Roxanne worked in the room, which she had converted into her studio, humming softly. Her lover, the Iceman, as they called him, was expected to come late that night, and she was due to finish a huge contract she had landed a few weeks ago. But somehow, as she told him, her hand on his chest as they lay side by side at night, 'the Muse' seems to have deserted me, Daddy..."

Van Dyke, who had been threading his large, thick fingers through Roxanne's lovely brown hair, which spread across ...