Burnt Sienna

1

A chopper took off and roared away, its blades glinting in the morning sunlight, but as far as Malone could tell, the man he had seen arrive the first day wasn’t aboard. Finishing his calisthenics by the pool, scanning the estate, he couldn’t think of a way to get Sienna out. As soon as he finished the portraits and left – if he was allowed to leave – he was supposed to tell Jeb how to rescue her. But now that he had studied the compound’s defenses, it was obvious that even the best extraction team would have trouble.

To add to his apprehension, this was the first morning he hadn’t seen her ride from the stable. It was so important a part of her routine that he could imagine only the worst reasons for her to have abandoned it. Had Bellasar decided that one portrait of her was enough and it was finally time to rid himself of an unwanted spouse?

Making his way to his room to shower and dress, he tried to convince himself that there might be an innocent reason for Sienna to have failed to go out for her ride. She might not be feeling well, for example, in which case she would send word via a servant while he was having breakfast. But all the while he sat alone on the terrace, no messenger arrived.

“I wonder,” he asked the servant who brought his coffee, “if you know why madame isn’t joining me this morning? Have you heard if she’s ill?”

“No, monsieur, I haven’t heard anything.”

A half hour later, Sienna still hadn’t arrived, and Malone was forced to admit she wasn’t coming. His stomach uneasy, he decided that his only option was to ask a servant to knock on her door and try to find out what had happened. He felt his pulse speed with the premonition that she was in trouble, perhaps unconscious from a drug Bellasar had given her. On edge, he rose to tell a servant to check on her – and froze with relief when Sienna stepped onto the terrace.

2

She wore dusty boots, faded jeans, and a denim work shirt, as if she had dressed to go riding but had been detained. Her long hair was tied back in a pony-tail, emphasizing the classic contour of her chin and jaw. But her pulled-back hair also emphasized a severity in her eyes that Malone hadn’t seen before. An anger. Something had happened. Whatever vulnerability hid behind her beauty was definitely not in evidence this morning.

“I’m glad to see you,” Malone said. “When you didn’t show up for breakfast, I got worried.”

Without a word, Sienna walked resolutely toward him, her boots and jeans emphasizing her long legs and tightly belted waist.

“What’s wrong?” Malone asked. “You look as if -”

“I’m late.” Her words were clipped. “We’re wasting time.”

“Wasting time? What are you talking about?”

“Let’s get to work.”

“But what’s the matter? Tell me what -”

Sienna pivoted and crossed the terrace, marching toward the sunroom.

Malone followed, mystified, noting her resolute stride and rigid posture. Although the sunroom was bright, it was less so than outdoors, and his eyes needed a moment to adjust to the difference.

He was twice as mystified and suddenly alarmed as she angrily unbuttoned her shirt and threw it onto the floor.

“Wait a minute,” Malone said. “Why are -”

She jerked off her bra and hurled it past the shirt.

“Would you please tell me what’s going on?” Malone said. “I don’t -”

“I’m getting ready for work!” She yanked off her boots and socks.

“For God sake, stop! What’s happened? Tell me why you’re -”

“I’m doing what my husband wants!” She savagely opened her belt, took off her jeans, and threw them, the buckle clattering across the floor. Her white bikini panties went after the jeans. In a final defiant gesture, she untwisted the clasp that bound her ponytail, freeing her hair so it hung to her shoulders. Outraged, she stood before him, her burnt sienna skin uniform from head to toe.

“What are you waiting for?” she asked. “Get your damned sketch pad! Get started!”

Malone found it nearly impossible to speak. He took a deep breath and forced out the words. “This isn’t what I want.”

“I’m supposed to assume a provocative pose, is that it?”

“No.”

“Then what the hell do you want? Stop confusing me! Tell me what I’m supposed to do!”

“Put on your shirt.” He picked it up, offering it to her.

She glared.

“I mean it,” Malone said.

“You accepted the commission, didn’t you?”

“Obviously.”

