The balcony ran the length of the building and connected the main gallery to the adjoining showroom where Sebastião had displayed Michael’s smaller paintings; canvases that measured less than five feet in length. Some of Michael’s favorite pieces hung in that room. He looked through the glass doors and was pleased to see so many guests until he realized that they weren’t admiring the paintings; they were gossiping.
What could be more important than the art? Wasn’t that what they had come here to see?
He slipped on his jacket, came inside, and leaned against a stone pillar the same shade of bland as his clothes. No one would notice him, not with the way they sloshed their Chardonnay and flashed their shiny watches and sparkly rings. Some shared pretentious thoughts about his paintings. Most of them just bragged about their lives, so intent upon projecting their own fabulousness they set the room buzzing with sound and motion.
That’s when he saw her. As still as a statue in a garden of bees.
She examined the painting with intense concentration, so still she might have stopped breathing. She tipped her head in thought, moved closer to inspect a detail, then stepped back to take in the whole. Deliberate. Focused. Oblivious of the buzzing around her.
She was beautiful, painfully so, and his heart ached just to look at her. The dark sable hair. The honey pecan skin. The pearlescent sheath that draped from one shoulder, across her breasts, and fell to the floor like the gown of a Grecian goddess.
Everything about her called to him.
He moved closer, taking care to project as little presence as possible. He didn’t want to disrupt her focus or attract the bees.
She moved on, examining one painting after another with studied care. Each one seemed to evoke a different emotional reaction. He had never seen anyone this engaged for so long. It was as if she were locked in the midst of a meaningful conversation that only she could hear.
He cringed at the thought. Disturbing memories of his own secret conversations with non-existent beings shoved their way to the front of his mind. He shoved them back. They didn’t belong in this magical moment. Besides, the beauty had settled in front of his favorite painting.
Slashes of crimson, peacock, and cadmium orange. Swirls of emerald. A zigzag of magenta. All intermingled with the deepest bittersweet chocolate, dancing around a molten amber smudge.
Could she feel the same heat and movement he had felt while painting it? He smiled at the irony. After lecturing the art critic about how art should be experienced independently from the artist, here he was hoping this lovely stranger would intuit his intent.
Hypocrisy? Ego? Desperation? He didn’t know what flaw had led to his lapse in artistic morality, but he couldn’t deny it. For some inexplicable reason, he needed this woman to understand.
“Voce gosta?” he asked.
She answered without taking her eyes from the painting. “Sim. Gosto muito.”
She liked it, but that wasn’t enough. What he hungered to know required more than Rosetta Stone basics. He abandoned his rudimentary Portuguese, switched to English, and hoped she would understand. “How does it make you feel?”
Her lips parted with a sigh and her chest collapsed. The change was so startling it made him wish he could take back the question. He was just about to tell her to forget it, when she surprised him with an answer. “It makes me want to be inside of it.”
He held his breath and willed her to say more.
“They call this abstract art,” she said, with a shrug of uncertainty. “But these paintings feel very real to me. Can you not feel the dance?”
Of course he did. He would have told her so if she hadn’t continued.
“It feels tribal to me. Do you think that was intended?” She laughed and shook her head. “Maybe I’m seeing what I want to see.”
Don’t say it, Cross. Just this once, keep your mouth shut.
“Does it matter?” he asked, disregarding his good sense.
She thought for a moment then shook her head. “Não. It only matters how the art makes me feel.”
Michael gaped, shocked to hear his innermost thoughts spoken by her lips.
She waved a graceful hand. “Don’t mind me. I’m just thinking aloud. His art speaks to me of my life, that’s all.” Reluctantly, she turned away from the painting and looked at him. “How about you?”
He laughed. “Oh, yes. It speaks to me all the time.” He offered her his hand. “Michael Cross.”
Her warm brown eyes widened with surprise as her face flushed to an appealing shade of lovely. “I’m so embarrassed.”
“Don’t be.” Her hand felt soft and warm in his. “I loved hearing your impressions. I can’t believe I just said that. Never mind. I mean, not never mind that I loved your impressions. Never mind that I can’t believe… You know what? Just—never mind.”
Pull it together, Cross.
He was still holding her hand. He knew he should let it go, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
“You know,” he said, dragging out the moment. “You still haven’t told me your name.”
She took a breath and released it with a glorious sound. “Adriana.”
He repeated it in his mind like a sigh. Ah-dree-AHH-nah.
Those four syllables struck his heart like a perfect chord.