Driving Her Crazy (9 page)

They spent the next two hours touring around the palatial house and grounds. Kent dutifully took photographs and Sadie asked all the standard questions. It was late afternoon when they were invited to
freshen up
and join
Mr Pinto
for pre-dinner drinks at six in the
saloon
.

Kent felt as if he’d just walked into the set of an Agatha Christie movie but he did as he was told, having a shower and getting changed into clean jeans and a casual skivvy. He took his camera with him as he headed for the
Gone With The Wind
staircase.

Sadie, who was still in her killer dress, met him at the top and they descended together. ‘I feel like I should be calling you Scarlett,’ he murmured.

Sadie laughed. ‘Why, Rhett, I do declare...’

Kevin fixed them both a drink and they all made polite conversation whilst they waited for the guest of honour. Leo turned up twenty-five minutes later.

‘Sadie!’ he exclaimed from the doorway.

Sadie, who had been chatting to Kevin, rose to her feet, her heart pounding again as the man she’d once loved walked briskly towards her.

‘Leo,’ she murmured as he swept her into a hug.

Sadie shut her eyes and waited for the familiar intoxicating rush she’d always experienced just from his presence. When it didn’t come she opened them to find herself looking directly into Kent’s gaze. He was standing near the large floor-to-ceiling French doors across the other side of the room in her direct line of sight.

He winked at her and she found herself suppressing a smile as Leo held her for a little longer than she was comfortable with.

‘My goodness,’ Leo said as he finally released her and held her away at arm’s length. ‘I think you’ve been living the high life. Where have all those lovely bones gone, darling?’

Kent watched Sadie’s smile falter and before he knew it he was striding towards them. The urge to punch Leonard Pinto in the face was one he was just able to suppress as he stuck out his hand and introduced himself.

‘Ah, yes, Mr Nelson,’ Leo said, grasping Kent’s hand. ‘Kevin mentioned that you were the photographer. It is indeed a great pleasure to meet you.’

Kent nodded. He supposed he should have returned the compliment, but Sadie’s smile in his peripheral vision was so brittle he thought it might actually crumble off her face and, frankly, Leonard Pinto’s handshake had been unimpressive.

Kevin handed Leo his standard gin and tonic and regaled Kent with his attempts at photography. Sadie listened to them on autopilot. She’d nibbled on an apple all day and the glass of white wine she was sipping was going straight to her head.

She tried not to let Leo’s opening comment get to her—he’d never been a particularly sensitive man—but she’d starved herself for days and knew she looked damn good. Not rake thin as she had been, but good nonetheless.

Would it have killed him to have given her a compliment?

Leo laughed at a joke he’d told and Sadie ran her eyes over him. He hadn’t changed. Maybe there was a little more grey in the wings at his temple, some more padding under his chin and around his middle, but he was the same. Tall and thin, with long arty fingers, curiously not paint stained as per usual, and bookish wire-rimmed glasses.

She waited for the rush of tangled emotions he’d always aroused and was relieved to feel nothing.

She switched her attention to Kent and his polite fixed smile. The comparison between the two men was striking. Kent was toned and broad and fit-looking compared to Leo’s obvious indoor physique. Kent’s spare, angular features were sharply contrasted with the gentle planes of Leo’s.

Sadie had never placed any stead on looks but with the two of them together it was hard not to compare. Kent looked like a Rodin sculpture—all symmetry and fluid lines. Leo looked like a kindergarten art project—something that you cherished because of an association but not something you wanted to just look at for hours.

‘The evening meal is served,’ Kevin announced interrupting Sadie’s reverie.

Kent watched Sadie nibble pathetically around the edges of her meal. It was all beautifully cooked by Kevin who seemed to be general dogsbody, but it just wasn’t his thing.

Small servings, big plates, posh names.

By the end of it Kent was still starving.

And Sadie must have been ready to eat the table leg.

More polite conversation was made about the local area and the history of the house until Kevin took away the last plate.

‘Would you like a tour of the studio now?’ Leonard asked them as he stood.

Kent looked at Sadie, a half-query in his eyes. Personally he’d rather drive to the nearest steak restaurant and order the biggest Waygu they had.

‘Sure,’ Sadie said, standing also, her head spinning a little. She was curious to see what kind of space he painted in now, in this marble mausoleum in the middle of nowhere.

Leo, ever the charming host, regaled them with stories as he led the way towards the back of the house. He opened a large double wooden door, flicking a light on in the darkened room illuminating the space inside and out.

