day, with Nadia credited for the design.
He was going home to Texas for the holidays, and she was going to New York to visit Venetia, her mother, and Olivia between Christmas and New Year’s, when the girls would be skiing with their father. Venetia’s wish for a fourth child had come true, and she had gotten pregnant at the château in August. She was four months pregnant now. They knew it was another girl, which was exactly what she’d wanted, so she would have two girls and two boys.
Greg was leaving the next day. The house had been finished just in time, and had required endless hours of work on Nadia’s part to achieve it.
“Now I don’t want to leave,” he said, and put an arm around her. They had become friends while she worked on it, but he had never gone beyond the line of friendship, and she didn’t want him to. She found him incredibly attractive to look at, but she wasn’t attracted to him. She wasn’t drawn to any man. She found that Nicolas had vaccinated her. She was content with her children and her work. She didn’t miss having a man in her life, knowing now how wrong it could all go, and how devastating it could be. She’d been too badly hurt to want a relationship for now.
“I’m taking you to dinner to celebrate when I get back. Nadia, you made all my dreams come true. You created a real home for me. I can’t wait to get back.” Greg had told her he hadn’t dated anyone since he moved to Paris. He hadn’t had time. Now he had a real home. Even Nadia thought it needed a woman’s touch to soften the masculine strength of it. As they stood in his living room, admiring his Picasso, he turned to her and kissed her. She couldn’t tell him, but she felt nothing. She was still too broken inside to want anyone, and he sensed it immediately.
“Too soon?” he asked her, and she shook her head.
“No, maybe too late.” She wanted to feel more for him than she did, but she didn’t, and didn’t know if she ever would again. There was a piece of her missing now. She wasn’t heartbroken. She was empty, and she knew that Nicolas had taken the missing piece with him, and it had gotten lost somewhere. It was as though her heart had been so shattered, it had been removed.
She and Greg sat down on the dove-gray velvet couch in his living room, and he pulled her close to him. It felt good sitting with him, she just didn’t know how much more of her there was to share with him. Her affection for him had been expressed in the home she had designed for him.
“I love being with you,” she said softly, “I just don’t know how much I can connect with anyone right now. I think he broke something deep inside me.”
“That’s how I felt after Sharon,” Greg said quietly. “The feelings come back. They’re just different.”
“I liked myself better before,” she admitted to him. “I feel alive with my kids now, and my work. The rest of me is just dead, or gone, or buried somewhere. I can’t seem to find it, or turn the switch on.”
“You will,” Greg said confidently. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ve never met another woman like you, and I’m not going to lose you, Nadia. What you did with my home is an incredible gift.” He had paid for it, but he knew you couldn’t pay for the love and talent she had poured into it. She had given herself to him in all the little details she had thought of, the touches she had added that would give him so much pleasure for years. He wanted to share it with her. He knew with certainty that she was a woman who would never cheat on him as others had. She was a woman of honor to her very core.
“Thank you for loving the house.” She smiled at him and nestled next to him as they sat there admiring it.
“How could I not love it? You’re an extraordinary woman, and eminently lovable. I’m sorry he hurt you so badly. You’ll get over it one day.” And if she didn’t, she wasn’t sure she minded anymore. She was content. She felt fulfilled. She had her work and kids and friends. She was no longer in pain. Seeing the look on