Сьюзен Мейер – One Passionate Night: Her Brooding Italian Boss / The Heiress's Secret Baby / Best Friend to Wife and Mother? (страница 22)

“We’ll do sketches first.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“First, I just need to warm up, get the feel of your features, the shape of your body.”

She nodded eagerly.

“So, I’ll sit here.” He leaned his hip on the corner of the desk. “And you sit there.” He pointed at a ladder-back chair about ten feet away.

She frowned. “There?”

“Yes. These are preliminaries. Warm-ups. Something to get me accustomed to your shapes.”

Her gaze involuntarily rippled to the chaise near the windows. That would have been more comfortable. She wanted to sit there.

But he pointed at the ladder-back chair again.

She smiled hesitantly. Though she understood what he was saying, something really drew her to that chaise. Still, she sat on the ladder-back chair. Antonio picked up a simple number-two pencil.

“Really? A pencil? You’re not going to use charcoal or chalk or anything cool like that?”

He sighed and dropped the tablet to his lap. “I’m warming up!”

She waved her hand. “Okay. Okay. Whatever.”

* * *

By the time Antonio had her seated on the chair, his anxiety about drawing had shimmied away. Praying that she would stop talking and especially stop second-guessing his choices, he picked up his pencil and began sketching quickly, easily, hoping to capture at least five minutes of her sitting still.

When she wrinkled her nose, as if it was itchy, he stopped and stretched. He’d drawn small sketches of her eyes, her nose, her lips, her neck, her eyebrows, the wrinkle in her forehead, the side view of her hair looping across her temple and one sketch of her entire face.

“If you need to scratch your nose, scratch.”

She pulled in a breath and rubbed her palm across her nose. “Thank God.”

“What? You were sitting for...” He glanced at his watch. “Wow. Ten minutes. I guess you do deserve a break. For someone unaccustomed to posing, ten minutes is a long time.”

She popped off the chair. Shook out all her limbs. “I know I’ve sat perfectly still for more than ten minutes at a time, but sitting still without anything to think about or do? That’s hard.”

“I’d actually hoped to break you in with five-minute increments.”

“Meaning?”

“You’d sit for five minutes a few times in our first two settings, then ten minutes in our third and fifteen in our fourth...that kind of thing.”

“So we’re skipping a step?”

“Which could be good.”

“Can I see what you’ve done?”

He handed her the tablet.

She smiled. “These are great.”

“That’s just me messing around until I get a good feel for drawing your features. Then we move on to sketches of what I think a painting of you should look like.”

She beamed at him and everything inside him lit up. He told himself he was happy that she was enjoying the process, happy that he hadn’t yet had an anxiety attack, and motioned her back to the chair.

“If you can keep doing ten-minute sessions, we’ll do two more, then break for the day.”

“You’re only working a half hour?”

He laughed. “Yes. I’m not just indoctrinating you into the process. I’m easing myself in too.”

She sat on the chair, straightened her spine and lifted her face. “Okay.”

He sketched for ten minutes, gave her a break, sketched for ten more, then they had lunch. Later, while she sat by the pool, he paid his dad a visit. He expected them to argue like two overemotional Italians about Constanzo stranding them in Barcelona. Instead, his father quietly apologized, told Antonio he was tired and retired to his room.

The next day, Laura Beth easily graduated to sitting for fifteen minutes at a time. The day after that, she had a bit of trouble with sitting for twenty minutes, but eventually got it.

He drew her face over and over and over again. He sketched her arms, her feet, the slope of her shoulder. Feeling the rhythm of those shapes in his hand as it flowed over the paper, he felt little bits of himself returning. But he didn’t push. Fearing he’d tumble into bad territory, he didn’t let himself feel. He simply put pencil to paper.

On Sunday, with Ricky and Eloise in Italy on the last leg of their honeymoon, he forced Laura Beth to take the day off to visit with them.

Monday morning, though, she arrived in his studio, bright and eager to begin.

Trembling with equal parts of anticipation and terror over the next step of the process, he busied himself with organizing his pencils as he said, “This week we’re doing potential poses for the painting.”

“So now I don’t just have to sit still? I have to sit still a certain way.”

He glanced up. Her eyes were bright. Her smile brilliant. Enthusiasm virtually vibrated from her body.

“Basically, yes.”

Knowing how uncomfortable the ladder-back chair had been, he walked her to the wall of windows in the back of the room. He posed her feet, positioned her shoulders, placed her hands together at her stomach and strode back to the old metal desk to get his pad and pencil.

He worked for twenty minutes, trying again and again to make her come to life in a sketch, but failing. He knew what he wanted. That faraway look. And though he saw snatches of it in her eyes, it didn’t stay and he couldn’t catch it when it was only a glimpse.

With a sigh, he said, “Let’s take a break.”

“Wow. Was that a half hour already?”

“Twenty minutes. I can’t seem to get what I want from this pose, so I figured we’d stop, give me a bit of rest and try again.”

After a bathroom break and a few sips of water, Laura Beth was ready to go again. Antonio picked up his pencil and tablet. She positioned herself and Antonio started drawing. After only a few seconds, he said, “The light is wrong.”

She deflated from her pose. “Bummer.”

He shook his head. “It is a bummer, but we can come back to this tomorrow morning. Right now...” He glanced around. “Let’s try one with you sitting on the chaise.”

She walked over and sat down. Without waiting for instructions, she angled herself on the chair with her back to him, then looked over her shoulder at him.

The vivid image of her lying wrapped in the towel on her bed popped into his head, quickly followed by the pose he’d so desperately wanted to paint. Her wrapped in silk, one shoulder and her entire back bare, the swell of her hip peeking out at him, her face a study of innocence.

His finger itched to capture that. But he was sure the urge was a leftover of an aberration. Watching her at the gallery, he’d envisioned several compelling poses, expressions, little bits of humanity that would result in a painting every bit as compelling. He did not need to go there.

“That’s not how I want you.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s try this.” He wasn’t entirely sure how to position her. He had facial expressions in his mind. Images of her hair falling just the right way. And he couldn’t seem to get it right as he shifted her from one side to another, one pose to another.

“Okay. How about this? Lie down and pretend you’re daydreaming.”

“Oh! I get to lie down!”

He stopped in midstep toward the metal desk and faced her. “If you’re tired or anything, I don’t want you to overdo.”

She stretched out on the sofa. “I’m fine.”

Her inelegant movement struck a chord in him again and he eagerly grabbed the notebook. That was part of the essence he was trying to grasp. Beautiful yet impish. Troubled but still hopeful. With the image fresh in his mind, he began sketching. But after ten minutes he realized that pose didn’t work either.

Neither surprised nor disappointed—today was all about trying and failing—he gave her a break, then sat her on a chair.

Backing away from her, he said, “Think deep thoughts.”

Her face scrunched. “How deep?”