The only question was would she agree to his terms?
CHAPTER SIX
Issy awoke to find herself alone in the huge bed, her body pulsing with heat. The first flames of the sun filtered in tangerine hues through the louvered doors, washing the room in an ethereal golden light. It was morning, a new day, a chance to start again and forget last night ever happened. But her body ached in ways that were foreign to her. She felt—
No! She closed her eyes, trying to suppress feelings she knew would only bring disappointment. Her blazing mind gave her no relief, burning instead with heated memories as she trailed her hand over the sheets where only a few hours ago she and Max had made love.
Amazing. She felt totally amazing. And along with those feelings, like a shadow crossing the sun, sauntered guilt. The night of passion that had been the most amazing sex she’d ever experienced should never have happened.
She rolled onto her back and looked up at the Modrani painting as her heart raced. Why had she let that happen? Was she just starved for affection, or was it because for the first time she felt a man really desired her?
A beam of sunlight spotlighted a tiny baby-blue bottle in the painting, standing between a transparent white vase, and an opaque black bottle. For some insane reason it made her think of the beautiful children a union between her and Max could produce. Our son would be so handsome, she mused. His looks, her eyes. His dimples, her smile. His hair, their brains.
Issy’s smile disappeared and her gut slopped with panic as reality loomed cold and glaringly bright.
God, what was she thinking?
That was the problem. Last night she hadn’t reasoned about anything other than her fear of missing out on experiencing all that Max wanted to give. She hadn’t anticipated the massive consequences of having sex.
Oh, God, she’d slept with her client.
The warm glow that had permeated every fiber of her being when she’d woken disappeared and all that was left was freezing panic.
What had she done?
Last night had meant nothing to him. She wasn’t dumb enough to pretend it had been personal. It wasn’t about her. Seducing her, and then claiming her had been his way of pushing her away. He would know that she’d be left with no choice but to resign.
They were polar opposites, hard-wired to always conflict. She was the hired help. He was the client. Whatever chemistry sparked between them last night hadn't changed that. The man didn’t do emotion. She made a career of it. His heart and his head were disconnected by a sabre-sharp blade of logic. Her heart ruled her head—and her traitorous body, which despite all her attempts at reason, pulsed with need, tricking her into believing that someone who by all accounts was so wrong for her, was Mr Perfect.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
I’m being stupid, she censored herself. It’s a childish crush, a dangerous infatuation made more palatable because he’s strictly off-limits. Classic textbook stuff. Any psychoanalyst worth their fee would tell her that by falling for the hard-to-get-strictly-off-limits guy she was protecting herself from hurt. Essentially rejecting herself. Because when the inevitable rejection came she would have seen it coming first.
Falling for Massimilliano Balforni was like falling for a movie-star. Completely out of her league.
Issy’s mouth twisted wryly. Perhaps Nancy was right, the reason she’d never found a love that lasted was because she always went for the wrong guy. Her training, her work and life experience heightened her knowledge of human behavior , and psychology—it just hadn’t covered any module in love.
Paintings couldn’t break your heart. Men did. Art, she reminded herself, swinging her legs out from the crumpled sheets and over the edge of the bed was her passion, her joy, her escape. Her love. She stood up, casting a brief look back at the bed. Mortification pulsed through her body as her gaze fell on the loved-stained sheets. She closed her eyes fruitlessly trying to blot out the blazing memory of their passionate encounter.
'And I certainly don’t need a reminder of my mistake,’ she said, tearing the sheets from the bed, and throwing them in a heap beside her feet. After James’ betrayal why would she even entertain the thought—no matter how great the fantasy—of a life with the ultimate heartbreaker.
Issy glanced momentarily up at the Morandi. Art made her feel alive in a way that no man ever had
Until now.
Sex with Max had been unforgettable. And that was the problem. Somehow she had to delete him from her heart and erase him from her head.
The question was—how?
