Canvas of Heart

2- An Unexpected Encounter

Isabella Rossini had led a quiet existence in Florence, Daughter to a family of artists, she had been raised amid beauty but with limited means. She worked in her family’s small art gallery, her passion for restoring paintings her only distraction from the crushing responsibility that could otherwise drown her.

And now Isabella, too, began to anticipate his visits, wondering about his life, his world, and why he would come to her (why a billionaire such as James would spend any time in her little gallery), but rather than yielding to the growing desire, a shred of healthy skepticism kept her from getting close. She didn’t allow herself to think that someone such as James could care for her.

Her rooted not only in her innate dread of being perceived as yet another gold-digging hussy but also in the psychic bruises that came with sacrificing her own ambitions for the sake of her family.

James returned to the gallery the following week to see Isabella – the first time since that memorable evening. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. He didn’t think it was possible, but in the days since their first meeting, his attraction to her had only grown. He loved that she wasn’t impressed with his money; he loved that she loved art. He didn’t know many women like Isabella: cool and mature, not swayed by his appeal.

When he entered the gallery, Isabella was stooping over a canvas, painting in the lost colors of an old painting. She didn’t turn her head when he walked in. But she knew he was there. Could feel him there. The same as the first time. And his electricity filled the space. But Isabella wouldn’t let him get inside, wouldn’t let him get to her again.

"Back again, Mr. Blackwell?" she asked without turning around, her voice smooth but distant.

James smiled. She was very aloof but he generally found that women either gushed over him or they were eager to please. Isabella seemed intent on doing neither. ‘Nice gallery. I like it.

She looked up, and their eyes met – his indigo and hers hazel, and there was a flicker between them that she closed off before it took root, rolling her eyes: like I could fall for this?

‘Huh,’ she said, getting up and drying her hands on a rag. ‘I’m sure there’s plenty of bigger ass gallery space in the world that could be captured by fancy, Mr Blackwell. This one is…aye, small potatoes, innit?’

James moved a few steps closer to her. ‘Look, I don’t know what your expectations are or how I fit in, but I’m not looking for some big deal or anything tricky. I just want something real.’

‘Nonsense,’ Isabella’s pulse surged, but she kept a distant, almost scornful, smile on her lips. ‘Real art does not have to be …’ she trailed off. ‘You go to an attic, people rebuild houses, you spread your arms and suddenly you see it. It’s all around you.

No one spoke to him like that. He had never been spoken to by someone who could polish their point into a harder, more startling shape simply by the steadiness of their cool gaze. But, contrary to all expectations, James did not start to feel irritated. He merely drew closer.

This time there was a smile on James’s lips as she tried her turn at metaphor. But the flat tone of his voice came through: ‘I’m not f*****g around here, Isabella.

She gazed at him for a long moment before his words made her knees buckle: his communication came through honest emotions easily for her to transcribe. ‘Neither am I.’

She moved back to fully over her shoulder. Wordlessly, she suggested, by her differences and her body language, that it was not going to happen today. For a moment James hung there, on a horn of dilemma: wonder and irritation.

“I’ll be back,” he said softly before turning to leave.

Isabella’s heart hammered in her chest as she watched him depart. She was cool, she was gamesome, but she wasn’t tin-plated. Something real lived inside those crisps, and however unwise it might be to let them dash, she wasn’t wired to turn away Victorian money. Even so, she’d learned her lessons too well to risk going over the cliff. Men with James’s combination of glamour and capital, men of consequence, flaunting their societal currency, men who expected everything and asked nothing, presented special risks. She would not throw herself into the vat.

James did return, and each time he did, Isabella received him with the same rigid reserve. He invited her to dinner several times and each time she excused herself – she had a meeting at the gallery, she had a commitment to her father, she just simply wasn’t into that sort of thing.

He wasn’t used to rejection. It only fueled his fascination with her.

Then one night, after an evening of polite refusals, he caught her before she could race into the gallery shelter.

"Isabella, what are you so afraid of?" he asked, his voice gentle but insistent.

Isabella’s eyes flashed. ‘It’s not that I’m scared, James. I just know how it’ll go – you get what you want, and when it gets boring, you’ll move on to someone else. I don’t want to be one of your distractions.’

James frowned. What had she said? ‘I suppose that’s what you think of me.’ James frowned. Was that what she thought of him?

‘I don’t know what to make of you,’ she replied more quietly. ‘But I know how your world works. I’m not your type and I’m not trying to be.’

The tension leaked out of James’s face. His eyebrows unbent. He stepped towards me. And for the first time, his voice filled up. With something. With something that hinted at heartbreak, anger, desperation, the kind of gritty feeling that comes with the three of humanity’s greatest behaviors in one package, one lump of pain: hope. Hope that I could comprehend the dribble he’d been handed. ‘You don’t have to be any… thing,’ he said. ‘Fit into anything. …’ He shook his head and tried again. ‘I’m not asking for that. s**t. I just… I want to get to know you. Please. Me. You. Yes? You. Not this girl Please? .’

Isabella hesitated, her resolve crumbling. She could see the earnestness in his gaze, but she was afraid she would come to care for him… and then they would grow bored with each other, and she would be left exposed and broken.

“I don’t know if I can trust you, James,” she admitted quietly.

James reached for her hand, but she yanked it back before he could grasp it. ‘Let me prove it,’ he implored, now near to begging. ‘Let me show that I’m serious.

Isabella would only look at him, still defiant, but wavering. ‘Prove it, then,’ she said, her defiance no longer quite so threatening. ‘Prove that I’m going to be there and that you are as well.’ of course you’re going to be there, and so am I.’ ‘So I’m going to be there, that’s not so hard to work out. But I meant, will we still be together, Will you still want me then? And what if I don’t want you anymore? What’s to stop me from finding someone else? Someone much more compatible with my future life, who’s already free?’ Isabella would only look at him, still defiant, but wavering. ‘Prove it, then,’ she said, her defiance no longer quite so threatening. ‘Prove that I’m going to be there and that you are as well.’ ‘Well, of course you’re going to be there, and so am I.’

James smiled, a spark of determination in his eyes. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

From here, as James pursues Isabella with calm, persistent siege work – to the point that she begins to trust him – and Isabella, with help from her inner circle, closes herself off from James indefinitely, until he ‘proves’ himself, when the push and pull might be taut but also goes deep, and can finally culminate in romantic union because James has shown her, not just told her, that he’s in it for the long-haul.