Lessons in Rule-Breaking Read online

  Jess couldn’t help but stand and stare up at him as he towered over her. She’d anticipated him being somehow disappointing in the flesh, but he wasn’t. He really wasn’t.

  Paint-splattered jeans hung low on his hips and a grey cotton T-shirt clung tightly to the hard contours of his chest, making no effort whatsoever to disguise the swell of muscles on his rangy frame.

  Despite the hard angles of his bone structure there was something faintly boyish about him. Perhaps that was the key to his appeal? A hard alpha male on the outside with just a glimmer of a softer, more vulnerable soul inside.

  There was an almost ethereal glow about him, too, as if his charisma were being overmanufactured inside his body and the excess were spilling out through the pores of his skin.

  Even his just-rolled-out-of-bed, designer mess of rich chestnut-brown hair seemed to glow like a freshly shelled conker in the sunshine pouring in through the large warehouse windows.

  Jess’s body buzzed with longing to reach up and run her hands over his face, to feel the hard contours of his bones under that golden skin and the gentle rasp of his barely there stubble as it caught on the whorls of her fingertips.

  It took her a moment to realise he was staring at her mouth with his amazing, bright, aqua-coloured eyes and giving her an impatient frown as if he was utterly nonplussed by her appearance and thoroughly pissed off about being disturbed.

  She gave herself a little shake and pulled herself together. She was a twenty-five-year-old professional woman, not some love-struck teenager, and she needed to act like it.

  ‘Hi, Xander, I’m here to do the interview with you today,’ she said brightly. ‘Maggie’s caught up so you’ve got me instead.’ Her smile began to falter when he didn’t give up his hard frown. ‘I know I’m a few minutes late, but it was totally beyond my control. The tube train I was on...’ She ground to a halt as he began shaking his head.

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  Panic rose in her chest and her blood began pumping round her body with such vigorous force she could feel the jittery buzz of it right down to her toes. ‘The interview. With Maggie? She said you’d agreed to talk to her today about the new exhibition you’re planning.’ He continued to stare at her blankly. ‘Before you go to Italy,’ Jess said, gesticulating wildly now, as if she could somehow waft the memory of the interview back into his head through the sheer force of her determination.

  Her rambling explanation must have sparked something in his brain because his eyes widened a fraction before his expression shut down into a hard frown again.

  ‘Yeah, okay, I’d forgotten about that...’ he shrugged ‘...but you missed your window. I’m right in the middle of something now.’

  ‘But...’ Jess could barely get the words past her lips in her panic.

  ‘Sorry, sweetheart, but you snooze, you lose.’ He turned to go.

  ‘What? That’s it? You can’t even give me five minutes of your time?’ she nearly shouted in her panic.

  Xander sighed and turned back, rubbing a hand through his hair. ‘To be honest, I never wanted to do this interview in the first place. I only agreed because your colleague is a friend of a friend and she caught me at a weak moment. I seem to remember I was pretty drunk.’ He leant against the doorjamb and flashed her a ‘crap happens’ look. ‘I don’t have time to pander to journalists right now. I have work to do. Now, if you’ll excuse me.’ He shot her a wink before striding off into his studio, slamming the door behind him and leaving Jess mouthing like a landed fish in his wake.

  * * *

  Xander Heaton walked back to where he’d been sketching his model, trying to shake off an unsettling twinge of guilt as the look of utter dismay on the journalist’s face permeated through to his conscience.

  He flipped it out of his head. He didn’t need distractions like that at the moment. It was hard enough holding it together without having to accommodate any old Tom, Dick or Harriet who wandered in for a bit of show-and-tell. Everyone seemed to want a piece of him at the moment and he barely had enough of himself left to keep his strung-out existence going.

  His latest model—who was giving it everything she’d got to contort herself into the strange pose he’d asked her to take up—gave him a slow, seductive smile as he sat down and attempted to focus back on her.

  Ah, hell. He knew he’d been playing with fire when he asked her to pose for a picture. She’d been one of a bunch of professional models he’d got talking to at a party and he’d thought she might be an interesting subject to paint. She was making it pretty clear she was interested in more than just modelling for him right now, though.

  She was a beautiful woman—too young for his tastes—but she was going to be a big thing at some point, he could tell. He should be excited about working with her, but somehow he couldn’t summon the energy for it today.

  A wave of tiredness crashed over him. He’d been searching for inspiration for this new exhibition for months, desperately trying to drop-kick his muse into action, but for some reason he kept missing his mark. He’d ended up destroying every picture he’d painted recently, disgusted by the banal rubbish he was coming up with. Just like the picture he’d been working on before he was interrupted.

  The dark-haired journalist’s face slid back into his mind as he tore off the page in the sketchbook he’d been working on, crumpled it up and lobbed it at the bin.

  She had enormous eyes, he reflected now, dark blue with bright, white flecks that had drawn him right in. She wasn’t conventionally attractive, but there’d been a kind of spirit about her that had made his blood pump faster. Thinking back, there had been something about her expression that disturbed him when he’d said no to the interview. It hadn’t been the usual sort of annoyance or disappointment he tended to invoke in journos when he refused to talk to them—she’d looked as if he’d just stomped hard on her life’s dream and left it broken and bleeding on the floor.