*
How could Max have flirted so outrageously with her? Issy ripped a large sheet of watercolor paper from her pad. Thrusting firmly she pinned it to the board as she sat on the table on the deck outside her bure. Taking her widest brush she swept in liberal washes of water, then squeezed a blaze of scarlet red straight from the tube.
She’d done nothing wrong, she thought as she watched the paint bleed into the paper. She hadn’t encouraged him at all. Issy splashed more water onto the paper, tipping the board slightly to stop the paint from dripping off the sides.
She hadn’t led him on one little bit, she gritted flicking her brush rapidly and peppering the paper with spontaneous color.
He’d controlled the whole thing. Taken her to the edge. Then pushed her over. And she’d let him. Was it desperation that stopped her resisting his advances? Or fear of missing out? Whatever it was she so shouldn’t have gone there. But she would not be his victim. She would take back control, even if it meant quitting.
Pressing a tube of black paint to the page Issy etched a ragged outline of a man. That man. The infuriating man one who showed with the transparency of watercolor that he was toying with her. He had no heart. No feelings. No emotion. The only way she could rid herself of the painful memories he had triggered was to pour her emotions onto the paper.
Her heart raced as, guided only by her intuition, she squeezed a generous dollop of permanent rose onto the painting. She didn’t stop to analyze why, of all the colors in her paint box, she’d been drawn to rose. Rose, the eternal symbol of romantic love.
Nor did she consider holding back on using her most expensive pigment when money was so tight. It would be worth splurging if she could exorcize her treacherous feelings for Massimilliano Balforni from her heart.
And it would be worth it if she could figure out how she was going to face him and get things back on track professionally. 'About last night,' she rehearsed, pushing the paint across the page. ‘Last night was a mistake,’ she said, layering in a thick wounded streak.
Stupid Issy. Of course it was a mistake. Max must be regretting every minute of it. Absorbing the excess pigment pooling across the page with her rounded brush, she dabbed at the hole she’d left for his heart, and layered in a wash of moody grey.
Feeling empowered by the new direction the painting was taking, Issy flounced her quill into a small pot of Indian ink. She roughly outlined large hands and fingers wrapped around a giant brush. In spite of everything that had happened she began to enjoy herself.
'Now you’ll have to play with my paints!' she said, stepping back from the painting and smiling. Taking some salt from a small container in her paint box she sprinkled it over the damp painting, smiling as the salt worked its magic, chasing away some of the pigment to make a lighter area beneath it. She loved the way she couldn’t predict what was going to happen —that was half the fun.
Why was it, she worried, that she couldn’t bring this same carefree abandon when she fronted up to Max and told him she was resigning? Why was she so preoccupied with how he was going to react? She needed to manifest more courage.
Put yourself on the page. Her Interactive Drawing Therapy training was so ingrained that the command came instinctively. Before she could put the brakes on, her subconscious did the bidding, unleashing repressed desires. She painted herself beside Max twirling like an elegant ballerina. on a pedestal, pausing mid-pirouette, so Max could admire her.<
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Issy chuckled to herself. What fantasy. What nonsense. What make-believe. A man like Max who could have any woman would never admire her. And, being such an unfeeling brute he would most definitely never pause long enough to discover, let alone admire, who she really was.
She stood back and let the painting speak to her. Amidst the blaze of abstract color she could just make out the outline of a flamenco dress. She seized the inspiration. A ballerina was far too tame.
She layered in a shot of illicit rouge to give the dress more boldness, twisting and rolling her brush to create giant ruffles like the hibiscus flowers perfuming Max’s tropical paradise. She painted an arm swept across her breasts and the other whipped into the air with a defiant flourish.
The result was as eye-popping as it was dangerous. Just looking at the painting made her feel confident, full of passion and courageous fire. She felt like she could transcend the beliefs her mother’s cruel taunts had imprinted so savagely. She felt like she could liberate herself from the ingrained feelings that she wasn’t worthy.
