Definitely a class act, Jenny decided, and wondered if he was idling away some time before a luncheon date, probably at the most expensive restaurant in the forum. It was almost noon. She half-expected some beautiful woman to appear and pluck him away. Which would be disappointing, but people like him weren’t usually interested in posing for a street artist.
Gradually it sank in that he was studying her, not how she worked. It was weird, being made to feel an object of personal interest to this man. She caught his gaze roving around the chaotic volume of her dark curly hair, assessing the features of her face, which to her mind were totally unremarkable, skating down her loose black tunic and slacks to the shabby but comfortable black walking shoes she’d been wearing since breaking her ankle.
Hardly a bundle of style, she thought, wishing he’d stop making her self-conscious. She tried to block him out, concentrating on finishing the portrait of the teenager. Despite keeping her focus on her subject, her awareness of him did not go away. He remained a dominating presence on the periphery of her vision, moving purposefully to centre stage and taking the chair vacated by the teenager as the sale of the completed portrait was being transacted.
Jenny took a deep breath before resuming her own seat. Her nerves had gone all edgy, which was ridiculous. She’d wanted to draw this man, he was giving her the opportunity. Yet her hand was slightly tremulous as she picked up a fresh stick of charcoal, and the blank page on the easel suddenly seemed daunting. She had to steel herself to look directly at him. He smiled at her and her heart actually fluttered. The smile made him breathtakingly handsome.
‘Do you work here every day?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘Wednesday to Sunday.’
‘Not enough people here on Monday and Tuesday?’
‘Those days are usually slow.’
He tilted his head, eyeing her curiously. ‘Do you like this kind of chancy existence?’
She instantly bridled at this personal probe. It smacked of a much superior existence, which he had probably enjoyed all his life. ‘Yes, I do. I don’t have to answer to anyone,’ she said pointedly.
‘You prefer to be independent.’
She frowned at his persistence. ‘Would you mind keeping still while I sketch?’
In short, shut up and stop disturbing me.
But he wasn’t about to take direction from her. He probably didn’t take direction from anyone.
‘I don’t want a still-life portrait,’ he said, smiling the heart-fluttering smile again. ‘Just capture what you can of me while we chat.’
Why did he want to chat?
He couldn’t be attracted to her. It made no sense that a man like him would take an interest in a woman so obviously beneath his status. Jenny forced herself to draw the outline of his head. Getting his hair right might help her with the more challenging task of capturing his face.
‘Have you always wanted to be an artist?’ he asked.
‘It’s the one thing I’m good at,’ she answered, feeling herself tense up at being subjected to more curiosity.
‘Do you do landscapes as well as portraits?’
‘Some.’
‘Do they sell?’
‘Some.’
‘Where might I buy one?’
‘At Circular Quay on Mondays and Tuesdays.’ She flashed him an ironic look. ‘I’m a street vendor and it’s tourist stuff—the harbour, the bridge, the opera house. I doubt you’d be interested in buying.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I think a name artist would be more your style.’
He didn’t rise to the note of derision in her voice, affably remarking, ‘You might make a name for yourself one day.’
‘And you want the pleasure of discovering me?’ she mocked, not believing it for a moment and feeling more and more uneasy about why he was engaging in this banter with her.
‘I’m here on a journey of discovery.’
The whimsical statement teased her into asking, ‘Where are you from?’
‘Italy.’
She studied his face; smooth olive skin, definitely a Roman nose, and that sensual mouth seemed to have Latin lover written all over it. His being Italian was not surprising. As she started sketching his features, she commented, ‘If you wanted a taste of Venice, surely it would have been much easier to go there.’
‘I know Venice very well. My mission is of a more personal nature.’
‘You want to find yourself?’ she tossed at him flippantly.
He laughed. It gave his striking face even more charismatic appeal. Jenny privately bet he was a devil with women and wished she could inject that appeal into his portrait, but the vibrant expression was gone before she could even begin to play with it on paper. The sparkle in his eyes gave way to a look of serious intent—a look that bored into her as though determined on penetrating any defensive layer she could put between them.
‘I came for you, Isabella.’
His soft and certain use of her friend’s name shocked her into staring at him. How could he know it? She signed her portraits Bella, not Isabella. Her mind reeled back over this whole strange encounter with him; the fact that he didn’t fit her kind of clientele, his too-acute observation of her, his curiosity about her work, the personal questions. A sense of danger clanged along her nerves. Was she about to be unmasked as a fraud?
No!
He thought she was Bella. Which meant he hadn’t known her friend. He must have got the name from one of the stall-holders who knew her as Isabella Rossini. Was he playing some supposedly seductive pick-up game with her? But why would he?
‘I beg your pardon!’ she said with as much indignation as she could muster, hating the idea of him digging for information about her, and thinking he could get some stupid advantage from it.
He gestured an apology. ‘Forgive me for not being more direct in my approach. The estrangement in our family makes for a difficult meeting and I hoped to ease into it. My name is Dante Rossini. I’m one of your cousins and I’m here to invite you back to Italy for a reunion with all your other relatives.’
Jenny was totally stricken by this news. Bella had told her she had no family. There’d been no talk of any connections in Italy. But if there had been an estrangement, perhaps she’d never heard of them, believing herself truly orphaned by the plane crash which had killed her parents. On the other hand, was this man telling the truth? Even if he was, how would Bella have responded to it? No one from Italy had cared about her all these years. Why bother now?
Fear fed the burst of adrenaline that drove her to her feet. Fear chose the words that sprang off her tongue. ‘Go away!’
That jerked him out of his air of relaxed confidence.
Jenny didn’t wait for a response to her vehement command. She slammed down the stick of charcoal, ripped the half-done portrait off the easel, crumpled the sheet of paper up in her hands and threw it in the waste-bin to punctuate an emphatic end to this encounter.
‘I don’t know what you want but I want no part of it. Just go away!’ she repeated, her eyes stabbing him with fierce rejection as he rose from the chair, suddenly taking on the appearance of a formidable antagonist.
‘That I cannot do,’ he stated quietly.
‘Oh, yes you can!’ Her mind wildly seized on reinforcements. ‘If you don’t I’ll go to the forum management, tell them you’re harassing