him… and to disregard him.
It was eight at night,
and Beal didn’t look like a moment had passed since I’d left, as he whirled
from a little knot of other models
and activity to face the sound of my footsteps. My breaths squeezed unevenly up
through my tightened throat in a staccato beat of shallow huffs that would
barely have stirred a hair. Why had I assumed we’d be alone, just the
photographer and assistant and I? Small mercy I didn’t see Cheri in the group.
“The brown-eyed girl
returns,” Nolan said as he sauntered toward me with a disconcerting display of
firm muscle shifting under smooth skin, still bare-chested. Maybe the jeans had
changed, but I was trying not to stare. It still hurt to look at him in the way it hurt to look too closely at
the sun. The hair was still perfect, and he still smelled like the pages of a
glossy men’s fashion magazine, the kind with ads and samples for expensive
colognes the average guy would never be able to afford or even pronounce. He
wore a smile that was no more than a suggestion, an impression, or maybe just
my wishful thinking seizing on something that wasn’t really there. Just lights
and makeup and Photoshop, this whole place, all these people.
Now one thick, neat
sable brow twitched in a moment of what might have been surprise or…
satisfaction as Beal looked me in the face, then up and down. “No makeup.
Clean, loose hair. Comfy, zippered sweats that are easy to get into and out
of,” he observed, and numerous parts of me shivered under his scrutiny.
“Someone might think you know the way this works, Miss Moreau. You have a
background in modeling?”
This question annoyed
me, as we both knew I was too short and weighed too much to be a model in any
traditional sense. I wasn’t heavy or stumpy, but I also wasn’t the lanky,
willowy, long-limbed type required for fashion and lingerie modeling. Tipping
my head impatiently to one side and grimacing up at Beal, I bit out a curt, “No.”
“Then as an artist,” he
said with a smug grin—not asked ,
stated, like I’d answered more than one question with considerably more than a
one-word response. Like I’d helped him win a bet to which I wasn’t party.
My annoyance cut the
adrenaline and sensory noise vibrating through my body, steadying me, affording
me a moment to catch my breath. “Let’s get this done,” I told him, and I was
proud of myself for keeping a firm, unaffected tone when I was anything but.
Beal lifted his square
chin and peered down his strong, straight, model-perfect nose at me. “Right to
business, just like this morning. That how you always operate, Miss Moreau? No
pleasantries or dawdling or rose-smelling?”
Ironic, I thought, that
his small talk came off as particularly pointed and purposeful , like a verbal Rorschach text. But why would he need to
assess me? What exactly was he hoping to
find out? And then , what was he
planning on doing with that information? The sudden anxiety that he was looking
for a way to renege on our agreement gripped the base of my spine like a fist.
“Your dime, remember,”
I growled through clenched teeth, recalling his earlier insistence that his
studio was his realm, a place where he directed the creative bedlam, controlled
it, bought and paid for it.
I pointedly leaned to
one side to look past him at the audience pretending not to watch us from the
corners of their eyes: ferrety Stan, the caramel blond Rilla (so the assistant
had called her), another shirtless male model with messy golden hair and a
strangely familiar rock star look to him, the little slip of a brunette I
recognized as the makeup artist I’d seen that morning, and a
malnourished-looking redheaded teen girl sporting raccoon- ish black eyeliner and skater flannel over ripped jeans.
“Am I working with
them?” I asked, voice cracking briefly. I tried to swallow the tremor as I
heard it, but by then it was too late.
Those dark dark blue eyes
registered his keen
It was eight at night,
and Beal didn’t look like a moment had passed since I’d left, as he whirled
from a little knot of other models
and activity to face the sound of my footsteps. My breaths squeezed unevenly up
through my tightened throat in a staccato beat of shallow huffs that would
barely have stirred a hair. Why had I assumed we’d be alone, just the
photographer and assistant and I? Small mercy I didn’t see Cheri in the group.
“The brown-eyed girl
returns,” Nolan said as he sauntered toward me with a disconcerting display of
firm muscle shifting under smooth skin, still bare-chested. Maybe the jeans had
changed, but I was trying not to stare. It still hurt to look at him in the way it hurt to look too closely at
the sun. The hair was still perfect, and he still smelled like the pages of a
glossy men’s fashion magazine, the kind with ads and samples for expensive
colognes the average guy would never be able to afford or even pronounce. He
wore a smile that was no more than a suggestion, an impression, or maybe just
my wishful thinking seizing on something that wasn’t really there. Just lights
and makeup and Photoshop, this whole place, all these people.
Now one thick, neat
sable brow twitched in a moment of what might have been surprise or…
satisfaction as Beal looked me in the face, then up and down. “No makeup.
Clean, loose hair. Comfy, zippered sweats that are easy to get into and out
of,” he observed, and numerous parts of me shivered under his scrutiny.
“Someone might think you know the way this works, Miss Moreau. You have a
background in modeling?”
This question annoyed
me, as we both knew I was too short and weighed too much to be a model in any
traditional sense. I wasn’t heavy or stumpy, but I also wasn’t the lanky,
willowy, long-limbed type required for fashion and lingerie modeling. Tipping
my head impatiently to one side and grimacing up at Beal, I bit out a curt, “No.”
“Then as an artist,” he
said with a smug grin—not asked ,
stated, like I’d answered more than one question with considerably more than a
one-word response. Like I’d helped him win a bet to which I wasn’t party.
My annoyance cut the
adrenaline and sensory noise vibrating through my body, steadying me, affording
me a moment to catch my breath. “Let’s get this done,” I told him, and I was
proud of myself for keeping a firm, unaffected tone when I was anything but.
Beal lifted his square
chin and peered down his strong, straight, model-perfect nose at me. “Right to
business, just like this morning. That how you always operate, Miss Moreau? No
pleasantries or dawdling or rose-smelling?”
Ironic, I thought, that
his small talk came off as particularly pointed and purposeful , like a verbal Rorschach text. But why would he need to
assess me? What exactly was he hoping to
find out? And then , what was he
planning on doing with that information? The sudden anxiety that he was looking
for a way to renege on our agreement gripped the base of my spine like a fist.
“Your dime, remember,”
I growled through clenched teeth, recalling his earlier insistence that his
studio was his realm, a place where he directed the creative bedlam, controlled
it, bought and paid for it.
I pointedly leaned to
one side to look past him at the audience pretending not to watch us from the
corners of their eyes: ferrety Stan, the caramel blond Rilla (so the assistant
had called her), another shirtless male model with messy golden hair and a
strangely familiar rock star look to him, the little slip of a brunette I
recognized as the makeup artist I’d seen that morning, and a
malnourished-looking redheaded teen girl sporting raccoon- ish black eyeliner and skater flannel over ripped jeans.
“Am I working with
them?” I asked, voice cracking briefly. I tried to swallow the tremor as I
heard it, but by then it was too late.
Those dark dark blue eyes
registered his keen
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