Impossible

“Sasha, you are amazing,” Liam said, smiling at her through his smoke rings. She even let him smoke there, and said she liked the smell, which in fact, she did. Arthur had also had a fondness for good Cubans. “The opening was terrific. You managed to make everyone feel important, even me. Hotchkiss loved it.” Hotchkiss was the artist they'd been showing. “He felt like he'd died and gone to heaven. He kept telling me how lucky I am to be represented by you, and he doesn't know the half of it.” Liam laughed, and so did she.

“I'm glad you enjoyed it,” she said, looking genuinely pleased. She was a hands-on dealer, particularly with him. But it was her style to be totally involved with both her artists and her clients. She loved what she did, and was brilliant at it.

“Who wouldn't?” he said, admiring her as she put on her nightgown. She was totally at ease with him, and felt as though she had been living with him for years. “Tatianna scared me,” he confessed, as he finished his cigar, and Sasha got into bed and looked at him.

“Don't be silly. She's just a kid. That's the way she is. She's very cool. She was very attached to her father, and she's very possessive about me. I told you, she's very black and white about things. But her glare is worse than her bite. She probably thought you were just another horny artist, lusting after her. I wish she didn't wear those dresses, though. It's no wonder men stalk her.”

“She's knock-out looking,” he conceded, but he wasn't nearly as blithe about her as her mother. Sasha obviously knew her better. “She's so different from Xavier. He would talk to a homeless person and make him feel like a king. I felt like dirt under her feet.” It was a slight exaggeration, but not by much, and Sasha was sorry to hear it.

“She's a little spoiled, from all the attention she gets. She looked pretty tonight.”

“She is pretty.” But her icy style turned him off. Sasha was a brightly burning candle, lit from within. Tatianna was an iceberg, or looked that way to him.

“She's a lot like my father. He was scary, too, although I think you would have liked him.” She also knew her father would have had no interest whatsoever in his work. Emerging artists had never been his thing, right to the end, although he liked the profits her pet passion had brought them. But he had never understood or cared for the work.

“What are we doing tomorrow?” Liam asked, as he got into bed with her. He had a certain look in his eye, and designs on her body, to which she was not opposed. They had made her bed their own.

“I thought we'd go out to the Hamptons,” Sasha said as he folded her into his arms.

“Sounds good to me,” he said, and then kissed her in the dark.

“It does to me, too,” she whispered as she kissed him back, and then forgot everything but him.

She went to the gallery the next day, was pleased with the reviews for the show, and they left for Southampton after dinner. They bought groceries on the way and got there at ten o'clock. They sat on the porch, talking for a while, while Liam ate ice cream, and they chatted about nothing in particular. They went to bed early, made love again, got up and went for a walk on the beach the next morning. They were settling into an easy, comfortable way of life. And that afternoon, sitting on the beach, he talked about moving his studio to Paris, maybe in the fall. It would be easier than commuting from London every weekend, which was tiring, and expensive for him. And he wanted to be close to her during the week.

They both knew that sooner or later, people would find out about them. Bernard already had. But Liam was not trying to shove his way into her life. He accepted that their lives and lifestyles were different, but what they had shared so far felt great to him. This was definitely possible, for both of them. He thought it was terrific, and Sasha was slowly but surely becoming convinced. Contrary to her fears in the beginning, it was not impossible at all.

They went to a movie in Southampton that night, and were cozily tucked into bed afterward, giggling and talking, when they both heard a sound. It sounded like someone downstairs, and they thought it was an intruder.

“Do you have a panic button on the alarm?” he whispered to her, and she shook her head.