Natasha had the same terror of returning to poverty. Daughter of an unknown father and a prostitute who had abandoned her in a state orphanage at two, she had never been adopted and remained in the orphanage until she was sixteen. After that came three years of working in factories and living in unheated dormitories, with no prospects. She refused the advances of men wanting to pay to have sex with her. She didn’t want to end up like her mother, who records showed had died of alcoholism shortly after she abandoned Natasha.
Vladimir had seen Natasha trudging through the snow in a thin coat when she was eighteen, and had been struck by her beauty. He offered her a ride in his car in the freezing cold and snow, and was stunned when she refused. He had haunted her for months at her state-run dormitory, sent her gifts of warm clothes and food, all of which she’d declined. And then finally, nearly a year after he’d first seen her, sick with a fever, she agreed to go home with him, where he had nursed her himself, while she nearly died of pneumonia. Something about her had reminded him of his mother. He saved her, rescued her from the factory and her abysmal life, although she was hesitant at first.
They never talked about either of their histories, but her worst fear was to be that poor again one day, to have nothing and no one until she died just from being poor. She never ignored the fact that Vladimir had been her savior, and in her opinion continued to be every day. She still had nightmares about the orphanage, the factory, the dormitories, the women she had seen die in her old life. She never said it to anyone, but she would rather have died herself than go back.
In many ways, they were a good match. They had come from similar backgrounds, and had achieved success differently, but they had a deep respect for each other and, although they would never have admitted it, a deep need for each other too.
The past was never far from either of them. The poverty he had grown up with was the fear that had pursued Vladimir all his life, and by now he had outrun it. But he never stopped looking over his shoulder to make sure the specter of it wasn’t there. No matter how many billions he had made, it was never quite enough, and he was willing to do anything he had to, to keep the demon of poverty from seizing him again. Natasha’s escape had been easier, fortuitous, and more peaceful, but in seven years she had never forgotten where she came from, just how bad it had been, and who had saved her. And no matter how far they had come, or how safe they were, they both knew that their old terrors would always be a part of them. The ghosts that haunted them were still vivid.
Natasha fell asleep waiting for him that night, as she often did. He woke her when he came to bed, and made love to her again. He was the savior who had rescued her from her own private hell, and dangerous as he might be to others, she knew she was safe with him.
Chapter 2
Maylis Luca was still an attractive woman at sixty-three. Her hair, which had gone prematurely white at twenty-five, was a snow-white mane she wore loose down her back in the daytime, or in a braid, or a bun at night, when she worked at the restaurant. She had cornflower-blue eyes, and the gently rounded figure that had made her appealing as an artist’s model when she came to St. Paul de Vence from Brittany for a summer at twenty, and stayed. She had fallen in with a group of artists who delighted her and had welcomed her warmly, much to her conservative family’s horror. She had abandoned her studies at the university, and stayed in St. Paul de Vence for the winter, and the first moment she laid eyes on him, she had fallen madly in love with Lorenzo Luca.
A year later, at twenty-one, after modeling for several of the artists the previous winter, she became Lorenzo’s mistress. He was sixty at the time, and he called her his little spring flower. From then on, she modeled only for him, and many of his best works were of her. He had no money then, and Maylis’s family was devastated by the path she’d chosen, and mourned the life and opportunities she’d given up. They considered her lost on the road to perdition, as she starved happily with Lorenzo, living on bread and cheese and apples and wine in a small room over his studio with him, spending time with his friends, and watching Lorenzo for hours while he worked, or posing for him. She never regretted a moment of it, and had no illusions about marrying him. He had been honest with her from the first, and told her he had married a girl in Italy in his early twenties. He hadn’t seen her in nearly forty years by then, and they’d had no children. They had been together for less than a year, but he was still married to her, and considered it too complicated and costly to get divorced.
By the time he met Maylis and fell in love with her, he had had four serious mistresses in the course of his lifetime, and seven children with them. He was fond of his children but was candid and unashamed that he lived for his work, and little else. He was a fiercely dedicated artist. He had privately acknowledged his children but never legitimized or helped to support them, and saw no reason to. He had never had money when they were young, and their mothers had never made demands of him, knowing he had nothing to give. All his children were grown by the time he met Maylis, and they visited him from time to time, and considered him more of a friend. None had become artists, nor had his talent, and they had little in common with him. Maylis was always kind to them when they came to visit, and all of them were older than she. Some were married and had children of their own.
Maylis had no urge to have children with him. All she wanted was to be with him, and Lorenzo had no desire for marriage or children either. He treated Maylis like a child much of the time, and she was happy to learn about art from him, but the only work she really cared about was his. He was fascinated with her face and body and sketched her in a thousand poses in the early years of their relationship, and did some very handsome paintings of her.
Lorenzo had been mercurial, alternately wonderful and difficult with her. He had the temperament of an artist, and of the genius she believed he was, and she was happy with him and carefree in her life in St. Paul de Vence, however shocked her family was by the existence she led and the partner she’d chosen, whom they considered unsuitable due to his lifestyle, career, and age. Lorenzo was respected as an enormous talent by his contemporaries, however unknown he was in the world, which he didn’t care about. He always managed to scrape up enough money for them to live on somehow, or borrowed from a friend, and Maylis worked as a waitress in a local restaurant a few nights a week when they were desperate for money. Money was never important to either of them, only his art, and the life they shared. He wasn’t easy—he was high-spirited, difficult, volatile, and temperamental. They had some fearsome arguments in their early years, which they resolved passionately in the bedroom upstairs. She never doubted that he loved her, as much as she loved him. He was the love of her life, and he said she was the light of his.