One Passionate Night: Her Brooding Italian Boss / The Heiress's Secret Baby / Best Friend to Wife and Mother?

She turned the knob on the ratty door of the cottage and it gave easily. Surprise almost had her turning to ask why he didn’t lock the door, then she realized he was totally comfortable here in the Italian countryside. Which was probably part of why it drove him so crazy not to be able to paint. This was his sanctuary, and it was letting him down. Since his wife’s death, everybody and everything seemed to be letting him down. She would not.

Pride billowed through her. She might make nothing else of her life, but helping him to paint again would be her crowning accomplishment. Even if she never told another soul, to protect his pride, she would know simple Laura Beth Matthews had done something wonderful.

They wound their way through the maze of old paint cans, broken furniture and fabrics to the last room. His studio.

Happy, she faced him with a smile. “So where do I sit? What do I do?”

He ran his hand down his face. “We just got off a plane. Give me a minute to adjust.”

His hesitancy filled the air. He wanted this so much and he’d tried and failed before. She knew that trying again, he faced disappointment again.

She stepped back, giving him space. “Sure.”

He glanced around, then rummaged through stacks of paper in the drawer of a metal desk so old it didn’t even have accommodations for a computer. He pulled out two tablets. One was huge. The other was the size of a spiral notebook. He set the large pad of paper on the top of the desk, and opened the smaller one.

“We’ll do sketches first.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“First, I just need to warm up, get the feel of your features, the shape of your body.”

She nodded eagerly.

“So, I’ll sit here.” He leaned his hip on the corner of the desk. “And you sit there.” He pointed at a ladder-back chair about ten feet away.

She frowned. “There?”

“Yes. These are preliminaries. Warm-ups. Something to get me accustomed to your shapes.”

Her gaze involuntarily rippled to the chaise near the windows. That would have been more comfortable. She wanted to sit there.

But he pointed at the ladder-back chair again.

She smiled hesitantly. Though she understood what he was saying, something really drew her to that chaise. Still, she sat on the ladder-back chair. Antonio picked up a simple number-two pencil.

“Really? A pencil? You’re not going to use charcoal or chalk or anything cool like that?”

He sighed and dropped the tablet to his lap. “I’m warming up!”

She waved her hand. “Okay. Okay. Whatever.”

* * *

By the time Antonio had her seated on the chair, his anxiety about drawing had shimmied away. Praying that she would stop talking and especially stop second-guessing his choices, he picked up his pencil and began sketching quickly, easily, hoping to capture at least five minutes of her sitting still.

When she wrinkled her nose, as if it was itchy, he stopped and stretched. He’d drawn small sketches of her eyes, her nose, her lips, her neck, her eyebrows, the wrinkle in her forehead, the side view of her hair looping across her temple and one sketch of her entire face.

“If you need to scratch your nose, scratch.”

She pulled in a breath and rubbed her palm across her nose. “Thank God.”

“What? You were sitting for...” He glanced at his watch. “Wow. Ten minutes. I guess you do deserve a break. For someone unaccustomed to posing, ten minutes is a long time.”

She popped off the chair. Shook out all her limbs. “I know I’ve sat perfectly still for more than ten minutes at a time, but sitting still without anything to think about or do? That’s hard.”

“I’d actually hoped to break you in with five-minute increments.”

“Meaning?”

“You’d sit for five minutes a few times in our first two settings, then ten minutes in our third and fifteen in our fourth...that kind of thing.”

“So we’re skipping a step?”

“Which could be good.”

“Can I see what you’ve done?”

He handed her the tablet.

She smiled. “These are great.”

“That’s just me messing around until I get a good feel for drawing your features. Then we move on to sketches of what I think a painting of you should look like.”

She beamed at him and everything inside him lit up. He told himself he was happy that she was enjoying the process, happy that he hadn’t yet had an anxiety attack, and motioned her back to the chair.

“If you can keep doing ten-minute sessions, we’ll do two more, then break for the day.”

“You’re only working a half hour?”

He laughed. “Yes. I’m not just indoctrinating you into the process. I’m easing myself in too.”

She sat on the chair, straightened her spine and lifted her face. “Okay.”

He sketched for ten minutes, gave her a break, sketched for ten more, then they had lunch. Later, while she sat by the pool, he paid his dad a visit. He expected them to argue like two overemotional Italians about Constanzo stranding them in Barcelona. Instead, his father quietly apologized, told Antonio he was tired and retired to his room.

The next day, Laura Beth easily graduated to sitting for fifteen minutes at a time. The day after that, she had a bit of trouble with sitting for twenty minutes, but eventually got it.

He drew her face over and over and over again. He sketched her arms, her feet, the slope of her shoulder. Feeling the rhythm of those shapes in his hand as it flowed over the paper, he felt little bits of himself returning. But he didn’t push. Fearing he’d tumble into bad territory, he didn’t let himself feel. He simply put pencil to paper.

On Sunday, with Ricky and Eloise in Italy on the last leg of their honeymoon, he forced Laura Beth to take the day off to visit with them.

Monday morning, though, she arrived in his studio, bright and eager to begin.

Trembling with equal parts of anticipation and terror over the next step of the process, he busied himself with organizing his pencils as he said, “This week we’re doing potential poses for the painting.”

“So now I don’t just have to sit still? I have to sit still a certain way.”

He glanced up. Her eyes were bright. Her smile brilliant. Enthusiasm virtually vibrated from her body.