“When I’m ready.” Coltrane bit his lower lip. “You said ‘professionally.’”

“Excuse me?”

“You told me that professionally you were interested in the photographs. You emphasized the word, implying, I suppose, that you weren’t interested personally.”

“Not the way you are. The way you talk about Rebecca Chance, it’s like she’s a living, breathing person. Last night, you asked me if I was jealous of her. Maybe I am a little. It’s almost as if…”

“What?”

“You’re falling in love with her.”

Coltrane didn’t comment.

Jennifer finished her drink.

“Time for a refill?”

“You bet. It’s New Year’s Eve, after all.”

“And if we’re not going to starve, I’d better start the marinara sauce.” Coltrane walked with her through the dining room and into the kitchen.

A smaller version of the glass-topped, steel-rimmed dining table was against a wall.

“I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on Duncan about possibly lying to me. I wasn’t exactly honest with him, either.”

“Oh?”

Coltrane refilled Jennifer’s glass, adding a lime wedge and ice cubes. “I told him I knew how the furniture was supposed to be arranged because I had seen the layout in an old architectural magazine. Not true.”

“Then if you didn’t find out from a magazine…”

“The photographs we found in the vault. By now, I’ve had a chance to go through all of them. It turns out that several of the pictures of Rebecca Chance were taken in this house, and as you might expect from anything Packard did, those photographs are as clear and crisp as can be. I had no trouble using them as a guide to arrange the tables and chairs and things.”

Jennifer studied him.

“I also found some interesting photos of a different sort,” Coltrane said.

Jennifer studied him harder.

“Nudes.”

The moment Coltrane said it, he wished that he hadn’t.

“Nudes,” Jennifer said flatly.

“You know, the type of thing Stieglitz took of Georgia O’Keeffe.”

“Yes, I know exactly the type you mean. Show them to me.”

5

CROSSING THE VAULT, Jennifer said, “No shivers anymore?”

Coltrane furrowed his brow in puzzlement.

“This vault used to give you the creeps,” Jennifer said. “It made you claustrophobic.”

“Oh, that. Well, I guess I’ve been coming down here enough that I got used to it.”

“Yes, you definitely did get used to it. It’s cool enough in here to give me the shivers.” Jennifer rubbed her bare arms.

“Here.” Coltrane took off his sport coat and draped it around her shoulders.

“Thanks.”

“Better?” His hands lingered on her shoulders.

“Much.”

Jennifer turned to him, spreading her palms against his shirt. His nipples reacted. A gentle kiss lengthened, becoming forceful.

They held each other.

“So where are these nude photographs?” Jennifer asked.

“You haven’t changed your mind?”

“Maybe I’ve got a kinky streak.”

Taking his arms from around her, Coltrane released the catches that held the wall in place.

When he pulled the section free, Jennifer stared at Rebecca Chance’s life-size features. The harsh light from the vault dispelled the darkness of the chamber. The photograph’s eyes reflected the illumination.

“She’s much more beautiful here than in the movie I saw,” Jennifer said.

Coltrane had left the box containing the nude photographs on top of the others. He carried it out to one of the shelves and took off the lid.

Stepping forward, Jennifer stared down at the image of Rebecca Chance in the dining room upstairs, the strings of chromium beads draped over her naked body.

Slowly, she turned to the next photograph, and the next. The room was so still that the only sounds Coltrane heard were the subtle scrape of the photographs and Jennifer’s tense breathing. She kept turning the pictures.

At last, she was finished.

“Well?”

“Her nipples,” Jennifer said.

Coltrane had no idea what reaction to have expected from her, but this certainly was not one that he could have predicted.

“The nipples and the aureoles around them,” Jennifer said.

“I don’t understand.”

“Mine are different from hers.”

Coltrane found himself blushing. “I wasn’t trying to imply that…”

“That hers are more attractive than mine? They are. Rebecca Chance was an astonishingly beautiful woman. She was blessed by nature. But that’s not what I’m getting at. My nipples are small, the width of the tip of my little finger. Rebecca Chance’s are as wide as the tip of my index finger. The aureoles around my breasts aren’t pronounced the way Rebecca Chance’s are.”

“And?”

“I could get my nipples and aureoles to start looking like hers, however.”

“You’re talking about surgery?”

“If I got pregnant.”

Coltrane’s heartbeat lurched. “You think she was pregnant?”

“I suspect it was her first time. I don’t see any stretch marks to indicate that she previously had had a baby. I’d say she was about three months along, still able to keep her stomach flat. But she couldn’t keep her breasts from getting fuller and the nipples larger as the photographs progressed. The glow on her face and the luster on her skin make me think that some powerful hormones had started to kick in.”

“Pregnant,” Coltrane said with wonder, then looked with new eyes at the photographs.

“So the obvious questions are: Who was the father? Was he Packard? And, assuming that the child was born, whatever happened to it?”

6

COLTRANE ARCHED HIS BACK AND TILTED HIS HEAD UPWARD, a surge of pleasure seizing his body. Moving slowly, he tried not to disrupt the delicate balance between immediate need and exquisite postponement. Jennifer kissed him, thrusting against him: “Don’t hold back.” Moving faster, he felt her urgent rhythm match his own. Climaxing, he felt as if the present stretched on forever. Too soon, time became separate moments, and he eased out of Jennifer, settling next to her. Neither moved. Streetlights glinted through the bedroom’s open blinds. A breeze made tree branches sway, casting wavering shadows across the darkened room.

She turned onto her side, facing him. “It’s been a long time.”

“Too long.”

“We’ll have to catch up.”

“The spirit is willing, but the flesh might be weak.”

“I’ll see what I can do to put some strength back into it.”

“Some food might help, too. If I don’t start making that marinara sauce pretty soon…”

“No.” Jennifer touched his cheek. “Lie there awhile longer.”

“It’s a great way to end what in other respects was an awfully bad year,” Coltrane said.

“In one respect, it wasn’t such a bad year. You took some wonderful photographs. You found a new direction for your work.”

Coltrane shrugged.

“Your work still doesn’t seem important to you?”

“Not compared to everything that happened.”

They lapsed into silence.

Jennifer was the first to speak. “When you were making love to me, did it occur to you that Rebecca Chance and Randolph Packard might have made love in this bed?”

“… No.”

“It did to me. I imagined that she and I had changed places. Did the nude photographs of her excite you?”

“A little.”

“Did they make you more eager to have sex?”

“I suppose.”

Jennifer lowered her hand from his face and drew it along his body, fondling him.

“Like this excites you?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

When Jennifer kissed him, he tasted the salt of a tear on her cheek.

“Because I can’t compete with her, Mitch. I’m not a goddess. I’m only a woman.”