"At age forty, Amy is the company's star employee - capable of selling a Renoir painting of a pudgy nude for twice its value. Hers are the charms and talents of a sophisticated woman: intelligence, ambition, wit, and endless charisma. Her customers, meanwhile, are intoxicated by a love for the objects that define them, and thrilled by the act of making them their own.

And sometimes, such as when the dark and mysterious Trevor locks eyes with Amy as she closes an auction with "fair warning," that object is Amy herself. Trevor is Amy's most hopeful romantic prospect in months, but is there something unsettling in his smile?".

"For years Amy has fought a smothering mother, a suburban sister whose marriage Amy struggles to respect, a late father who never forgave her for abandoning the cattle business in Texas, and the ghosts of doomed relationships. Now Amy wonders whether she has finally found true love in the form of Alain Bouchard, the suave and worldly French business mogul who will be her new boss.

When he promises to make her a partner and whisk her away to his beloved Paris, it all seems picture perfect, until unsettling signs appear. Is Alain any different from Amy's alienated clients - connoisseurs who lose touch with the very things they pursue?"--BOOK JACKET.