Chapter 3 #3
“Yes,” I finally manage. “A lot of his paintings have some feeling of violence, or revelation. But the technique is so beautiful that it softens the brutality. Light interweaving with dark.”
He turns to look at me, and the corner of his mouth lifts. "You know his work."
"I'm an art dealer." I lift one shoulder in a half-shrug, my voice remarkably steady. "It's my job to know."
"Ah." He extends his hand. "Alexander Volkov. I'm a donor here. Art is one of my passions."
Of course. The coincidence feels almost too strong as I reach out and take his hand.
Like fate. I feel his palm slide against mine, a hint of roughness to his skin.
Not a tender, pampered man, then, and something about that makes me like him more, that heat blistering through me now.
A rough man in an expensive suit is, it seems, something I’m attracted to.
His hand is warm, his grip firm but not aggressive.
The touch sends a jolt through me that I absolutely do not want to acknowledge.
I feel as if I’m holding onto a live wire, something that I can’t let go of.
But I have to. I can’t stand here holding his hand forever; it’s already close to being in awkward territory.
“Mara Winslow.” I introduce myself as I pull my hand back, my heart still beating wildly in my chest. “I’m just visiting from Manhattan.”
"A long way from home." His eyes haven't left my face. "Business or pleasure?"
"Visiting a friend." I turn back to the painting, needing to break the intensity of his gaze. "But I couldn't miss this exhibition. Caravaggio doesn't travel often."
"No." He moves to stand beside me, both of us facing the painting now. "Too much risk of damage." He pauses, his gaze flicking back toward me. "Some things are worth the risk, though."
The air between us feels thick, charged. I'm acutely aware of the space separating us, and I know it should be more. That I should put some distance between myself and whatever this… is.
“Fitting, since there’s an element of risk in much of his work,” I offer, trying to keep the conversation on neutral ground. Safe ground. “The Conversion of Saint Paul, The Calling of Saint Matthew, they show that becoming something new requires the death of what you were before."
“So transformation requires violence?” His eyebrow raises, and I see the slightest hint of a smirk on his lips, an expression I don’t entirely understand.
"I think it requires sacrifice." I gesture to the painting. "Paul doesn't get to stay Saul. He doesn't get to keep his certainty, his righteousness, his sense of who he is. All of that has to die in order for him to become who he’s meant to be."
“So becoming someone new requires total obliteration of your old self.” His voice is calm, but there’s something underneath it, an emotion that I don’t know him well enough to decode.
I turn to look at him. His face is unreadable, but his eyes—I realize that, even in the dim light, I can finally see what color they are.
They’re a light, icy blue, piercing in their intensity.
I’m almost relieved that they’re not focused on me at the moment—being the utter focus of his attention feels overwhelming.
"I think," I say slowly, "that some things can't be changed gently. Sometimes you have to burn all the way down to the foundation before you can rebuild."
"Mara?"
Annie's voice cuts through the moment like a knife. I turn to see her walking toward us… except there is no us, I realize. My last words were spoken into thin air. Alexander has vanished.
I’m about to look around for him when I realize that Annie looks pale, and everything else in my mind flees. "Hey." I move toward Annie immediately, concern overriding everything else. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, just..." She presses her lips together. "I think I overdid it. I'm feeling a little dizzy."
"We should go." I take her arm, steadying her. "We’ll tell the driver to head back…"
"No, don't." She squeezes my hand. "Mara, you've been wanting to see this exhibition for months. I'm not going to ruin it for you."
"You're not ruining anything—"
"Stay." Her voice is firm despite her pallor. "Please. Enjoy it. I'll have the driver take me back, and you can take your time here. I’ll send him back for you; I’ll give you the number so you can let him know when you need to be picked up."
"Annie—"
"I mean it." She's already pulling out her phone. "I feel terrible that I dragged you here and now I'm bailing. The least you can do is actually see the rest of the show."
I glance around for Alexander, but he's disappeared completely—melted into the shadows between paintings like he was never there at all.
Maybe that's for the best, I tell myself. There’s nothing that can come of a connection like that.
I’m not going to bail on Annie while I’m here for a hookup, no matter how hot he is or how intense the sex might be, and I meant it when I said I had no desire to entertain the idea of long distance. Whatever this is, it can’t go anywhere.
