3. Soleil
THREE
SOLEIL
The ma?tre d' smiled when I walked in. "Ms. Lattimore. Mr. Hugh is already seated."
Of course he was. My father had never been late to anything in his life.
I spotted him in our usual booth by the window — silver hair combed back, navy suit pressed sharp, black coffee untouched because he always waited for me before the first sip.
He looked up. The phone disappeared. He stood, buttoned his jacket, and kissed my forehead.
"There's my girl."
"Hi, Daddy." I slid into the booth. The sparkling water with lemon was already there. Every Friday since I was eighteen. I canceled plans for these. He rearranged board meetings. It was sacred.
"Last night," he said, picking up his coffee. "Tell me everything."
"Four pieces sold. Rafael cried when the young couple bought the Pinheiros streetscape. And Margaux nearly fainted during a pricing negotiation with Eleanor Voss."
His eyebrows rose over the rim of his cup. "Eleanor came?"
"Three pieces, Daddy. She bought three."
"Well." He set the cup down, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. "She has good taste."
I tilted my head. "You wouldn't happen to know how Eleanor heard about the gallery?"
"I ran into her at the Harrington benefit. Mentioned my daughter's gallery to a woman who collects art." He shrugged. "She made her own decision." He looked at me over his coffee, fond. “I open a door now and then. You're the one who has to walk through it.
"Daddy."
"I pointed. She walked. That's all."
I shook my head but couldn't stop the grin.
I believed him. Of course I did. He'd always said he only nudged.
A word here. A name there. Nothing that would make it his instead of mine.
The thought moved through me like a shadow across a window — the gallery, the lease, the terms, Eleanor Voss walking through my door — and then the shadow passed, and the grin stayed.
"Have you heard from your brother?" he asked.
The grin faded. "I called after the show. Two texts. He sent back a thumbs-up."
"Just a thumbs-up?"
"One thumb. No words." I turned my glass on the table. "He showed up last night, but he left early, and he was…distracted."
Something behind his eyes tightened. A reorganization — quick, buried. I'd been catching these my whole life. I'd never followed them.
"The Meridian acquisition is taking everything out of him," Daddy said. "Give him space."
"He's canceled our last two dinners."
"He'll come around. He's a Lattimore. We always do."
I let it slide, as I always did when his voice dipped into that warm, conclusive tone — the door shut firm behind his smile.
"Your birthday," he said, his eyes brightening. "What does my girl want?"
"Small. Intimate. Family dinner."
"Define small."
"Under thirty people."
"I'll consider it."
"Daddy."
"I said I'll consider it."
I opened my mouth. The man from the gallery sat behind my teeth.
His name, the painting, the text exchange still glowing on my phone.
I closed my mouth. This was mine. The first thing in a long time that didn't arrive through his network or his orbit.
I wanted to hold it before anyone else touched it.
We finished brunch. He kissed my forehead at the curb. I watched his car pull away and checked the time.
At 6:43 p.m., my phone buzzed with an address and nothing else. I smiled at the screen because the absence of decoration was becoming something I recognized as him.
He stood outside the building in a black suit, no tie, hands tucked in his pockets. His collar hung open with two buttons undone, revealing a sliver of dark skin at the base of his throat.
"Hi," I said.
His eyes traveled over me, taking in the burnt sienna knit, wide-legged trousers, and mismatched earrings I'd assembled from vintage Brooklyn flea market finds. His gaze paused on the earrings.
"You made those," he said.
I touched one. "How did you know?"
"They don't match. On purpose."
I opened my mouth and closed it. He turned toward the entrance before I could respond.
The security guard nodded. "Good evening, Mr. Reeves."
He nodded in return. “Good evening.”
We took an elevator to the basement. He pushed open a heavy door, stepped aside, and waited.
Floor-to-ceiling shelves held paintings in various stages of undress.
Canvases stripped to their underlayers, revealing sketches beneath the oil.
Mistakes painted over, original compositions buried under final versions.
A Baroque canvas sat on a stand with one corner cleaned to a luminous blue and the other still darkened by centuries of varnish.
A conservator's table held scalpels, solvents, and brushes finer than eyelashes.
I pressed my hand over my mouth. "How did you get access to this?"
"I know people."
"You know people who let you into a conservation lab after hours?"
"I'm persuasive."
I turned to face him. He leaned just inside the door, shoulder propped against the frame, watching me with that same rapt focus he'd given Rafael's painting last night. Still, unblinking, granting me space not out of courtesy, but hunger — to drink me in undisturbed.
