Chapter 3
3
When dinnertime rolled around, Jess drove back over to Xander’s villa in an even more agitated state than when she left it, which didn’t bode well for a relaxed and fruitful interview with him.
She hadn’t anticipated having to conduct her interview over dinner either. She used to hate eating in front of other people after struggling with disordered eating during her later teenage years. Things had got a lot better on that front after she’d gone to speak to a specialist counsellor during her time at university though. After months of sessions she’d been able to finally start to deal with the feelings of shame and self-loathing that tipped her into comfort eating when she felt stressed and she hadn’t had a relapse since.
She had a suspicion that eating in front of Xander was going to be a real test of her fortitude though.
Rosa opened the door to her with a smile and showed her through to the huge living room, which was furnished with only a sofa, small drinks table and fireplace. There was an amazing, coloured glass chandelier hanging from the ceiling, which looked a bit like an exploding bouquet of long-stemmed flowers. Refracted shards of light from it bounced off the walls, giving the room the feel of a disco paused in time. Jess had never seen anything like it. ‘Xander’s running a little late, but he’ll be with you soon,’ Rosa said, giving Jess a kind smile. ‘Can I get you a drink?’
‘Just some water, please,’ Jess said, determined to remain sharp and focussed that evening, which meant no alcohol for her. She didn’t tend to drink much of it anyway – hating the way it messed with her head – and she had a horrible feeling that just a sniff of the stuff tonight would be a disaster in terms of keeping her cool and collected front in place.
Rosa nodded and gestured to the sofa before leaving her alone in the room.
Jess chose not to sit down, nerves making her too edgy to stay still and instead wandered around the room. She took a closer look at the beautiful marble fireplace and the amazing glass chandelier, shifting uncomfortably in her six-inch heels as she waited for Xander to materialise. She’d chosen these shoes at the last second, thinking the extra height would give her a bit more confidence, but they were already killing her feet which set her teeth on edge.
She was dragged out of her thoughts by the sight of Xander finally sauntering into the room, wearing a light blue linen shirt, open at the neck, dark combat trousers and a spellbinding smile on his face.
He really was the perfect specimen of a man.
Even the loose cut of his clothes couldn’t conceal the fact he had a killer body underneath. No doubt those lean muscles were flexing and bunching under his shirt as he moved towards her. It made her mouth water to think of it.
How would he feel if she pressed her hands against his chest?
Hard and soft at the same time.
The tips of her fingers tingled in empathy with her thoughts and there was a disturbing rush of warmth in the depths of her pelvis.
Not good, Jess. Not good.
How the heck was she going to get through the evening? Already the butterflies that had taken up residence in her stomach were flapping about like wild things, which meant her appetite was zero.
‘Welcome to my humble abode,’ Xander said giving her a generous smile as he came to a stop in front of her.
He seemed relaxed, insouciant even, as if he was anticipating a pleasant, gentle evening of good food and lively conversation.
Relief filtered through her at the thought that this dinner might not be quite as awkward as she’d anticipated. She just needed to keep him on her side in order to get him to open up and talk about things that would make her article sparkle.
‘Take a seat,’ Xander said, motioning to the huge, red velvet covered sofa in the middle of the room.
‘Okay, thank you.’ Jess sank down gratefully onto the soft cushions, glad to finally take the weight off her feet, and kept on sinking. The innards of the sofa were so soft she found herself nearly doubled in two with her knees up near her chin.
Not exactly ladylike.
‘I’m really pleased you decided to come,’ Xander said, flopping down next to her and almost catapulting her onto his lap. ‘I think we can both get something useful out of our time together.’
He gave her such a loaded smile she could do nothing but stare back at him.
‘Yes, I’m sure we can,’ she finally managed to mumble through lips that seemed to be malfunctioning.
He slowly dropped his gaze to her mouth again and the intensity of the atmosphere stepped up another notch.
Focus, Jess, focus.