  He had a sudden mad urge to sketch the image that had just pinged into his head. It was brighter and clearer and sharper than anything he’d envisaged in a very long time and his sluggish blood picked up speed as a long-forgotten feeling of elation coursed through him.

  Rubbing his hand over his eyes, he felt the puffiness that had taken up residence there since the insomnia had set in. It had been months since he’d slept properly and no matter what he tried it wouldn’t break its hold on him.

  It appeared to be making him crazy.

  ‘Everything okay, Xander?’ his model, Seraphina, asked, unfolding herself from the chair and sauntering over to where he sat with his now blank sketch pad on his knee. ‘Hmm, so are you using invisible ink here, or what?’ she asked.

  He flashed her a look of irritation and her smile faltered.

  Guilt pulled at him and he replaced the unreasonable expression with an apologetic smile to try and make up for offending her. ‘Look, Sera, I’m sorry but this isn’t working out.’

  ‘What? I’m not making your creative juices flow? Do you need a bit of inspiration?’ she asked, her voice laden with innuendo.

  Before he could react she slipped her top over her head, stepped close and picked up his hand, pressing it to her bare breast.

  He felt nothing.

  Closing his eyes, he shook his head and carefully removed his hand.

  He’d partied hard this year, needing an outlet for his frustration and anger after the cutting reviews of his last exhibition—where the reviewers had wondered in full public view where his talent had disappeared to—but it had all caught up with him recently.

  He felt hollowed out by all the vacuous affairs with an ever-changing kaleidoscope of willing women, none of whom lasted for more than a couple of months. He’d been constantly on the lookout for something new and fresh and revitalising to draw him out of his depressed funk but he’d over
indulged, leaving him feeling strung out and empty.

  His work had suffered. Big time. In fact he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt a genuine urge to pick up a paintbrush, or pencils, or even a spray can and make his mark. He felt washed up, wrung out and desiccated.

  Looking up at Seraphina, he was horrified to see tears had welled in her eyes. He held up a placating hand—none of this was her fault and he felt a sting of shame at hurting her. ‘Look, you’re a beautiful woman, but you’re not what I need right now.’

  ‘What do you need?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sera. I wish I did. I’ll know it when I see it.’

  ‘Fine,’ she interjected, her voice wobbly and high. ‘If I’m not good enough for you I’m not wasting my time hanging around here.’ Pulling her top back on, she gave him one last accusatory look before storming out, slamming the door behind her.

  * * *

  Jess was smoothing her hair down with a shaking hand and trying to pull herself together in the loos across from Xander’s studio when the door flew open and a tall, beautiful woman stormed in and slumped against the porcelain washbasin, swiping away a waterfall of tears that were making her meticulously applied make-up run.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Jess asked, grateful for a reprieve from worrying about her own problems for a moment. She wondered whether the woman was anything to do with Xander. She wouldn’t be at all surprised.

  The woman glanced up into the mirror. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, giving a shaky smile before looking away again.

  Jess went into the toilet to grab some tissue and placed it on the basin next to the woman before leaning back against the wall in companionable silence. The woman nodded in surprised thanks and picked up the tissue, dabbing under her eyes.

  She was incredible-looking, all Bambi limbs and delicate bone structure. Her huge blue eyes seemed to glow with life—even through the tears—and her skin... What Jess wouldn’t give for flawless, soft skin like hers.

  She pulled her long suit jacket around her, feeling like a massive frumpy lump in comparison.

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ Jess asked.

  ‘Yeah. Feeling humiliated and rejected, but I’ll survive.’

  Jess snorted. ‘Join the club.’

  The woman looked at her in confusion. ‘What happened to you?’

  Jess sighed. ‘I was supposed to be interviewing Xander Heaton but he blew me off.’

  The woman snorted. ‘Sounds like Xander. Does what he wants, when he feels like it and sod everyone else. He’s a law unto himself, that guy.’

  Aha, so she was right.

  ‘What did he do to make you cry?’ Jess asked tentatively. If she couldn’t get an interview with the man himself, she could at least get some information from one of his disgruntled models to try and appease Pamela.

  The model looked down at the sink. ‘I’ve been stupidly excited about working with him and I’ve been telling everyone I’m going to be in a famous painting, but apparently I’m totally uninspiring. He doesn’t think I’m attractive enough,’ she said quietly. ‘He was all sweetness one minute and cold as ice the next and I have no idea what I did wrong.’

  A shot of anger fired through Jess’s veins. Just who did the guy think he was? ‘What’s your name?’ Jess asked gently.

  ‘Seraphina.’

  ‘Well, I think you’re a very beautiful woman and Xander’s an idiot to reject you,’ Jess said, giving the woman an encouraging smile. ‘From what I’ve heard about him you’ve had a lucky escape. He’s not exactly known for having meaningful relationships.’

  The model snorted, but managed to raise a smile. ‘No, I guess not. And it’s not as if he made a move on me, but I hoped he might.’ She looked down at the floor. ‘I just got a bit swept away by the excitement of it all and he’s so damn hot. You can’t blame a girl for falling for him.’

