Unconventional furnishings and fabrics graced each room, from the imported ivory silk carpets from China to the low-slung sofas and chairs designed to flow like ribbons fluttering in the wind. The only colors used were muted earth and sky tones, which faded away into the cloudlike walls as if they were in the process of disappearing into them.
Meriden despised clutter, and he might have warmed to the place himself if not for the dozens of portraits hung on the walls, each one a slam of color to the eye.
He had no idea who the people were that Dansant painted, but they pissed him off every time he looked at one of their faces. The oil paintings, which showed both men and women standing surrounded by mists or shadows, were dark and composed of thousands of short, broad strokes, more like sketches than paintings. Framed in precious woods and polished steel, each one was illuminated by an incandescent spotlight in the ceiling, which emphasized the rich jewellike colors and compelling movements of the brushstrokes.
The men were handsome and the women gorgeous, but there was something wrong with all of them.
Despite the heavy hand Dansant used with his paint, he managed to draw out disturbing details from each portrait: lethal chrome eyes, a twisted angelic smile, a slash of scar. One of the youngest subjects in the paintings, a tall, dark-haired kid with glowing purple eyes, looked at times like a feminine boy and at others a boyish girl. Another portrait showed a man whose hair and skin were covered with green shadows that echoed the eerie color of his emerald eyes.
The one he really hated most was the one he’d christened the Bitch Madonna, a portrait of a woman dressed in white, the only one of his subjects that Dansant had painted in profile. She stood half-turned toward something, the shape of another figure cloaked in the shadows around her, but instead of looking at her mystery companion she eyed Meriden like he was a swatch of slime under a microscope. Her nose was too beaky and her eyes too sharp for her to be called pretty, but the colors the Frenchman had used for her made her shimmer with life, from the red lights spiraling through her long chestnut curls to the golden warmth of her skin.
She radiated light like high noon on a summer day, but something about her made him think of thunderstorms at midnight.
D’Anges’s executive chef rarely spent more than a few hours in the place, and didn’t stock anything for himself in the brushed-steel fridge or glass- fronted cabinets. Meriden never knew when he was going to end up here, so he kept a stock of his own supplies. He took out a cold beer before he pulled back the silver drapes and stepped out onto the teak floor of the narrow balcony that wrapped around the entire floor. From the west side he could watch the sky, which he often did, counting the minutes until the night crept over the city.
Meriden lifted his beer in the direction of King’s mansion. Cheers, you evil motherfucker.
The Frenchman would be late to the restaurant tonight, Meriden thought with some satisfaction, so by the time he got there that long, cool woman he’d hired would be too busy working to flirt with him. He guessed Rowan Dietrich was already half in love with Dansant; there wasn’t a woman alive who could resist him. Let Dansant have her, too. Meriden wasn’t interested in a skinny kid with eyes like permanent bruises and a subconscious death wish.
All right, he admitted to himself, she was something to see, all long legs and racing curves. Meriden usually preferred his ladies blond and built, with bodies he could really sink into and play with, but the slinky little black cat had the kind of speed and grace that aroused something else in him.
If a man had an itch, she’d definitely scratch.
When she’d run downstairs, he’d wanted to follow, to chase her down. He scowled at his own thoughts, not sure why he’d felt that. She thought she was tough, you could see it in the set of her shoulders and the curl of her hands. The way she had of tilting her head to bring up her chin and look down her nose when she was pissed, should have annoyed him. Instead, it tickled the shit out of him. So did her sense of humor, so sharp it came equipped with teeth and claws.
He shouldn’t have walked back into the bathroom earlier; he’d known from the sound of the shower she was in there washing up. And if he was going to be honest, that was exactly why he’d gone back in. She’d never know how close he’d come to yanking back the curtain and joining her. He’d have been happy to scrub her back, her front, and any other parts that needed some close, personal attention.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten laid; maybe that was why he’d gotten a hard-on that still hadn’t subsided. There were half a dozen women he could call for something easy and quick, and still he didn’t want a damn one of them.
Talking to Rowan had been a mistake. He could have found out what her deal was through Dansant. Now he was screwed. He wasn’t living ten feet away from her without touching her. Not now that he knew what she smelled like when she stripped down to her skin.
Sure, break into her apartment tonight and wake her up by fucking her brains out. Of course she’ll come to thinking that you’re her dream prince.
