He cursed something I didn’t catch. Marching away, he dragged both hands through his hair while glowering at the ceiling. For a moment, it looked as if he’d rather throw himself off a cliff than return to me, but then his hands fell from his hair, his back straightened, he retraced his steps to stop beside me.

His voice was brittle with tightly reined temper. “Look, if you’ve gone shy, then leave. It’s best you go. I don’t know what I was thinking, asking you to come back.” His green gaze shot to the door, his shoulders tensing. “I...this was a mistake. You need to—”

“No.” Taking a deep breath, I undid the belt and wriggled out of the comfy warmth. “I want to stay.” Letting the robe hang off my wrists, it cascaded down the back of my thighs.

My stomach quivered as Gil’s eyes stayed resolutely on mine.

He didn’t look.

Didn’t devour.

We stood at an impasse.

Me desperate for him to want me.

Him desperate to show no signs of caring.

His jaw clenched as he arched an eyebrow, settling his features into cool indifference.

I wasn’t half-naked before him for the very first time. I was merely a piece of parchment stretched on a wooden frame.

“You really should have left.” His voice became tumbling rocks, heavy and threatening.

“I need the money.”

“Some things are worth more than money.” His veneer cracked a little. His jaw twitched. Bracing himself, he dropped his gaze from my eyes to my chin, to my collarbone, breasts, belly, thighs, and toes.

He noticed everything.

The slight scar on my kneecap. The belly button ring I’d recklessly done on my sixteenth birthday. The way my hipbones were a little too stark for my otherwise svelte frame.

He stayed in front of me.

Which I was glad.

My back was where my secrets lay.

His body locked down as if he enlisted every muscle not to reach for me. The freezing warehouse suddenly became a furnace. Deceit couldn’t exist in the blistering awareness that things weren’t over between us.

They could never be. Not when our souls still belonged to the other.

“Gil...” My heart drummed against my ribcage. “I—”

He bit his lip, shaking his head furiously. Backing away, he rubbed his mouth as if giving himself time to get runaway desire under control. Slowly, difficultly, he shoved away all hints of need, shutting himself down.

With his body rigid, he nudged his chin at my sports bra with its highlighter peach crisscross straps. “I can’t paint you with that on.” He dropped his stare to my black G-string. “Nor that.” Swallowing back the gravel that’d appeared in his throat, he turned and yanked open a drawer on his mixing table. Another packet appeared, this one smaller than the bathrobe but just as new and untouched. “Put this on and take the bra off.”

“Here?”

He crossed his arms, a tortured lash of need vanishing beneath bleak determination. “Do you have a better place in mind?”

When I didn’t answer, he added, “You read my advert. You know what this job entails.”

“I know.”

Tension etched its way across his face. “I made a mistake asking you to come back. Maybe you made a mistake applying for—”

“Why did you change your mind? You didn’t want to do the commission before.”

He froze, every hint of him vanished behind a careful wall. “I don’t need permission to switch.”

“Was it because of the phone call?”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Search for things that don’t exist.”

“You say that as if you’re hiding things you don’t want to be found.”

“You’re right.” His face darkened as a flash of agony highlighted his gaze. “If it was up to me, you wouldn’t be here. You would be as far away from this place as possible.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s—” His lips snapped shut.

He made no effort to enlighten me.

“You’re acting as if you’ve been forced into this.” I cursed the goosebumps dancing over my skin.

He twitched as if I’d struck him. His temper slipped. “Stop it, Olin.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“Enough,” he groaned.

“But—”

“But nothing.” He vibrated with ruthless energy, grasping onto it after splintering before me. “Make your choice. Stay and do what you’re told. Or leave and never come back.”

“If I stay will you talk to me?”

“No.”

“If I go can I see you again?”

He shook his head.

I fell quiet, shooing away the tension that’d sprung from nowhere, hoping he’d be able to do the same. “I want to stay. If you refuse to talk about what we had in the past then I’m happy to begin again.”

His eyes liquefied with pain. For a moment, he struggled to reply. “What we had...it meant nothing.” He flinched as if his own words cut him like fatal swords.

“Why did you leave, Gil?” My voice hugged a whisper, my pain bleeding out without permission.

He looked away, his fists clenching. “I had a reason.”

“Tell me.”

He shook his head again, his temper returning to shield him. “No past. No history. You’re nothing more than a canvas and I’m nothing more than a painter. That’s it. That’s all there can ever be.” The way his voice mixed with merciless misery sent curiosity slashing through me. He harboured something that chewed at him. It lived behind his eyes. It thickened his every breath. It begged me to uncover it.

But...I’d already pushed too far.

I teetered on the edge of falling to my knees and begging for answers or slapping his flawless, heartless face.

I needed time to regroup. To come up with a better plan.

Striding wordlessly toward the stage, I climbed onto the small platform. Turning my back on him, I tugged the robe up and over my shoulders for privacy and, with trembling hands, removed my black G-string. Quickly, I ripped open the packet and traded my underwear for the skin coloured one he’d given me.

The plastic bag and my old G disappeared into the pocket of the robe.

I paused.

I sucked in a breath.

I searched for bravery.

This was it.

No going back.

Gritting my teeth, begging my heart to stop being such a traitorous fool, I spun around, shrugged out of the bathrobe, and tossed it to the side. Not giving myself time to second-guess, I ripped off my sports bra and let it fall.

My hands balled as my nipples pebbled from exposure and nerves. I dared look at Gil, bracing for a sneer or some condescending remark, expecting to be broken into pieces by his frost.

However, his eyes blazed as brilliant and as bright as wildfire. He stood frozen in place. Fists curled, body taut, lips pressed together as if he didn’t trust himself.

Just like before, lust sprang violently between us.

I was no longer cold.

He was no longer pretending.

In that aching, wanting moment, the truth was vibrant as it was vicious.

With a quiet grunt and monumental effort, he tore his gaze away. He stumbled toward his workstation, rubbing his face as if he didn’t have the strength for more torture.

With jerky movements, he dragged the airbrush on its rolling frame toward me, keeping his attention locked on his tools, fiddling with dials and hoses.

I stood bare and vulnerable, waiting, begging him to look at me and let go of whatever held him trapped, but he never did.

He acted as if I had the power to kill him with a single touch, doing his best to keep shields high and decorum fiercely in place.

Without a word, he placed a tray of pre-mixed colours beside the podium. Taking his time, he arranged the supplies until they were neatly rowed by my feet. When he had nothing else to occupy himself with, he sucked in a tattered breath and...looked up.

I clenched my tummy, ready for the ricochet of heat and hurt, but his jaw worked and his eyes remained cold, clinical, totally unaffected that I stood before him in just flesh-coloured knickers and bare breasts.