She took in a deep breath. ‘This is a wonderful room,’ she said, trying like mad not to go to pieces as the fresh and delicious citrusy scent of his aftershave hit her nostrils. My, he smelt good. Perhaps she was hungry after all? Only not for food.
Oh, lordy.
Wriggling along the sofa away from him and swivelling her knees into the gap she’d left, she attempted to put a defensive barrier between them, only to watch him reposition himself, mirroring her action so that their knees were almost touching. Her breath caught in her throat at what appeared to be a deliberate move to unsettle her and she had to look away to gather her courage.
She was so out of her comfort zone here.
Rosa arrived with a couple of flutes of strawberry Bellini, Jess’s requested glass of water and a bowl of the most enormous olives Jess had ever seen, which she placed in front of them with a flourish.
‘Dinner will be served in ten minutes,’ she said, giving them both a gracious nod.
‘Thanks, Rosa,’ Xander replied, the deep smooth tone of his voice twisting through Jess’s head like music. No wonder women seemed to throw themselves at him wherever he went, all he had to do was speak and she was a gibbering wreck. Imagine the effect if he decided to talk dirty to her.
A deep, low throb began to pulse between her thighs at the thought and her face flamed with heat. Good grief, what was wrong with her?
Jess hurriedly picked up a Bellini and took a sip, grateful for the distraction from Xander’s overwhelming presence.
So much for her no drinking rule.
But this was an emergency – she needed something to flatten out her nerves and lull her into a more relaxed state of mind if she was going to get through the evening with her sanity intact.
Turning back, she found he was studying her, a look of concentrated interest on his face. They stared at each other for a moment and Jess’s heart hammered in the pause.
Had it suddenly got hotter? She could swear they’d turned the heat up and were directing it straight at her. She was damp with perspiration under her long-sleeved blouse and even the undersides of her knees were sweating.
Ugh, how unattractive.
‘You have the most expressive face I’ve ever seen,’ he murmured, a glint of mischief in his eyes. ‘I’m going to have a lot of fun drawing you.’
Jess cleared her throat and sat up taller in her seat, anxiety at the thought of having to model for him making her body hum with nerves.
‘So how exactly do these things go? Do I just sit around for a couple of hours and you produce some amazing piece of art?’
He smiled. ‘Not exactly. I prefer to hang out with my subjects for a bit first. It can take a while to come up with the right idea and I like to play around with things for a while before committing paint to canvas. I’ll do some sketches over the next few days and see what works.’
‘The next few days ? I wasn’t expecting to be here for that long. I thought we could get this all wrapped up in a day. Two max. In fact, I’ve booked a return flight for three days’ time.’
He snorted. ‘A day? If only I could work that fast. No, I usually need at least three or four days of planning. But don’t worry, we can make it fun.’ He gave her a slow grin that made her insides flip.
‘What exactly do you mean by that?’ The question came out sounding curter than she’d intended, so she chased it with an awkward smile.
He snorted, the corner of his mouth twisting up in mirth. ‘Why are you so nervous, Jess?’
‘I’m not nervous,’ she said, the squeak in her voice totally giving her away.
He laughed, the sound rumbling low in his chest. ‘Is my reputation really that bad?’ He leant forwards in a conspiratorial manner, ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to rip your clothes off and ravish you – unless you ask me really nicely,’ he added with a flirtatious eyebrow raised.
Was he teasing her now? He was. He so was. And she had absolutely no idea how to handle it.
This was exactly why she usually avoided men like him. They rattled her so badly she could barely function.
Mercifully, Rosa returned to call them for dinner then, so she didn’t have to scrabble around for an eloquent response.
‘After you.’ Xander gestured towards the other end of the hall.
‘Great,’ Jess said, already on her feet and making a move towards the doorway he’d motioned to, desperately trying not to skid in her shoes on the smooth marble floor. She could feel him behind her, giving off a vibe of sexual electricity that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention.
