‘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, Pam, 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.
The thought of doing something so against the rules she lived by would have given her the heebie-jeebies before she met Xander, 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.
Suddenly there was a world of possibility out there. She wasn’t sensible, dependable, unremarkable Jess when she was with Xander, she was exciting, stimulating, wild.
She was out of breath when she returned to his studio, and 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.’
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.