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They had not even reached the chalet that had held so many good memories of long-ago childhood holidays when Maya had felt a migraine coming on.
It had definitely been a sign of things to come and proved, she reflected grimly, that it was a fatal mistake to try and recapture the past. But when the owner, an old family friend, had offered her and Beatrice the place for a song after a last-minute cancellation it had seemed too good an offer to pass up. So they’d eased their consciences by calling it a working holiday; after all, what better place, Beatrice had said, for Maya to get some inspiration for the winter collection she was trying to put together for the long-delayed launch of their fashion label.
But they had got very little actual work done, not due to Maya’s migraine, or the lure of the ski slopes or even the après-ski fun, but solely thanks to the arrival of Beatrice’s nearly ex-husband, Dante, who had turned up without the royal fanfare befitting his status as the Crown Prince of San Macizo and thrown her sister’s life into chaos yet again.
Maya could forgive him for being the reason that their fashion label had not got off the ground first time around, but she couldn’t forgive him for making her sister—who, until she’d fallen in love with Dante, had been the most optimistic and glass-half-full person Maya knew—so damned miserable. These days, even when Beatrice did smile, it was obviously an act; the shadow of misery visibly remained in her eyes.
From her vantage point beside the potted palm, Maya pushed away the thoughts of her sister’s doomed marriage and watched in fascination as the young artist’s hand moved across the paper managing in a few bold confident lines to pick out the essential features of his victims and magnifying them to comical proportions.
Maya had once thought she had artistic talent, but her youthful confidence in her ability had not withstood the campaign of mockery and humiliation waged by her stepfather.
The man was no longer in their lives and Maya had recovered most of the self-belief he had systematically destroyed, but never regained her uncomplicated joy of expressing herself in charcoal or paint.
In retrospect she could see that the dreadful Edward had probably unintentionally done her a favour—goodness, but he’d hate to know that—because there were so many artists far more talented than her who never made the grade and she didn’t want to be one of the ranks ofnearlygood enough.
But this guy, she decided, was pretty good. Though to her amusement it was obvious that not everyone was happy with the frequently unflattering though always amusing portraits. But he was doing brisk business and he took the few knockbacks he received in his stride.
‘Quantity over quality.’ The youthful artist threw the comment towards her over his shoulder, making her start guiltily.
‘I think you’re very talented,’ Maya said with a smile. She came out from behind the spiky palm fronds and moved in closer as the young man scrunched up his last rejected creation and attacked a fresh sheet.
‘It pays the bills, or at least some of them, and beats starving in an attic. That issolast century or maybe the one before. God, not again!’ He groaned as the hotel lights flickered and went out.
‘Is it a power cut?’ There had been a moment of total silence but now the place was filled with a jabber of voices, most saying much the same as she just had.
‘Who knows? It’s been doing it all morning. Ah, and now we have light.’
His clever hand was flying over the paper again, the caricature coming to life like magic. With a few brief strokes a face began to appear along with, and this was the most magical part, a personality.
Head tilted, she studied the face that was taking form. A razor-sharp blade of a masterful nose made for looking down on the rest of humanity bisected a face with impossibly high cheekbones; a mouth with an overtly full, sensual upper lip contrasting with a firm, slightly cruel-looking lower, a deep chin cleft and a squared-off jaw that looked as though it were carved from granite completed the strikingly austere effect.
If the owner of those heavy-lidded eyes with exaggeratedly long curling eyelashes had in the flesh a fraction of the arrogance, self-belief and authority that was looking back at Maya from the paper, he was surely not going to be a potential customer of the artist.
In her private estimation, the subject of the cruel, clever portrait did not look like someone who could laugh at themselves.
Her warm dark brown eyes lifted, sparkling with amused speculative curiosity as she searched the room for the real-life inspiration, but the half-smile curling her lips quickly faded as she recognised the model for the unsolicited portrait.
It wasn’t hard to spot him and that wasn’t just because he stood inches above most people in the place. An imposingly tall, athletic figure in a long black wool trench coat that moulded to broad shoulders. His jet-black wavy hair was pushed back from a broad brow, nearly touching the snow-crusted collar of the coat as he moved through the press of bodies with a seemingly inbuilt exclusion zone. He wasnot, she mused, someone who could easily fade into the background.
Maya was conscious, not just of the uncomfortable in-your-face aura of alpha-male authority that he projected even from this distance, but the skin-tightening prickle of antagonism it produced in her. She chose to focus on that aspect while trying to ignore the pelvic flutter of awareness she felt as she watched him. He really was the living, breathing definition of compulsive viewing.
Love him or loathe him—there was no in between, she suspected. What was not in dispute was that there was something totally riveting about the man. Maya found herself both repelled and fascinated in equal measure, but then beauty always was fascinating—even if you were only trying to find a flaw in it—and hewasprettyaesthetically pleasing!
The artist was good, but the closer his subject got, the more the limitations to his technique became apparent, though to be fair no amount of exaggeration could turn this subject into a joke. Everything about him, from the sense of restrained power in his panther-like fluid stride to his perfectly chiselled profile that combined strength and sensuality in equal measures, suggested he wasmorein every sense of the word.
The artist moving forward, sketch pad in hand to waylay his quarry, re-awoke Maya to her surroundings. She blinked and shook her head. The noise of the crowded space gradually filtering back, she was disturbed and embarrassed to realise justhowhard she must have been staring at the man, as though she were... She lowered her eyes and felt the heat climbing to her cheeks as the mocking termsex-starvedpopped into her head.
It was not a description she could dispute in the literal sense, but the phrase somehow implied that the situation was a bad thing. Maybe it was for some people, but in her own personal situation celibacy was a conscious choice and not bad luck or, as Beatrice suggested, because she was frightened... She closed her eyes briefly, trying not to think about what Beatrice had said. Her sister was hurting badly, and was just lashing out.
Beatrice had passion, and Maya, well, she had...caution, and what she suspected was a pretty low sex drive, so she didn’t envy poor Bea in the slightest.
She sometimes wondered if her sister had thought she had found with Dante the rare thing their parents had enjoyed before their father had been snatched away from them.
How would you even know if you found it? It seemed to Maya it was much more likely that—always supposing that special someone even existed in the first place—you would walk straight past your soulmate in the street. Maybe it was why most people, or so it seemed to her, eithersettledor, like Beatrice, imagined that they had found their soulmate, only to end up miserable and alone when things went wrong.
Or maybe Bea was right? Perhaps Maya was just scared—scared of offering her love to a man only to have it rejected, or loving and losing him as Bea had... Pushing away the unhelpful thoughts before they could set up home in her head, she allowed herself to be further distracted by the advancing tall, powerful subject of the caricature.
No chance of mistaking him for a soulmate, she mused, rubbing her hands hard against her upper arms to ease the dark prickle she felt under her skin even through the layers, a sensation she had only previously experienced in the prelude to an electric storm.