Just as they reached the dining room door, her heel caught in a small hole in the marble and she stumbled forwards, her arms flailing as she tried to regain her balance.
Xander stopped her from falling flat on her face by darting forwards and grabbing her arm, pulling her against his body for support.
Taking a hurried step away from the hard wall of his chest, she smoothed down her hair, then her skirt before flashing him a grateful smile. He watched her with an amused eyebrow raised. ‘You okay?’
‘Fine. Thank you.’ She gave him a curt nod. ‘I’m not normally that clumsy, honestly.’
Xander laughed. ‘Don’t worry on my account. It’s not often I get to play the knight in shining armour. It’s usually me falling down, drunk.’
‘I’m not drunk, I only had a couple of sips…’ she began to argue, horrified he’d think she was that much of a lightweight.
He held up a hand. ‘I’m joking, Jess. Jeez, I’ve never met anyone so bad at taking a joke.’
‘I-I can take a joke with the b-best of them,’ she stuttered, picking a rogue hair off the sleeve of her blouse before turning to stare him defiantly in the eye.
Xander shook his head and grinned back at her. ‘Do you think you can make it to the table without taking another tumble? I can give you a piggy back if you like.’
‘I’ll be fine, thank you,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t want to be responsible for putting your back out.’
He laughed. ‘Never gonna happen. I’m as strong as an ox. See?’ he braced his arms in front of him, mimicking the stance of a bodybuilder.
Jess couldn’t help but laugh at him.
‘Yeah, okay He-Man , but I’ll walk, thanks.’
He smiled back. ‘Well, okay then, let’s go. I’m starving.’
The dining room was just as impressive as the living room, with an enormous, highly polished dining table sitting pretty in the middle of the room, surrounded by what must have been twenty high-backed chairs.
Another enormous chandelier, this time made from hundreds of pieces of blown glass in the shape of a flock of birds let out a warm, low light over the room.
‘Wow, the light fixtures here are amazing,’ Jess said, staring at it in wonder.
‘Pretty cool, huh?’ Xander said, stopping next to her to admire it too. ‘Roberto, who owns this place, made it. He’s sickeningly talented.’
He was standing so close to her she caught another waft of his amazing citrusy scent, which sent an energised prickle right up her spine.
‘How kind of him to let you use his place,’ she said, taking a careful step into the room, away from him.
‘Yeah, he’s a really generous guy. We worked on a couple of projects together a few years back, before we both started getting successful. He lets friends come and stay here when they need to escape for a bit.’
‘So you’re escaping right now?’ she asked, turning back to look at him.
His expression closed over. ‘I need a bit of space to concentrate on producing work for a new exhibition, away from the din of the city.’
‘And away from the temptation of all those parties?’ she asked, raising a playful eyebrow, hoping he’d bite and give her a bit of gossipy goodness that she could incorporate into her article.
‘Oh, I don’t know. I’m sure I can find a party round here if I really want to,’ he said, moving his shoulder in a circular motion as if trying to relieve a trapped nerve.
‘Have you hurt your shoulder?’ she asked.
‘Nah, I’m just a bit tense from being bent over drawing today. Why, are you offering to rub it for me?’ he flipped her a provocative grin.
‘You don’t want me giving you a massage, I’m terrible at it,’ she said, nervously tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, then flipping it back out again to rejoin the rest of her bob. She had a horrible urge to hide her face from him. He was so perplexing with his ability to suddenly switch the conversation from something innocuous into something sexy.
He gave her a questioning frown. ‘I don’t believe it. How can you be terrible at giving massages?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s just not something I count as one of my talents.’
‘Hmm,’ he was looking at her with such an intense, searching stare it made her insides twist.
She wasn’t used to dealing with such overt flirtatiousness. The men she’d dated in the past had been attractive guys, but nothing like the unwieldy package of sexual energy that Xander Heaton embodied. He was something else entirely.
Walking past her, he pulled out a chair from the table and gestured for her to sit down.