“And you knew the second portrait was supposed to be nude.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you think it would have been polite to tell me? All the time you were staring at me, I was flattered. Because it wasn’t like you were staring.” She struggled to order her thoughts. “You were… admiring. Without being predatory. Making me feel good about myself. I thought, Finally here’s somebody who understands me as a person, not an object. And now I find out this was just a job for you. Make the bitch feel at ease, and do what you’re paid for.”

“No,” Malone said. “This wasn’t just a job. Please.” He continued to hold out her shirt.

She grabbed it. Her harsh gaze remained fixed on him, but he never looked away from her eyes, never let his own gaze waver, lest he unwittingly suggest he wasn’t being truthful.

She put on the shirt.

“Listen to me,” Malone said. “At the start, this was just a job, yes. I didn’t know you. The first time we met was uncomfortable. It looked like we might not get along. I figured this was going to be the hardest work I’d ever attempted, and I wished I’d never gotten involved.”

She glared.

“But day by day, we got to know each other,” Malone said. “More important, we seemed to enjoy each other’s conversation. I looked forward to getting up in the morning, to meeting you at breakfast and going to work each day. The project became important to me. I realized that I’d never done better work in my life – because I’d never had a better subject.”

She glared harder.

“And each day, as the first portrait came closer to completion,” Malone said, “I felt increasingly tense because I knew that I’d soon have to do the second portrait. But I didn’t want the first one to be completed. Talking with you, identifying with you, transmitting my imagination through you, had become so meaningful to me that I didn’t want it to end. I knew, of course, it was going to have to end. I couldn’t postpone completing it forever. But I couldn’t adjust to the thought of what it was going to be like painting you under different circumstances, with everything strained and me having to stare at you all over again, getting to know your body as well as I know your face. I can paint whatever I set my mind to. But if it’s going to be the best work I can do, I can’t be objective. What I’m going to say is probably the strangest thing you’ve ever heard a man tell you. Given the relationship we’ve established, the last thing I wanted was to see you naked. I’d have been content just to study your face, and I had no idea how I was going to deal with the problem when I couldn’t avoid it any longer.”

The last of Malone’s words echoed into nothingness. Silence gathered, finally broken by the scrape of his shoes on the flagstones as he walked to her jeans, picked them up, and returned them to her. The shirt, which she had rebutttoned, was long enough to cover her. Even so, he wanted her to feel totally at ease.

A tear trickled from her left eye. “Why does Derek want these portraits in the first place? I don’t understand any of this.”

“The only reason I know is what he told you,” Malone lied. “He wants to preserve your beauty, to make it permanent.”

“Including my body.”

“Including your body.”

“The next thing he’ll have me shot and stuffed,” she said.

Her statement was so close to the truth that Malone fought hard not to react.

“If I’m so beautiful, why won’t he look at me?” Sienna’s voice quavered. “Everything I do is wrong, as far as he’s concerned. The disapproving way he treats me. Not just disapproving. He’s contemptuous. Why would he want portraits of someone who disgusts him?”

Tears streamed down her face now, reddening her eyes, bringing out the fire beneath her tan skin. Before Malone realized, she was leaning against him, holding him with a desperation that made him think of someone struggling not to drown. Her shoulders heaved, her deep sobs racking them. He smelled apricots in her hair, nutmeg on her skin. He felt her tears drip onto his shirt. They soaked through, burning his chest. At the same time, he felt her breasts beneath her shirt. They pressed against him, making him terribly aware of the jeans she hadn’t put on. Her legs were bare. So were her hips beneath her shirt. So was -

“Is this a technique they teach in art school?” Bellasar asked from the doorway.

3

With a frightened gasp, Sienna jerked away from Malone and spun toward her husband.

“Some kind of artistic encouragement?” Bellasar asked. “But is the artist encouraging the model, or the model encouraging the artist?”

“This isn’t what you’re thinking,” Sienna said.

“How do you know what I’m thinking? You were expected to take your clothes off, after all. If you’re afraid I’ll think I’ve caught you having an affair, don’t worry. I’ve never once doubted that you’d remain faithful to me. You wouldn’t have the nerve to do otherwise.”

