Page 47 of Here Comes Trouble
On their last morning together, he sketched her as she sat on the terrace sipping a cup of coffee, looking out across the lake. She looked so beautiful – her amazingly expressive face alive with the vitality that had first drawn her to him. She seemed like a different woman to the one he’d met only a couple of weeks ago. She was taller, brighter and somehow more real.
She’d found her joy.
When she turned and smiled back at him, her perfect, white teeth flashed between her lips. Even her smile was more relaxed since he’d first met her.
Was that because of him?
He felt a swell of pride at the thought. He’d never made anyonelessstressed before.
The intimacy of the atmosphere tugged at his chest. The thought that this was just a fleeting moment in his life made him clench his jaw, and a low throb began to beat in his temple. Why did that bother him so much? What was this feeling? He wasn’t entirely sure. He’d never experienced it before, but he sure as hell didn’t like it.
He’d been bored and frustrated when he’d asked Jess to come to Italy. It had been a spur of the moment thing – just for kicks – but he’d underestimated her ability to get into his head. To find out what it was that drove him. To discover his deepest, darkest secrets. And he’d let her probe and push until all the bad memories that he’d buried for so long had begun to rise to the surface.
He didn’t want to feel like this. After spending the majority of his life pushing that anxiety and fear of rejection away, he didn’t want to have to face it now. He wanted things to stay the way they were: light and free and easy.
He realised she was staring at him with concern now and he adjusted the scowl on his face into a smile.
The apprehensive expression in her eyes made him wonder what she was thinking, but he didn’t want to ask. Didn’t want to know. Ignorance was bliss.
In retrospect, it had been a crazy move to ask a journalist to come and stay, then invite her into his bed. Of course she was going to push and push at his defences until she found a crack to get her nails into.
It was her job.
He needed to remember that.
She shifted in her chair, putting her coffee cup down onto the table with a shaky hand. ‘I guess I should go and write my article. Pamela’s going to kick my butt if I send it in late and I haven’t even started it yet,’ she said, awkwardly rising from her seat so that she banged her leg on the table.
Was she feeling the same tension that he was?
He shrugged off his concern and nodded at her stiffly. ‘Okay. See you later.’
* * *
Jess sat in the middle of the bed with all her notes spread around her. She was hyper aware that this was the last day they had together, but she had to get this article written. This was why she’d come here, after all.
Xander had seemed to become increasingly distanced from her over the last couple of days, which had unsettled her, and she’d thought the best thing to do right now was to get away from the intensity of their situation for a while and try and get her head straight.
This piece on Xander had to be the best thing she’d ever written or there was a very good chance she’d be booted off the magazine as soon as she got back.
As she scanned over and over all the notes she’d written since she’d arrived a stultifying fear started to grip her. What if she couldn’t do it? The words began to blur together and the more she read, the more panicked she got.
After about half an hour of trying and failing to write one single, usable sentence, she gathered up every piece of paper, shuffled them into one tidy sheaf, then threw them across the room in frustration.
She watched as they floated down like overlarge snowflakes and settled onto the cold, tiled floor.
This was ridiculous. How the hell was she ever going to be able to write a thing? Closing her eyes, she took a moment to think back over the time she’d spent here with Xander, about his passion and fears, and his determination not to be beaten down by them and finally how he’d made her feel by including her in his life. How he’d brought out a side of her she’d never known was there.
A deep, bolstering warmth pulsed through her.
Pulling her laptop towards her, she let her fingers move over the keyboard, writing whatever came into her head without letting conscious thought intrude, without giving in to her fear about whether what she was writing was any good or not. Instead, she concentrated on how Xander made her feel about herself.
And the words began to flow. It was as if she’d finally keyed into something – opened a previously locked door in her brain, but now all these intense thoughts and feelings, which she’d been suppressing for so long, began firing round her brain.
She wrote and wrote and edited and wrote some more until there it was – the best thing she’d ever written. Reading it back she had tears in her eyes. It had warmth and humour and, best of all, fire and life. She knew in her gut that Pamela was going to love it – that it might just save her career.
She also knew without a doubt that she was totally and utterly in love with Xander.
And that she’d failed to follow the most basic rule of all: don’t fall for a guy who’s incapable of loving you back.