She nodded her thanks and perched herself on the edge of the leather-upholstered chair, folding her hands on the table top and kicking off her shoes so she could flex her aching feet under the table. She watched as he pulled out the seat opposite and dropped into it with a sigh.
‘I’m curious. Why don’t you give interviews any more?’ she said, hoping that if she just kept firing random questions at him, he’d eventually give her some straight answers.
He leant back in his chair and smoothed the front of his shirt down with long, tanned fingers.
Jess watched the movement, fascinated by the simple beauty of his hands, noting how his fingernails were dark-rimmed with ingrained paint. There was something lovely about how his hands reflected exactly who he was.
‘I’ve had some bad experiences with the press twisting things I’ve said. They take things out of context and make me sound like an idiot.’ He leaned forwards in his chair. ‘And I prefer to keep my private life just that – private,’ he said, giving her a knowing smile and stretching out his legs under the table, his foot bumping gently against hers. ‘But I’m sure I can trust you to give me a fair write-up, Jess, especially as I have the power to make you look ridiculous too. You don’t want your “bad hair day” captured for eternity and put up to hang in a gallery somewhere, do you?’
She felt lightheaded with fear at the thought.
‘You wouldn’t do that.’ The shake in her voice made it clear she totally believed he would.
He laughed. ‘Of course not. I’m only joking. I promise to be true to your character.’
She nodded slowly. ‘Okay, well, I guess I’m going to have to trust you.’
Speaking of which…
‘So what happened last year to kill your muse?’ she asked as casually as she could, glancing up at him through her lashes in the hope he’d answer without thinking.
He gave her such a hard stare she shrank back into her seat under the force of it.
Okay, so it wasn’t the most professional way to conduct the interview, but then again, she had nothing to lose by throwing out provocative questions. In fact, if she was going to get something juicy enough to satisfy Pamela she was going to have to push the boat right out into enemy waters.
Xander must have felt he’d reacted a bit too strongly because he shook his head and let out a gentle snort.
‘My muse isn’t dead, just resting. I had a few years where I worked pretty intensively, and I needed a break.’
‘So, taking a break had nothing to do with the reviews you had of your last exhibition then?’
His expression darkened again, and he leant forwards in his chair. ‘You really think I care about the opinions of a few talentless hacks? I have zero respect for people who don’t have the ability to produce their own art so spend their time and energy trashing other people’s work instead. They’re a waste of space and not something I want to talk about again, so you can cross that one off your list of “probing” questions.’ The cold resentment in his voice made her shiver.
Okay, lesson learned, she wasn’t going to be able to rush this. Probably best to keep the conversation bland for now and build up to the more pointed questions. After all, if he wanted more time to sketch her, she could afford to take things slowly and build his trust in her.
* * *
Xander relaxed back into his chair and attempted to shake off the unsettling avalanche of anxiety that Jess’s questions had buried him in. He needed to keep his temper under control, or she’d think she was onto a juicy story about how he really felt about the press’s less than favourable reaction to his last show.
He’d relived the hurt and anger of last year’s glitch in his career over and over until it had nearly driven him crazy, and he was determined to get over the debilitating fear of failing again. He really didn’t need her poking at that old wound when he was finally feeling the creative buzz again.
Jess leant back in her chair and studied him for a moment, and he tensed, waiting to see what she was going to ask him next.
‘So, what does it feel like to be voted the fourth sexiest man in England?’ she asked, a mischievous eyebrow raised.
He let out a snort of mirth, relieved that she’d taken the hint and changed the subject.
‘Actually, I hear I’m third in the UK right now and it’s a real honour.’
‘I bet.’ She shot him a judicious look. ‘Any plans to up your rating? How much sexier do you think you’d need to be to reach number one, for example?’
He couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Quite a bit, I suspect.’
She smiled and picked up her water, taking a quick sip. ‘If you did get any sexier, I think most women – and probably some men – would probably melt into a puddle at your feet.’