Sienna flinched.

“And I’ve never yet heard of a tryst in which the woman made herself sexually attractive by sobbing all over her lover.” Bellasar approached and drew a hand along the tears that trickled down her cheeks. “You’re a mess, my dear. You look the way you did when I first saw you in Milan. You weren’t photographable then, and you’re certainly not anything I’d like to see a portrait of now.”

Sienna’s sobs came from deep within her.

“Your nose is running. Your mouth is… How on earth is this man supposed to do his work?”

Malone couldn’t help noticing that Bellasar never once looked at him.

“Go to your room and clean yourself up,” Bellasar said. “When you return after lunch, I expect you to have repaired the damage you’ve done to yourself and be ready to pose.”

Sienna’s lips trembled.

“Damn it, what are you waiting for?” Bellasar asked. “Move. For once in your life, do something right.”

Through tear-blurred eyes, she looked at Bellasar, then switched her emotion-ravaged features toward Malone. Abruptly she ran from the room.

It had taken all of Malone’s willpower not to stop Bellasar from humiliating her. The rage that had prompted him to accept Bellasar’s commission seethed twice as strongly in him. More than anything, he wanted to get even. But not here, not now, he kept telling himself. Attacking Bellasar for what he’d just done, breaking his arms and legs and as many other bones as Malone could before the guards rushed in, wasn’t the punishment Bellasar deserved. It wouldn’t help Sienna. It wouldn’t get her safely off the estate. Keep control, Malone urged himself.

As Sienna disappeared beyond the wall of windows, silence gathered. The sunroom seemed to shrink.

“I want to ask your professional opinion about something,” Bellasar said.

“Anything you want to know about painting, I’ll do my best to answer.”

“This isn’t about painting.”

4

The stutter of a machine gun grew louder. As Malone aproached the shooting range, he noted that the shrub-lined path Bellasar had chosen avoided the Cloister. He also noted an increase in guards and remembered that Sienna had told him she had never been allowed to enter this section of the estate.

So why is Bellasar bringing me here? Malone thought. Does he feel free to show me the shooting range because he knows I’ll never live to tell anyone what I see?

The machine gun stopped, then started again. From the force of its bursts, Malone identified the weapon as a.50-caliber one, and its astonishingly rapid rate of fire made him conclude that the problem Bellasar had mentioned weeks earlier – how to compensate for the heat that a faster feeding mechanism generated – had been solved.

The shrubs gave way to an open area in which there were several wooden shooting stalls that resembled roadside vending stands, with the difference that, although each had a roof, there wasn’t a back wall. Where fruits and vegetables would normally be on display, there were spotting scopes and clamps for bracing weapons whose sighting mechanisms needed calibration.

Between two of these stations, a machine gun had been mounted on a tripod. A man in gray coveralls pulled plugs from his ears, leaned over to examine the weapon, then reached for a tool in a box next to it. An ammunition belt, its rounds as thick and long as a finger, fed into the weapon from a large metal bin on the right. Expended brass casings littered the ground, glinting in the sun.

But Malone gave these details only passing notice, too preoccupied by where the machine gun was aimed. That area was spacious: several hundred yards square. It contained a village in which everything had been devastated by explosions and bullets. Huge jagged holes gaped in concrete-block buildings. Walls had toppled, ceilings collapsed. The scorched frames of cars and trucks littered what had once been streets but were now wastelands of rubble and craters.

Movement attracted Malone’s attention back to the man in coveralls, who, at the sound of approaching footsteps, straightened from the machine gun. Behind drab spectacles, Potter’s eyes hardened when he saw Malone.

“You’re more versatile than I thought,” Malone said.

“Oh, you’d be surprised what I can do.” Potter turned toward Bellasar. “He shouldn’t be here.”

“I want to show him something.”

“It’s against your rules.”

“And since they’re my rules, I can break them.” Bellasar pointed toward the machine gun. “If you’ve finished adjusting it, put up some targets.”

