Impossible

The conditions he had set were impossible for her, whether or not she loved him. She had no compromise to offer him, other than what she had said to him before he left Paris. At the end of the month, she stopped waiting for the phone to ring. She knew he was gone. And as he sat waiting to hear from her in London, he knew the same. It had taken weeks, instead of years, but they had parted ways. She had been right from the day they met. It was impossible. She reminded herself that it was better to face it sooner than later. But as she waited for the call that never came, she was sad anyway. As childish as he was at times, there was an appealing side of him, and she truly missed him.

It took two months for Sasha to make her peace with it, and even then she was still sad about his disappearance from her life. But there was no one to tell. No one had ever known about them, so there was no one to turn to for advice or comfort. She couldn't mourn him with others, or speak to anyone about him. She just had to accept the fact that he was gone. She knew it would never have worked anyway. He was too immature, too difficult, too unreasonable, too determined not to grow up. He had proven all that to her when he had a tantrum and vanished.

Sasha went to New York in February and March, and both times ran into a blizzard. Tatianna loved her new job. And the gallery was doing well. She was planning to visit Xavier in London in April, and she braced herself, knowing that Liam would be somewhere near. She just hoped she didn't run into him with Xavier. And she couldn't say anything to Xavier about avoiding him, or it would expose their secret.

Shortly before Sasha left for London in April, Eugénie told her they'd had an e-mail from Liam. He had finished several new pieces of work, and thought Sasha should come to see them. He had volunteered to send transparencies, but wanted his dealer to see the work in the flesh. He said in the e-mail that it was the best work he'd ever done.

“Oh,” Eugénie remembered, as she reported on the e-mail to Sasha at the end of a long day, “he said to send you his best, and hopes you're okay.” Sasha was in fact okay. After more than two months of silence from him, she was a lot better than she had been in February, but she was still annoyed at him. And it sounded stupid to her to send her his “best.” His best what? She had already seen his best and his worst. Although she had believed herself to be in love with him for about a minute, he had put her off forever with the way he'd behaved. He had pulled an incredibly childish move on her. She was tired of self-indulgent artists, who were not so young, but pretended to be, and still behaved like teenagers well into middle age. At thirty-nine, in her opinion, he was far too old to act the way he had when he left Paris. Still, she was hurt that she had never heard from him again. She had far too much pride to call him.

She told Eugénie she was going to a dinner party that night, and it reminded her again of her blowout with Liam while she was getting dressed. She was leaving for London the next day to see Xavier. She didn't know what she was going to do about Liam and seeing his new work. She represented him, but she was in no hurry to see him again. He had created a very awkward situation for her, in fact for both of them. She was glad that she hadn't introduced him to her world. His absence now would have been embarrassing to explain.

The dinner party she was going to that night was being given by the American ambassador to Paris. He had invited several important artists and dealers, an American writer who was visiting Paris, and someone had told her there was a famous actor coming, too. It sounded like a motley crew to her, and she wasn't in the mood. For reasons known only to herself and Liam, she had been testy and short-tempered with everyone for the past two months, although lately she had been in a slightly better mood.

She wore a black lace dress to the dinner party at the ambassador's residence, her hair in a bun as always, and a new pair of very sexy shoes, although most of the time, she wondered why she bothered. She hadn't gone out with anyone, nor did she want to, since she and Liam had had their brief, ill-fated fling. She had known right from the beginning that their affair was doomed. She felt stupid for having allowed him to convince her to try it. But in private moments, she admitted to herself that she had wanted it as much as he said he did, and in her heart of hearts she had hoped it would work. It was too bad it didn't. He was a talented artist, but a totally immature man. It was no surprise to her now that Beth had left him, and taken their kids. Being married to him for twenty years must have been a nightmare for her.