The first thing she noticed was that the studio overlooked the man-made lake Kevin had shown them earlier. The next was how clean it was. She knew Leo, she knew him well, and when he was in the middle of a project—the studio was always a shambles.

The third thing she only noticed when Kent said, ‘Holy cow.’ She turned to look up on the wall behind her to see what had his jaw dropping.

A giant nude portrait hung there. Of her. And for a moment all three of them just stood and looked at it.

‘My best, don’t you think, Sadie?’

Sadie nodded as she remembered how many hours she’d sat for this particular painting. She felt her cheeks flush as Kent’s gaze continually darted over it. It wasn’t the same as seeing her naked in the flesh, she knew, but it was still her up there, lying reclined in all her glory.

Kent couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He’d hoped to see something like this. To see a true artist capture Sadie’s likeness. But this portrait was shocking. The Sadie in the painting was a far cry from the woman he’d shared a car with for the last few days.

She was very thin. Her bones stuck out, her curves were non-existent and her breasts were much smaller.

He looked down at her, horrified. ‘My God, were you ill?’ he asked.

Leo blanched at Kent’s blunt question. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he blustered. ‘She was much healthier then. Look at that bone structure. Those angles. She’s the very picture of female beauty, of what men desire in women. And she worked hard to look that good, didn’t you, darling?’

Kent looked at Leo Pinto as if he’d just grown another head. Suddenly Sadie’s eating patterns of the last few days, her ‘
It’s complicated
,’ made sense.

Leo had obviously been starving her for two years.

And facing him again as a successful, independent career woman must have taken a lot of courage.

Finally he understood her. Understood the celery sticks and the oversized T-shirts.

And he understood why. Leo Pinto.

She’d loved him to the point that she’d become someone else for him.

And he’d let her.

Toxic bastard
.

He looked at a silent Sadie, then back at the painting. He hated it on sight. She looked like his ballerina nudes.

Thin and androgynous.

She did not look like Sadie Bliss.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Pinto,’ Kevin interrupted from the doorway, a phone in his hand. ‘It’s your agent—he says it’s urgent.’

Leo gave Kent a pained smile and ran his fingers down the back of Sadie’s arm. ‘I won’t be a moment.’

Kent watched him go, then turned back to Sadie. She was looking at the painting with an inscrutable expression and he couldn’t figure out whether it was admiration, indifference or revulsion.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

Sadie nodded absently, rubbing her arms, feeling suddenly cold and very light-headed. It had been interesting seeing the portrait again with time and distance on her side.

Interesting to see it through Kent’s eyes too.

‘You’ve been starving yourself to look like that?’ he asked incredulously, jabbing a finger in the general direction of the portrait. ‘You don’t seriously believe that men find bones and angles attractive, do you?’

‘I used to,’ she said. ‘Leo used to say I had the perfect face on the wrong body but that could be fixed.’ Spots started to swim before her eyes as she dragged her gaze away from the portrait she’d once loved so much.

Kent watched as Sadie swayed and he grabbed her upper arms in alarm. ‘You’re not okay.’

Sadie nodded as his strong, frowning face swam before her eyes. ‘Just a little light-headed,’ she dismissed, but reached for his arms for extra anchorage.

‘I’m not surprised. That’s what happens when you don’t eat anything. Come on, I have a Mars bar in my bag.’

Something told him there wouldn’t be anything so common in
Casa Del Idiot
.

‘No,’ she resisted. ‘Just give me a moment. It’ll pass.’

Kent shook his head as he looked back at the painting. The woman staring back at him looked utterly miserable. Thin for sure, but where was the vibrant woman of sass and spark he’d come to know the past few days? ‘That is a tragedy,’ he muttered.

‘Thanks a lot,’ Sadie half joked, looking up into his face. He was still holding her, his scratchy-looking jaw line in profile. ‘I was rather fond of my bony look.’

Kent looked down at her in alarm. Which was a mistake, because her mouth was so very, very near, her red dress like a beacon in his peripheral vision. That passionfruit smell enveloped him in a flurry of very bad ideas. He dropped his gaze to the plump pillows turned up towards him, thinking that thin was never a good look.

Not on bodies. Or mouths. ‘Trust me, curvy looks way better.’

Sadie could feel the heat of his gaze on her mouth. She shifted her hands so they were lying more comfortably against his biceps. ‘Leo always said that men lied about liking curves, that given a choice they’d choose skinny every time.’

Kent frowned. ‘God, he’s a pretentious arse.’

Sadie smiled, but Leo’s words still stung after all these years. She traced a finger absently around the bulk of a bicep. ‘He said no one would ever want me.’

