22. Neil
— ? —
Neil
The Milan gallery was smaller than the New York one, but somehow more intimidating.
Maybe it was the ceilings, vaulted and ancient, making every footstep echo. Maybe it was the Italian critics clustered in corners, speaking in rapid-fire judgments. Or maybe it was Theo Lachlan, standing near the entrance.
The Table hung in the center of the room. The scar ran corner to corner, a visible wound that the restorer had preserved exactly as Anika requested. It looked different here, under the European light. More defiant, more alive.
“Nervous?” I asked.
Anika was standing beside me, her hands clasped in front of her, her face carefully neutral. She was wearing a simple black dress, no jewelry, her hair pulled back. She looked like she was about to walk into battle.
“Terrified,” she admitted.
The doors would open in five minutes. Already I could see the crowd gathering outside, a mix of collectors and critics and curious onlookers who’d heard about the American artist whose show had ended in a fistfight.
I turned to face her. Took her face in my hands.
“You’re going to smash it,” I said.
She went still.
“You’re looking at me,” she said quietly.
“And?”
“That’s the first time you’ve said that while looking at me. You mean it this time.”
The words hit harder than I expected. All those times I’d tossed off the phrase while reaching for my wine, checking my phone, already thinking about the next meeting. All those times I’d offered encouragement without actually being present for it.
“I’m sorry it took so long.”
She stared at me for a moment. Then she rose on her toes and kissed me, soft and quick.
“Don’t make me cry. I just did my makeup.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
The doors opened and the crowd poured in.
Theo found us twenty minutes later.
He approached with that smooth European stride, champagne in hand, smile perfectly calibrated. But something was different. A tension around his eyes, tightness in his jaw.
“Anika.” He leaned in to kiss her cheek. “Congratulations. The show is magnificent.”
“Thank you, Theo. For making this happen.”
“My pleasure.” His eyes slid to me. Cooled several degrees. “Neil. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Where my wife goes, I go.”
“How devoted.” The word came out with a slight edge. “I thought you had a company to run.”
“I have people for that now.”
Anika shifted beside me. I could feel her tension, the way she was bracing for whatever was coming.
Theo took a sip of his champagne. “I have to say, I’m surprised you’re still together.
After everything that happened. The diary, the scandal, the very public separation.
” He smiled at Anika, and there was something predatory in it now.
Something that had been hidden before. “I thought you would have realized by now that you deserve better.”
“Theo,” Anika said carefully.
“I’m just being honest.” He stepped closer to her, angling his body to exclude me from the conversation.
“You have extraordinary talent. You could have an extraordinary life. Instead, you’re still tethered to a man who wrote that you weren’t compatible.
Who forgot your birthday. Who chose his secretary over you. ”
“He didn’t choose his secretary.”
“Didn’t he? Everything that happened suggests otherwise.”
I felt something cold settle in my chest. This was who Theo really was. He was not a charming patron of the arts or at least a supportive colleague. Just another man who saw my wife as something to be acquired.
“Theo.” My voice came out flat and dangerous. “I’m going to give you one chance to walk away from this conversation.”
He turned to face me, and the mask was fully off now. “Or what? You’ll buy the gallery and have me thrown out? You’ll use your money to make the problem disappear, the way you do with everything?”
“I don’t need to buy anything.” I stepped closer, and he actually backed up. “My wife is not a problem to be solved. She’s not a prize to be won. And she’s certainly not available for you to poach just because you think I’m not good enough for her.”
“Neil,” Anika said softly.
“I know what I did. I know how badly I failed her. But I’m here now, doing the work, showing up every day. What are you doing? Circling like a vulture, waiting for my marriage to die so you can swoop in?” I smiled, and it wasn’t a nice smile. “That’s not going to happen.”
Theo’s face went red. For a moment, I thought he might actually take a swing at me.
Then he composed himself. The mask slid back into place, though it fit less smoothly now.
“Well.” He straightened his jacket. “I suppose we should keep things professional from now on.” He turned to Anika. “The gallery introductions will proceed as planned. My people will handle the details. I trust that’s acceptable.”
“That’s acceptable,” Anika said coolly.
Theo walked away without another word.
Anika let out a breath. “That was…”
“Overdue.”
“I was going to say hot.” She looked up at me, and there was something warm in her eyes. “Very hot.”
“Yeah?”
“Remind me to make you jealous more often.”
“Please don’t.”
She laughed, and the sound loosened something in my chest that had been tight since Theo first approached.
The show was a hit.
Three pieces sold in the first hour. Two more by dinner. By the time the gallery closed, Anika had commitments from collectors in four countries and interview requests from a dozen publications.
She was radiant. Everything I’d always known she could be, finally being seen by the world.
The gallery didn’t need her for four more days. The staff would handle the rest of the show. She was free.
Which meant I could finally do what I’d been planning since we landed.
“Pack nothing,” I said as we left the gallery.
She stopped walking. “What?”
“You heard me. The jet leaves at six.”
“Neil, I have clothes at the hotel…”
“You won’t need them.”
“That’s ominous.”
