“I’m a dream,” Jordan said. “I’m not your dream.”

Declan put his chin in his hand and looked back out the window; that, too, would be a good portrait. Perhaps it was just because she liked looking at him that she thought each pose would make a good one. A series. What a future that idea promised, nights upon nights like this, him sitting there, her standing here.

“By the time we’re married,” Declan said eventually, “I want you to have applied for a different studio in this place because this man’s paintings are very ugly.”

Her pulse gently skipped two beats before continuing on as before. “I don’t have a social security number of my own, Pozzi.”

“I’ll buy you one,” Declan said. “You can wear it in place of a ring.”

The two of them looked at each other past the canvas on her easel.

Finally, he said, voice soft, “I should see the painting now.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s time, Jordan.”

Putting his jacket to the side, he stood. He waited. He would not come around to look without an invite.

It’s time, Jordan.

Jordan had never been truly honest with anyone who didn’t wear Hennessy’s face. Showing him this painting, this original, felt like being more honest than she had ever been in her life.

She stepped back to give him room.

Declan took it in. His eyes flicked to and from the likeness, from the jacket on Portrait Declan’s leg to the real jacket he’d left behind on the chair. She watched his gaze follow the live edge she had taken such care to paint, that subtle electricity of complementary colors at the edge of his form.

“It’s very good,” Declan muttered. “Jordan, it’s very good.”

“I thought it might be.”

“I don’t know if it’s a sweetmetal. But you’re very good.”

“I thought I might be.”

“The next one will be even better.”

“I think it might be.”

“And in ten years your scandalous masterpiece will get you thrown out of France, too,” he said. “And later you can triumphantly sell it to the Met. Children will have to write papers about you. People like me will tell stories about you to their dates at museums to make them think they’re interesting.”

She kissed him. He kissed her. And this kiss, too, got all wrapped up in the art-making of the portrait sitting on the easel beside them, getting all mixed in with all the other sights and sounds and feelings that had become part of the process.

It was very good.

Chapter 30