ballerina shoes, with a heavy black sweater and her long blond hair loose and tousled, reaching almost to her waist. He handed her the wrapped painting where she stood, and she looked surprised.

  “I want you to have it. I was going to keep it because everyone says it’s my best work so far, but it belongs to you.”

  “Did the buyer change their mind?” She looked confused, and he shook his head.

  “There was no buyer. I wanted to give it to you. I knew it when I saw you last night, but I didn’t want to tell you with all those people around.”

  “I want to buy it,” she said fairly, as they stood on the landing with the painting between them, and he shook his head again.

  “It’s a gift. It has no price, and it’s not for sale. It�
��s yours.”

  “I can’t just take it from you like that.” She was visibly embarrassed but pleased and very touched. She looked incredibly young when he talked to her. He had noticed it before. He didn’t know how old she was, but she seemed like barely more than a girl, especially with what she wore. She appeared older only when she was all dressed up.

  “Why not?” He smiled at her. “I took your face to paint it, now you can take the result.”

  “It’s a wonderful portrait. Do you want to help me pick a place to hang it?” she asked cautiously as she stood in the doorway, and he nodded. She stepped aside so he could come in, and he carried the painting for her. He had chosen an antique frame and it was heavy.

  He followed her into the apartment, and he immediately noticed the antique boiseries and floors, the art she had hung in the entry, which was mostly her choices, and not as important as most of Vladimir’s, but warmer and more appealing. He walked into the living room after her, which looked like a little sitting room in Versailles, but wasn’t overdone, with delicate silks and damasks. They wandered into the little sitting room, the dining room, and then she took him up the stairs to their bedroom, since she was thinking of hanging it there. She had a seventeenth-century painting of a young girl over the fireplace, and they both had the same thought at the same time. The portrait would be perfect there. He carefully lifted down the one she had hanging, and put the one of her on the same hook, and it was absolutely perfect. They both smiled as they looked at it, and she seemed thrilled.

  “I love it, don’t you?” She clapped her hands like a child, and he laughed, watching her. She was more like a young girl than a woman, despite what she’d seen and the life she led with Vladimir.

  “Yes, I love it,” he said, smiling at her, pleased that he had made the gesture and given it to her. And what he’d said was true. It belonged with her. He wanted her to have it.