Lessons in Rule-Breaking

by Christy McKellen

  Her heartbeat accelerated, sending a rush of adrenalised blood to her head, making her feel for a moment as if she might pass out. Taking a few deep breaths, she waited until the pounding in her head had calmed down before looking at the invitation again.

  There was an address for a gallery in Brick Lane and a date and time for the following week in neat print below it.

  Xander’s exhibition.

  Her naked body about to be exposed to the whole world.

  The invitation slipped out of her trembling fingers and fell onto the floor. Looking down, she saw there were words scrawled on the back of it in the same looping handwriting that was on the envelope. Leaning down to peer closer at them, she made out the words, ‘Jess, please come. I need you to see something. Xander’.

  She stared at it for a few moments, the rushing sound in her ears blocking out the noise of the office. Sitting up, she jumped in shock when she realised Pamela had appeared out of nowhere and was standing over her, waiting for an answer to a question she’d totally failed to hear. Looking up to see her boss’s imperious expression, she had to quell the nervous impulse to leap up and dash off to the sanctuary of the loos. ‘Sorry, Pamela, I missed that.’

  Pam shook her head, clearly unimpressed by Jess’s lack of focus. ‘I said, did you get an invitation to Xander Heaton’s exhibition, too? He sent one to me asking me to make sure you came along. You must have made quite an impression on him.’ She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow.

  ‘Ah, yes, but I wasn’t going to go. I have a thing that night.’

  Pamela’s other eyebrow shot up to join its counterpart. ‘Cancel it. You should attend. We could do a great follow-up piece on him for the magazine. Your interview’s been syndicated to a lot of influential sources already and you’re in a position to exploit your relationship with him to get a good exclusive interview afterwards. Am I right?’

  Jess sighed. There was no way Pamela would let her get away with missing the exhibition if she thought the magazine had something to gain from it.

  Well, she was going to have to face the horror of being recognised as the model in his paintings some time. It might as well be sooner rather than later. At least it might be a friendly crowd at the exclusive first showing of his work. She could write the piece, then go and hide away under a rock until all the fuss had died down.

  She gave her editor a tight smile. ‘Sure, Pamela, I’ll be there.’

  ‘Good, good. Make sure you work all the angles, Jess,’ Pam said, waving a hand in the air as she stalked off, unquestionably on her way to terrorise another poor member of her staff.

  * * *

  Xander couldn’t ever remember being this nervous before a showing of his work, and for once the nerves weren’t about what the critics might say about it. It was all down to what Jess would think.

  Everything he’d done here was for her, after all.

  After she’d refused to pick up or return his phone calls he’d realised it was going to take more than words to prove to her he was sorry and that he cared about her and wanted to make a go of a relationship—something he’d never been interested in before. Unfortunately, his reputation for being such a playboy didn’t do him any favours in that regard and he’d clearly fed directly into her insecurity about taking a relationship with him seriously with his selfish disregard for her feelings.

  He missed her so much.

  He couldn’t go on the way he was, isolated and casually using people before casting them off like pieces of rubbish.

  She’d shown him how incredible it could feel to fall in love with someone and now he’d experienced it he was damned if he was going to let her just walk away.

  Because he was in love with her, he realised. This aching hole in his chest he’d been living with for the last two months was exactly Jess-sized.

  The front door to the gallery swung open, bringing him back to the present and letting in a draught of cool evening air. He looked round to see who it was.

  Jess.

  He’d sent an invitation to her editor as well in the hope it would force Jess to come, but had made the time on Jess’s half an hour earlier.

  He wanted her to see what he’d done for her first without being interrupted.

  Apparently this exhibition opening had turned into a hot ticket after Jess’s article on him for Spark magazine had been so well received. He’d been humbled by her descriptions of him and impressed by how she’d woven in his background with real sensitivity, making him sound like the kind of guy he’d always wanted to be—intelligent, passionate and talented.

  She’d let the piece run, showing him in such a good light, despite how he’d treated her.

  He knew he didn’t deserve to even lick her shoes, but he wanted to become a man who did deserve her, and only she could help him with that.

  If she could forgive him.

  She stood in front of him now, head held high, looking so beautiful and bold he wanted to pull her against him and kiss her hard, to let her know just how much he wanted her back. How amazing she was. But he knew he couldn’t do that—he needed to be more subtle, to prove to her this wasn’t just about sex.

  ‘Where is everyone? Did I read the invitation wrong? I thought it started at seven thirty,’ Jess said, staring at him defiantly, her arms folded across her chest. He could see she was trying to brazen it out, but her awkward stance and the slight tremor in her voice gave her away.

  Maybe there was hope? The thought made his blood buzz with adrenaline.

  ‘You’re on time. This is a private viewing, just for you, before all the other guests arrive. I wanted you to be the first to see it.’

