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He taught her lessons outside the bedroom as well, coaching her on fencing, which she took to with pleasure. They spent several Sundays poring over the basics of investing, Ian challenging her to come up with a feasible plan for her money given what she’d learned from her lessons. She’d showed him two options on two separate occasions. Ian’s polite queries and slight frowns had made her go back to the drawing board both times. On her last investment-planning presentation, she’d earned a small, proud smile and knew she’d finally learned something valuable about how to handle her own finances. Thus, Ian taught her not only about passion and love but some basic lessons of life.

He wasn’t the only one who taught, either. With Francesca’s encouragement, he continued to be spontaneous once in a while, to live in the moment . . . to experience life like a thirty-year-old instead of a jaded, weary man several decades his senior.

The problem was, he never really came out and told her in so many words how he was feeling about her—about them—and she was too shy and afraid to tell him she’d fallen in love with him. Wasn’t that precisely the opposite of what he’d said their relationship would be about? Would he think her a naive fool for mistaking lust and infatuation for something much deeper?

The thought haunted her. She pushed it back repeatedly when she spent time with him, not wanting to ruin the moments she had, worried she’d waste them by ruminating about anxieties that weren’t for now, but for the future. It was a little like doing a high-wire act, always striving to keep her balance on the narrow edge of their passionate affair, constantly worried she’d find herself falling away from Ian . . . or him flying away from her.

One cool late fall evening, that jarring moment came.

Francesca worked in the studio at the penthouse, anguishing over the final detail of the painting. She pulled her hand back from the canvas, her breath sticking in her lungs as she studied the tiny black figure—a man in an open black trench coat, walking along the river, head lowered against the cold Lake Michigan wind.

Would Ian notice she’d inserted him again into one of her paintings? It made sense to her somehow, she thought as she wiped off her brush. He’d twined himself indelibly into almost every thread of her life.

Her heart swelled as she studied the painting.

Finished.

By tradition, once the word hit her brain with a note of finality, she would never put paint to that particular canvas again. Feeling ebullient with her accomplishment, she hurried out of the studio in search of Ian. It was a Sunday, and he’d opted to work in the library rather than go into the office.

She was about to round the corner of the hallway that would lead to the library when she heard a door open and low, tense voices—a man and a woman talking.

“. . . all the more reason for me to act quickly, Julia,” Ian said.

“I want to emphasize again that there are no guarantees, Ian. Just because it’s a particularly good period doesn’t mean lasting results, but we at the Institute are hopeful . . .”

The woman’s British-accented voice faded as she and Ian proceeded down the hallway toward the elevator, but not before Francesca caught a glimpse of her. It was the attractive woman Ian had breakfasted with in Paris, the one he’d called a friend of the family. Her heart sank as she once again registered the thick tension in the exchange, similar to what she’d felt in the hotel lobby. Like that other time, she retreated, scurrying back to her studio.

She didn’t know how she knew, but she just knew Ian wouldn’t want her observing him right now . . . asking him questions . . . trying to care for him.

Even though she wanted to do just that more than anything else in the world.

She spent more time than was necessary cleaning up her work space in the studio, trying to give him time to recover. Eventually, she again went in search for him, but came up empty-handed.

She found Mrs. Hanson in the kitchen scrubbing the kitchen counters.

“I was looking for Ian,” she said. “I’ve finished the painting.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful news!” Mrs. Hanson’s excited expression fell. “But I’m afraid Ian’s not here. He had to leave Chicago for a while. An emergency came up.”

Francesca felt as if an invisible force had pummeled her in the chest. “But . . . I don’t understand. He was just here. I saw him with that woman . . .”

“Dr. Epstein? You saw her arrive?” Mrs. Hanson asked, looking surprised.

Dr. Julia Epstein. So. That was her name. “I saw her leave. What was the emergency? Is Ian all right?”

“Oh dear, yes. Don’t alarm yourself over that.”

“Where did he go?” she demanded, her hurt and incredulity over the fact that Ian had left and hadn’t even bothered to come into the studio and tell her good-bye was still vibrating unpleasantly in her flesh.

Mrs. Hanson avoided her gaze and resumed her scrubbing. “I can’t say for certain—”

“Do you truly not know, or are you saying that because Ian told you to?”

The housekeeper glanced at her, startled. Francesca fiercely held her gaze. “I truly don’t know, Francesca. I’m sorry. There’s a tiny part of Ian’s life that he’s always kept to himself, even from me, who knows his every habit and idiosyncrasy.”

Francesca patted the older woman’s arm. “I understand,” she said.

And she did. If Mrs. Hanson didn’t know where Ian had gone, it could only mean one thing.

He’d gone to London—the location of that secret corner of his universe, the place that Jacob had never been invited, nor Mrs. Hanson . . . and certainly not Francesca. That Dr. Epstein, though . . . she almost certainly knew about that part of Ian’s life. She kept hearing Ian’s tense tone ringing in her head, saw his lost expression as he stood in the lobby of the hotel.