“Thank you, Mevrouw Bonger, but I must take my leave. My own mother is waiting.”

“I’ll show Theo out,” I offered before Anke could interfere. I owed him that much. And also, it allowed me to defer Mama’s interrogation for a few more minutes. I had to present the proposal in such a way that she would see its absurdity instead of a grand offer I must throw myself on immediately.

Inside the front door, Theo picked up his carpetbag. And then he just stood there, until I wished I’d let Anke see to him after all. Standing endlessly in the small, enclosed space with my jilted suitor was quickly turning torturous.

What more does he want?

“Johanna, can you not offer me any hope at all?”

Only a cruel woman would string him along. “I am sorry, Theo.”

His sad smile could have made angels weep an entire spring’s worth of rain. In the end, he could no longer maintain even that small smile. The corners of his mouth sank. He pushed his hat onto his head, over his dark-copper hair, with a grave finality. “Goodbye, Johanna Bonger.”

“Goodbye, Theo van Gogh.”

He descended our front steps, his feet halting on the pavement. “May I write?”

I couldn’t say no again, not to such a small request. “Yes.”

A single word. But, oh, how much power a single word could have.

I could not have fathomed that because of that one yes, in three years’ time, two people I loved would be dead.

Chapter Three

Emsley

“I’ll tell you a secret, Emsley.” Diya crossed our small break room at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons where I was hiding to conquer my pre-auction nerves. “Men want three things from women: stimulation, adoration, and nurturing. You have to know what to give them and when.” She filled her cup with coffee, lowering her voice until I could barely hear her over the noise in the hallway. “And you have to give it to them wrapped in sex.”

This was how far I’d fallen: I was listening to relationship advice from my ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend. My eyeballs felt as if they were rough carved from granite: stone dry and too heavy to roll. I’d slept too little on the plane from New York to LA, then dragged myself to the office straight from the airport. I’d showered at the gym on the building’s top floor and changed into fresh clothes I kept at work in a garment bag. I might have been exhausted at the Fast Business interview, but at least I hadn’t looked like someone had just pulled me out of the overhead luggage compartment.