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 overindulged, 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.’
