Until Izabela . . .

When he’d first met her, he’d used all his usual tricks to seduce her, and had enjoyed watching her blush as she slowly fell under his spell. Sure enough, it had been a game he’d excelled at playing many times in the past. But usually, once the fish was hooked and was dangling on his line to do with as he wished, the novelty would wear off and he’d become bored and move on.

And then, when he’d realised Izabela was leaving, and that, perhaps for the first time, what he felt for her was genuine, he’d made his first and only heartfelt declaration of love and asked her to stay on in Paris.

And she had refused him.

In those first few days after she’d left France, he’d put his misery down to the fact that it was the first time a woman had not succumbed to him. Perhaps the fact she was unattainable made the idea of her even more provocative, and the thought that she was sailing across the sea to be chained to a man she didn’t love for the rest of her life heightened the drama of the situation.

But no . . . it seemed it had been none of these things. Because eight weeks on, despite taking other women to his bed to see if that helped – which it hadn’t – and getting so drunk that he’d managed to sleep through the entire following day – which had incurred the wrath of Landowski – he felt no different.

He still thought of Izabela every waking moment. At the atelier, he found himself staring into space, remembering when she had sat so serenely in front of him and he’d been able to feast his eyes on her day after day, for hours at a time . . . why had he not appreciated it more? She was unlike any woman he had ever met, so innocent, so good . . . Yet, as he’d discovered when he’d questioned her that first day as he sketched her, she was also so full of passion and eagerness to discover all that life could hold. And her kindness that night, when she’d so tenderly carried the young boy in her arms, brooking no discussion about the rights and wrongs of her actions . . .

As Laurent drained his glass and ordered another, he decided she was truly a goddess.

At night in bed, he’d often go over their conversations, mentally kicking himself for ever playing with her emotions, wishing he could take back any of the outrageous doubles entendres he’d embarrassed her with in the beginning. She hadn’t deserved them.

And now she was gone forever. And it was too late.

Besides, he thought morosely, what had he to offer a woman like her? A dirty shared attic where even the bed was rented out by the hour, no form of steady income and a reputation with women that she must surely have heard of any time she had visited Montparnasse. He had seen Margarida Lopes de Almeida watching him knowingly, and Laurent was sure she’d have commented to Izabela on what she thought of him.