Jean-Louis stopped by when he finished his own shoot. Liz and her group were working late.

“Pretty shot,” he said admiringly from the sidelines, as he stood next to Liz. She was wearing black leggings and a T-shirt, her long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, no makeup, and high-heeled Givenchy sandals they had made especially for her. She looked tired and stressed. They had been working since eight o’clock that morning, and she’d been at the photographer’s studio at six to set things up. Usually she would have had an assistant do it, but the pieces they were using were of such enormous value that she felt she should be there herself.

Jean-Louis put his arms around her and kissed her. They had been dating for months, with frequent breaks since they lived in separate cities, and they both traveled constantly for work. They tried to get together in Paris or New York once or twice a month. It seemed to work, and neither of them had time for more of a relationship. They were both rising stars in their fields.

Liz’s secret dream was to be editor of Vogue one day, and she knew that getting there was still years away. She had to make her mark as an outstanding editor first. And the stories she did now were key. Jean-Louis was successful but more relaxed about his work. He told her that she took life too seriously, but Liz always had. Life had gotten very serious for her on a September Sunday when she was twelve. And she had been intense about everything ever since. The one thing she never did was relax. She never took anything for granted, and she never got too attached. The only people she felt she couldn’t live without were her brother, sister, and aunt. The men in her life came and went. Jean-Louis had accused her several times of being cool and detached. The Ice Princess, he called her. She wasn’t, but she was standoffish with men. It was easy to understand why. She had told him she had lost her parents as a child, but she never went into detail. Her night terrors afterward, the nightmares she had had and sometimes still did, the years of therapy to get over the loss, were none of his business. All she wanted from Jean-Louis was to have fun, and she liked that they worked in the same field. The men she went out with were always related to fashion. Other people didn’t understand the crazy world in which she lived, and how passionate she was about her work. Her aunt Annie felt the same way about what she did and had been a role model for Liz as she grew up. Her directive to Liz had been to follow her dream and do whatever it took to do it well. Liz had always tried to live by those rules and was highly respected in the world of fashion as a result. Her ideas were innovative, bold, and fresh.

It was nearly midnight when they took the final shot. Jean-Louis had gone home to his loft by then, and Lizzie promised to come by when they finished. There was a cheer in the studio when the photographer shot the last roll and gave a war whoop of satisfaction with the last shot. The pictures they got were going to be great.

It took Liz and two assistants another hour to wrap up all the jewels and mark the boxes. The three armed guards accompanied her back to her office, where she put everything in the safe. She got to Jean-Louis’s place at two. He was listening to music and drinking a glass of wine as he waited for her. And he was standing naked in his living room, with his long, lean splendid body, when Liz helped herself to the key he kept behind the fire extinguisher outside his door and walked in. He hid it there because he was always losing it. Half the models in town knew where to find that key. But for now the key was only for her. She didn’t mind how little time they spent together, but the one thing she cared about was that they were exclusive to each other and slept with no one else. And Jean-Louis had agreed. He had no need for a long-term commitment. When he wanted a different woman, he left and found one. But neither of them had any desire to go elsewhere for now. However inadequate Annie thought he was for her, Lizzie was satisfied. Jean-Louis fit perfectly into her high-flying, fast-moving, glamorous world, and he was just as comfortable with her.

He smiled as she walked in, and silently held out a glass of wine. And as she came to him, and he stripped her thin layer of clothes off, he became rapidly aroused. He lowered her gently onto the couch, and they made love there. They were both breathless and sated when they were through.

“You drive me crazy,” he said happily, his head thrown back, as she ran a graceful finger along his beard, down his neck, and then let her fingers drift slowly down. “Don’t…,” he said, catching her hand and smiling at her. “If we make love again, I’ll die.”