Kent shook his head as her doe eyes blinked up at him. His pulse was pounding through his ears as her body swayed closer to his. He swallowed as desire bolted through his system. He shouldn’t kiss her. Not in a client’s house. And certainly not standing under a life-sized image of her in the buff. But she smelled so damn good and her lips were so damn near. Nearer as he moved his face closer to hers.

‘He’s wrong,’ Kent muttered.

Sadie’s breath quickened as his lips descended. She hung onto his words. Looking at her portrait again, listening to Leo’s rapture over it had sucked her back into a turbulent time in her life, but this man—this potent virile he-man, the polar opposite to Leo in every way—was telling her something different.

He was going to kiss her in this room, in front of that painting.

And she needed it
. She needed to be desired for the person she was now, not the one she’d been.

The air crackled around them as their lips met. Kent felt no resistance, just her body completely aligning with his and her incredible mouth opening to him on a little whimper that reached right inside his gut and squeezed.

And then it was gone as a much hotter, deeper, more urgent need consumed him. The need to claim, to conquer, to lead. He sucked in a breath, pushing his hands into her hair and his tongue into her mouth, feeling the tentative touch of hers grow bolder.

But then voices getting nearer started to intrude and Kent suddenly realised where he was. He pulled away, her little disappointed mew and moist pouty mouth almost bringing him to his knees.

‘You okay?’ he asked, when she opened her big grey eyes, now the colour of slate, his arms steadying her.

Sadie blinked and nodded as she heard Leo enter the room even though she wasn’t sure she’d ever be okay again.

SEVEN

The kiss kept Sadie awake long into the night. Nothing kept Sadie awake long into the night. Especially not something that probably didn’t even last twenty seconds. It was practically over before it began but, man, did it have an impact!

It had certainly shot her flagging blood sugar into the stratosphere. And as she lay in the dark staring at the ceiling she felt as if she were still riding the sugar high.

It had been impossible to concentrate on Leo after the impulsive kiss. All she’d been aware of was the tingle in her lips, the fizz in her blood and Kent’s brooding monosyllabic presence nearby. Had he felt as flummoxed as she had? Or was it just another gallant deed
he-men
performed every day for damsels in distress?

The kiss of life to revive flagging blood sugars and dented egos.

She had escaped as soon as possible to get away from Kent. To get away from both of them.

Two very different men who had both rocked her world.

Kent hadn’t attempted to stop her or even follow, for which she was grateful. She needed some distance. To gain some perspective. Like the perspective she’d gained over Leo since being apart from him for the last few years.

Because she seriously doubted that one little kiss meant anything to Kent, especially considering how very hard he’d tried to have absolutely nothing to do with her the entire trip.

Men flirted with her. It was just a fact of her life no matter how hard she dressed down and didn’t try to draw attention to herself.

But not Kent. Kent had been blunt in his complete lack of interest.

Which only made the kiss more puzzling.

But it had been an odd moment. And straight afterwards he had looked as if he were contemplating hacking his lips off. Reading something into it would be a bad idea. It would be something the nineteen-year-old Sadie would have done. Latching onto anyone who flattered her and showed an interest in anything other than the contents of her bra.

Twenty-four-year-old Sadie used her head.

And it was telling her to get a grip.

After
her restless night Sadie woke late. Kevin informed her that Kent had headed out about midnight to take photographs and wasn’t expected back until after lunch. And that Mr Pinto would receive her in his studio at ten.

Sadie felt an immediate sense of loss. The memory of her starry night on top of Kent’s Land Rover had stayed with her and the pull to see an outback night again, to see it as he saw it, through a lens, was undeniable.

And what was she supposed to read into his sudden walkabout? Was it his not-so-subtle way of saying that he didn’t want to talk about what had happened?

That the kiss hadn’t meant anything?

That it had been a mistake?

‘Egg-white omelette?’

Kevin’s question broke into her swirling thoughts. She shook her head, her hunger pangs dampened by her confusion. ‘Just a cup of tea, please.’

Twenty minutes later she was knocking on Leo’s studio door in a similar shoestring-strapped dress to yesterday, hinting and skimming in a deep ochre like the colour of the earth outside the oasis that Leo had built for himself. It buttoned all the way up the front with tiny black buttons. Her hair was clasped behind in a tight ponytail. Strappy sandals adorned her feet. Dark kohl emphasised her eyes and gloss drew attention to her mouth.

It had been tempting to interview him in her travel clothes just to see that annoyed little crease he got between his brows. But she was a professional and she was working, representing
Sunday On My Mind,
and she wouldn’t compromise that.

