The Muse
Lauren Blakely
Little Dog Press
Contents
Also by Lauren Blakely
About
The Muse
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Epilogue
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Also by Lauren Blakely
Contact
Copyright © 2021 by Lauren Blakely
Cover Design by Helen Williams.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This contemporary romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This book is licensed for your personal use only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy sexy romance novels with alpha males. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Also by Lauren Blakely
Big Rock Series
Big Rock
Mister O
Well Hung
Full Package
Joy Ride
Hard Wood
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The Guys Who Got Away Series
Dear Sexy Ex-Boyfriend
The What If Guy
Thanks for Last Night
* * *
The Gift Series
The Engagement Gift
The Virgin Gift
The Decadent Gift
* * *
The Extravagant Duet
One Night Only
One Exquisite Touch
* * *
MM Standalone Novels
A Guy Walks Into My Bar
One Time Only
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The Heartbreakers Series
Once Upon a Real Good Time
Once Upon a Sure Thing
Once Upon a Wild Fling
* * *
Boyfriend Material
Special Delivery
Asking For a Friend
Sex and Other Shiny Objects
One Night Stand-In
* * *
Lucky In Love Series
Best Laid Plans
The Feel Good Factor
Nobody Does It Better
Unzipped
* * *
Always Satisfied Series
Satisfaction Guaranteed
Instant Gratification
Overnight Service
Never Have I Ever
PS It’s Always Been You
* * *
The Sexy Suit Series
Lucky Suit
Birthday Suit
* * *
From Paris With Love
Wanderlust
Part-Time Lover
* * *
One Love Series
The Sexy One
The Only One
The Hot One
The Knocked Up Plan
Come As You Are
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Sports Romance
Most Valuable Playboy
Most Likely to Score
* * *
Standalones
Stud Finder
The V Card
The Real Deal
Unbreak My Heart
The Break-Up Album
21 Stolen Kisses
Out of Bounds
My One Week Husband
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The Caught Up in Love Series
The Pretending Plot (previously called Pretending He’s Mine)
The Dating Proposal
The Second Chance Plan (previously called Caught Up In Us)
The Private Rehearsal (previously called Playing With Her Heart)
* * *
Seductive Nights Series
Night After Night
After This Night
One More Night
A Wildly Seductive Night
About
The first time a woman stepped out of a painting, I thought I was seeing things.
The second time, I thought I was going mad.
The night she emerged from a Renoir, I felt something else entirely — a deep stirring of desire, and the wish to get to know the brilliant beauty who’s been trapped inside a painted garden for years.
She can only come out at night in the Musée d’Orsay, where I work. There, after hours, we wander through galleries and step inside the Van Goghs, the Monets, the Toulouse Lautrecs, visiting the Moulin Rouge, kissing under a starry painted sky, and tangling up together on the bridge across the waterlilies.
She opens her heart to me, and I learn her story.
But she keeps secrets too, ones I hope to unravel. Why she was trapped. Why Renoir is hunting her. And why artwork in famous museums across the world is starting to disintegrate.
Why I too seem to be the only person who can repair the masterpieces.
As I fall deeper for the woman who’s trapped between two worlds, I’m caught up in another side of Paris after dark, one inhabited by forgers, ghosts of famous artists and, impossibly, by Muses.
But someone is after the woman I’m falling in love with, and it’s up to me to save her…even if it means losing everything I’ve found with her.
The Muse
By Lauren Blakely
* * *
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Prologue
One month ago . . .
* * *
Some ex-girlfriends are like too-dark pencil lines on a sketch. Erasing them is impossible—they leave smudges or impressions on the paper that will show through anything you try to put over it. There’s nothing for it but to rip out the page and start a fresh one.
It’s time to tear out Jenny.
That’s the plan as Simon and I head out from my flat on a Friday night in June to catch the Metro to Oberkampf. Rip out the Jenny page and see what, if anything, takes shape on the next.
