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