  ‘So I have time to run away and hide before they all arrive?’ she asked, an eyebrow quirked, clearly trying to keep her voice controlled, but failing spectacularly to hit the right note of nonchalance and sliding right on through to utter terror.

  He put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, feeling the heat of her skin burn through her thin cotton top. His mind flicked back to the memory of how the heat of her body felt against his and he almost lost his cool.

  ‘I’m really hoping you won’t want to run,’ he said, begging with his eyes for her to give him another chance.

  ‘You know, I don’t know if I can bear to look at it again, Xander.’ Taking a step backwards, she broke his hold on her and gave him a wobbly smile. ‘But I wish you luck with the exhibition. I’m sure everyone’s going to love it.’ She turned to walk away, but before she could take a step he slid his fingers around her arm and twisted her back round to face him. No way was he going to let her walk away before he had chance to at least apologise.

  He pulled her hard towards him, drawing her mouth so tantalisingly close he could feel the heat of her breath on his lips. ‘Jess, please. Don’t leave. I did all this for you. Not for my critics. I wanted you to know how much I miss you. How much I care about you. Please don’t walk away now.’

  He felt her falter and relax a little against him and he pressed on quickly before she could gather herself enough to leave.

  ‘This is my apology to you. No one has ever given me that much of themselves before, Jess, and I can’t believe I took advantage of you like that. I was so scared I was actually as washed up as everyone suspected, I lost sight of what was right and wrong. You trusted me and I treated that trust as if it was nothing. It was a cowardly, selfish, pathetic thing to do. I understand why it upset you and you were right to call me on it.’

  She stared at him, her eyes wide with confusion. ‘Okay. Well, thank you for apologising.’

  ‘I destroyed that painting you saw, so you don’t need to worry about it ever appearing.’

  Releasing her arm and digging into his pocket, he pulled out a handful of long painted ribbons of canvas. ‘This is all that’s left of that painting and the one of you covered i
n paint.’ He handed them to her and she stared down at them, her eyes widening in surprise.

  When she looked back up into his face, her bottom lip was trembling and her eyes were shining with tears.

  ‘What do you want me to say? That I’m pleased you tore your work apart?’

  It was hell being this close to her without being allowed to enfold her in his arms and hold her close, to soothe all the pain away, but he knew he couldn’t do that right now. The weight of his reputation for short, intense affairs with his muses lay heavily between them. He’d given her no reason to believe she was any different from the tens of women he’d already used up and cast aside.

  ‘Let me show you what I replaced those pictures with,’ he said, walking over to the light switches on the wall and flicking them up so the room was flooded with light.

  He heard Jess gasp as she saw what he’d been pouring his heart into for the last month.

  * * *

  It took Jess a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the light before she could fully focus on what was in front of her.

  There was a sculpture, made up of what looked like a multicoloured canvas stretched across a man-shaped frame, sitting in the middle of the room beneath four white spotlights. His posture was tensed as if ready to jump up and run forward, his hands gripping his knees, but, eerily, there was a flat picture where the contours of his face should be.

  She walked towards it on shaking legs, utterly captivated, and as she peered closer she realised the flat piece had a self-portrait of Xander’s face painted on it, showing an expression of such pain in his eyes it nearly broke her heart to look at it. The word loser was painted across his forehead in dark purple paint.

  Dragging her gaze away from the face, she peered more closely at the rest of the sculpture and realised with a shock that the multicoloured body was made up of hundreds of tiny paintings.

  Of her.

  In some of them she was smiling, some looking confused, some looking insecure. In fact, he seemed to have captured every possible emotion she’d ever had in her life. As if he knew her. As if he’d seen inside her and understood exactly what made her tick.

  There was something metallic and shiny protruding from the chest of the sculpture, as if it had been dragged out of his body and was hovering in mid-air before him.

  Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she dropped to her knees to study it more closely and realised it was a small metal cage, in the shape of a heart with fine filigree letters trapped inside it.

  She peered closer, barely able to focus through a bewildering haze of emotions.

  It was the word Jess.

  It was Xander’s own personal love letter to her.

  She felt his footsteps behind her as they made the stripped wooden floor bounce. Swivelling round, she stood up and faced him, at a total loss for words.

  He didn’t say anything, just took her hand and gently led her out from under the spotlight into a room at the back of the gallery, motioning for her to sit down on a cream leather sofa set back against the wall.

  She sat on the edge and watched him lower himself down next to her, her whole body shaking now. She had no idea how to deal with all this. After convincing herself she needed to put her fling with him down to a freak anomaly in the short history of her life, she’d never expected to see him again, let alone have to deal with something as surreal as having a piece of his art dedicated to her.

  ‘Did...did I imagine the life-size naked model of you, made up of images of my face?’ she asked, her voice faltering as she tried and failed to pull herself together.

  He breathed out slowly, as if centring himself.

