Page 23 of Here Comes Trouble
‘Ah, damn it,’ Jess said, her heart sinking. She really didn’t fancy spending the next hour in such close proximity to Xander, driving round looking for somewhere else that could fit them in. Why hadn’t he just booked a table?
Xander seemed blithely unconcerned as he parked the car in the trattoria’s car park and opened his door to get out.
Jess followed him out into the warm evening air. When he turned to look at her, she opened her mouth to ask him what they were going to do, but before she could utter a word, he held up a hand to silence her.
‘Give me a second to speak to the maître d’,’ he said, backing away from her towards the open door to the trattoria.
Striding confidently past the queue of future diners, he disappeared into the restaurant, leaving Jess gaping after him.
Everyone in the queue turned to look at her and she had to pull her phone out of her bag and pretend to be checking for messages so they wouldn’t see how embarrassed she was.
Xander reappeared a minute later and beckoned her to follow him.
She hurried after him as he walked past the queue of people again, giving them all a friendly smile.
Every one of them smiled back at him.
Oh, to be that confident.
The maître d’ met them at the door and ushered them inside to a small table at the back.
The trattoria was hot with the collected warmth of bodies and heat from the wood-fired stone pizza oven in the corner and Jess’s stomach rumbled as the amazing aromas of Italian food hit her nostrils.
‘So they just happened to have this table free?’ she asked after they’d seated themselves in heavy wrought iron chairs and had been handed menus by their waiter.
‘No, but they made room for us.’
‘I don’t even know what that means,’ Jess said, throwing up her hands.
Xander grinned. ‘Sometimes fame has its perks.’
Jess chose what she was going to eat quickly – a delicious sounding chicken salad – and looked up to watch Xander as he studied the menu.
She had one of those disquieting moments where she seriously wondered whether she was dreaming this all. If anyone had told her this time last week that she’d be in Italy, dining opposite Xander Heaton, she’d have told them to get their head checked. Even more baffling than the arbitrariness of her situation was the fact she felt as if she belonged here with him – that their camaraderie earlier had somehow taken their relationship to a new level.
He glanced up and caught her staring at him.
‘Everything okay, Jess?’
She flushed in embarrassment at being caught out. ‘I’m fine. Just thinking how strange it is to be sitting here with you.’
‘Strange?’ he looked puzzled at her choice of word.
‘Good strange. It’s not the sort of thing that ever happens to me. I live a pretty uneventful life, usually.’
He leant back in his chair and considered her for a moment. ‘Believe it or not, my life can be pretty lonely. Especially when I spend a lot of time holed up on my own working on my paintings. That’s why I like working with models. Having you around is a welcome relief, to be honest.’
She raised her eyebrows and sat up, crossing her arms in front of her. She’d never considered his life could be like that, not when, according to the papers, he seemed to live such a hedonistic existence. ‘That doesn’t sound like a fun way to live.’
He shrugged. ‘Sometimes it’s not.’
‘So why do you do it?’
* * *
Jess’s question made Xander pause. It had been a long time since anyone had got close enough to ask him a question like that. He usually held journalists at arm’s length when they were after personal details and none of the women he’d dated recently seemed interested in the why, only in what he could offer them in the now. But he found he actually wanted to talk to Jess about this side of him. Perhaps to prove to her he wasn’t the cold-hearted player she clearly had him pegged as.
‘It’s my calling. What I feel I’m meant to be doing with my life. I think I’d wither and die if I had to go and work in an office every day.’