Maybe that’s melodramatic, but this is Paris after all. The French half of me overrules the stiff upper lip issued with my British passp
ort. I grew up with Mum in London but spent summers in France with my dad. Now I’m experiencing everything Paris has to offer—the food, the dance clubs, the galleries, and the joy of being dumped for Christophe the sculptor.
Would I be nearly so upset if she hadn’t left to be with another artist? Simon and I slide onto the semi-crowded train, which feels like a bit of a party already, and I decide introspection can wait.
“All right, Julien,” Simon says. “On with part two of the purge of Jenny from Pittsburgh.”
“Jenny who?” I feign bewilderment. “Where is Pittsburgh? Is that near Leeds?”
He laughs and punches my shoulder. “That’s what I’m talking about.” More subtly, he lowers his voice and tips his head to indicate a pair of pretty women sitting not far from us. They’re dressed for a night out, with low-cut shirts and lots of leg showing. “We should invite them to come along,” he says.
“It’s as if you can read my mind.”
“Or I just know what’s good for you.”
“Convenient that it coincides with what you want to do.”
“The universe is telling us something, mate. And it sounds like ‘Forget what’s-her-face and do some high-quality socialization.’”
He offers a hand and we knock fists then head over to chat up the blonde and the brunette. When we find out they’re headed to the same stop as we are, Simon flashes a big smile. “What are the chances?”
That’s my cue. “We’re meeting up with friends at this club. You should come along.” I’m getting back out there.
We exchange names as the train rattles into the next stop, and when the doors open, the four of us walk down the cobbled street in search of a neon-lit door leading to an underground club. Inside, the music is so loud that I can’t hear anyone—not the women we just met, not my friends from university, not any of the people that Simon corrals into the dimly lit corner. The dancing and the music drown me in a riot of sound and motion that leaves no room for what’s-her-name from Pittsburgh.
Which is all I’m looking for from the evening. I’m not looking to hook up or get wasted or high, and I dance late into the night, surrounded by friends and strangers.
I leave by myself, well after the trains have stopped running, but I’m not ready to go home to my flat. Without really planning it, I find myself at the service entrance of the Musée d’Orsay, where I’m an intern.
I use my key card to get in and greet the security guard. “Bonsoir, Charles.”
“Working late again?” he asks, looking up from his desk.
“It’s the only time it’s quiet enough to focus,” I tell him, heading for the public galleries.
He shakes his head and shrugs as if baffled by my hours, the faculty’s demands, and why I’d put up with it.
Two reasons: my sister is the head of the museum—she didn’t help me get the internship, but she definitely makes sure I earn it—and I’m not actually here to work tonight. Tonight and a lot of nights.
Charles lays down the magazine he’s reading. “Does it ever spook you, walking through the galleries at night?”
I pause and glance back, curious what he means. “No. Why would it?”
He gives the kind of “Who can say?” shrug I’ve never seen anyone give as well as the French. “The lights are low, the portraits watch you go by . . . Some people find it eerie.”
“Maybe I just know it too well,” I tell him with a grin. He returns it as I get on my way.
I make for the stairs to visit my favorite Van Gogh. But I don’t even reach the second floor, because I catch a swish of pale fabric as someone in a skirt rushes into a nearby gallery.
What the . . .?
The skirt rules out another guard patrolling through the galleries. I debate with myself for only a moment—the chances of another nighttime rambler versus the power of suggestion—then I quicken my steps toward the doorway where that bit of floaty material disappeared.
When I turn at the junction between galleries, I have to catch myself against the doorframe so I don’t fall over in shock. My heart skids into my ribs with a hard thump. It’s thunderous to me, but it doesn’t interrupt the scene playing out in the ornate room.
If I were going to imagine something, why would it be a young girl in a tulle skirt pirouetting from one soft pool of light to another across the shiny parquet floor in a flurry of white?
I cast a look around for the patrolling night guard, but there’s no one aside from me and the dancer.