  ‘I need to explain something to you.’ He ran a hand over his face, then repositioned himself on the sofa so his body was twisted towards her. ‘When I was younger my art was the thing that saved me from complete meltdown. I did it as an outlet for all the anger and shame I carried around with me. I never expected for a second I could make the sort of money I have from it. After years of being shoved into the category of troublemaker I was totally amazed when people began to talk about me in terms of having talent as an artist instead of just being a public nuisance with my “graffiti”. Before I realised what was happening, my career began to gain this crazy momentum and I was suddenly propelled into the limelight. People were interested in what I had to say, like it meant something important to them. It was a revelation. Instead of being a problem and a drain on the system, I was someone people wanted to be associated with.’

  ‘And, boy, did you associate with them.’ She gave him a tentatively playful smile, which he returned.

  ‘Yeah, I know, I turned into a massive tart. Believe it or not, I was pretty freaked by all the attention to begin with. Suddenly women who wouldn’t have given me the time of day before were throwing themselves at me left, right and centre. After the first few had been and gone and more were lining up right behind them, I went a bit wild with it. It felt like an opportunity to make up for all the lost time in my youth when everyone else had been out at parties and clubs and I’d been working my butt off just to keep myself alive.’

  He ran a shaking hand through his hair and Jess had to force herself to let out the breath she’d been holding, her throat tight from trying not to cry.

  ‘I was living the dream, until it all began to fall to pieces,’ he continued. ‘The critics got hold of me and tore my last exhibition to pieces, which wouldn’t have been such a big deal on its own, but it was meant to be a slap in the face for my old man. Not that he ever got to see it. He died before I got to prove he was wrong about me being a waste of space and I’ve been carrying this rage around with me ever since. Until you turned up and helped me channel it into something positive.’

  ‘Xander...I don’t understand what you want from me. I thought you didn’t do relationships?’

  ‘I thought so, too, until I met you. I want to make this work between us, Jess. I want a real relationship with you, not some meaningless fling. You’ve made me re-evaluate everything I thought was important in my life. I don’t want to be alone any more. I want to wake up in the morning and see that amazing smile of yours and know it’s for me. That I’ve made you happy. That I’m worth more than my father told me I was.’

  ‘You are. Oh, Xander, you are.’

  ‘I laid myself bare for you. That’s all of me, Jess.’ He put a hand up to her face and stroked his fingers against her cheek, before sliding them into her hair and cupping the back of her head, drawing her mouth closer to his. ‘After tonight the whole world’s going to know how I feel about you.’

  ‘I can’t believe you did that. For me,’ she murmured, the heat of his mouth driving her wild.

  ‘Yeah, well, apparently being in love can make you do crazy things.’

  ‘You love me?’ The words came out as a gasp.

  He smiled. ‘Isn’t it obvious? I didn’t think I was capable of subtlety.’

  Laughing, she pressed her mouth against his, basking in the familiar taste of him, the tantalising smell of his skin.

  ‘I think you should move in with me,’ he said, drawing back to look her in the eye.

  ‘What?’ she whispered.

  He grinned. ‘What’s the matter, Miss Prim, too wild for you?’

  She huffed out a laugh. ‘I can handle wild. In fact I’m giving up on trying to control everything around me. I don’t want to be sensible any more. I want fun and craziness. And to experience the ups and downs. With you.’

  ‘It’s going to be quite a ride, Jess,’ he said, raising an eyebrow in challenge.

  ‘Bring it on,’ she said, leaning forward to plant a firm kiss on his lips.

  The sound of the gallery door opening brought them back to the present and Jess pulled away to look him in the eye. ‘It sounds like your admirers are arriving.’

 
He looked at her with such sexual heat she thought she might melt into a puddle at his feet. ‘They can wait,’ he said, kicking the office door shut and enfolding her in his arms. ‘Tonight is all about you, after all.’

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from TWELVE HOURS OF TEMPTATION by Shoma Narayanan.

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  ONE

  ‘Brian’s selling the agency.’

  The words didn’t sink in at first because Melissa was busy squinting at her keyboard. Damn the O key. It was jamming up again. The last line she’d typed read as if it had a particularly nasty swear word in it—the difference a single missing o could make was amazing.

  ‘I need a new keyboard,’ she said. ‘Unless... What did you say?’

  Pleased at the impact she’d created, Neera plopped her lush backside onto Melissa’s desk and beamed at her pretty young friend. ‘It’s true. He’s going to announce it today.’

  Melissa stared at her in dismay. Brian Mendonca had set up the tiny advertising agency thirty years ago, and it was more like an extended family than a workplace. Melissa herself had been working there for a little over two years, and she loved the place.

  ‘Who’s buying it?’

  ‘Maximus Advertising. They’re expanding...and Brian wants to retire and go back to Goa, apparently.’ Neera looked over her shoulder and then leaned down. ‘Don’t look now, but the guy who’s taking over is with Brian right now. He’s pretty hot, actually, can’t be very old...’