Arturo Flores wasn’t like the rest. He was much older, a gentle, brilliant, and lonely man who only wanted her friendship. When he asked if he could paint her, she agreed without hesitation, never dreaming that she would find seven years respite with him.

Arturo was part of a close-knit circle of wealthy and prominent European men who were secretly homosexual, and his carefully selected friends became her friends. They were witty, cultured, frequently waspish, generally kind, and the demands they placed on her were not physical. They wanted her attention, her sympathy, and her affection. In exchange, they taught her about art and music, history and politics. She received a finer education from Arturo’s friends than her old boarding school classmates were receiving at college.

But they couldn’t make her forget. Her trauma was too deeply rooted to be easily conquered, and so she continued to punish the heterosexual men she met with small cruelties: an enticing smile, provocative clothing, a wicked flirtatiousness. She learned she could control all of them by letting her body make promises she would never allow it to keep.

So sorry, Monsieur, Herr, Señor, but you’re not quite man enough to touch.

As she walked away from all of them, her hips swayed in the rhythm of the French girls who ruled the Boulevard du Montparnasse.

Hot cha cha

Hot cha cha

Hot hot

Cha cha cha cha

She was twenty-six before she’d permitted another man to touch her, the young doctor who attended Arturo during his illness. He was handsome and kind, and his physician’s hands had been soothing with their caresses. She had enjoyed the closeness, but when he had tried to deepen the intimacy, she had frozen. He remained patient, but each time his hands slipped beneath her clothing, she was assaulted with memories of the night in the metal pool shed, memories of the young men she had allowed to heave over her. The physician was too much of a gentleman to tell her she wasn’t enough of a woman for him, and he disappeared from her life. She forced herself to accept the fact that she was irreparably damaged when it came to sex and resolved not to let herself grow bitter. After the heartbreak of Arturo’s death, she found other outlets for her softer emotions.

In Manhattan, she surrounded herself with gentle, gay men, some of whom she held in her arms when they died. These men were the ones who received the love and affection she possessed in so much abundance. These were the men who took the place of lovers who would only have reminded her she was less than a woman.

“Hello, cuz.”

She gave a strangled gasp and spun around to see Reed Chandler standing in a pool of light at the edge of the lawn, barely ten feet away.

“Still hiding in the bushes, Flea Belly?”

“What are you doing here?”