Chapter 8
8
They spent the first couple of days in bed together, taking time out for a few hours here and there so that Xander could squirrel away in his studio to work on his paintings and Jess could explore more of Lake Garda, gathering information for her holiday piece.
Each time they made love, Jess would allow him to reveal a little more of her body until she was almost comfortable with him seeing her naked.
It was a revelation.
The whole thing was also a huge step away from reality – something Jess had to keep forcibly reminding herself about.
Every now and again a little bubble of hope that they could turn this fling into something more rose in her chest and she’d have to stamp on it hard to stop herself from getting carried away with the idea.
She needed to keep this thing in perspective. It wasn’t real and she was going to have to wake up soon and re-join the real world. This was a holiday from life, pure and simple.
Attaching any kind of emotion to it would be an utter disaster.
* * *
Part way into the week, Jess woke to find Xander had got up before her for once. After getting dressed and grabbing some breakfast, which Rosa served out on the terrace, she went looking for him.
The sun was already beating down and she wanted to go for a swim in the lake and hoped she might be able to persuade him to go with her.
He was in his studio, stripped to the waist, flinging paint from a brush onto a large canvas. More tarp-covered canvases were propped up against all four walls and his art table was laden with tubes of paint and sketchpads. She wondered what she would see if she peeked underneath the tarpaulins. He’d refused to let her look at what he was working on, saying he never let anyone see an unfinished painting and she was slightly nervous about whether he’d used any of the sketches of her.
‘Will you come for a swim? It’s so hot today,’ she said, moving closer to the art table and glancing down to see if she could see whether any of his sketchpads were open.
They weren’t.
He didn’t even acknowledge her and continued to swipe at the canvas, lost in his secret little world. The rejection stung. Was she really going to let him get away with ignoring her like that?
No. She certainly wasn’t.
Picking up a paintbrush from the table, she dipped it in a discarded palette of rich, purple paint. It was gloopy enough to hang onto the brush for a second or two before dripping back down into the pool of shiny, slick liquid. Turning back to him, she raised the brush to ear level, then brought it forward quickly, flicking the paint towards him. It landed with a splatter against his golden skin, a line of dots making their unsubtle way from his shoulder blade to his hip.
He swivelled round and looked at her, startled. ‘What the hell?’ he said, raising a challenging eyebrow.
She grinned. ‘I thought I’d paint you for a change. You look good in purple, but then you look good in everything.’
He huffed out a laugh, before turning back to his easel.
Outraged at his snubbing, she moved round so she was standing facing him, just behind the easel. She flicked another splodge of paint, which caught him on his chest this time, right above his nipple.
His eyebrows shot up as he lifted his head slowly to look at her again. ‘Are you sure you want to start a paint fight with me, Miss Prim? How will you ever cope with your perfectly clean and pressed clothes getting messed up?’
‘You wouldn’t dare,’ she teased, delighted she’d been able to capture his attention.
‘You’re playing a dangerous game, Jess. Don’t think I won’t retaliate. I have a whole palette of colours here with your name on it. Just try it, one more time.’
She gave him a slow, taunting smile, her blood pumping fast through her veins as an urge to see exactly what he had planned caught her by the throat.
Her hand quivered by her side.
She really should put the paintbrush down and go for a walk or something to relieve this crazy impulse to keep pushing him. It was madness, this whole thing.
He was watching her, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. Anticipating her next move.
Did she dare?
Yes, she bloody well did.
Turning back to the table, she loaded up the brush with paint again, then twisted back, holding it aloft.
‘Jeeess.’ Xander’s voice was low with warning, but she caught the lilt of amusement.
The look in his eye made her insides flip, but some craziness compelled her to bring back her hand and let the paint fly through the air in his direction.
This time he dodged it, and it sailed past him, splattering the floor behind where he’d stood.
With a predatory grin, he advanced towards her, loaded paintbrush held aloft.
Adrenaline-fuelled blood pumped through her as her fight-or-flight instinct kicked in. In her real life she’d be putting her hand up to stop this right now, to save her clothes as well as her pride, but this time she didn’t want it to stop. She wanted to experience the heady rush of excitement as she let whatever might happen, happen. She ached to feel his hands on her, his body pressed close to hers again, their skin slippery and messy with paint.
Where had this wild abandon come from? She hardly recognised herself.
He was almost upon her now, his bright aqua gaze trained on her face.
