She turned to face him without blinking. “You know, he kind of kissed like a professional. Technically perfect, but I never felt like it came from the heart.”
Luke’s eyes narrowed. “Okay. Point taken. For real this time. I’ll never mention kissing Rori again if you never bring up Caleb. Deal?”
“Absolutely,” Kris said, holding out her hand.
For a moment he just looked at her hand, nose wrinkling as if he smelled something bad. Then he looked up at her and said, “Why would I seal a deal with you with a handshake when I could do it with a kiss?”
Then Luke dipped her down and laid a kiss on her just in time for Kris’s mom to walk into the kitchen.
Chapter 29
Rori loved teaching. She loved the hunger, arrogance, drive, and ambition of artists who honestly believed they would hold the world by the balls once they had their first exhibit. That deep set belief that their art was so singular, so special, that anyone with half a brain would look upon it and unanimously declare it brilliant. So young and so already stuck in their artistic ways—starting every picture the same, pushing their creations into a styling that was “all their own.”
The hypocrisy of it all was that Rori wasn’t that much older than the students she was teaching, but she liked to think that her life had granted a breadth of exposure that was unusual. All thanks to her mom. All of Rori’s life she’d been carted from museums to cathedrals to temples to remote desert caves with prehistoric hieroglyphs. By age 18 Rori had visited 80 countries and been schooled in the religious symbology of dozens of ancient religions by scholars, priests, monks, and indigenous tribesmen alike.
She may have been young, but she’d been taught by Buddhist monks to never get attached to even the most stunning of works—that it was the process that was to be revered and not the final work that should be worshipped. She’d been taught by indigenous groups to see the same subject in its many forms. A rock was never simply a rock. Just as an adult looks at a cloud and sees a cloud while a child sees an elephant, the indigenous peoples taught her to see what her mind had been trained not to see.
From Egypt to Paris and Easter Island to Asia, Rori had spent time with masters of many styles, and because of that she knew she really knew nothing. Sure, she’d gone through phases of being a know-it-all, just like the kids she was teaching now. They’d learn, just like she had, that art was bigger than any one person. You were lucky if you mastered even one aspect of it in your entire life.
For the moment her class was sketching a model. The sketch time was a gift to Rori as well, because she could plan her exhibit. Or she could have, if she could focus in on her theme. Autumn. So vague. So lame. Her agent had thrown it out as a challenge and Rori had been distracted with the Luke situation when she agreed, but she was hating the theme. Yes, her show would take place in the beginning of autumn, but Rori couldn’t create autumn in the middle of summer, and certainly not in the middle of Manhattan.
But what then?
Glancing up to make sure her students were all focused, Rori popped open her laptop and logged into her email account.
Autumn’s not going to work for the theme. I’ll let you know when I have a replacement, she typed to her agent before pressing send. Then she clicked on her inbox and spotted an email from Sophia. Her matchmaker.
Dearest Aurora, it read in French. I am happy to see that you have renewed your application to be matched as I believe I have found a French man who matches all of your requirements. He is a titled gentleman in his forties. His family has been wealthy for generations, but he has amassed a substantial fortune on his own merits. He desires to have two children, and your values are parallel on how the children should be raised. Your marriage requirements and expectations are also very much aligned, as are your long-term goals.
I know you mentioned waiting until after you left the states to meet a gentleman, but as it turns out, my candidate will be in New York in August for business, and I could certainly arrange an evening of drinks between you