“My chalet.” He bypassed the entrance to the kitchen and opened a door to the patio, inviting her to exit ahead of him.
“You did well. I liked it.” A wind had come up beneath the overcast skies, making her hug her arms and try to tuck her wayward hair behind her ears as they walked past flower pots that lined the covered pool.
He was looking sideways at her.
“I wasn’t trying to escape because I didn’t like the floor plan.”
He rolled his eyes, which made her smile, but self-consciousness stuck like a burr, prickly and sharp. It was strange to be with him again, in person, alone, without nurses or valets hovering. With sexual awareness sizzling within her.
“I’m serious,” she said, trying to hide her nervousness. “I know you don’t need my approval, but I thought it felt cozy despite the open plan. You obviously placed the windows very carefully. Each view was a well-framed photograph of the natural world—what?” she demanded as his look grew penetrating. “I’m an artist. I notice when care has been taken for a particular effect. Don’t you? Look at these stairs.”
She waved at the way they curved down from the upper terrace.
“Most people see convenience, but the placement balances the turret on the other side, which is probably the master bedroom, situated to overlook—” She turned to look across the expanse of grounds, charmed as she noticed the brook and the wooden bridge. “Oh, that’s lovely, isn’t it?”
“He wanted to put the master bedroom on this end,” Xavier said. “At the top of the stairs, closer to the pool. I suggested the turret and told him to curve the stairs.”
She pivoted to face him, watching his gaze track the upper terrace, profile dark with critique, but also...envy?
“What else have you designed?”
“Nothing. My attention is needed elsewhere.” He said it without emotion, but she felt the pang that he refused to betray.
“You’re frustrated.”
His lids came down so the heat of his gaze glowed fiercely behind the veil of his spiky lashes. “We’re talking about that, are we?” His attention dropped to her mouth.
Suddenly they were poolside again. Such a hard streak of sexual heat shot through her, it physically stung from the base of her throat, behind her breastbone, sank like a hot coal in the pit of her belly and radiated warmth into the juncture of her thighs. Her heart took off at a gallop while birds took flight in her midsection.
“I meant as an artist!” She blushed, embarrassed at how quickly and blatantly she reacted to a simple look.
His mouth deepened at the corners. He pushed his hands into his pockets. “There are many ways to apply form and function to the role I occupy. I don’t have to design something.”
“It’s not the same.” She was still flustered, stewing in heat and being confused by it. “I told you about the time I was depressed? It was because the medication made it impossible for me to create. The need was there, but when I sat down to draw or sew, it was like sending a bucket into an empty well. I wasn’t having panic attacks, but I didn’t see any point in being alive if I couldn’t...” She held up her hands.
“I’m not depressed.”
“But you’re denied.”
“So what?”
“It’s something you need.”
“It’s something I want. Desire can be ignored in favor of more important things.”
“We’re not talking about architecture, are we?” She let her hands fall and blinked, eyes watery from the wind. Or so she hoped he believed.
A long silence followed where only a distant wind chime rang.
“Are you really here because of optics?” It made her lungs feel heavy and raw.
He hissed out a long breath. “I came because I wanted to.” He set his teeth after he said it, as though absorbing some inner thought that displeased him, then said in a voice rife with subdued turmoil, “But we don’t get everything we want, bella. You know that as well as I do.”
He wasn’t mocking her. He was saying it with deep understanding of the things she would never have—a carefree childhood, another pregnancy. She choked up, wanting to ask if he had come because he’d wanted to be with her, but she was too scared of the answer.
So she only said, “Have you forgotten my name? You’re calling me bella.”
“It’s not an endearment. It’s who you are. It’s what you are.” The last bit sounded as though it came out against his will.
She wanted to believe him, but her misshapen heart was so very conscious of her flaws. Of the fact he had rebuffed her.