The Muse Read online

  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

  * * *

  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

  * * *

  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

  * * *

  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

  * * *

  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?