How much did I drink at the club? One cocktail and then water? If I were seeing pink elephants, or genies riding on magic carpets while huffing on hookahs, or something truly outlandish—those would be easy to identify as fantasy. But the ballerina is both real and realistic, from the tips of her dancing shoes to the wisps of hair that have slipped from her bun to frame her delicate face.
My senses ignite, my brain buzzing. I’m too alert to be drunk. It feels more like dreaming while wide awake, because I recognize this girl. I’ve seen her before, but not like this.
This ballerina has danced her way right out of a Degas painting and into this museum.
1
July—Present Day
* * *
A peach falls out of a Cézanne.
I grab the fruit before it rolls down the steps and out to the lion sculptures, near where the security guards make their nightly patrols. This peach looks tasty, rosy, and ripe, begging to be eaten, and I imagine the way it would drip juice down my chin, leaving my face and hands sticky but worth it. When I run my thumb over it, the skin is fuzzy and tender. It feels the same against my lips when I bring it close enough to bite.
But I don’t. The peach is a puzzle I view from all angles. One part of me says go ahead and bite. See what happens. At least I will know whether it’s real or a figment of my imagination. The rest of me doesn’t want to chuck out my understanding of reality after twenty-one years.
Instead, I do what Cézanne did—capture its likeness. I set the peach down and rustle in my messenger bag for my notebook and pencils. Taking a knee, I balance my sketchbook on the other and sketch quickly. When I’m done, I hold up the drawing so I can compare it to the subject, and I see . . . an accurate rendering of a peach.
That’s all. It’s a how-to-draw-a-peach tutorial, not something delicious you want to wrap your lips around. Not the kind of peach that evokes a summer day and a sweet, sultry smell that makes you feel something about fruit and the nature of the universe.
This sketch is not something you can have feelings about.
With a bone-deep sigh, I stuff my sketchbook into my bag.
I stand and carry the peach back to its home on the wall and tuck it into its frame. The canvas stretches itself around the piece of fruit with a slurping sound, then goes quiet. The peach is two-dimensional again. It still feels odd, no matter how many times I do it.
Something rubs against my ankles, and I look down to see a black cat winding around my boots.
“Meow,” she murmurs. I hadn’t noticed her approach. But then I wouldn’t—dark cat, shadowed gallery, pussyfooting from where she belongs to swish back and forth against my jeans.
Her chest rumbles against my calf as she purrs, alluring and enticing. No wonder this cat keeps company with Manet’s Olympia—she’s the feline version of the naked woman. Curiosity—at least, that’s a safe bet—makes the cat seek me out, but sometimes I think Olympia watches me too. I swear I have seen her eyes following me as I walk from one end of the gallery to the other. She always stays put though, stretched out seductively on the white silken sheets of her painted bed.
“Now, how did you make it all the way over here?” I scoop up the cat and return her to her home. With the fifth floor closed for a summer-long renovation, nearly all of the museum’s pieces are here on the main level. “They say black cats are trouble,” I tell her, stroking her silky, luxurious fur as I bring her to the edge of her canvas. “Is that true?” She meows one more time—maybe an answer, maybe no
t—but the sound is cut in half when she folds herself back into her regular pose—arched back, fierce yellow eyes, completely still.
Almost as if she’d never leaped out of the frame.
This is how my nights go now.
It’s not why I started coming to the Musée d’Orsay after hours, but it’s why I can’t stay away.
I hear soft footfalls from another gallery, and I smile. If I was a little surly before—all right, I was definitely surly—my mood lifts at the delicate sound of toes tucked into slippers twirling on the hardwood floor. I head across the hallway, not wanting to miss the dancers. They’re beautiful, graceful, and watching them is both breathtaking and relaxing at the same time.
When I turn into the gallery, two dancers in white dresses, including the girl from that first night, have jetéd out of a Degas to spin in dizzying circles. They make regular nighttime appearances now, but not in any set routine. Last week, all of Degas’s dancers here in the Musée d’Orsay, plus a few musicians from an orchestra scene too, peeled away from their paint to stage an impromptu midnight performance of Swan Lake in the main gallery. What will tonight’s show be?
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