Picture Perfect Christmas. Melanie Schuster

over to the French doors that led out to the terrace and frowned when he couldn’t open them. “How do you get out of here?”

      “Thinking of jumping, are you? Loverman had everything in here child-proofed. The boys are absolutely fearless as well as being as curious as heck. And the girls are even worse, if that’s possible. So, unless your thumbprint can access the keypad over there you won’t be flinging yourself off the roof tonight,” she said dryly. “Or me, either, because you look mad enough to try it.”

      “Loverman” was one of her many sappy nicknames for her husband, Antoine. And despite still looking like she was in her twenties, Ricki was the devoted mother of five children under the age of ten. Her long, black hair, smooth dark brown skin and her firm, curvy body all belied her mommy status. Normally Philippe considered her to be quite charming, but she was working his last nerve tonight.

      “I’m going to bed, Ricki. Thanks for coming with me,” he said in a dead voice.

      “Oh, no you’re not! You’re going to sit down and relax and I’ll make you a nice hot drink to loosen your tongue. You have some things to get off your chest. Let me check on my babies and get out of this outfit and I’ll be right back,” she said.

      Philippe groaned as he took off his suit jacket. He had taken off his tie and cuff links and was staring balefully at the twelve-foot Christmas tree that graced the room when Antoine entered the room. He was wearing a silk robe and pajama bottoms, despite the fact that it was only nine o’clock. He put in long hours with his restaurants and usually retired early.

      “The baby woke up and Ricki couldn’t let her go back to sleep without some mothering.” Antoine still had a strong French accent, even though he’d been in America for years. He and Ricki had met when she was in college and it was love at first sight. “She tells me you have some issues to deal with. Let’s have a cognac and you can tell me what’s putting that look on your face.”

      Philippe was about to refuse the offer, but somehow the prospect of Antoine’s excellent cognac sounded like a plan. Antoine’s family owned one of the best vineyards in France and under the management of his brothers they had become one of the biggest importers in the world. Antoine also owned three restaurants in New York and two in New Jersey. His latest project, though, was training homeless and unemployed people in the restaurant business. He said it was his way of giving back to the country that had been so good to him.

      They went into the study, which was also a wine cellar. The rich wood that lined the walls held specially made racks that were cleverly disguised behind the paneling and kept each bottle at the perfect temperature. Soon they were each sitting in sinfully comfortable club chairs with a snifter of a hundred-year-old imported cognac that warmed the throat and loosened the tongue.

      “So what happened at the showing? Your friend, was she not pleased that you had come?”

      Philippe snorted. “I wasn’t pleased that I had come. I haven’t seen Chastain since she dumped me three years ago to take off for France. Chastain and I have been in and out of love since we were kids. I thought at one point that we’d be getting married, but instead she got some genius grant and decided to leave me, leave her family and everything else and work on her painting in Paris,” he said with obvious bitterness.

      “She’d already been away long enough. She went to college in D.C. and instead of coming home to New Orleans she pranced her little ass off to New York to get an MFA and just stayed here. After Katrina she moved back home and said she was back to stay. But after about four months she got the news that she’d been awarded this big fellowship. That was cool. It really was, because she’s extremely talented. She’s really gifted, Antoine, I’m not kidding. But the grant didn’t have any restrictions on it. She could have done anything she wanted with the money and she chose to just get up and go. She didn’t seem to give a damn about what she was leaving behind. She just left.” He drained the rest of his snifter and nodded in the affirmative when Antoine offered him a refill.

      “I think you mean ‘who’ she left behind,” he said wisely. “You said ‘what’, but I think you meant to say ‘who’.”

      Philippe shot him a searing look, but gave up and shrugged. “Who meaning me. Yeah, I guess that’s what I meant to say. Whatever.” Taking another sip, he looked longingly at the expensive humidor on the table.

      Antoine understood the look at once and offered Philippe a cigar, which he assured him was excellent. “Better than a Cuban, I promise you. Normally Ricki makes me go out on the terrace, but as long as we air out this room she may let me live.”

      After lighting the cigars the two men smoked in silence for a moment. Antoine went back to the subject at hand. “So you haven’t seen her in three years, you go to her opening and then what? She wasn’t glad to see you? She didn’t welcome you?”

      “She made a fool out of me, that’s what she did. She’s there looking like she just left a photo shoot and she’s got some chump hanging all over her like he owns her. Before I could say anything to her, I happened to look up and see these three huge paintings of a nude man and then I realized they were paintings of me. There I am, big as life, hanging on a wall naked,” he snarled. The anger began building again until he felt it might erupt until Antoine interrupted him.

      “So? They weren’t good pictures, you looked bad, what?”

      “Hey, man, come on now. If you walked into an art gallery and saw three nudes, life-size nudes hanging in the middle of the room and you realized it was you, you’d be as mad as I am. That’s a total lack of respect. It’s like a slap in the face. It’s like letting the whole world know that I was just a lay for her. I don’t know how she could do something so low-down. But I told her that they’re coming down or I’m going to sue her and that gallery for…”

      “For what? If someone painted me in the nude I’d be quite flattered, that is if they were beautiful art. Were they caricatures or cartoons? Did you look like an idiot or something?”

      “Not really,” Philippe admitted. He roughed up his hair with one hand while he thought about the portraits. “It wasn’t like my full face was visible.”

      “And she’s very talented, you said? Did she make you look good?”

      Philippe was about to answer in the affirmative when he caught himself. “That’s really not the point, Antoine. The point is that she painted those pictures without my knowledge or permission and she has them on public display. My privacy has been invaded and she’d going to remove them from that exhibit or face the consequences.”

      Ricki sailed into the study wearing pink silk pajamas and a cashmere robe in the same color. “You’re kidding, right?”

      “No, I’m not. Thanks for the talk, Antoine. I’ll see you tomorrow, this time I’m really going to bed.”

      He left the room, leaving the couple alone.

      “Loverman, what did we say about cigars?” Ricki waved her hand in front of her face with a grimace.

      “Sorry, darling. Philippe looked like he could use one. I’ve never seen him this upset about anything before.”

      Ricki got comfortable on her husband’s lap, snuggling next to his heart with a contented sigh. “Philippe is actually one of my more mild-mannered cousins. They all have hot tempers, but Philippe was always the most laid-back of the bunch. He must have really been crazy in love to react like that.”

      Antoine stroked her silky hair and inhaled the fragrance that always clung to it. “How bad were the portraits? He seems to think they were a source of humiliation.”

      Ricki turned her head so she could kiss his neck. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t really get to see them that well. I noticed them, but I was busy looking at these exquisite renderings of Bricktop and Richard Wright. This lady has an amazing gift, Antoine. I was staring at the paintings and the next thing I knew Philippe was dragging me out of there like the place was about to explode.

      “But I want some of her work,”