He gave her a lazy grin, something warm and happy growing deep in his belly. ‘You think I’m sexy?’
Her gaze shot away from him, and she put her glass down hurriedly, managing to catch it awkwardly on her side plate and spilling water onto the tablecloth. ‘I can see why other people think you are.’ She didn’t look back at him, but busied herself mopping up the spill with her napkin.
‘But you don’t personally?’
She still wouldn’t look at him. ‘I have different tastes.’
‘Different?’
‘Yeah, I like boy-next-door types, I guess. Men I feel comfortable to be around. Men who aren’t going to outshine me wherever we go.’
‘I can’t imagine anyone outshining you.’
She raised a discerning eyebrow. ‘You’re sweet to say that, but I’m warning you now, I can smell BS a mile away.’
God, she was saucy when she got all strict.
‘You’re really quite something, you know that?’ Xander said, leaning forward and putting his elbows onto the table.
There was something about the wariness on her face that made him long to get behind that restrained front. He was pretty sure there was a lot going on beneath the surface with Jess and he longed to find out what was driving it. He’d not met anyone as guarded – and seemingly immune to his charms – as her in a very long time.
He liked that about her. He liked it a lot.
And he was determined to shake the real her out from under those layers of protection.
* * *
‘Okay, let’s try some quick-fire questions,’ Jess said, ignoring his attempt at flirting her into submission and hoping her slowly, slowly approach would yield better results. If she could keep things light and unobtrusive he might just give her something juicy without realising he was.
Although, judging by the bemused look on his face, she suspected she was going to have a tough time getting him to take any of this seriously.
Shoving back his chair and balancing his foot on his knee he waved at her to begin. ‘Shoot.’
She cleared her throat and sat up straighter, pen poised over her notepad in readiness. ‘Okay. Beer or wine?’
He raised an amused eyebrow. ‘Tequilla body shots.’
Heat rushed up her neck as a vision of him licking salt out of her bellybutton slammed into her head. She pushed it away quickly, hoping her expression hadn’t given her away.
‘Favourite animal?’ she ploughed on, not looking up from her pad.
‘Tiger.’ He growled and she glanced up to see him making clawing gestures with his hands.
She fought to keep her smile under wraps. ‘Favourite way to travel?’
‘Asleep.’
She sighed. Yup, he wasn’t going to make this easy on her.
‘What?’ he asked, holding his hands up in mock offense. ‘I hate travelling, it’s tedious. I try to sleep through all my journeys.’ He leaned forwards in his chair. ‘I’m guessing you’re one of those people who don’t believe in power naps.’
‘I can’t sleep during the day.’
‘What, never? You should practice. It’s a useful skill.’
‘I’m usually too busy working in the day.’
He grinned. ‘Yeah, well, if you sleep as badly as me you need to master afternoon napping.’
‘Have you always slept badly?’ she asked, intrigued by the small snippet of personal information he’d let slip.
He shifted in his chair, switching his legs over and propping the other foot on the opposite knee, obviously annoyed at himself for slipping up.
‘I’ve always had strange sleep patterns.’ He didn’t look at her and she wondered why. Judging by the sudden tension in his body she’d swear he was lying.
‘What is it that keeps you up in the night?’ she pushed, determined to pursue this until he gave her something interesting she could use in the piece.
He glanced back at her, his expression now teasing. ‘Usually the hot woman lying next to me.’ He shot her another grin, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.
‘Right. So what? All the partying you’ve become famous for is to help you sleep? Wouldn’t it be easier to take a sleeping pill?’
‘I party hard to have fun. You’ve heard of that, right? Fun.’ He gave her a withering smile as if he knew exactly what she did for fun.
She thought about all her quiet nights in and cringed a little.
‘Sadly, I don’t have the opportunities or resources that you do,’ she said, trying to keep the giveaway clip of indignation out of her voice.
Instead of responding, he got up and strode out of the room, leaving her staring after him.