“But -”

“Do what you’re told. I don’t pay you to argue.”

Potter’s cheek muscles twitched. With a glance toward Malone that left no doubt whom he blamed for the reprimand he had just received, he went over to one of the shooter’s stations and flicked a switch. Malone momentarily thought his eyes were deceiving him. The ravaged village came to life. Soldiers ran from one building to another. Civilians scurried for cover. Jeeps bumped along the wreckage-scattered streets. To the right, an armored personnel carrier lumbered into view, turning to cross in front of the village. Two large tarpaulin-covered trucks hurried after it.

None of this was what it seemed. The soldiers and civilians were lifelike mannequins dressed for their various roles. They moved in a way that suggested they were attached to a motorized track below ground level. The personnel carrier and the trucks moved on motorized tracks also.

“Impressive,” Malone said.

Bellasar nodded, as if he took for granted that the setup was exceptional. “My clients want weapons demonstrated under as close to lifelike conditions as possible.”

“It’s sort of like your own huge electric train set.”

Bellasar looked puzzled.

“I once went to school with a kid who built electric train sets so he could put firecrackers under the bridges and in the water towers and the boxcars and blow them all up,” Malone said. “I’d never met anybody who liked to destroy things so much.”

“Let’s see how much you like to destroy things.”

“What do you mean?”

“Get over here, and test-fire this weapon. You were in the Marines. Give me your expert opinion on what a.50-caliber gun feels like with a faster feeding mechanism.”

“I’m afraid my opinion wouldn’t be worth much. It’s been ten years since I handled a weapon.”

“A weapon’s like a bicycle.” The statement was a command. “You never forget.”

“Derek,” Potter cautioned.

“Stay out of this.” Bellasar kept his gaze rigidly on Malone.

“Fine.” Malone held up his hands in mock surrender. “I’m not sure what point you want to make, but I’ll go along.”

As Malone approached the machine gun, Potter put his earplugs back in, then reached his right hand beneath the bib of his coveralls – to draw a handgun if the situation got out of control, Malone assumed. Guards unslung their rifles.

“You’ll want these,” Bellasar said, throwing him a set of earplugs, then putting in his own.

Malone pushed the earplugs into place. Noting how wary Potter looked, he made an exaggerated show of keeping the machine gun aimed toward the devastated village. He looked at Bellasar. “Anything special you want me to blow apart?”

“The truck on the right.” Because of Malone’s ear-plugs, Bellasar’s voice was muffled.

When Malone aimed and squeezed the trigger, the sudden roaring assault made Malone feel as if he were trying to control a powerful living thing. He had expected an upward kick. He had braced his arms to compensate. But the force of what he held was far beyond his expectation. The recoil from an unimaginable rate of fire thrust the barrel violently into the air. As Malone shoved it back down, he aimed at the truck on the right, and if he hadn’t been concentrating so hard to control the weapon, he would have gaped at the damage it did, its massive spray of bullets disintegrating the back of the truck, reaching the front and blasting the entire vehicle into pieces. When Malone released the trigger, his hands and arms vibrated. Anyone unfamiliar with a.50-caliber weapon would have dislocated both shoulders, he was certain.

“Have you got extrapowerful loads in these rounds?”

Bellasar shrugged. “What’s your opinion of the modifications?”

“If you don’t find a way to stabilize the recoil, nobody’s going to be able to handle this thing.”

“I don’t know what recoil you’re talking about.” Bellasar stepped to the weapon, aimed, and pressed the trigger.

Malone wasn’t prepared.

