“I’m doing what my husband wants!” She savagely opened her belt, took off her jeans, and threw them, the buckle clattering across the floor. Her white bikini panties went after the jeans. In a final defiant gesture, she untwisted the clasp that bound her ponytail, freeing her hair so it hung to her shoulders. Outraged, she stood before him, her burnt sienna skin uniform from head to toe.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked. “Get your damned sketch pad! Get started!”
Malone found it nearly impossible to speak. He took a deep breath and forced out the words. “This isn’t what I want.”
“I’m supposed to assume a provocative pose, is that it?”
“No.”
“Then what the hell do you want? Stop confusing me! Tell me what I’m supposed to do!”
“Put on your shirt.” He picked it up, offering it to her.
She glared.
“I mean it,” Malone said.
“You accepted the commission, didn’t you?”
“Obviously.”
“And you knew the second portrait was supposed to be nude.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you think it would have been polite to tell me? All the time you were staring at me, I was flattered. Because it wasn’t like you were staring.” She struggled to order her thoughts. “You were… admiring. Without being predatory. Making me feel good about myself. I thought, Finally here’s somebody who understands me as a person, not an object. And now I find out this was just a job for you. Make the bitch feel at ease, and do what you’re paid for.”
“No,” Malone said. “This wasn’t just a job. Please.” He continued to hold out her shirt.
She grabbed it. Her harsh gaze remained fixed on him, but he never looked away from her eyes, never let his own gaze waver, lest he unwittingly suggest he wasn’t being truthful.
She put on the shirt.
“Listen to me,” Malone said. “At the start, this was just a job, yes. I didn’t know you. The first time we met was uncomfortable. It looked like we might not get along. I figured this was going to be the hardest work I’d ever attempted, and I wished I’d never gotten involved.”
She glared.
“But day by day, we got to know each other,” Malone said. “More important, we seemed to enjoy each other’s conversation. I looked forward to getting up in the morning, to meeting you at breakfast and going to work each day. The project became important to me. I realized that I’d never done better work in my life – because I’d never had a better subject.”
She glared harder.
“And each day, as the first portrait came closer to completion,” Malone said, “I felt increasingly tense because I knew that I’d soon have to do the second portrait. But I didn’t want the first one to be completed. Talking with you, identifying with you, transmitting my imagination through you, had become so meaningful to me that I didn’t want it to end. I knew, of course, it was going to have to end. I couldn’t postpone completing it forever. But I couldn’t adjust to the thought of what it was going to be like painting you under different circumstances, with everything strained and me having to stare at you all over again, getting to know your body as well as I know your face. I can paint whatever I set my mind to. But if it’s going to be the best work I can do, I can’t be objective. What I’m going to say is probably the strangest thing you’ve ever heard a man tell you. Given the relationship we’ve established, the last thing I wanted was to see you naked. I’d have been content just to study your face, and I had no idea how I was going to deal with the problem when I couldn’t avoid it any longer.”
The last of Malone’s words echoed into nothingness. Silence gathered, finally broken by the scrape of his shoes on the flagstones as he walked to her jeans, picked them up, and returned them to her. The shirt, which she had rebutttoned, was long enough to cover her. Even so, he wanted her to feel totally at ease.
A tear trickled from her left eye. “Why does Derek want these portraits in the first place? I don’t understand any of this.”
“The only reason I know is what he told you,” Malone lied. “He wants to preserve your beauty, to make it permanent.”
“Including my body.”
“Including your body.”
“The next thing he’ll have me shot and stuffed,” she said.
Her statement was so close to the truth that Malone fought hard not to react.
“If I’m so beautiful, why won’t he look at me?” Sienna’s voice quavered. “Everything I do is wrong, as far as he’s concerned. The disapproving way he treats me. Not just disapproving. He’s contemptuous. Why would he want portraits of someone who disgusts him?”
Tears streamed down her face now, reddening her eyes, bringing out the fire beneath her tan skin. Before Malone realized, she was leaning against him, holding him with a desperation that made him think of someone struggling not to drown. Her shoulders heaved, her deep sobs racking them. He smelled apricots in her hair, nutmeg on her skin. He felt her tears drip onto his shirt. They soaked through, burning his chest. At the same time, he felt her breasts beneath her shirt. They pressed against him, making him terribly aware of the jeans she hadn’t put on. Her legs were bare. So were her hips beneath her shirt. So was -
“Is this a technique they teach in art school?” Bellasar asked from the doorway.
3
With a frightened gasp, Sienna jerked away from Malone and spun toward her husband.
“Some kind of artistic encouragement?” Bellasar asked. “But is the artist encouraging the model, or the model encouraging the artist?”
“This isn’t what you’re thinking,” Sienna said.
“How do you know what I’m thinking? You were expected to take your clothes off, after all. If you’re afraid I’ll think I’ve caught you having an affair, don’t worry. I’ve never once doubted that you’d remain faithful to me. You wouldn’t have the nerve to do otherwise.”
Sienna flinched.
“And I’ve never yet heard of a tryst in which the woman made herself sexually attractive by sobbing all over her lover.” Bellasar approached and drew a hand along the tears that trickled down her cheeks. “You’re a mess, my dear. You look the way you did when I first saw you in Milan. You weren’t photographable then, and you’re certainly not anything I’d like to see a portrait of now.”
Sienna’s sobs came from deep within her.
“Your nose is running. Your mouth is… How on earth is this man supposed to do his work?”
Malone couldn’t help noticing that Bellasar never once looked at him.
“Go to your room and clean yourself up,” Bellasar said. “When you return after lunch, I expect you to have repaired the damage you’ve done to yourself and be ready to pose.”
Sienna’s lips trembled.
“Damn it, what are you waiting for?” Bellasar asked. “Move. For once in your life, do something right.”
Through tear-blurred eyes, she looked at Bellasar, then switched her emotion-ravaged features toward Malone. Abruptly she ran from the room.
It had taken all of Malone’s willpower not to stop Bellasar from humiliating her. The rage that had prompted him to accept Bellasar’s commission seethed twice as strongly in him. More than anything, he wanted to get even. But not here, not now, he kept telling himself. Attacking Bellasar for what he’d just done, breaking his arms and legs and as many other bones as Malone could before the guards rushed in, wasn’t the punishment Bellasar deserved. It wouldn’t help Sienna. It wouldn’t get her safely off the estate. Keep control, Malone urged himself.
As Sienna disappeared beyond the wall of windows, silence gathered. The sunroom seemed to shrink.
“I want to ask your professional opinion about something,” Bellasar said.
“Anything you want to know about painting, I’ll do my best to answer.”