“I’m afraid so. I bid on one of your paintings a few months ago—Composition #3. My business manager forced me to drop out at two hundred and fifty thousand.”

“Obscene, isn’t it?”

He looked so pleased that she laughed. “You should be ashamed of yourself. It wasn’t worth a penny over two hundred thousand. And I’m just beginning to realize how much I hate giving you compliments. You truly are the most overbearing man.”

“It makes life easier.”

“Keeps the masses at a distance?”

“I value my privacy.”

“Which explains why you’ve built such an extraordinary house in the wilds of northern Michigan instead of Big Sur or Cap d’Antibes.”

“Already you know me well.”

“You’re such a diva. I’m certain I’ve had my privacy invaded far more than you have, but it hasn’t turned me into a hermit. Do you know that I still can’t go anywhere without people recognizing me?”

“My nightmare.”

“Why is it such a big deal to you?”

“Old baggage.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s an incredibly boring story. You don’t want to hear it.”

“Believe me, I do.” She sat on the couch to encourage him. “I love hearing people’s stories.”

He gazed at her, then sighed. “The critics discovered me just before my twenty-sixth birthday. Are you sure you want to hear this?”

“Definitely.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets and wandered toward the windows. “I became the proverbial overnight sensation—on everybody’s guest list, the subject of national magazine articles. I had people throwing money at me.”

“I remember what that was like.”

The fact that she understood what he’d gone through in ways most people couldn’t seemed to relax him. He left the windows to sprawl down across from her, dominating the chair he’d chosen in the same way he dominated every space he occupied. She felt a moment of uneasiness. Craig had been overpowering like that.

“It went to my head,” he said, “and I started believing all the hype. Do you remember that, too?”

“I was lucky. My husband kept me grounded in reality.” Too grounded, she thought now. Craig never understood that she’d needed his praise more than his criticism.

“I wasn’t lucky. I forgot that it was about the work, not about the artist. I partied instead of painted. I drank too much. I developed a taste for nose candy and free sex.”

“Except sex never is free, is it?”

“Not when you’re married to a woman you love. Ah, but I justified my behavior, you see, because she was my true love and all that other sex was meaningless. I justified it because she was having a tough pregnancy, and the doctor had told me to leave her alone until after the baby was born.”

Lilly heard his self-contempt. This was a man who judged himself even more harshly than he judged others.