Lessons in Rule-Breaking (13 page)

‘
Something
fun to do?’

‘Okay, some
one
fun to do.’ He grinned.

Her heart hammered hard against her chest as she realised he was actually serious. ‘I don’t know, Xander—won’t you need to concentrate on your exhibition?’

‘Not in the evenings.’

Where had this sudden panicky feeling come from? She’d been all right brazening this out when she’d thought it would be a one-off and she’d be back home the following day, before she had chance to get too attached.

‘I don’t think I can. Pamela, the editor at the magazine I work for, is expecting me back at work tomorrow.’

‘Can’t you tell them you’re ill or something? I’m sure she can cope without you for one more week.’

There was a weird rushing in her head that was making it hard for her to concentrate. ‘I can’t do that. What if she finds out I’m lying? I’ll lose my job.’

‘How would she find out if you’re stuck in Italy, unable to travel? It’s not as if she’s going to jump on a plane with a cold compress and a bowl of chicken soup.’

Her heart was beating so fast she felt sure he must be able to see it pulsing against her chest. ‘I don’t feel comfortable with lying, Xander.’

‘Don’t you think you deserve some fun? Why are you so hard on yourself? It’s like you don’t believe you deserve to be happy or something.’

She sighed, rubbing a hand over her face.

He was right. She was a mess.

‘I don’t know why—I’ve always been like that. I have a highly developed guilty conscience and I get over-anxious about things sometimes. My mum always made me feel like it’d be the end of the world if I did anything to show her up and I guess it’s just stuck around in my psyche. She expected perfection and I failed to deliver.’

He gave her a puzzled frown.

‘I know, it’s weird. Not something most people can understand.’

‘Well, I think it’s about time you came and joined me on the dark side.’

She laughed and shook her head. ‘Why are you so intent on corrupting me?’

‘Because it’s fun to see you coming to pieces.’ He ran a finger from the deep hollow in the base of her neck, down between her partly exposed breasts to where her belly button lay hidden beneath the cotton of her dress. ‘Especially when I’m the one that gets to make you come.’

She put her hand over his, stopping him from continuing his path.

He closed his eyes and took a breath. ‘Look, I’m not going to pressure you into this. If you don’t want to stay, that’s fine, but you should consider doing something wild and totally selfish, just for once.’ He rolled away from her and got up, pulling on a pair of trousers. God, he looked sexy, half dressed like that with his hair all mussed and falling over his eyes.

Dishevelled and dangerous.

She suddenly wanted to stay. So much.

‘I have to go and speak to my agent about the arrangements for the exhibition. Come and find me if you change your mind.’

He gave her one last heated look before turning and leaving the room, pulling the door closed behind him.

The ensuing silence of the room filled her head until she thought she’d go crazy with it.

The thought of never seeing him again left her feeling empty. Totally and utterly empty. He was right: she should allow herself to do something completely crazy for once. She was sick and tired of worrying about doing the right thing all the time. After all, Pamela said she needed to
live a little
if she was going to become a better writer.

Returning to her bedroom, she retrieved her mobile phone from the nightstand, readying herself to put on her most ill-sounding voice, and called through to the magazine.

‘Pamela Bradley.’

Just the sound of her editor’s voice made her stomach twitch with nerves.

‘Hi, Pamela, it’s Jess.’

‘Jess, are you on your way back?’

She took a deep, steadying breath. ‘Er, actually, I think I’ve picked up that flu that was going around the office before I left for Italy.’ She gave a fake cough, willing Pam to believe her. She was so nervous about lying her palms were sweaty and her body felt hot and tingly. She’d never played hooky in her life and it made her really uncomfortable to lie like this, but the draw of spending a little more time with Xander fortified her.

‘I can work on the story from my bed,’ she rushed on into Pam’s silence, feeling her cheeks flame as guilt swept through her. ‘I only need a few more days to get it nailed down, then I’ll email it over. You’re going to love it, Pam. He’s such an interesting subject to write about,’ she said, inordinately relieved Pamela couldn’t see how red her face was.

Liar, liar, pants on fire
couldn’t have been more appropriate at that moment.

There was a long pause, then a sigh. ‘Okay, Jess, but make sure you hit your deadline. I need this piece in on time otherwise you’re going to find yourself right at the top of the redundancy recommendation list.’

Jess swallowed hard. ‘Okay, Pamela, I’ll get it to you on time, I promise.’

She cut the call and put her phone carefully back onto the nightstand, feeling something she hadn’t felt since childhood.

Naughty.

She’d never even contemplated playing hooky before she met Xander—never lied to get what she wanted. Even the thought of doing something so against the rules she lived by would have given her the heebie-jeebies before she met him, but now she’d crossed the line she was amazed by how enlightened she felt. How alive. As if her sluggish blood had woken up and decided to have a drag race around her body.

She guessed it was something to do with endorphins, this crazy recklessness, some mad chemical reaction. It was certainly like a drug, this throbbing, screaming urge to break out of her normal, dull existence and do something crazy for once.

Her usual control seemed to have abandoned her, at least for a short while, and she felt buzzed and high on life, as if there was a world of possibility out there for her—something that had hidden from her consciousness up until this point, something that had only ever happened to other people.

Xander had unearthed a part of herself she never knew was there. She wasn’t sensible, dependable, unremarkable Jess when she was with him; she was exciting, stimulating,
wild
.

She was out of breath when she returned to Xander’s studio. He opened the door with an expectant smile.

‘I don’t have anything planned for the next week,’ she gasped. ‘So I’m all yours.’

He grinned. ‘All mine. I like the sound of that.’

EIGHT

They spent the
first couple of days in and out of bed together, taking time out for a couple of hours here and there so that Xander could squirrel away in his studio to work on the exhibition 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 rejoin the real world. This was a holiday from life, pure and simple.

Attaching any kind of emotion to it would be an utter disaster.

* * *

Partway 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 veranda, 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, flinging paint from a brush onto a large canvas on the floor. More tarp-covered canvases were propped up against all four walls and his art table was laden with tubes of paint and sketch pads. 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 sketch pads were open.

They weren’t.

‘Not right now. I’m in the middle of this. You go.’

He turned away again, and swiped at the canvas, already 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 was that?’ 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 getting paint on your perfectly clean and pressed clothes?’

‘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 did.

Turning back to the table, she loaded up the brush with paint again, then twisted back, holding it aloft.

‘Je-e-ess.’ 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 stood.

With a dangerously 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.

‘No, no, Xander, 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 nanosecond, 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 overt 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, pulling his T-shirt over his head, 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 peaceful, so content, so relaxed for once.

Moving quietly over to the bed so as not to wake her, he tugged gently on the sheet until it slipped off her, revealing her beautiful, voluptuous form in all its glory.

He could only just make out the 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’d been tied down, 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 spirit was floating above her fully clothed and trapped human form as she lay bound to the bed.

It was the final image he needed for the exhibition.

A picture of her naked spirit, stripped of all her inhibitions. Beautiful and real and breaking free.

Hands shaking, he picked up his sketch pad 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 for ever, 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 was 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 from 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 in confusion 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 remind himself of 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.