Alexa could only stare.
‘No,’ she repeated, ‘I really can’t paint you. I’m extremely sorry.’
He smiled—a brief, social smile that barely indented his mouth. ‘Pas de tout. Please—won’t you sit down? May I offer you some coffee? A drink, perhaps, as the sun has very nearly set?’
She didn’t move. ‘Mr de Rochemont, I really have to emphasise that I have no choice but to resign the commission. I can’t paint you. It’s impossible! Just impossible!’
She could hear her voice rising, and it dismayed her. She wanted to get out of here, but how could she? Guy de Rochemont was still indicating that she should come and sit down, and without knowing why she found that that was exactly what she was doing. She sat, almost with a bump, clutching her handbag.
‘I can’t paint you,’ she said again.
His eyes were resting on her with that familiar veiled regard that she could not read in the slightest. ‘Very well. If that is your decision I respect it entirely. Now, tell me, Ms Harcourt, do you have an engagement this evening?’
Alexa stared. What had that got to do with anything?
He took her silence for negation. ‘Then I wonder,’ he went on, his eyes never leaving her face, ‘if it would be agreeable to you to be my guest this evening. I feel sure the event would be of interest to you. It is the private opening of the forthcoming exhibition on Revolution and Romanticism: Art in the Napoleonic Period. Rochemont-Lorenz has the privilege of being one of the key sponsors.’
Alexa went on staring. Then she said the first coherent thing that came into her head. ‘I’m not dressed for the evening.’
Once more Guy de Rochemont gave a brief social smile.
‘Pas de probleme,’ he said.
And it wasn’t.
There was, Alexa discovered over the course of the next hour, absolutely no problem at all in transforming her from someone who was wearing the same dull grey blouse and skirt that she’d worn the first time she’d encountered her client to someone who—courtesy of the use of the facilities of a penthouse apartment that seemed to form a substantial portion of the executive floor, plus a stylist who appeared out of nowhere with two sidekicks, hairdresser and make-up artist, and a portable wardrobe of eveningwear—looked astoundingly, shockingly different.
When she emerged, one hectic, extraordinary hour later, and walked into the executive floor reception area, Guy de Rochemont looked up from where he’d been talking on the phone at the deserted secretarial desk and said only one thing to her.
His eyes—those green, inscrutable eyes—rested on her for only a brief moment. He took in the slender figure in raw silk—burnt sienna, with a high neckline but bare arms—her hair in a crown around her head and her face in full make-up, with eyes as deep as oceans.
Then he walked forward, stopped just in front of her.
‘At last.’
That was all he said.
And he didn’t mean how long she’d kept him waiting.
Satisfaction ran through Guy as he surveyed the woman in front of him. He had had more than ample time to peruse her attributes during his sittings, and Alexa Harcourt in evening attire was all that he wanted her to be.
Superbe.
The single adjective formed in his mind, and he plucked it from the list of many that he could apply to her and considered it. Yes, superbe…
Nothing less would do as a description. He had known from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her that once he’d disposed of the prim schoolteacher image she so amusingly put forward he would reveal for his delectation a beauty well worth his attention. And so it had proved.
His eyes rested on her appreciatively. Yes, superbe indeed. Tall, graceful, slender, with that classic English chic—so understated, yet so powerfully alluring for that very reason—she was exactly what he wanted her to be. A wisp of a smile played at his lips as he called to mind the muted, self-effacing persona she had presented up to this point. At first he had assumed it was a ploy, for women went to vast efforts to engage his interest, and she would not have been the first to attempt a pose of indifference to him. But as the sittings had continued he had come to the conclusion—surprising, but for that very reason enticing—that Alexa Harcourt was not courting his interest.
Not, of course, that she was not all too aware of him. That had been evident to him from the first, and it had come to be a source of amusement to him, adding a rare piquancy to his pursuit—a pursuit which he had taken considerable enjoyment in extending for far longer than he customarily did when it came to the women he selected for his relaxation. But he had found that it was fort amusant to sit, posed like a prince in his Renaissance palace, while his portrait was captured for posterity—or in his case for his fond maman—and let his eyes play over her sculpted features. He found pleasure in this casual scrutiny, while she assiduously endeavoured to ignore his regard.
But not without revealing by her very assiduity just how responsive she was increasingly becoming to his presence.
His eyes veiled momentarily. That increasing responsiveness was evidently, the reason why she had come here to make her dramatic announcement that she could not continue with making his portrait. Again, at first for a few moments he had assumed she had done so merely to put to the test whether he was or was not interested in her. But then he had realised, with a sense of relief as well as satisfaction, that his reading of her was unchanged—she was quite genuine in her determination to abandon his portrait.
It was an excellent sign! Excellent that she was not attempting to be intrigant, but even more excellent that she was having such problems with the task of capturing his likeness. Because the reason for that was obvious—he was no longer nothing more than a client to her. And most essential of all, her inability to capture his likeness betokened her increasing frustration at her own attraction to him. She could not paint him…. because she could only desire him.
And desire was exactly what he felt for her. He had experienced it the moment he’d realised how much of a front her austere appearance and repressive manner was. He had allowed himself the luxury of a slow, enjoyable cultivation of his desire. Now, as she stood before him in the rich, lustrous beauty she was finally revealing to him, his desire rose pleasurably. Anticipation speared within him for what he knew would be the delights of the evening—the night—ahead.