As the machine gun roared, making a rhythm like a locomotive at full speed, Bellasar controlled it with seeming effortlessness, his arms dominating the weapon’s powerful inclination to jerk upward. Empty shell casings flew through the air with a velocity that made them look blurred. Bellasar’s broad shoulders, muscular chest, and ramrod-straight posture had made Malone suspect that the man exercised frequently, probably with weights, and was in exceptional condition, especially for a man in his early sixties. But what Malone saw now was a bravado demonstration of strength far beyond anything he would have believed. The ease with which Bellasar handled the bucking recoil was awesome. He blew the second truck apart, switched his aim to the Jeeps in the village, blew them apart… and the soldiers… and the civilians… and finally swung the barrel toward the personnel carrier, inflicting what Malone would have considered impossible damage to the armored vehicle, its treads bursting loose, a hatch blowing open, smoke and flames spewing out. Jesus, this ammunition has armor-piercing heads and explosive charges, Malone thought as Bellasar released the trigger and swung the machine gun in Malone’s direction.

Malone’s heartbeat lurched. Apparently, his wasn’t the only one. Seeing the barrel being swung past him, Potter stumbled to keep out of its way. In the background, the guards rushed toward the cover of trees.

Bellasar peered along the barrel toward Malone’s chest. Despite the effort it must have taken to control the weapon during the damage he had inflicted on the village, Bellasar looked as if he had expended no more energy than steering a car.

“I’ll show you what it feels like on the opposite end of the recoil,” Bellasar said. “How would you like a couple of hundred rounds through your chest?”

“I think I’m missing something here.”

“No, I don’t believe you are. I think you know exactly what’s going on.”

Christ, does he know I’m working with Jeb? Malone wondered. Bluff, he warned himself. He couldn’t assume anything. He didn’t dare risk showing even the slightest sign of having been caught at anything. “Just so there’s no confusion, why don’t you be explicit?”

“Do you think I’m a fool?”

“Never.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t know the effect it would have on you to be with my wife all day every day? Did you think I wouldn’t expect you to be attracted to her when she took her clothes off? I knew you wouldn’t be able to keep from imagining what it would be like to make love to her.”

Malone’s heart pounded less violently. So this wasn’t about Jeb. “You’ve got the wrong idea about -”

“Shut up. I want you to understand something very clearly. I can’t control what you feel when you’re with my wife. But if you ever act on those feelings, if you ever touch her in a way that’s more than what I saw a while ago, if you ever react to her more than an artist merely giving comfort to his model, I’ll drag you back here and… My wife belongs to me. I don’t like people touching what I own. Is that clear?”

“Very.”

“You’re certain you understand?”

“Absolutely.”

Bellasar swung the barrel back toward the village and squeezed the trigger, atomizing the walls of several buildings, until the last round fed through the firing mechanism and the gun became lifeless. He glared toward the ruins, a tremble working through him, but not from the effect of the massive recoil. When he finally spoke, his voice was tight. “Now get the hell back to work.”

5

“I’m sorry.”

Malone looked up from a sketch he was doing from memory. Sienna stood at the entrance to the sunroom. He wouldn’t have thought it possible for someone whose face had been so ravaged by tears to repair the damage in such a short time. She wore a loose pullover and a similar ankle-length skirt, both of them a blue that reminded him of the jade of the Caribbean that he had loved to look at from the beach of his home on Cozumel. Had loved, he emphasized to himself. Even though Bellasar had promised to return the property to its original condition, Malone would never go near it again.

“What are you sorry about?” he asked.

“Making a scene.”

“You didn’t make a scene. Your husband did.”

“No. I apologize for being unprofessional. We both had jobs to do. I didn’t approach mine very well.”

“It’s not a big deal. We had some issues to work out.”

“And now that they’ve been settled…” Sienna gripped the bottom of her pullover and started to raise it over her head.

“Stop.”

“I don’t want to make Derek any angrier than he is. You’ve never seen him when he’s truly upset. We have to do this second portrait. The sooner the better.”

“Sit down.”

“Is that how you want to pose me?”

“It’s where I want you to relax a minute while I talk to you.”

“No, please, we have to work. If Derek thinks we’re wasting time, he’ll -”

Malone’s muscles tightened. “I’m the one doing the portrait. Let me worry about your husband. I want you to sit down. Please.”

Sienna peered nervously toward the door. Hesitant, she did what she was asked.