"You," I said, "are the least persuasive-sounding person I've ever met."
He smirked.
“My partners at Vanguard would agree with you.”
I grinned and turned back to the paintings.
The Baroque piece pulled me in. I leaned close, studying the border where the cleaned half met the dark — the luminous blue giving way to centuries of grime, two versions of the same sky separated by a conservator's careful hand.
"The painting you bought last night," I said, still facing the canvas. "The garden."
"What about it?" His voice was close. He'd moved from the doorway without making a sound.
I turned. He was less than a foot away. I could see the texture of his jaw, the clean line where his hair met his skin.
"It was mine," I said with a shy smile. "I painted it myself."
His expression softened into a gentle smile. "I know."
"You — how?"
"The brushwork was different from everything else in the room." His eyes held mine. "And your knuckles went white on the doorframe when I turned it around."
I bit the inside of my cheek. "Maybe I was surprised."
"You were terrified."
"I don't get terrified."
"Your hands told a different story." He paused. "Why hide it?"
"I wasn't hiding. I just…" I looked at the Baroque canvas, catching the faint blue beneath the varnish. "Nobody sees those. They're just for me."
"Show them."
"It's not that simple."
"It's exactly that simple. You're the one making it complicated."
"I'll think about it," I said.
He nodded once.
I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding and moved toward the door. "Come on. I'm starving, and I know a place."
"What kind of place?"
"It’s one you'll hate," I added, a smirk tugging at my lips.
The Dominican spot was three blocks south, tucked between a laundromat and a nail salon.
The fluorescent tubes buzzed overhead. The chairs were plastic.
A hand-painted menu board hung behind the counter, and a woman with gray-streaked hair tied under a yellow bandana was stirring something in a pot that smelled like garlic and cilantro.
I walked up to the counter. Nolan stood behind me, his tall frame conspicuous in the small space.
"Buenas noches," I said to the woman. She looked up from the pot and smiled. "Me da dos platos de sancocho, un orden de tostones, y — "
I glanced back at Nolan. He raised an eyebrow. I turned back to her. "Y dos maltas, por favor."
"Claro, mami." She winked at me and shouted toward the kitchen. A man's voice shouted back. She waved us toward a table by the window.
I pulled out a plastic chair and sat. Nolan looked at the chair, then the table, then the menu — all in Spanish, which he couldn't read.
"What did you order?" he asked, lowering himself into the chair across from me. His knees nearly hit the underside of the table.
"You'll see."
"That's not reassuring."
"Good." I grinned. "Trust is earned."
He shook his head, but the corner of his mouth gave a twitch. I was learning to track those — the ghost that lived at the edge of his lips, the one he kept killing before it could arrive.
The sancocho came in deep ceramic bowls, steam rising off the surface.
Root vegetables, chunks of corn on the cob, tender beef, and a broth the color of gold.
The tostones arrived on a separate plate, crispy and thick, with a cup of garlic sauce beside them.
The Malta bottles were dark, cold, and sweating.
I picked up my spoon, dipped it into the broth, and brought it to my lips. The heat bloomed through my chest. "Oh," I whispered. "Oh, that's good."
Nolan picked up his spoon. He took a sip. His eyes closed for half a second — involuntary, I was sure, because when they opened, he looked almost annoyed at himself for reacting.
"Well?" I leaned forward, my elbows on the table.
"It's good."
"It's good? That's what you're giving me?"
He took another spoonful. His jaw relaxed as he chewed through a piece of beef. "It's very good."
I tore a tostón in half and dipped it in the garlic sauce. "You know, I keep waiting for you to use more than four words at a time."
"Why would I use six when four works?"
I laughed. He watched me laugh — his eyes on my mouth, then my eyes, then back to his bowl. He picked up a tostón and bit into it. His eyebrows lifted a fraction. He dipped the other half in the sauce without being told.
"So," I said, pushing a piece of corn around my bowl. "Serious question."
He looked up. A drop of broth sat on his lower lip. He wiped it with his thumb.
"Do you own a single piece of clothing that isn't black?"
He shrugged. "Black goes with everything."
"Black is the absence of color."
He set his spoon down and leaned back, his arms crossing over his chest. "Are you talking about light or pigment?"
I blinked. "What?"
"In pigment, black is every color combined." He tilted his head. "The opposite of absence."
I put both palms flat on the table. "Did you just out-art-nerd me?"