“Adrienne. Answer the question.” It comes out harsher than I intended.
She sits on an angle in the seat and pulls her skirt up to her hip, exposing her thigh. Then she jabs the needle into her flesh and presses down on the cap. “What do you think?”
I stare straight ahead again, my teeth painfully clenched. Oh, for Chrissakes.
“Didn’t my father tell you?”
“No,” I grind out. “He didn’t.” That’s what she meant about me thinking I had her all figured out. She’s been hiding her condition from me until she realized it would be a useful way to show me I’m not as clever as I think I am.
She zips up the cases and shoves them into her backpack. “Well I do apologize that my condition might make your job harder,” she says.
I don’t give a toss about her condition. I care that something so important as a life-threatening illness wasn’t included in my briefing. I specifically asked her father to tell me everything about his daughter and he wittered on about her art classes and her temper tantrums, but didn’t say anything about her medical condition. My mind immediately starts running through the risks but I don’t know enough about the disease. I’ll have to read up back at the house tonight.
I’m angry, too, that Adrienne didn’t tell me herself, instead hiding her condition for days until she used it as a means to provoke me.
And just like that, I know I’ve finally reached the end of my patience with Adrienne.
Chapter Three
I feel energized as I stride into the Slade. Showing Dieter up like that has given me a boost. He might have stopped me running away, but he didn’t know about my condition. The look on his face when he saw me with the insulin pen, both angry and surprised, was priceless.
I spend the hour or so before my first class in one of the studios, drawing myself as Medusa with snakes for hair, turning my bodyguard to stone. I snicker as I sketch his petrified face. Ha, vanquished.
At eleven I have oils, and we’re on our third week of painting portraits from photographs. I’ve been working on Thranduil from The Hobbit films and I’ve got his haughty expression and long, silvery hair just right, though his hands are causing me a headache. Hands are seriously hard. By the end of the class I’m happy with his left hand but the right still looks knobby and skinny.
Then I have life-drawing. We’re all at our easels, charcoal ready, but no life model to draw. Our teacher looks at the clock on the wall and then strides out, muttering about going to find a volunteer.
Celeste, whom I told Dieter is called Mind Your Own Business, flicks mischievous blue eyes at my bodyguard, and then at me. “Why don’t you ask your goon to sit for us, Adrienne?”
He’s standing at the back of class again, arms folded, his broad shoulders pressed against the wall. Whoops and laughter follow, and I’m about to tell them all to knock it off when he narrows his eyes at me. Something about that expression causes a slow smile to spread across my face. He’s thinking seriously about quitting, I can tell. It won’t take much to push him over the edge.
I turn on my stool to face him. “What a good idea. Come on, goon. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
His eyes stay fixed on mine as the rest of the room joins in on my invitation. A moment later he pushes away from the wall and walks slowly toward me, something flickering in his gray eyes. He stops right in front of my stool and I have to tilt my head back to look up at him. Go on then, I dare you.
Still looking me in the eye, Dieter raises his hand, loosens the tie around his neck and slowly pulls it off. There are a few barks of shocked laughter around us. The smile freezes on my face.
Dieter lays the tie over my easel and his large hands begin undoing the buttons of his shirt. I expected him to walk out or tell me off, but not this. A lock of dark hair falls over his forehead as he stares down at me. He’s got the shirt open halfway down his chest now and I glimpse his strong throat, the tanned expanse of his chest, a dark v of hair.
Oh my god, he’s really doing it. That shirt will be off in seconds. What will the teacher think when she comes back and finds my bodyguard naked at the front of the room? She’s very strict about people “disrespecting the space” in her life-drawing class and might throw me out.
“Wait,” I yelp. “I was just kidding.”
His fingers keep working at the buttons and there’s a look in his eyes that could melt metal. His shirt’s gaping open and I note
distantly that he’s got a body that any artist would itch to sketch.
“Please, I didn’t mean...”
He stops. “Please what, Adrienne?” he growls, his voice pitched low.
I swallow. “I was only kidding. Can’t you take a joke?”
He reaches out and slowly pulls his tie from my easel, and then leans down and whispers in my ear. It’s a very different sort of voice to the one he normally uses. Silkier. More dangerous. “Don’t ask for things, little girl, if you’re not prepared for the consequences.”
Something plummets through me like falling lead. I watch him walking back to his place at the back of the room, buttoning his shirt as he goes.
I’m still staring when the teacher hurries in, a third-year student on her tail. The young woman looks resigned and is already pulling her T-shirt out of her jeans. We get started, but the charcoal shakes in my fingers. I see my bodyguard’s narrowed eyes and hear his low voice in my ear. Every now and then someone whispers or giggles and my face burns again.