She swept her brush into the pigment, then painted in a large scarlet flower tucked behind her ear. For one delicious, reckless moment she felt, like a bee to nectar, she was alluring enough to attract Italy’s most eligible billionaire.
She placed the end of her brush in her mouth and chewed, twirling the ends of her own fuchsia pink hair as she studied the painting.
Put some feelings on the page, the voice commanded again, invoking another key mantra of her training. Grabbing a pastel from a box in her satchel she scribbled Joyful. Sensual. Sexy. Loved.
Loved.
God where did that come from? She’d never been loved. Not unconditionally. Not for who she truly was. She was only loved for who people wanted her to be. And even then whatever it was that drew men to her, it certainly wasn’t love. Not everlasting love, anyway. What the hell did she know about love? And why would a man like Max love a girl like her when he could have any woman he desired?
She washed in some warm cobalt blue to cool things down,then chided herself for being so negative. Whatever had happened to her in the past she must never lose her optimism. She would never be like her mother bitter and complaining. 'It sucks that you’ve been hurt. But get over it,' she told herself, adding a splash of sunny yellow around her flamenco dancer. 'Dance like you’ve never been horridly hurt. Sing like you’ve never been seriously sad. Make love like—'
Issy sucked in air as her mind flashed back to Max. The way he took command of her lips, and the scorching feel of his skin beneath her fingers as she wrapped her arms around him. She felt her body stiffen and tremble as she folded into the memory. She stared blindly down at the trace of watercolor beneath her fingernails, hot tears clogging her eyes as she faced the unpalatable truth.
Max was everything she wanted—and feared, sexy, arrogant and emotionally frozen. Immersed in the world of painting Issy might be a dreamer but in all things Max she was a realist. She could paint her fantasies, recreate her dull life in visual splendor with symphonies of movement, color and sound. But that was as ‘real’ as anything was going to get.
She tidied up her makeshift studio on the deck, leaving the saturated painting to dry, and padded to the bathroom to wash the nonsense out of her brushes, and remove all traces of their fated liaison under the shower. It was time to scrub up and prepare to resume the charade she had to play. Detached, consummate, resigning, professional.
She didn’t need a man, she affirmed, ignoring the heaviness in her gut calling her a liar. She looked back at the woman in the painting as she stepped towards the bathroom.
Why did she look so bloody happy?
Their first art-therapy session was scheduled to begin in less than 30 minutes. Even though Issy doubted Max would show, it was important she was on time. She would tell him of her decision then.
She rattled through the bathroom vanity. ‘Blast, no hairdryer.’ She went to the phone beside her bed and dialed Tukana, the resort manager, and asked for one to be brought to the bure.
She jumped in the shower and placed a liberal dollop of Balforni shampoo in her palm, transforming her hair into a foaming prism of Frangipani bubbles when there was a firm knock on the door.
‘Just a minute,’ she shouted out. Turning off the water she stepped out of the shower, wrapped a towel around her, and scuttled to the door. ‘Gosh that was quick,’ she said, flinging it open.
‘Oh crap!’ She clenched the tiny piece of toweling tightly around her breasts as Max flashed her a wide-eyed glance and strode into the bure.
‘Very Marge Simpson,’ he said, gesturing to the foaming beehive on her head.
Issy lifted her right hand and patted her hair flat. A whisper of foam bubbled between them, then drifted through the open door, fluttering toward the azure sea.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asserted.
Max cast his eyes around the room, his gaze rested briefly on the sheets strewn on the floor then darted away. He was very adept at avoiding things, she thought, as she watched him scan the bure restlessly. He was also very adept at making her uneasy. Unless she was wrong, he did both on purpose.
But what she couldn’t work out was what he was searching for. She followed his stare as his eyes narrowed warily. Then with mortifying clarity it dawned on her.
The painting!
The caricatured, frenzied portrayal of him. Complete with the tiny 'spray on' trunks he’d been wearing when they first met. There could be no mistaking the painting was of Max.
