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London.

“He's a sweet boy, but it must have been hard on you to have him around for that long.”

He had stayed with her for ten days, and she had loved everything about it, until the last few days when they began to argue. It also struck her that Bernard called him a “boy.” That was the essence of the problem she was having with Liam. He was a boy, not a man, and acted like one. At times he was age appropriate, at others he was an unruly teenager. She expected more of him at nearly forty. He really was Peter Pan. She thought Bernard was being sarcastic with his comments at first, and curious about their relationship. And then she realized he was sincere in what he'd said about her houseguest. He thought Sasha had been an incredibly good sport to let him stay there for so long. Apparently, their secret was still safe. It would never have occurred to Bernard that Sasha was involved with Liam. And in any case, it looked like the relationship was over. She sat and waited for the phone to ring at night, once Liam went back to London. It never did. He never called, nor did she. They had come to an impasse over his ridiculous demands and childish behavior. She hadn't expected their affair to last forever, but she had expected it to last longer than it had. There was no point calling him, since he had made his terms clear to her. Either she would take him out in public in the circles that she moved in, no matter how proper, and no matter how he behaved, or the deal was off.

The conditions he had set were impossible for her, whether or not she loved him. She had no compromise to offer him, other than what she had said to him before he left Paris. At the end of the month, she stopped waiting for the phone to ring. She knew he was gone. And as he sat waiting to hear from her in London, he knew the same. It had taken weeks, instead of years, but they had parted ways. She had been right from the day they met. It was impossible. She reminded herself that it was better to face it sooner than later. But as she waited for the call that never came, she was sad anyway. As childish as he was at times, there was an appealing side of him, and she truly missed him.

It took two months for Sasha to make her peace with it, and even then she was still sad about his disappearance from her life. But there was no one to tell. No one had ever known about them, so there was no one to turn to for advice or comfort. She couldn't mourn him with others, or speak to anyone about him. She just had to accept the fact that he was gone. She knew it would never have worked anyway. He was too immature, too difficult, too unreasonable, too determined not to grow up. He had proven all that to her when he had a tantrum and vanished.

Sasha went to New York in February and March, and both times ran into a blizzard. Tatianna loved her new job. And the gallery was doing well. She was planning to visit Xavier in London in April, and she braced herself, knowing that Liam would be somewhere near. She just hoped she didn't run into him with Xavier. And she couldn't say anything to Xavier about avoiding him, or it would expose their secret.

Shortly before Sasha left for London in April, Eugénie told her they'd had an e-mail from Liam. He had finished several new pieces of work, and thought Sasha should come to see them. He had volunteered to send transparencies, but wanted his dealer to see the work in the flesh. He said in the e-mail that it was the best work he'd ever done.

“Oh,” Eugénie remembered, as she reported on the e-mail to Sasha at the end of a long day, “he said to send you his best, and hopes you're okay.” Sasha was in fact okay. After more than two months of silence from him, she was a lot better than she had been in February, but she was still annoyed at him. And it sounded stupid to her to send her his “best.” His best what? She had already seen his best and his worst. Although she had