“No, you won’t,” she whispered, and kissed him where it mattered most. They worked hard, played hard, and the sex was great. Better because they weren’t together all the time. There was still excitement and mystery and hunger between them, which fueled the fires of their passion. He had never told her that he loved her, and she never wondered if he did. She wasn’t ready for that, with anyone, and never had been. She cared about him and liked him and enjoyed him, but at twenty-eight she knew she had never been in love. Something always held her back. The fear of loss. This way she had nothing to lose if he ever left her, except great sex. She would have missed him, but she never wanted to experience the wrenching agony of real loss again, and she did everything to avoid it. She called the kind of relationship she wanted “intimacy without pain,” but her therapist said that there was no such thing. Not real intimacy, or love. There is no love without risk, she had said, which was precisely why Liz had never loved any man. She was committed but never owned. And when it no longer felt right, or got too close, she moved on. Her aloofness was a challenge to most men, and to Jean-Louis. They wanted to possess her and to make her fall in love. She never did. Or not yet. She wondered if one day she would, or if that part of her had died when her parents’ plane went down when she was twelve, the part of her that was willing to be vulnerable and take risk.

“I’m crazy for you, Liz,” Jean-Louis said, as they started to make love again in the candlelight in his loft.

“Me too,” she said softly, her blond hair falling like a curtain across her face, with one enormous blue eye peeking through at him. She was happy he hadn’t said he loved her. It was a step she didn’t want to take. He wasn’t in love with her either, he was in like and lust with her, which was all she wanted from him. She put her lips on his then, and they kissed. They fell asleep in each other’s arms afterward, on the couch, as the candles flickered and gently went out, as Liz lay against Jean-Louis and sighed peacefully in her sleep.

Ted’s Monday after the Thanksgiving weekend was not a happy one. It was one of those days when everything went wrong. The water had been turned off in his building for an emergency repair, so he couldn’t take a shower when he got up. His roommates had finished the coffee and not replaced it. He missed two buses and then a subway, when he tried that to get to school, and was late to class. And when the assistant professor handed back their papers on a quiz from the week before, he had gotten several answers wrong and got a miserable grade. The guy sitting next to him had BO, and by the time class was over, he was in a rotten mood, from the lousy grade on the quiz he had actually studied for, and the unpleasant seat.

He was leaving the class with a glum expression, when the teacher signaled him. The professor who normally taught the class was on sabbatical, writing a book, and she had taken over his duties for a year. Her name was Pattie Sears. She was an attractive woman with long curly hair who wore jeans and Birkenstocks with socks and T-shirts that showed off her breasts. He had noticed it when he was bored in class. She looked to be in her early thirties and was sexy in a wholesome, natural way.

“I’m sorry about the grade on the quiz,” she said sympathetically. “Contracts are a bitch.” Ted smiled at what she said. “I flunked them the first time I took the class myself. Some of the rules just don’t make sense.”

“I guess not. I studied for it. I have to read those chapters again,” Ted said diligently. Throughout his entire school and college career, he had always had good grades. And other than the recent quiz, he was doing well. He was in his second year at NYU Law School.

“Would you like some help? Sometimes if you prepare it with someone to give you some guidance, it helps. I don’t mind.” She had warned them of a quiz the following week, and he didn’t want another bad grade.

“I don’t want to bother you,” he said, looking embarrassed. She had put on a heavy jacket and a woolen hat. There was something homespun and friendly about her. He could easily imagine her chopping wood and building a fire in Vermont, or making soup from scratch. “I’ll read the chapters, and if I feel like I’m not getting it, I’ll ask you after the next class.”

“Why don’t you come by tonight?” she said, and her eyes were warm and kind. Ted hesitated, and now he felt even ruder turning her down. She was offering her help, and he didn’t want her to feel that he didn’t appreciate the gesture, but it seemed strange to go to her house. They had never spoken to each other outside of class. “My kids are asleep by eight. Why don’t you come by at nine? We can knock out the prep for the quiz in an hour. I’ll give you some pointers about contracts, and show you some things that are key.”

“All right,” he said hesitantly, not wanting to intrude on her private life. She had already jotted down her address on a piece of paper and handed it to him. He saw that she lived in the East Village, not far from the university, in a run-down neighborhood. “You’re sure you don’t mind?” he asked, feeling like a kid. She seemed so motherly to him, although she probably wasn’t that much older than he was. “I won’t stay long.”