Forgetting she was virtually naked, the tiny bit of toweling barely covering her butt she flew across the room. Max caught up to her in three easy strides, his long legs chewing up the ground much faster than her five foot six inches would allow her to move.
Gripping the towel she reached out to grab the portrait. His hand closed firmly over hers. She felt her body stiffen and tremble. She could have nudged his hand away. She could have wrestled the painting from him. Instead she stood still, enjoying the sensation she knew she would never experience again.
His gaze zeroed in on the hole she’d left for his heart. ‘Very expressive,’ he said, his tone grave.
Her brows drew together as she braced herself for a torrent of criticism. She was too mortified to care about the foam crawling down her neck and pooling along the swell of her breasts. She looked him in the eyes as she always did when she was criticized by her mother, and standing stiff like a soldier waiting for him to laugh at her stupid painting.
He smiled with a strangely gentle charm that shouldn’t have complemented his eyes yet did. ‘You’ve got real talent, Principessa. This is extraorindary. Perfecto!’
A surge of unexpected warmth scuttled through her. Was he seriously flattering her? Again? It would be easier to hate him if he had made a scene, told her that her painting was childish, the work of an amateur. Told her she was an amateur. But he said none of that.
Heat flared between them.
Issy drew back. Her legs shook, her knees felt weak, shaken by the ferocity of the desire she felt to kiss him, and the urgent desire to confide that she had never shared her paintings with anyone, fearing they would only confirm what she feared—that they were no good. That she was no good.
For all her degrees, and professional accomplishments and cultivated facade of togetherness she had a firm fear of rejection she’d never been able to shake. She was, after all, the skilled “I’ve-got-it-all-together-therapist” helping people with their problems, not facing her own vulnerabilities.
Her job as an art-therapist gave her identity, social validation, prestige, respect—and a steady pay-cheque that put a tiny roof over her bedsit. Who would she be if she was a starving artist. How would she pay the bills? She was already struggling as it was.
If she had more guts, more courage, more-self-belief perhaps she might have tried harder. Sent the paintings abandoned under her bed to galleries and entered competitions. But then—shaking her head, she didn’t believe
she had it in her to be a great artist.
‘It’s nothing. Just a scribble,’ she said, staring at her feet.
‘I’ve clearly under-estimated you,’ he said against the lush seduction of his mouth. 'In fact I know very little about you. I don’t know why you’ve run away for Christmas, why you’re hiding your real talent, or what you plan to teach me. I know next to nothing about you,’ he said moving way to close.
'Although I do know,’ he said, his voice dangerously low, ‘That you have a violet butterfly tattooed at the base of your neck.’
Painting on her most unaffected smile she spoke with saccharine politeness, ‘I’m glad you noticed it.’ She backed toward the door and held it open. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me I really do have to get dressed.’
His eyes ran the length of the braided edge of the towel stretched tightly across her generous chest then travelled with leisurely thoroughness down her body resting for a long uneasy moment where the towel finished at the top of her thigh.
‘Please,’ she said, loathing the fact that her mind wanted nothing more right now than to be a million miles away from him but her body was screaming, 'Take me.' She should run before she was pushed, and stop thinking about a one-off fling that was never going to happen again.
Oh God this was horrible.
She cleared her throat and mentally rehearsed the script she’d been practicing all day. But she’d been dressed then, and now she was standing virtually naked in front of the man who had intimate knowledge of every part of her body.
Mortification didn’t cut it. Shame-faced humiliation did. She took a deep breath. The quicker she got it out, the quicker he could do what he always intended and bundle her out.
She glanced out the open door, noting with an unexpected pang of disappointment Tukana waiting beside the Land Rover below. The engine was running. No doubt the plane was already fired up to go, too. God, he couldn’t wait to get rid of her. Well, she couldn’t wait to go. And she would tell him first.
The Italian Billionaire’s Christmas Bride Page 9