And, in Leo’s presence, her career was like a shield against his poisonous words from the past, so she was going to armour herself in the full uniform and hold her head up high.

Leo pulled the door open. ‘Sadie!’

He pulled her towards him into an embrace, kissing her on the mouth before Sadie could take evasive action and lingering a little longer than was polite. She pulled back and noticed a fleeting look of confusion on his face before he ushered her in.

Light filled the room from the large windows and Sadie was struck again by how clean the studio was. She looked around for half-finished canvases stacked against the walls, drop sheets, preliminary sketches littering the ample bench tops. Even the familiar toxic chemical odour of paint, so inherent in his studio, was strangely absent.

‘I’ve never seen your studio so sparkling before,’ she remarked.

Leo shrugged. ‘I’ve never allowed a photographer into my space before,’ he said, indicating the studio looking even more cavernous with the usual chaos cleaned away. ‘Can’t have the public knowing what a pigsty I work in.’

Sadie noticed his very clean-looking hands again. The entire two years she’d lived with him Leo’s fingers had rarely been without paint stains. ‘Are you between projects at the moment?’

Leo nodded briskly. ‘I’ve set up some chairs over by the windows,’ he said, moving towards them. ‘Will that be okay for the interview?’

Sadie followed him over to the two low bucket chairs separated by a coffee table upon which there was a carafe of water and two glasses. Kevin appeared as she sat down, handing Leo his usual gin and tonic, and enquired as to whether she wanted something else to drink. She declined and he poured her some water as she rummaged through her bag for her notebook and her tape recorder.

‘Do you mind?’ she asked as she set it on the table between them.

Leo shook his head. ‘Not at all.’

Sadie felt ridiculously nervous as she started the interview. She knew the man intimately and it was hardly her first job, but she didn’t want to stuff it up. Leo had told her she couldn’t make it without him and it was imperative to prove she could.

She had
.

Two hours later it was over and Sadie was exhausted from the polite pretence between them. Especially with Leo’s continual efforts to sabotage Sadie’s professionalism by spicing his answers with personal details of their past life together. Her nerves were at screeching point when she closed her notebook and pronounced herself satisfied.

Leo stretched back in the chair and looked at her for long moments. ‘What are you doing, Sadie?’

Sadie contemplated pretending she didn’t know what he was asking, but decided that playing coy wasn’t her style any more. ‘I’m doing my job,’ she said as she stuffed the tools of her trade back in her handbag.

Leo stood and held out his hand to her. ‘Come,’ he commanded.

Sadie looked up at his outstretched hand and cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘I beg your pardon?’

Leo sighed. ‘Let me show you something.’

After a moment or two Sadie stood ignoring his hand. She let him usher her over, his hand at her elbow, to stand in the middle of the room facing the painting of her. Neither of them said anything for a moment.

‘You belong here with me.’

Sadie felt the pull, the allure, of the painting even after all this time. Every brushstroke told a story of a time in her life when she’d been deliriously happy. When a man had cosseted her and celebrated her female form instead of lamenting it as her father had done.

‘Look how beautiful you are,’ Leo whispered.

His finger stroked the inside of her elbow and tears blurred in Sadie’s eyes—she had looked good. But being back here with him beside her she also remembered his obsession with her body. And how she’d bought into it. As her stomach rumbled again she remembered those days when she would have killed for a cheeseburger and fries.

When not even his compliments could soothe the ache that continually gnawed at her gut.

When the diet pills and the caffeine and nights of no sleep as Leo painted her obsessively had left her strung out.

With distance she could recognise the insanity of it.

‘I could help you get back to that, Sadie. Stay here with me. Let me paint you again.’

His voice was low and, oh, so familiar as his thumb continued to stroke her arm. Sadie fought against the illicit thrill of addiction. She shook her head. ‘I have another job now.’

‘I bet it doesn’t measure up to being Leonard Pinto’s muse. I need you, Sadie. We need each other.’

It was his utter arrogance that helped pull her back from the edge. A few years ago she’d revelled in that title; now it turned her stomach.

He might as well have said Leonard Pinto’s plaything.

As if she were some doll he could manipulate into whatever position he wanted.

She looked down at his thumb still stroking her. The skin was pink as a newborn babe’s and she could see the whorl of his fingerprint.
I need you, Sadie.

She took a step away from him as realisation dawned, his hand falling away. ‘Oh, my God. You’re blocked, aren’t you?’ She looked around at the studio gleaming like a luxury car showroom. ‘You’re not in between projects at all.’