***
Milan first.
Via Montenapoleone at ten p.m., because I’d called ahead and the stores were waiting. Anika walked through the first boutique like she was in a museum, touching nothing, looking at everything.
She paused at a scarf. Cashmere and hand-painted. She picked it up, ran her fingers across the fabric, and put it back down.
“We’ll take it,” I said to the attendant.
“Neil…”
“You looked at it for four seconds. That’s your tell.”
“I don’t have a tell.”
“You absolutely have a tell. Your left eyebrow twitches when you want something and you’re trying to convince yourself you don’t.”
She stared at me. “My eyebrow does not twitch.”
“It’s twitching right now.”
“Because you’re being ridiculous.”
“Add the blue one too,” I told the attendant. “She’ll look at it as we’re leaving and pretend she doesn’t want it.”
Anika threw up her hands. “This is insane.”
“This is eight years of interest. You bankrolled me for a year on four paintings. Remember? When I was almost bankrupt with no investors, and you sold your work to keep us afloat. I owe you everything I have.”
“That’s not how marriage works.”
“Ours does. Everything I built, I built because you believed in me first. We’re just getting started.”
She opened her mouth to argue. Looked at the scarves.
“Fine,” she said. “But I’m drawing the line at jewelry.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Paris by midnight.
I’d rented an atelier in the Marais. After hours, private showing. When we arrived, a seamstress was waiting with champagne and a rack of couture pieces that had been pulled from the archives just for Anika.
“Madame Franco,” the seamstress said, ushering her toward a velvet stool. “Please, sit. We have much to show you.”
Anika shot me a look and I shrugged innocently.
Three hours later, she’d tried on sixteen dresses. The seamstress kept calling her Madame Franco. Somewhere around the third gown, Anika stopped correcting her.
I noticed.
Marrakech at dawn.
“I don’t understand why we’re here. Is sleep not part of the itinerary?” Anika said as the car wound through narrow streets toward the medina.
“You said once that the light in Marrakech must be unreal.”
“When did I say that?”
“Two years ago. We were watching a documentary about artists who’d lived here. You said you wanted to see it someday.”
She was quiet for a moment. “You remembered that.”
“It came to me in a dream.”
The pigment souk was overwhelming. Spices and dyes piled in pyramids, colors I didn’t have names for, sellers calling out in Arabic and French. Anika walked through like she was in a trance, touching everything, her eyes wide.
She stopped at a stall with pigments in wooden bowls. Lapis lazuli, ground fine. A blue so deep it looked like captured sky.
“How much?” I asked the dealer.
“Neil, no.”
“How much for all of it?”
The dealer named a price. I paid it.
“And the saffron,” I said. “And whatever else she looks at for more than three seconds.”
“I hate you,” Anika said.
“You love me.”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
Dubai that evening.
A private jeweler. I knew she said she’d draw the line at jewelry, but I also knew that line was negotiable.
The jeweler laid out trays of impossible things. Diamonds that caught the light like frozen stars. Sapphires the color of deep water. Emeralds that matched her eyes.
“Pick one,” I said.
She picked the smallest thing on the tray. A delicate gold chain with a single tiny diamond.
“That one,” she said.
I pointed at the piece she’d looked at first. An art deco bracelet, diamonds and sapphires in a geometric pattern.
“That one,” I said to the jeweler. “And the one she pointed to.”
“That’s not-”
“Don’t argue. You’re just going to lose.”
***
Somewhere over the Mediterranean, heading back to Milan, she checked a luggage tag and started laughing. The kind of laugh that took over her whole body, that made her eyes water and her shoulders shake.
“Art supplies,” she managed. “You labeled everything art supplies.”
“For customs purposes.”
“The coat is not an art supply.”
“It’s on an artist. It’s a supply.”
“The jewelry is not an art supply.”
“Inspiration. Very important for the creative process.”
“You’re impossible.”
She laughed until she couldn’t breathe. I sat there watching her, memorizing the sound, storing it away for all the years I hadn’t paid attention.
Back in Milan. She’d disappeared into the bathroom with shopping bags. I was on the couch, pretending to read, actually just waiting.
The door opened.
She was wearing one of the simple Paris dresses. Cut to highlight every curve.
“Well?” she said.
“Beautiful.”
“You’ve seen this one.”
“I could see it a thousand times.”
She smiled and disappeared again.
The next dress was pink. Then blue. Then a red thing that made my mouth go dry.
Then nothing for a long moment.
When she emerged again, she was wearing lingerie. Just lingerie.
Black lace. Straps that crisscrossed her torso. A thong that was barely there. She stood in the doorway, backlit by the bathroom light, and I forgot how to breathe.
“Turn around,” I heard myself say.
She turned slowly. Letting me see every angle.
The back was worse. Or better. A web of straps that led down to the curve of her ass, barely covered by a scrap of lace.
“Christ.”
I was across the room in two steps.
I pressed her against the window. Milan glittered below, a sea of lights and possibility.
“Everyone can see,” she whispered.
“Let them.”
The lingerie survived thirty seconds.