Malone brought over a second chair. Straddling it, resting his arms on its back, he hoped that his casual movements would put her at ease. He spoke softly. “When your husband came in this morning, he said you looked the way you did when he first saw you in Milan. He said you weren’t photographable then.”

Sienna peered down at her hands.

“What was he talking about?” Malone asked.

Something in her eyes went somewhere else. She was silent for so long that Malone didn’t think she was going to answer.

“That was a bad time for me,” she said.

“When was this?”

“Five years ago.”

Malone waited.

“I…”

Malone gave her an encouraging look.

“You have to understand…” She took a deep breath. “Models are the most insecure women you’ll ever meet.”

Malone didn’t respond, afraid that if he said anything, he might make her too self-conscious to keep talking.

“We keep trying to assure ourselves that we’re more than just a beautiful package. We worry about aging. We’re always afraid that our best days are behind us.”

Malone forced himself to remain silent.

“Oh, there are exceptions. But I wasn’t one of them. Imagine what it’s like to have to stay so thin that if you eat even a small amount, the camera shows the bulge in your stomach. To go as long as you can without eating. Or to eat and then make yourself throw up. Along the way, you try a little cocaine. It doesn’t put on any weight, and for a while, it makes you feel better about yourself, so you try a little more, and meanwhile, with so many people trying to manipulate you, you hope for a man, stronger than the others, to help you get your life together. But when you think you’ve found him, he turns out to be a son of a bitch who wants to control everything you do, and…”

Sienna had spoken faster and faster, and now all of a sudden she seemed to realize that Malone was before her.

He took the risk of saying something. “Tell me what your husband meant about your face not being photographable back then.”

“I’d been eating so little, I finally got too thin even for the camera. Worse, the cocaine had put a permanent glaze in my eyes. Worse than that, the man I was living with had split my lip and given me two black eyes.”

Malone felt sick.

Her hands fidgeted. “This happened in Milan. I was there for the fall shows, but after I got beaten up, I obviously couldn’t work. I stayed in my hotel room while the guy I was with went out to screw everything in sight, and the next thing I knew, there was a knock at the door. When I opened it, Derek was standing there. I’ll never forget it. He was wearing a tuxedo and holding red roses. In my blur from the cocaine, I frowned at that handsome tan face, and I swear, for a moment I thought he was Rossano Brazzi, that Italian actor. I have no idea how he knew where I was or what had been done to me. He put a hand under my chin and said, ‘I’ve come to take care of you. Don’t bother packing. Just get your coat and come with me.’ I blinked. I nodded. I didn’t even bother with the coat. I just shut the door behind me and went down to his limousine.”

“But you told me you had a loving family. Why would you have been insecure?”

“I didn’t say I had a loving family, only loving parents.”

“I don’t understand.”

Sienna swallowed. “After my parents died when I was twelve, I was sent to live with my uncle. He couldn’t keep his hands off me. Whenever his wife wasn’t around, he’d try to…”

Malone tasted bile.

“A couple of times he forced me to…”

“Jesus.”

“He warned me that if I told anybody, he’d throw me out. I’d be sleeping in the gutter, he said. I couldn’t concentrate. I did poorly in school. I cried myself to sleep. Finally, I retreated into a fantasy world. All I did was read fashion magazines and fantasize about being a model and having a glamorous life. This went on until my sixteenth birthday. When he snuck into my room again, I screamed that I wasn’t going to do it anymore. I woke up his wife and kids. My aunt wouldn’t believe what I said had been happening. He beat me black-and-blue for telling what he claimed were lies about him. I hurt so much, I had to stay in bed for two days. The third day, while they were at work, I stole money from under the flour jar, where I knew my aunt hid it from him. I hoped she’d think he’d found it and taken it to buy booze. I packed a bag and took a bus to Chicago, where I lived in a boardinghouse and worked at every rotten job you can imagine. But I never stopped dreaming about becoming one of those women in the fashion magazines. I found a company that gave modeling classes at night. I worked as hard as anybody can imagine to make good on my dream. And by God, from modeling for underwear ads in the newspaper, to doing swimsuit ads in catalogs, to appearing in Vogue, to doing covers for it and Cosmopolitan and every other major fashion magazine you can think of, I finally got what I wanted. The only trouble was, it wasn’t what I’d dreamed of. It wasn’t glamorous. It was a meat market.”