What the hell? Was this how he was going to act whenever she pursued a line of questioning he wasn’t comfortable with?
Before she had chance to get up and follow him, he reappeared, sketchpad and pencil in hand.
Her stomach did a slow dive. ‘What are you going to do with those?’ she asked dumbly, suddenly hot with worry. He wasn’t going to start sketching her now, was he?
‘I needed a little pre-dinner snack and these looked delicious,’ he said, his voice laden with sarcasm.
Jess bristled. ‘Do you really need to start doing that right now, here at the dinner table?’
‘Why not? You brought your work to the table, why can’t I bring mine?’
She had no answer for that. He had a point.
Flattening her hair down with hands that no longer felt as if they belonged to her, she shuffled up straighter in her seat.
‘Look, Xander, I’m not really comfortable…’
‘Don’t worry, you don’t need to do anything differently, I just had an image I wanted to get down before I forgot it. I have to grab these little flashes of inspiration when they strike. Unfortunately, my muse isn’t something I have any control over.’
‘A bit like your libido,’ she muttered, staring down at the table, unwilling to meet his eyes now.
He didn’t make any reply to her jibe, but when she glanced up to check what he was doing she noticed a small curl to his lips, as if he was trying to suppress a smile. His gaze was fully focussed on what he was doing, but as she watched him move the pencil fluidly over the paper he looked up and caught her staring.
She looked away quickly, heat burning her cheeks.
Rosa appeared in the doorway with plates of food and Jess breathed a sigh of relief when Xander put down his pad and ceased the impromptu sketching session.
Taking a deep breath, she tentatively started in on the scrumptious looking salmon, asparagus and salad that Rosa placed in front of her. Her appetite had totally abandoned her, but she wasn’t going to let her insecurities get the better of her – no way. Even so, she hardly tasted a bite of the meal as she worked her way through it. It was as if her taste buds had packed up and gone on holiday, making everything turn to dust in her mouth.
She put her cutlery down after managing only half of it, defeated.
‘How was your food?’ Xander asked, startling her as he laid his own knife and fork onto his empty plate.
‘It was delicious. There’s just a bit too much for me here,’ she said, feeling the heat of her discomfort flaring in her cheeks. Looking down, she realised her hands were trembling so she hid them underneath the napkin on her lap, hoping he wouldn’t notice.
‘You know, I don’t think I’ve ever met a journalist who was such an awful liar before,’ Xander said, leaning back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head as he studied her. ‘You looked like you were being tortured all the way through eating that.’
That did it.
The stress of attempting to stay poised around him, along with the pressure of potentially losing her job if she couldn’t get him to play ball and his utter disrespect for her profession all collided in her head, shooting up her blood pressure.
‘You know what, I didn’t want to believe all the gossipy reports about you being an arrogant bastard, but I can see now they’re totally on the money.’
He stared back at her, eyebrows raised and a muscle twitching in his jaw, but didn’t say a word in his defence.
Had she blown it losing her cool like that? Was that the end of this fiasco? She felt as if the whole thing had spun out of her control and she had no idea how to claw it back.
But instead of telling her to get out of his house, he picked up his sketchbook and pencil again and started to scribble away as if she wasn’t even in the room.
She sat for a minute or two, waiting to see whether he’d speak to her again, but he steadfastly ignored her.
‘Look, I’m sorry for losing my temper. I’m just feeling a bit… out of my depth at the moment.’
Still nothing. Not even an acknowledgment that she’d spoken.
‘Okay then… w-well…’ she stuttered, scrunching up the napkin from her lap and dropping it onto the plate in front of her. ‘I’ll let you get on with your picture and get back to my hotel.’
Perhaps once she’d had a good night’s sleep everything would look rosier in the morning, and they could start afresh. She tried not to shudder as she remembered the insect-infested room that awaited her.
He said nothing as she slid out of her seat, stooping to pick up her shoes. She decided against putting them back on, mainly because it would delay her leaving, but also because her poor aching feet would have screamed at her to stop torturing them if she had.