Ten minutes later, I have Annie safely ensconced in the car with her continued insistence that I stay.
I head back to the exhibition space, trying not to worry about her while I’m here.
It defeats the point of staying if I can’t focus on anything else, and she promised to call her doctor immediately.
There’s really nothing I can do, especially since, as she kept saying as we walked to the car, she’s just going to go home and nap.
"Your friend—is she alright?"
I nearly jump out of my skin, turning as I feel that same electric awareness prickling across my skin.
"She's fine. She’s pregnant… she just overdid it a little." I swallow hard, trying to ignore the feeling coursing through me. "I thought you'd left."
"I was giving you privacy." He moves to stand beside me again. "But I was hoping you'd stay."
The honesty in his voice catches me off guard. He sounds genuine—it doesn’t sound like pretense, or as if he’s playing a game. Just a simple statement of want.
"Why?" The question comes out before I can stop it.
"Because I'd like to walk through the rest of the exhibition with you." He tilts his head slightly. "If you'll allow it. I'm curious about your perspective."
Everything in me screams that this is a bad idea. That every minute I spend with this man is a torture and a temptation that I don’t need.
Instead, I hear myself say, "Alright."
He smiles, and it softens his face. It makes him look younger, slightly vulnerable, and I can feel myself softening toward him.
We move to the next painting in silence—The Entombment of Christ.
“And how would you describe this one?” he asks, and I think I hear genuine curiosity in his voice. It’s a temptation I can’t ignore—having someone ask me to explain art history to them is like catnip.
“It’s about weight, about the physical reality of death. Look at how the figures strain to hold Christ's body, how heavy he is."
“So much of his paintings focus on the body, in grounding even the most transcendent of moments in the flesh,” Alexander says.
A prickle runs over my skin, my heart beating hard at what feels like a genuine connection…
not just over our physical attraction, but over the most important thing in my life.
“The divine doesn’t feel intangible here,” he continues. “It feels physical. Real. Human.”
“I think our human moments are the most sacred.” I shrug lightly. “When we’re our true selves and not performing for others. When we’re present, even in grief or heaviness.”
Something shifts in his expression. I feel the weight of his eyes on me; it’s own kind of heaviness.
My blood feels like it’s rushing through my veins, hot and demanding.
My breath catches as we move further down the exhibition and he almost brushes against me, not quite making contact, but close enough that I could imagine he did.
As we make our way through the paintings, the conversation flows like we've been doing this for years, like we speak the same language. I haven’t had a conversation like this with a man on a personal level in… God, I can’t even remember how long. I don’t want it to end, and that frightens me.
When we reach the end, he looks at me. “Can I buy you a coffee, Mara Winslow?” he asks, that light smile on just the corners of his mouth. "There's a café on the second floor. Terrible coffee, but the view of the courtyard is worth it."
I laugh at that; I can’t help it. "You're a museum donor, and you're admitting the coffee is terrible?"
"I'm a donor because I love art, not because I have any illusions about the museum café’s quality." He gestures toward the exit. "Shall we?"
The café is nearly empty, the afternoon light streaming through the tall windows overlooking the courtyard. He was right—the coffee is mediocre at best. But I’m on a high from the exhibition, and the conversation, and I don’t care.
He sips his coffee as if it were a delicacy, studying me in the light. “So,” he says. “It’s been a long time since I was in Manhattan. "What's it like being an art dealer in the city that never sleeps?"
"Exhausting. Exhilarating. Competitive." I wrap my hands around my cup. "Everyone wants to be the one who discovers the next big thing or authenticates the lost masterpiece, who makes the biggest deals."
“Is that what you want?”
“I just want to be good at what I do,” I admit.
“I want my clients to be satisfied. I love chasing hard-to-find pieces, I can admit that. But I want my gallery to be successful. I love the rush of closing a deal or finding the perfect artist to showcase, but I know the rush can’t sustain us forever.
Eventually, I’m going to want to know that we can bring in enough to remain open, make me financially comfortable and pay my employees well on a regular basis, not just riding a windfall and hoping the next one comes. ”
He observes me, curiosity in his eyes. “So you want control.”