Now she was kneeling and he tried to ignore the way her shapely backside wiggled into his view when she leaned forward to locate and pull weeds.
Dammit—when had gardening ever been sexy?
He pushed the answer to the question he had posed himself to the back of his mind. Since Shelley had become his gardener.
She’d been here two weeks and he was more and more impressed by her. Her professionalism. Her knowledge. Her unfailing good humour. And that was on top of her beauty. Was she too good to be true? He kept contact with her to a minimum but he was super aware of her all the time she was on the property.
Too aware.
He had to remind himself he had vowed not to let another woman into his thoughts. Guilt and constant regret dictated that.
Even though he’d been told over and over again he was not responsible for Lisa and his daughter’s deaths, he blamed himself. He should have responded quicker when Lisa had told him she was getting rapidly increasing contractions. Not begged for ten minutes to finish the intricate piece of code he’d been writing. Ten minutes that could have made a difference.
His fault.
His own, obsessed workaholic fault.
Selfish, self-centred and single-minded. He and Lisa hadn’t quarrelled much—they’d had a happy marriage—but when they had, those were the accusations she had hurled at him. The anger had never lasted more than minutes and she’d laughed and said she hadn’t meant a word of it. But he knew there was some truth there.
Because Lisa had told him she wasn’t ready to have children. Had wanted to spend a few more years establishing her career in marketing before they started a family. He’d cajoled, wheedled, begged her to change her mind. Because he’d wanted at least three children to fill up the many empty bedrooms of this house. Children who would grow up knowing how loved and wanted they were.
And look what had happened.
Lisa’s death cast a black shadow on his soul. And Alice...he could hardly bear to think about Alice, that tiny baby he’d held so briefly in his arms, whose life had scarcely started before it had ended.
Their deaths were his fault.
He didn’t deserve a second chance at happiness.
Down in the garden, Shelley leaned back on her heels and reached into the pocket of her sturdy gardener’s trousers and took out her mobile phone. He hadn’t heard it ring from where he was but she was obviously taking a call. He was near enough to see her smile.
As she chatted she looked up at the house, the hand that wasn’t holding her phone shading her eyes. She couldn’t possibly see him from here. He didn’t want her to think he was some kind of voyeur. Just in case, he stepped back from the light of the window into the shadows of his office.
The furnishings in his shades-of-grey workspace were dominated by a bank of computer monitors. This was where he lived, his bedroom in the turret above.
Separate from the computers was a large drawing board he had set up to catch the best light from the window. He’d done some preliminary work on Princess No-Name on the computer. Design software could only do so much.
Now he’d gone back to sketching her with charcoal on paper. The old techniques he’d learned from his artist grandmother. Pinned up on a corkboard above the drawing board were sketches of various angles of the princess warrior’s head, her arms, the curve of her back. On the sketchpad was a work in progress of her—okay, of Shelley—looking over her shoulder with her hair flowing over her neck.
But the old ways had their limitations too. What fun he could have using motion-capture software to animate his princess warrior character. But to do that he would have to ask Shelley to model for him. To dress her in a tight black spandex suit that revealed every curve. To attach reflective sensors to her limbs and direct her to act out movements from the game.
In the anonymity of a big, professional studio—perhaps.
In the intimacy of his office? No way. Much too dangerous.
Further back from the window, though still in the good light, was his easel, where he had started a preliminary painting of the character in acrylic paint. The painting formed the only splash of colour in the monotone room where he spent so much time alone.
The painting was pure indulgence; this kind of image would not be easily scanned for animation. He hadn’t painted for years, not since before he was married. But his newly sparked creativity was enjoying the subtle nuances of colour and texture the medium was able to give Princess No-Name.
Shelley’s warrior strength and warm blonde beauty had kick-started his imagination but her connection to nature was what was now inspiring him to create his new character. He’d found himself researching the mythical Greek, Roman and Celtic female spirits of nature and fertility. Gaia. Antheia. Flora. The Green Woman. Mother Nature.
He was painting his Shelley-inspired warrior heroine in a skin-tight semi-sheer body stocking patterned with vines and leaves. The gloves that hugged her arms to above her elbows were of the finest, palest green leather. She strode out in sexy, thigh-high suede boots the colour of damp moss. As contrast, he’d painted orange flower buds in various stages of unfurling along the vines.
It would be only too easy to imagine Shelley wearing the exact same outfit. He drew in his breath at the thought of it.
But he could not go there.
Better he reined in his imagination when it came to thinking too closely about Shelley’s shape.
He had purposely used Princess Alana’s body as a template for Princess No-Name. Shelley’s slim, toned arms were there, yes. But he did not want to focus on her breasts, her hips, her thighs to the extent it would take to draw them. That could be misconstrued.
She was his muse—that was all.
His imagination filled in his princess warrior’s glorious mane of hair with fine brushstrokes. If only Shelley would let her hair down for him.
He modelled his new creation’s face on Shelley’s strong, vibrant face—with her lovely lush mouth exaggerated into artistic anime proportions. Her eyes were the exact same nutmeg as Shelley’s, with added glints of gold and framed by the kind of long, long lashes that owed more to artifice than nature.
His princess was inspired by Shelley, but she was not Shelley—he had to keep telling himself that. His new warrior was a distinct character in the unique style of his bestselling games. She would be a worthy successor to Princess Alana.
A name flashed into his head. Estella. He thought the name probably meant star—bright and shining and bold. Yes. It was perfect. Princess Alana. Princess Estella. It fitted. And gave a vague nod to ‘Shelley’.
Maybe her weapons could be ninja throwing stars—sharp and deadly. No. Too obvious, and far too vicious for his Princess Estella.
Wonder Woman had her golden lasso of truth. Maybe Estella could have a magical lariat to incapacitate and capture. But not kill. He didn’t want Princess Estella taking lives. He kept on painting, working in a fluorescent green lariat looped around her shoulder.
He stepped back, looked at his work with critical, narrowed eyes. Estella was gorgeous; she would make an awesome warrior heroine. But there was something lacking; he needed to add a unique characteristic to make her stand out in the sea of gaming heroines. He hadn’t got it right yet.
He needed to spend more time with Shelley.
Purely for inspiration, of