“What happened when you went away with Bellasar?”

“In the limousine, as we drove to the airport, he looked at the bruises on my face. He told me he couldn’t let beauty be destroyed. He said he was going to make sure no one ever harmed my face again and that I never harmed myself, either. He brought me here. He had a plastic surgeon waiting to make sure the injuries to my face wouldn’t leave scars. He had a medical team detoxify me. He had a psychologist who specialized in eating disorders cure me of thinking food was my enemy. It took six months before the results met with Derek’s approval. He was so proud. He’d created me, he said. He’d walk around me, study me from all angles, beam, and say that my beauty wouldn’t have existed without him.” She shrugged wearily. “He was right. At the downward rate I was going, I’d have been dead in the time he took to resurrect me.”

“So he gave you what you needed. Finally, you had someone to take care of you.”

“Until three months ago.”

Malone frowned. “What happened then?”

“He came back from a business trip, and all of a sudden he’d changed. He complained about the start of wrinkles at the corners of my eyes. He claimed he saw a strand of gray in my hair. He warned me to stop being expressive with my face – the movement was starting to cause furrows in my brow, he said. I kept asking myself what had happened on that business trip to make him change. Had he fallen in love with another woman? When I raised the issue with him, it made him furious. He told me I was imagining things, that I had to get control of myself. I had my hair dyed, had facial scrubs, did whatever I thought would please him. But he only became more impatient with me. Nothing I did was good enough. I began to look forward to his trips away. They gave me a measure of peace. But each time he came back, he was even more critical.”

Malone opened his mouth to reassure her and abruptly stopped as something behind him made Sienna stiffen.

She jerked to her feet. “Honestly, Derek, we’re just talking about how to pose me. We’re just about to start working. I swear it.”

Bellasar stood in the doorway. “We’re flying to Istanbul. Be ready at five.” He narrowed his gaze toward Malone. “You have two weeks to finish your work.”

“That might not be enough time.”

“Make it enough.”

“When I agreed to do the portraits, I told you I had to do them on my terms. You accepted those conditions.”

“The conditions have changed.”

“How am I supposed to work without a model? How long will Sienna be away?”

“As long as necessary.”

“Well, the longer she’s gone, the longer it’ll take me to finish.”

Bellasar’s eyes darkened. “I’m beginning to agree with Alex. It was a mistake to get involved with you. Five o’clock.” He turned angrily and left the room.

Watching him cross the terrace, Sienna shivered. “What time is it?”

“A little after three.”

“God, that doesn’t give me enough time.”

As she stood, Malone asked, “What’s in Istanbul? What’s so important?”

Her voice was tight. “Whenever this happens, it’s business. Several of Derek’s clients enjoy spending time with me. Derek has an easier time negotiating with them because I’m around.”

Malone nodded. Sure, Bellasar would be a bigger man in their eyes because he was married to a woman so beautiful.

“I can’t talk any longer.”

As she hurried away, Malone continued his thought. Yes, so much beauty might dazzle a client, might subtly affect his judgment. But what about when that beauty developed flaws? Bad for business. Bad for the rigid standards of a husband who couldn’t settle for less than perfection. Bad all the way around. When someone stopped fulfilling a necessary function, a replacement had to be found.

6

The sun was low enough to throw the terrace into shadow, but not enough that it didn’t cause a reflection off the spinning blades of a helicopter. Malone watched as Sienna, Bellasar, Potter, and three bodyguards got into it. She wore an elegant suit, her hair impeccably arranged. Even from a distance, her beauty was overwhelming, but also from that distance, Malone was able to tell how reluctantly she got into the chopper. In fact, she had the manner of a well-dressed prisoner being taken to a trial. Or to a funeral.

The metaphor made him uneasy. As the helicopter roared away, he felt a stab of separation.