‘N-no, no, Xander, w-wait,’ she stuttered, feigning fright.
‘What’s the matter, Jess, can’t stand to get down and dirty with me?’
She took the opportunity in his pause to tease her to sneak in another crafty flick of her brush, sending the paint higher this time so it landed squarely across his nose and cheeks.
He stared at her in utter disbelief for a nano-second, before letting out a low growl and flicking his own brush at her over and over again, covering her T-shirt, her jeans and her hair in bright magenta paint.
Tipping back his head, he laughed at the mock-horror on her face. ‘You look good in hot pink, Jess. You should wear it more often.’ He took a step towards her and her stomach did a slow roll with excitement. ‘But I have to say, I think you’d look a lot better in just the paint.’
She held his gaze as he stared her down, the dare behind his words clear in his expression.
‘Okay.’ Before she lost her nerve, she pulled the ruined T-shirt up over her head and dropped it on the floor next to her.
Xander’s brows shot up in surprise. ‘What’s this? Not going feral on me, are you?’ he asked, his voice catching as she reached round and unhooked her bra with shaking fingers, letting it fall to the ground beside her. Closing her eyes, she willed her erratic breathing to normalise. She could swear she felt the heat of his gaze sweeping her upper body, taking in the fullness of her breasts and the hard jut of her nipples as she stood there in front of him.
Totally exposed.
Totally vulnerable.
Something cool and soft swept over her left breast and she gasped in shock at the alien sensation.
Snapping open her eyes, she saw that Xander was running the tip of his paintbrush over her skin, circling the bud of her nipple in slow, seductive strokes. She shivered with pleasure as he flicked it upwards, then began to make wider sweeping circles around her breasts.
Her skin felt so sensitive she trembled every time he moved his brush to a new area.
Without moving his gaze from her face, Xander backed away to where his easel stood propped up in the middle of the room. Reaching down, he grabbed his palette loaded with paint and walked back to where she stood.
By now she was shaking with nerves, but she made herself stand there, rooted to the spot, unflinching as he tested her nerve.
Without saying a word, he unpopped the buttons of her jeans with his spare hand and slid them down her legs until they pooled in a heap at her feet. Next, he slipped his cool fingers into the waistband of her knickers and slid those down too, with slow, excruciating care, until she stood naked before him.
His gaze glided up and down her body and she shifted on her feet, but steadfastly kept her arms at her sides, allowing him to look.
‘Beautiful,’ he murmured, his voice low and deep.
He covered her body in paint, keeping his strokes long and slow until she thought she’d go crazy with it. She wanted to feel him, sliding against her skin, the paint lubricating their movement, so she reached for him and he helped her undress him, casting off the remainder of his clothes.
After slicking her hands over her paint-covered body, she pressed them against his chest, leaving a stark handprint over each pec, delighting in his sharp intake of breath as she then swiped her palms over and over his nipples. Looking up into his handsome face, she caught his eye and grinned, then swiped more paint across his stomach and down his arms, laughing at his comical expression, until he stopped her by pulling her close and kissing her hard, skin sliding against skin, making a sucking sound as they came apart and pressed back together.
Jess laughed in glee. ‘You’re going to have to come for a swim now to wash all this off.’
Xander raised an eyebrow. ‘Later,’ he said, his voice seductively low, ‘once we’ve explored just how dirty we can get.’
* * *
Xander woke early again the next day and got up to see the sun rising on the other side of the lake, spreading its soft rays across the water and tipping the buildings with a warm, honey-coloured glow.
Looking back at the bed where Jess lay, the sheet barely covering her naked body, he felt a harmony he hadn’t experienced in a very long time. She looked so relaxed, so peaceful, so content.
He could only just make out the shadowed profile of her face in the gentle glow of the morning light. Her arms and legs lay splayed towards each corner of the bed as if she was anchored there, her spirit trapped in the amazing body she’d loathed so much. As he moved towards her, his tired eyes played tricks on him in the low-level light and a double image of her appeared in his vision, as if that fighting spirit of hers had risen like a dark angel from where she lay trapped and was hovering above her body.
He had a moment of pure, clear inspiration as his imagination twisted the image so her freed spirit, stripped of all her inhibitions, was floating above her fully clothed form as she lay sleeping.
It was the final image he needed for the exhibition.
Hands shaking, he picked up his sketchpad and pencil, sat in the chair at the end of the bed and began to draw.