Meriden felt the last glimmer of sunlight touch his face before he drank the rest of his beer and went back inside. He looked at all the silent fixtures, the understated elegance and clean lines, knowing that—like Rowan—it would never be his. He threw the bottle across the room, watching it smash against the frame around the Bitch Madonna.
The last dregs of his beer ran down the portrait’s face like amber tears. Another of Dansant’s victims, no doubt, not that Meriden would ever know for sure. The Frenchman kept his secrets. Still, after all these years together, he had a pretty good idea of how it would go.
Dansant hadn’t hired Rowan or given her the apartment out of the goodness of his heart. He wanted her, and he intended to keep her where he could have her and make regular use of her. When he got bored, he’d employ his mojo, wipe her memory and send her on her way.
He went into the bedroom to stand beside the bed. “You can have any woman in Manhattan,” he muttered as the light from outside disappeared. “Any woman in the fucking world. Just leave this one alone. She didn’t ask for this shit. She didn’t ask for you. You hear me?”
No one answered.
Chapter 8
Not for the first time in his new life, Dansant woke to the smell of beer and rage.
He knew the cause of it. Meriden had sometimes indulged his penchant for breaking and entering as well as ale and anger in years past, although since coming to America he had calmed down considerably and had worked hard to make their arrangements comfortable. Dansant never fooled himself into believing Sean was happy, but he had assumed the younger man had made his peace with their situation.
What has gone wrong now?
He tracked the scent from his bedroom through the empty apartment to one of his paintings, beneath which lay scattered broken brown glass. A chip in the frame and the splatter of beer across the canvas testified to what had happened.
He knelt and collected the glass in his hand, disposing of it in the kitchen before he went back to carefully clean the surface of the portrait. The narrow, clever face of the chestnut-haired woman seemed to soften with sympathy.
Would you feel sorry for me, chérie? he wondered as he blotted dry her features. Or would you side yourself with him?
He despised the circumstances that had brought him and Meriden together, and forced their dependence on each other, but when it came to a resolution, he was as helpless to change it as his partner was. Perhaps more so, for he had done nothing by design to harm Sean or intrude on his life, and had in fact been dragged into this uncomfortable partnership with no choice at all. Yet he had never blamed Nathan for what he had done, not when he had come to understand the reasons behind it. Without the terrible choice Nathan had made, Dansant would be nothing but a collection of tubes and samples in a laboratory; where what remained of his body would have been used to change others into becoming something like what he had been.
But without Dansant’s intervention, Sean Meriden might never have had a life, either. Then Nathan’s heroic act would have resulted in nothing more than a nameless corpse rotting in a potter’s grave.
A pity Sean never remembered that.
Dansant didn’t know why Meriden had come to the apartment, but the hour was late, and he had to move quickly to prepare for the night’s work. He showered and dressed before he called down for a taxi.
Downstairs the doorman, a silent but watchful ex-Marine who had lost an arm in Afghanistan, greeted him with a smile. “Evening, Mr. Dansant. Your cab’s waiting.”
“Merci, Jason.” As he put on his coat, he glanced outside. “No new snowfalls?”
“No, sir. Should stay clear and cold until midnight, and then some snow flurries are coming in from the east.” Jason opened the door and escorted him to the curb. “My fiancée went crazy when I told her you invited us to your next chef’s table. We couldn’t even get reservations at your restaurant until next summer or fall, I think.”
Dansant’s chef’s table, a private, invitation-only free dinner he held once a week at D’Anges, had become legend among the city’s fine dining patrons. Many food critics, famous gourmands, and several chefs from competing restaurants had tried repeatedly to angle for an invitation, only to be summarily turned down. None of them was aware that Dansant had very specific criteria for who joined him at his table.
“She’s been shopping for a dress all week.” The doorman sounded proud and embarrassed. “Any hints I should drop on what she should wear so she doesn’t, ah, look out of place?”
“I am sure anything she chooses will be charming.” Dansant had seen the young woman in question, who was a pretty redhead with milk-white skin, who often picked up Jason after work. “If she cannot decide, there is in her closet perhaps the little black dress, oui?”
“Oh, yeah, about twenty of them,” Jason said drily. “With matching shoes.”
“I will tell you a secret,” Dansant said as Jason opened the taxi door for him. “All American women love the little black dress because it is the classic, and they all look good in it. And they know this.”