details and dealing with the public. Not to mention someone who’s used to dealing with artistic temperaments.”
“Why not just come out and tell her I can be a bastard when the work isn’t going well?” Sartain frowned at her. “Or has he already warned you? Doug has a high regard for the product—and the money it brings—but not so much patience with the creator.”
“And Sartain likes to pretend he knows what other people are thinking.” Doug steered her toward the door. “Natalie will have plenty of time to learn your personality quirks,” he called over his shoulder. “I’m sure she’s dealt with more difficult men than you in her time.”
“But none more interesting, I’m sure. Good night, Natalie. Welcome to the Satyr’s castle.”
His laughter followed them out of the room. She shivered and hugged herself. “He knows people call him the Satyr?” she asked.
“I suspect he encourages it,” Doug said. They stopped in the foyer to collect her suitcases. “It adds to his reputation. And a man like Sartain lives and dies on the basis of his reputation.” Doug led the way up the wide staircase. “Are you sorry you agreed to take the job, now that you’ve met him?”
“No. Why would I be sorry?”
“He can be difficult to deal with at times, but nothing you can’t handle, I’m sure.” At the top of the stairs they started down a long hallway. “Your apartment is in the east wing, away from Sartain’s living quarters. The business office is downstairs, in the back, so you’ll have privacy up here.”
She hurried to keep up with him. “Is that why you hired me? Because I could handle Sartain?”
He glanced at her, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “You’ve dealt with your mother all these years, haven’t you?”
She laughed. “Yes, I suppose Gigi could be described as difficult.” Natalie’s mother was one of the key supporting players in the Cirque du Paris troupe, though she carried herself like a superstar. One of the chief disappointments of her life was that her daughter had not shared her ambition.
“This is your apartment.” Doug took a key from his pocket and opened the door.
Like the main salon below, this room was done in shades of red and gold, from the wine-colored carpet to the crimson-and-gold patterned drapes on the floor-to-ceiling windows. A maroon leather sofa heaped with velvet pillows faced a fireplace of gold-veined marble, and a cherrywood table filled the dining area. “It looks like the setting for one of Sartain’s paintings,” she said.
Doug laughed. “I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right.” He handed her the key. “If you want to change anything, feel free.”
She trailed a hand along the back of the sofa. “I’ll leave it like this for now.” There was something sensuous about the warm tones of the room. After years spent in the utilitarian backstage world of the Cirque du Paris, she craved a little luxury.
“So tell me what you think of Sartain.” Doug said.
“I’m not sure I know what to think of him. I couldn’t decide if he was mocking me or flirting with me.”
“Probably a little of both. Most people, when they first meet him, are either attracted to him, or afraid of him.”
She shook her head. “I’m not afraid of him.” As for attracted…there was something compelling, not so much about the man, but about what he represented—passions within herself she had never dared to explore.
“A friendly word of warning—don’t take any of his moods to heart. He can be charming at times—seductive, even. And you may have heard, he has something of a reputation with women.”
The agent’s expression was so serious she had to laugh. “Are you worried he’ll try to seduce me?”
“It’s happened before. Just remember he means nothing by it. You shouldn’t take his flirtation any more seriously than his occasional fits of pique.”
She met the agent’s eyes. “If you’re worried I’ll leave the first time he frowns at me or throws an artistic temper tantrum, don’t. I didn’t come here to quit.”
“Why did you come here?” Doug crossed his arms over his chest and fixed her with a level gaze. “Not that I’m not glad to have you, but I am a little surprised you accepted my offer. I’d have thought after all those years of traveling with the Cirque du Paris, you’d want to move to a city with lots of activity and people your own age, not be stuck out here in an eccentric artist’s castle.”
“I’ve never much liked crowds.” She’d have been lost in a city, where it was too easy to hide behind anonymity, to spend every day seeing dozens of people and knowing none of them, to remain aloof and cool as she’d been from the crowds who came to see her perform.
The castle, and John Sartain, had sounded exotic and exciting, yet an intimate enough atmosphere for her first foray into the “real” world of office work and meeting new people. Here was a chance to learn to relate to a small circle of people with backgrounds different from her own. A chance to find out what she was like away from the discipline and self-control that had ruled her life. To take off the performer’s mask and discover the woman within.
SARTAIN RETURNED to his studio and picked up his brush, but he stood still before the easel, his thoughts on Natalie. When he’d given in to Doug’s badgering and agreed to hire the daughter of a friend of his, Sartain hadn’t expected this woman whose eyes reflected the pain and determination he so often felt himself. The recognition unnerved him, as if he’d caught a glimpse in the mirror in an unguarded moment.
When he’d first spotted her, he’d almost turned on his heels and retreated to his studio. It wasn’t so much that she was beautiful—though she was, with that fall of black hair reaching to the middle of her back and the lithe body she carried with a dancer’s grace. No, more than her beauty, it was Natalie Brighton’s intensity that made him catch his breath, an energy, like barely suppressed passion, that radiated from her. If he painted her, he would show her with a light around her that radiated from within—a fire that burned, so that he could almost feel the heat.
In any case, the last thing he needed in his life right now was someone whose intensity matched his own. Hadn’t the idea been to find some dispassionate, businesslike manager to keep him on the straight and narrow?
Curiosity had won over caution and he’d remained fixed in place, watching her while she studied his painting like a professor searching for flaws. He usually feigned indifference to what strangers thought of his work, but he wanted to know what she would say about the painting, which he’d titled The Lovers’ Lash.
But when he’d asked his question she’d turned and looked him in the eye, and he was captured, like a moth held fast by a collector’s pin.
She’d called the painting evocative. As good a description as any of what he intended to accomplish with his work. One thing about sex—everyone had an opinion about it. The controversy his paintings sometimes generated hadn’t hurt his career one bit.
So what did Ms. Brighton think about sex? Doug had described her as a sheltered innocent, but her dancer’s body and the fire in her eyes hinted at a woman with appetites that might well match his own. It would be interesting to find out which
