Unbroken by Lynne Connolly Page B

sketchpad he had mounted on a stand.
    “No problem at all. Despite the accident, I’m fairly supple.”
    “And you don’t have to keep your mouth still while I work. Talk to me.”
    “What about?”
    “Anything you like.”
    Her mouth firmed. He wanted to know the sordid details, did he? Well, fuck him. She began to talk about wine. Her father, long dead, had been a wine merchant and she still remembered the yeasty, musty smell of his wine cellar. She had some bottles, inherited with the rest of the family’s belongings when her mother had died, because there was no one else. Absolutely no one.
    He interrupted her halfway through a description of the champagne-making process, as she was beginning to run out of material. “Do you miss your mother?”
    How to answer that one? Tired of dissimulating, or making up socially acceptable answers, she told him the truth. “No.”
    He didn’t stop the fluid lines he was making on the paper, but glanced up to meet her gaze and she melted all over again. Fuck it, when she took another pose, he’d see the way he turned her on. Even discussing her family hadn’t helped.
    “You were inseparable, or so the papers said,” he said.
    “You read the papers?”
    He grinned. The expression transformed his stern features, added crinkles to the corners of his eyes and a mischievous twinkle, but the smile disappeared as fast as it had come.
    Elusive, fascinating. Even more of a turn-on.
    “I use them to mop up spilled water sometimes. Yes, I read the accounts, and I looked you up on the Internet when I decided to ask for you.”
    Her negative needed qualification otherwise he’d keep at her. Fine, so she’d give him the truth, but not the emotion that went with it. “She was a typical stage mother. She registered me with an agency when I was five, and I did a few commercials. I went to a stage school and an agent from a modelling agency spotted me when I was sixteen. It wasn’t what she wanted for me, but it was near enough. I have to be grateful to her for chaperoning me, making sure I didn’t take too many drugs or go on the kind of crash diets that cause permanent damage.”
    Her mother had exploited that aspect in the press to show how caring she was, but Vashti gave Zoltan the truth now.
    “She was in it for the long term, didn’t want to see her investment damaged. In the last few years I took more control of my life, refused some jobs, reduced my commitments a bit. She went along with it when I explained that it put my price up, gave me an exclusive value. But she still tried to control everything I did.” She felt her surface crack. If she wasn’t careful she’d be pouring her heart out to him and she was fairly sure he was only asking to get some kind of artistic depth, not because he really cared.
    Time she asked a question. “Why did you choose me?”
    He seemed to be drawing her face, because he concentrated on her features, following the contours of her chin and cheekbones with his intent stare.
    He returned to the paper. “You have an interesting face. And now you’re more than just a model, I thought it might be interesting to see what the experience has done for you.”
    “Bastard.” She said it without heat. At least he was telling her the truth.
    “Sure I am.” He looked up and grinned again, and Vashti found herself longing for that smile, fleeting and so attractive. “I have a few pictures here. Poses I’d like you to look at.”
    He bent and picked up a book that lay at his feet and stood to take the half-dozen strides that separated them. She found herself shrinking back, his presence, so close, overwhelming. She’d felt it when he’d answered the door to her that morning, a presence that had rocked her back on her heels, vital and so alive. So fucking sexy.
    It didn’t take much adjustment to smile and force her pose back. He laid the book across her lap and sat next to her, not touching, but making her so aware she was naked while he was