Chapter 15
ROXY
The morning sun baked the pool deck, reflecting off the water and casting dancing ripples of turquoise light across the walls of the villa.
Angel floated on his back on a lilo, one bejeweled hand trailing through the crystalline liquid.
His broad chest rose and fell as he half-napped while I sat a few yards away, working on my latest canvas.
He had no idea how devastating he appeared, sprawled out in nothing but sunglasses and a pair of swim shorts.
The Italian sun made his muscles gleam, highlighting the ink etched across his honey-tan skin and tracing the lines of a sinewed body that was pure, unadulterated perfection.
Every instinct in my hands wanted to paint him, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
I had no stomach for the awkwardness if he turned me down.
So I kept my head down, biting my lip, brushing blue and gray watercolor to map out the jagged cliffs over the ocean.
I glanced up when he dumped his shades onto a towel on the inflatable, slid off the float, and cut through the pool in long, clean strokes.
After five laps, he swam to the tiled coping beside my easel, water pouring off his hair.
His eyes locked on my canvas.
‘That shadow under the cliff needs more violet, Roxy,’ he grunted, wiping his face.
My brush hovered.
‘Violet? Really?’
‘Yeah.’ He rested his forearms on the stone rim, arching a brow. ‘Gives it depth.’
‘Thanks, I’ll give it a shot,’ I muttered, dabbing purple onto my palette.
As he hauled himself out of the pool, water running down the cut of his back, my heart rate went through the roof.
‘Fuck me,’ I uttered to myself.
How much more of this torture could I take?
I was thirty-one years old, yet I was fangirling him hard.
He prowled across the deck, his muscles rippling as he dried off and threw on a loose vest, thank heavens, because I needed the visual shield.
‘Given you’ve offered me advice,’ I murmured to dissolve my tension, ‘I dare you to show me what you’ve got.’
He narrowed his eyes on me.
‘Please explain.’
‘Draw for me.’
His eyes lit up at the challenge.
He found his battered notebook sitting by his guitar, flipped past pages of scribbles, and set his pencil to the paper.
He worked fast.
Aggressive, precise strokes. Five minutes later, he turned the pad around.
It was me.
Not some airbrushed fantasy, but me, eyes vulnerable, face soft, pencil shades of the paint smeared on my forearm, bare and exposed.
It was stunning.
My throat shut down. Tears pricked my eyes, so I shut them.
I heard him place the pad down and reach out, then twitched when his calloused thumb traced my cheekbone.
‘Why are you upset, Rox?’
Opening my eyes, I shook my head, unable to speak, for his full, unvarnished focus on me left me speechless.
It was like sitting too close to an open flame, so I sliced my eyes away.
I’d always known he had a capacity for gentleness, but having it focused on me was almost too much to bear.
That’s when he cupped my jaw and turned my face to his.
‘Rox,’ he rasped, ‘would it help if I told you that I’ve never found you so fuckin’ hot as I do in this moment?’
My soul leaped.
‘It would cross the line.’
Then I shot my shot, reckless, uncaring, my heart so gone for him.
‘Still, would that be such a bad thing?’
‘That’s just it, gorgeous,’ he murmured, his thumb tracing my jawline. ‘I suspect it’d be wild, savage, and we’d flame out together.’
My heart lurched as I stared into his intense, heated eyes until he sliced them away.
He felt it too, but he fought it hard.
He tore the sketch out of the notebook and handed it over.
‘Keep it.’
‘I will.’
I tucked it into my notebook as his eyes shuttered.
I sensed he wanted out of the surge of emotion whirling around us.
He turned away from me, picked up his acoustic guitar, and his fingers started picking at the strings.
Song sheets ended up scattered over his bare feet, scratched-out lyrics and alternate progressions scribbled in black ink.
He was in his own head now, locked into the music.
Six Sinners wrote songs that almost sounded bled out in an alley, utter grit and desperate survival.
Listening to him work out a melody was like watching a soul tear itself open to see what was inside.
‘Listen to this,’ he grunted, striking a rich minor chord and singing a rough, unfinished verse about the dark places people hid in when everything fell apart.
His voice was pure gravel and smoke.
‘What do you think?’ he growled, raising his eyes to mine as the last reverberation died out.
‘Gives me chills,’ I said, rubbing the bumps on my arms. ‘It works, but change ‘chains’ to ‘shackles’ in the third line. Fits the rhythm better.’
He pursed his lips, dragging a hand through his beard as he thought it over.
He ran his fingers over the fretboard again, testing the new word with an acoustic strike.
‘Damn, beautiful. You’re right. Look at you, secret lyricist.’
I worked my brushes into the canvas while he muttered lyrics into his phone and scraped his pick across the strings.
Between chords, the sun caught the flash of metal in his right hand.