  Jess nodded. Okay, well, that answered the ‘are you sleeping with him?’ question. ‘Yeah, I imagine that’s easily done.’ She brushed a speck of dust off the sleeve of her jacket. ‘Right, well, I’d better go. I have to go back to work and persuade my editor not to fire me.’

  Her stomach sank at the thought of returning and admitting she’d failed.

  Seraphina gave Jess a sympathetic smile. ‘Good luck.’

  ‘You, too,’ Jess said, giving the girl’s arm a reassuring squeeze before leaving her alone in the bathroom—hot wrath at Xander rising like an out-of-control soufflé in her chest.

  * * *

  Xander was locking up the studio when the dark-haired journalist slammed through the ladies’ toilet door and stalked towards him. Her cheeks were flushed and disdain and anger flashed in those huge midnight-blue eyes of hers.

  She jerked to a halt, a dark frown marring her face, before turning to go on her way. She’d only taken two steps before she swivelled back to face him again. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ she practically spat.

  He took a step backwards in surprise. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The way you treated that woman is inhumane.’

  He frowned at her hard, baffled. ‘What woman?’

  She threw her hands up in disgust. ‘Seraphina.’

  Her reprimanding tone bothered him. Who was she to tell him how to conduct himself? ‘She needs to toughen up if she’s going to make it as a model.’

  Her eyes widened in contemptuous disbelief. ‘Not everyone has rhino skin. Can’t you remember what it feels like to be young and filled with hope and excitement for the future?’

  There was a hint of expectation in her face, as if she wanted to hear him admit to his weaknesses out loud.

  His automatic privacy barriers shot up.

  Not a chance, journo.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been filled with hope. I may have filled a Hope in my time, though.’ He flashed her a grin and took a step towards her.

  Her frown deepened and she took a shaky step away. ‘Have you always been this arrogant?’

  He grinned. He couldn’t help it. It was too tempting not to tease her, to see that passion flash in those amazing eyes again. ‘Yes.’

  Shaking her head, she looked away from him, over his shoulder at the closed studio door. ‘No wonder everyone’s beginning to think you’re just some washed-up playboy. I’m not surprised your reputation’s on the rocks if that’s the way you treat people.’

  Indignation trickled through him. That was a low blow. He couldn’t let her get to him, though; she had no idea what it was like living in his world. Perhaps she wouldn’t be quite so quick to judge if she did.

  The immense pressure to continually produce better and better work had been a killer to his self-confidence, and more importantly to his self-control when it came to distractions.

  Not that he was about to explain that to her.

  She turned back to face him and he stared into her eyes for a moment, lost in their depths. Her little show of snappy rebellion intrigued him—in more ways than one.

  She was properly saucy, in a hands-off-the-merchandise kind of way. Her face wasn’t classically beautiful: her nose was a little too big, her eyes set too far apart, but there was definitely something striking about her. He was pretty sure there was more going on behind that guarded expression, too, that wasn’t quite reaching surface level. The suit that hung so badly on her curvy frame looked like something a fifty-year-old woman might choose to wear and the long bob of dark hair she sported dragged her already long face down. She was all buttoned up—her youth and vitality clearly being repressed and controlled.

  The thought of getting beneath that well-secured facade made him want things. Things he really shouldn’t be wanting right then, not when he ought to be swearing off women until he started producing some decent art for this long-overdue exhibition.

 
His gaze dropped to her small, cupid-lipped mouth and he wondered for a second what it would feel like to kiss her, how she would taste on his tongue, before dismissing the idea. He really needed to focus right now.

  A flash of him sitting down to capture this intriguing contradiction of a woman in paint and pencils flitted through his head. He’d love to have her pose for him. He hadn’t felt this captivated by anyone or anything for such a long time it was as if he’d been given a shot of adrenaline to the heart. His fingers itched to pick up his pencil and start sketching her face.

  She threw her hands up in exasperation when he failed to respond to her last jibe. ‘Okay, well, I guess I’d better leave you and your massive ego in peace so you can get back to work.’

  Turning on her heel, she strode away from him, her shoulders pulled forward with tension and her hands balled at her sides.

  ‘Let me draw you.’ The words came out of his mouth before she reached the stairwell, stopping her abruptly in her tracks.

  She turned round to face him and her look of utter confusion made him laugh out loud. She’d make a great comic actor.

  ‘What did you say?’ The words seemed to catch in her throat and she gave a little cough at the end as if to clear the blockage.

  He walked over to where she was standing. ‘I’m in need of a portrait model and I think you’d make a fascinating subject.’

  ‘You want me to pose for you?’

  ‘Sure, why not?’

  ‘Firstly, because I have a job as a serious journalist, and secondly, because I’ve seen how you treat your models and, I have to say, I’m not champing at the bit to get the same treatment.’

  He startled her by lifting a hand and running it vigorously over his face before snorting with laughter. ‘Okay, Lois Lane, but in my defence Sera was the one up for more than just modelling and I was being a gentleman for once by turning her down,’ he said, resting one arm against the wall behind her so it nearly touched her shoulders. ‘That’s why she was so mad at me.’