The Genius and the Muse Read Online Free PDF Page B

lens.” Kate felt her face flush as Dee burst into laughter. She finally calmed down a bit. “Yes, Kate, they modeled for each other. But never together! And they were so beautiful together. His dark and her fair. Just gorgeous. Sad that there’s not more pictures of them.”
    “I saw the picture in Chris’s office.”
    “That old snapshot?” Dee smiled at Kate with a twinkle in her eye. “Javi took that. That’s nothing. Here, come look. I’ve got a better one.”
    She rose, and Kate followed her into the studio at the back of the house. There was a small darkroom in the back corner, and the walls were lined with shelves stacked with all the equipment two working photographers could collect. Dee walked to a stack of filing cabinets.
    “I don’t have a print, but I took a beautiful picture of them once. One of my best portraits. I had to sneak up on them. Reed hated getting his picture taken. Hated it. So you always had to sneak up on him. I have the slide here… somewhere.” She rifled through her files at the back of one cabinet until she held up a slide page in triumph. “Aha!”
    Dee moved to one of the light boxes in the room and flipped it on. She retrieved a magnifying loupe and handed it to Kate. Moving to the side so she could look at it, a sad expression flickered across her face. “There they are.”
    Kate leaned down to peek at the small picture. It must have been a candid shot; neither of them was looking at the lens. Sam was sitting on Reed’s lap facing him, with her legs wrapped around his waist and her arms around his back. His long legs stretched out on the grass, and he leaned toward her as if to kiss her.
    He held her close, and his large hands, the hands from the photograph in the gallery, tangled in her hair as he drew her head toward his. Their bodies were pressed together, and their lips were only a whisper apart, but it was their eyes, which were locked on each other with a look of complete and total mutual adoration, that Kate couldn’t stop staring at.
    She stared at the slide, hardly noticing the tears that had come to her eyes. “So beautiful,” she whispered. “So…” She trailed off, unable to describe the feeling that the photograph evoked. Passion. Possession. Kate couldn’t say why the picture of the couple touched her so deeply, but when she saw it, she could almost feel their sense of complete and utter belonging.
    “They were,” Deepali said quietly, finally turning off the light box as Kate stepped away from it.
    “Did you ever show them the picture?”
    She nodded. “I gave a print to each of them. I never used it for anything. It’s too personal. I never even made a copy for myself.”
    “I wonder…”
    What had happened to them?
    The spark of Kate’s academic curiosity suddenly flared into something much more personal.
    Dee wiped her eyes a little and cleared her throat. “Yeah, I think we all do.”
     

 
     
     
     
    CHAPTER SIX
     
     
     
    Claremont, California
    April 2000
     
     
    “ O h shit!”
    Sam looked up from her sketchbook, somewhat shocked at her roommate’s sudden outburst. Dee had fallen asleep on the couch after another all-day session working with Reed. They were helping each other with their portfolios for a studio class, and the deadline for turning them in was fast approaching.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “I forgot to send those slide pages home with Reed, and he needs them first thing in the morning for Professor Simon. Oh, I’m so exhausted.” Dee groaned as she sat up, rubbing her eyes and grimacing.
    “He absolutely has to have them? Come on, it’s almost midnight,” Sam said, trying to turn back to her sketchbook.
    “Yeah, he lent them to me as a favor, and I forgot to give them back. Ugh, I better go and slip them under his door. He’s meeting with Simon first thing in the morning.”
    Sam sighed. She didn’t give a rat’s ass about Reed O’Connor, but she did care about Dee, who was obviously exhausted. She had