‘Goodnight, Xander,’ she said to the top of his head before walking away from him, not daring to look back and catch the look of amusement that had to be on that unnervingly handsome face of his.
* * *
Slumping back against his chair and dropping his sketchpad and pencil onto the table Xander watched Jess stalk out of the dining room in her stockinged feet, her shoes swinging from her fingers at her side.
A slow burn of shame worked its way through him.
Perhaps he’d pushed things a little too far with that last comment? Judging by her furious reaction to it she certainly seemed to think so. He’d found it amusing to toy with her when he’d realised she was more nervous around him than she’d previously let on, but he really should apologise tomorrow and see if he could get her back on side once she’d calmed down.
He wouldn’t usually entertain the idea of letting a journalist get anywhere close to him, but he liked Jess. There was something about her that fascinated him, something about her stoic determination not to let him get to her that made him want her more than anyone he’d met in a very long time. The thought of drawing her out of that brittle shell she protected herself with was thrilling. It did something disconcerting to him; causing a twisting heat to take him over and make him reckless – something he’d been determined not to be again until his new exhibition was in the bag – but teasing her had been such a turn-on. He’d love to see how she responded to a serious onslaught of flirting and whether he could change her mind about not wanting to sleep with him. He’d been surprised and not a little rankled when she’d said that earlier, and the egotist in him wanted to prove her wrong. It had been a long time since a woman had turned him down, which made it a point of pride.
He knew she felt some sort of attraction to him because of the unconscious way she responded when she was around him. Her pupils flared when she looked his way and her body language became charmingly jittery.
So why was she fighting it so hard?
He had no idea, but he was going to enjoy finding out.
* * *
Jess got back to her hotel room in a state of nervy agitation.
Her dinner with Xander had shot her adrenaline levels into the red, but now she’d calmed down she felt utterly exhausted by it all.
Lying in her bed she allowed her thoughts to skip over what had happened earlier. A small voice in her head started to whisper something about overreacting a bit. Hot embarrassment trickled through her as she thought about how uncomfortable she’d felt around Xander and how that had perhaps made her act a little more extremely than normal. He hadn’t actually said or done anything that bad. He was clearly deliberately trying to wind her up – and she’d let him.
Rubbing a hand through her scalp, she tried to wake up her sluggish brain. What the heck was she doing? She needed to relax and stop going at Xander like a harpy with a headache if she had any chance of getting him to trust her.
She was a smart, educated woman with good conversation skills; she could get what she needed for the article if she just stopped jumping down his throat every time he opened his mouth. No way was she going back to Pamela without something sensational to use in the magazine.
She was going to have to work harder at it, be tenacious.
It was totally doable.
Another scuttling sound, this time from the corner of the room, made her sit up and flick the bedside light back on. She couldn’t see anything, but somehow that was worse. What if the insects crawled up the sides of the bed and found their way under the covers with her? The thought of it made her skin crawl with disgust. Wrapping the sheets round her like a cocoon, she tried not to think about it and relax into sleep.
The scratching noise came again, this time from the other side of the room. Finding her earphones from her handbag, she stuffed them into her ears, connected them to her phone and turned the music right up. Putting the pillow over her head, she hoped, would be enough to ward off any uninvited bedfellows.
Her thoughts drifted back to Xander and what he would be doing right now. Perhaps he’d be in the shower, washing off the grime of the day, water and suds cascading down that impressive body of his as he soaped himself down?
The mere thought of it made her blood fire round her body again.
Her legs were twitching now as she lay there desperately trying to turn her thoughts to something innocuous so she could drift into a much-needed sleep.
Between the apprehension of dealing with Xander again and the worry about warding off the bugs, she seemed to have kicked herself back into a state of anxious alertness.
Sighing, she burrowed deeper into the covers and started counting sheep. She had a horrible feeling it was going to be a long night.