In that moment, he wanted things to stay like this forever, but he knew with a sinking feeling in his chest, that life wasn’t like that – he wasn’t like that – and when the time came for her to leave, he would say goodbye without putting up a fight.
He really needed to pull himself together and focus his attention on finishing his pictures for the exhibition now or he was never going to hit his deadline. He couldn’t go on the way he was, unfocused and unprofessional or it would be the end of his career as an artist. People would forget about him, and he really couldn’t allow that to happen.
The thought of running out of money and having to work a real job again, like the soul-destroying ones he’d done to stay alive as a teenager, filled him with cold dread. He was terrified by the idea of not feeling special or revered any more – of being ordinary again.
He couldn’t let this thing with Jess get in the way. Whatever had happened between them didn’t feel like the usual artist/muse relationship, and it made him uneasy. This fling with her had rejuvenated him but he needed to step away from it now.
This had to be the beginning of the end.
* * *
On their last morning together, he sketched her as she sat on the terrace sipping a cup of coffee, looking out across the lake. She looked so beautiful – her amazingly expressive face alive with the vitality that had first drawn her to him. She seemed like a different woman to the one he’d met only a couple of weeks ago. She was taller, brighter and somehow more real.
She’d found her joy.
When she turned and smiled back at him, her perfect, white teeth flashed between her lips. Even her smile was more relaxed since he’d first met her.
Was that because of him?
He felt a swell of pride at the thought. He’d never made anyone less stressed before.
The intimacy of the atmosphere tugged at his chest. The thought that this was just a fleeting moment in his life made him clench his jaw, and a low throb began to beat in his temple. Why did that bother him so much? What was this feeling? He wasn’t entirely sure. He’d never experienced it before, but he sure as hell didn’t like it.
He’d been bored and frustrated when he’d asked Jess to come to Italy. It had been a spur of the moment thing – just for kicks – but he’d underestimated her ability to get into his head. To find out what it was that drove him. To discover his deepest, darkest secrets. And he’d let her probe and push until all the bad memories that he’d buried for so long had begun to rise to the surface.
He didn’t want to feel like this. After spending the majority of his life pushing that anxiety and fear of rejection away, he didn’t want to have to face it now. He wanted things to stay the way they were: light and free and easy.
He realised she was staring at him with concern now and he adjusted the scowl on his face into a smile.
The apprehensive expression in her eyes made him wonder what she was thinking, but he didn’t want to ask. Didn’t want to know. Ignorance was bliss.
In retrospect, it had been a crazy move to ask a journalist to come and stay, then invite her into his bed. Of course she was going to push and push at his defences until she found a crack to get her nails into.
It was her job.
He needed to remember that.
She shifted in her chair, putting her coffee cup down onto the table with a shaky hand. ‘I guess I should go and write my article. Pamela’s going to kick my butt if I send it in late and I haven’t even started it yet,’ she said, awkwardly rising from her seat so that she banged her leg on the table.
Was she feeling the same tension that he was?
He shrugged off his concern and nodded at her stiffly. ‘Okay. See you later.’
* * *
Jess sat in the middle of the bed with all her notes spread around her. She was hyper aware that this was the last day they had together, but she had to get this article written. This was why she’d come here, after all.
Xander had seemed to become increasingly distanced from her over the last couple of days, which had unsettled her, and she’d thought the best thing to do right now was to get away from the intensity of their situation for a while and try and get her head straight.
This piece on Xander had to be the best thing she’d ever written or there was a very good chance she’d be booted off the magazine as soon as she got back.
As she scanned over and over all the notes she’d written since she’d arrived a stultifying fear started to grip her. What if she couldn’t do it? The words began to blur together and the more she read, the more panicked she got.
After about half an hour of trying and failing to write one single, usable sentence, she gathered up every piece of paper, shuffled them into one tidy sheaf, then threw them across the room in frustration.
She watched as they floated down like overlarge snowflakes and settled onto the cold, tiled floor.
This was ridiculous. How the hell was she ever going to be able to write a thing? Closing her eyes, she took a moment to think back over the time she’d spent here with Xander, about his passion and fears, and his determination not to be beaten down by them and finally how he’d made her feel by including her in his life. How he’d brought out a side of her she’d never known was there.
A deep, bolstering warmth pulsed through her.
Pulling her laptop towards her, she let her fingers move over the keyboard, writing whatever came into her head without letting conscious thought intrude, without giving in to her fear about whether what she was writing was any good or not. Instead, she concentrated on how Xander made her feel about herself.