Leo looked at the floor. ‘A small slump,’ he dismissed.

‘How long, Leo?’ she asked his downcast head.

When he finally looked at her again she could tell he was steeling himself to lie. But then his shoulders sagged and he looked significantly more than twenty years her senior. ‘I haven’t painted anything decent since you left.’

Sadie blinked at his admission. She’d been gone for over three years.
That had to be killing him.

Leo looked at her. ‘You belong here with me, Sadie.’

He sounded like a petulant child and Sadie shook her head as she realised she was finally free of him. ‘No. I belong to me. And I have a job that I love.’

‘You
loved
posing for me.’

His interjection was almost a whine and she took pity on him. ‘It’s not a real career, Leo.’

‘That didn’t seem to bother you at the time.’

Sadie ignored his sarcasm and the truth of it. ‘Journalism can take me places. I’ve been out for just a few months and already I have a shot at my dream job.’

Leo stuck his hand on his hip. ‘Thanks to me. You’ve only got this shot because you slept with
me
. I warned you—you were nothing without me.’

Sadie reeled a little as the crudeness of his triumphant accusation sank in. He’d obviously been waiting three years to throw that one in her face. And it was true—she had scored this interview because of her association with Leo. But she wasn’t the lost young woman he’d tossed away a few years back—she had a spine these days and his slights didn’t have the power to hurt any more.

She certainly wasn’t going to hang around listening to any more. ‘Goodbye, Leo,’ she said, turning away from him.

‘Sadie, wait!’

She contemplated ignoring him, but the urgency in his voice pulled her up and she turned around.

‘You walk away and you’re walking away from that.’ He pointed to the painting. ‘You’ll never get a shot at being her again.’

Sadie looked at the painting and finally saw what Kent had seen last night. Bones and angles and hollows. Leo had even painted her breasts smaller—artistic licence, as he was so fond of quoting. Suddenly she looked like just another skinny Hollywood starlet or skeletal model.

Like every ballerina he’d ever painted.

It didn’t look like her.

‘I don’t want to be her, Leo. I like me. I like the me I am now.’

She stalled for a moment, realising the words that had just fallen out were utterly true. Time, distance and Kent’s kiss had put some things into perspective.

‘I like to eat good food and drink good wine and I love junk food as well! I like those little tiny marshmallows on my cornflakes for breakfast and hot dogs and, damn it all, I think Twisties should be a food group.’

Leo shook his head. ‘You don’t mean that,’ he said.

Sadie nodded. ‘I’ll tell you a secret about that girl, Leo. She wasn’t happy. Not really. She just thought she was.’

Sadie couldn’t look at the painting a moment longer. All she could see now was how starved for affection she’d been.

And she just wasn’t that girl any more.

She turned on her heel and left. Left Leo standing in the middle of his studio gawping like a landed fish.

She took the stairs two at a time to her room and threw her things in her bag. As she headed out again she noticed a sketch pad and a box of sketching pastels on the bedside table. She fingered them lovingly—Leo was a creature of habit. He’d always kept stashes of them everywhere so he’d have access when the muse struck.

No doubt they were here because he’d thought they’d end up in bed together.

On a whim she picked them up and shoved them in her bag. Then she turned straight back around. She reached the front door just as Kent was entering. He looked so good, so
he-man
, so not
arty
, she almost threw herself straight at him.

But the wariness in his gaze as he took in her bag stopped her. ‘We’re leaving,’ she said.

Kent blinked. They were supposed to stay another night with Sadie getting a plane to Darwin in the morning. He wasn’t sure what had gone on in his absence but Sadie sounded pretty serious.

Hot but serious.
That damn mouth he’d been thinking about all night set in a determined little line.

Just as the line of buttons down her front was taunting him.

‘Give me five.’

She nodded. ‘I’ll wait for you in the car.’

Kent didn’t ask any questions about Leo when he joined her in the promised five minutes. He just started the car. ‘Where to?’ he asked.

‘Town,’ she said. ‘I need Twisties.’

Kent
kept the food coming at a café in Borroloola and Sadie ate as if she were pregnant with twin elephants.

‘Better?’ he asked as she finally pushed away her plate and refused some more of his hot chips. It had given him immense satisfaction watching her load food into her mouth.

The painting of her in Leo’s studio had been disturbing and he’d spent a lot of time out in the bush last night trying to scrub it from his brain. Understanding that the misogynistic idiot residing in Casa Del Leone was behind all her insecurities hadn’t helped—seeing her eat did.

It also distracted him from the buttons.

And the kiss.