I paused, squinting at the silver thumb plectrum shaped like a half-ring, a custom piece engraved with a pair of feathered wings.
‘That pick looks familiar,’ I said, resting my brush across the palette.
He stopped strumming and gave me a long look, his eyes searching my face.
‘Don’t recognize it, Rox?’ he rasped. ‘You gave it to me for my eighteenth birthday. You saved up your allowance for it. It’s sterling silver, heavy-gauge, custom-made, by a Nashville silversmith who was also a local musician. I don’t use anything else on stage.’
My jaw went slack. ‘I bought it for you?’
‘Did you forget?’
‘I must have,’ I breathed, my pulse quickening.
He ran a finger over the engraved metal.
‘I’ve never forgotten, Rox. I’ll use it until either it or I crumble into dust.’
‘Good to know.’
The fact he’d kept it all these years was mind-blowing, and a knot tightened in my throat as he turned back to his instrument.
Minutes later, Mrs. Campanelli appeared, fueling us with a spectacular, sprawling spread.
She brought out a massive platter of Insalata Caprese, thick slices of heirloom tomatoes and creamy buffalo mozzarella swimming in wild basil and local olive oil.
Alongside a basket of warm, rosemary-infused focaccia.
Then came the star of the show: a deep ceramic dish of crispy, layered eggplant parmigiana, its aroma so heavenly it derailed my train of thought.
Angel set his guitar beside the stone wall and loaded up our plates while Mrs. Campanelli poured us glasses of cold white wine before heading inside.
We ate as the mid-afternoon heat baked the flagstones as the sea glinted in the distance. My phone buzzed on the table.
A text from Di.
I read it with a sigh.
‘The suits at Rosedale Corp need fresh honeymoon content to pump into their brand channels,’ I groused to Angel.
Angel peered at my screen and twisted his mouth.
‘I still don’t get why we’re doing this,’ he groused.
‘They tag you and me as Reese’s family; the Rosedale Group name rides your clout.’
‘I hate selling myself out for social media.’
‘It’s par for the course, though,’ I teased, pouring more wine into my glass.
‘I only do it coz I have to. Otherwise, a thirty-five-year-old man chasing clout on the internet is pathetic,’ he muttered, dragging a hand through his hair. ‘I’d rather stay off the grid. Live on a rock like this, anonymous, with my woman.’
My breath hitched in my throat.
‘What’s stopping you?’
He turned his smoky eyes to mine, a dry smirk playing on his mouth.
‘Nothing. Not a damn thing, Rox, not one.’
He reached out, hooked his arm on my waist, and tugged me to him, pressing his lips to my temple.
His heat radiated through my shirt, and I shivered with a delicious frisson.
The casual intimacy between us was ramping up, and it terrified me.
‘We doing this?’ he murmured. ‘Let’s get this over with for the suits.’
‘Done deal,’ I said, tapping on the camera app to cut through the sudden tension.
We spent ten minutes messing around to make the photo shoot bearable.
Angel pulled an exaggerated, brooding villain pose, narrowing his eyes at the lens and pursing his lips.
I leaned over his shoulder, twisting my face into a ridiculous duck pout.
We ended up cracking each other up between takes.
I managed to catch candid images of him laughing, his sculpted features losing their aloofness, softening for once.
Studying him through the screen, my brain replayed the obvious: my husband was infuriatingly attractive.
He had this magnetism to him, made even more sexy by how unbothered he was by his hypnotic presence.
I picked a few usable shots, attached them in an email, and sent it off to Di.
We finished our food in the shade, trading quiet banter as the sun started to drop.
At dusk, Mrs. Campanelli appeared on the terrace carrying a wicker hamper.
‘I’m taking the evening off to visit my sister in Anacapri. I left your supper in the basket.’
‘Thanks, Mrs. C,’ Angel called out.
‘There’s a small cove down the strand via the winding cliff path,’ she added, her eyes twinkling with that familiar mischief. ‘Go enjoy the sunset.’
Angel turned to me, brow arched.
‘Shall we?’
‘Let’s,’ I confirmed, anticipation hitting me as we rose from the lounges and got ready for our twilight excursion.
Half an hour later, armed with sand shoes, cushions, blankets, jackets, and our hamper of goodies, we navigated toward the seashore.
Angel held my hand tight down the steep, rocky trail in the fading amber luminescence, guiding my steps over the loose shale.
We reached the solitary shore and found the beach still warm from the day’s rays.
Shedding our sweatshirts and bottoms, we plunged into the sea in our swimming gear, loving the ocean’s brine-laced coolness over our skin.
The dusk light hung over the coastline, bleeding ink-blue and bruised violet across the horizon where the open water met the sky.
Out here on the secluded stretch of sand, the tide crashed on the rocks, churning white foam around our thighs as we waded deeper.