And the words began to flow. It was as if she’d finally keyed into something – opened a previously locked door in her brain, but now all these intense thoughts and feelings, which she’d been suppressing for so long, began firing round her brain.
She wrote and wrote and edited and wrote some more until there it was – the best thing she’d ever written. Reading it back she had tears in her eyes. It had warmth and humour and, best of all, fire and life. She knew in her gut that Pamela was going to love it – that it might just save her career.
She also knew without a doubt that she was totally and utterly in love with Xander.
And that she’d failed to follow the most basic rule of all: don’t fall for a guy who’s incapable of loving you back.
Somewhere in the back of her brain she’d harboured the hope that the time they’d spent together had meant more to him than any of his previous non-relationships, and that this time he wanted more.
That he wanted her like she wanted him.
But she knew she was kidding herself, just look at how detached he’d been with her this morning. This relationship was only ever a temporary thing for him. For both of them. A whimsy, a game, a lark.
What had he called it?
A blip in their timeline.
He’d made that very clear.
She had to pull herself together.
Not giving herself time to fuss and start fiddling with a word here and a word there, she attached the document she’d just written to an email to Pam and hit send, and it was gone – her future – off into the ether.
Her time here was finished.
All she had to do now was say goodbye.
Feeling as if her feet were made of lead, she searched the house for Xander, finding him painting madly away in his studio, in what seemed to have become his usual zoned-out state over the last couple of days. She watched him for a few minutes, taking in the graceful fluidity of his movements as he swiped his brush across the canvas. He was frowning hard in concentration, his handsome face shuttered and drawn as he poured his soul onto the canvas.
He barely glanced up as she moved into the room.
She understood his utter absorption in what he was doing, she’d felt the same about her writing and it was heartening to see him in such a frenzy of excited activity after being so agitated about not being able to make the magic happen before now. She liked to think she had something to do with that, in some small way.
Finally, he glanced up from what he was doing and noticed her standing there.
‘Hey, Jess, how long have you been there?’
‘Only a couple of minutes,’ she said quietly.
He nodded distractedly. ‘The exhibition’s taking shape. It’s all coming together.’ The look in his eye was almost manic.
‘Well, I’m really pleased for you,’ she managed to force past the lump in her throat.
‘Jess?’ He was looking at her as if he was worried she was about to cry – which was pretty much on the money.
Pull yourself together, woman.
She didn’t want him to see how upset she was about the inevitable end of their time together.
Glancing away, she smoothed her hair down against her head and fought against the growing tension in the back of her throat. She couldn’t look at him any more. If she did, he’d see just how much she was struggling to keep it together.
‘I finished my article,’ she said, attempting to keep the misery out of her voice.
‘Oh yeah?’ he looked at her, his eyes blank, his mind obviously still on his painting.
‘Don’t worry, I gave you a good write-up and I didn’t include anything too salacious.’
He smiled. ‘Great, that’s great, Jess. Congratulations.’
He looked back at his painting as if he’d said all there was to say.
She was being dismissed.
So this was it then. The end of the affair.
‘Okay then, I guess I’d better let you get on with finishing your picture. Will you let me know when you’re exhibiting? I’ll leave my contact details on the hall table. I’d love to finally get to see what you’ve been working so hard on.’
He looked up at her again, the hazy look in his eyes clearing as if her words had finally penetrated through to his brain.
‘Hell, Jess, sorry, I was right in the middle of a thought. Yes, sure, I’ll let you know.’
There was a steely look in his eye now, as if he’d hardened himself against her leaving.
A hot wave of despair crashed over her.
She needed to get out of there before she made a fool of herself and did something stupid and crass like asking him to be her boyfriend.
‘Okay then. Well, it’s been a blast. Good luck.’ Without waiting for a response, she turned on her heel and walked away from him before he could see how much she wanted him to ask her not to go.
All the way through packing her suitcase she wondered whether he’d come and stop her.
As she walked down the corridor, then out of the villa, then got into her car, with her heart hammering against her chest, she wondered whether he’d come running up at the last moment and say, ‘I want you to stay’.
Then as she drove the car slowly out of the driveway and crept down the lane to the main road, her breath short and a hard pressure behind her eyes, just waiting to spill over into tears, she wondered whether she’d see him in her rear-view mirror, running after her car.
But she didn’t.
He wasn’t coming. He was letting her go.