The One He's Been Looking For

by Joanna Sims

  Ian frowned at her. “Did you just take my picture?”

  “Yes.” Jordan dropped her head as she punched more buttons on the device.

  “Why?” His voice sharpened on the question.

  Jordan was certain he was used to getting his way very quickly when he used that tone. She ignored him and finished her chore before she answered. “What? Oh, I’m sorry. Did that bother you? Was that an invasion of your privacy? I mean, God forbid that should happen to you, a famous photographer. I mean, what’s the big deal? I just took a picture, it’s not like I tracked you down at your private residence or followed you onto a trolley....”

  Ian didn’t respond, but she could see by the stony expression on his face that she had made her point.

  “I just sent your picture to all of my friends. If anything happens to me, the police will come knocking on your door first,” Jordan said smugly. Then she leaned back on her bench and stared at him curiously. “How’d you find me anyway?”

  He dragged his fingers over his closely cropped brown hair. “I know someone who’s good at finding people.”

  She looked out at the darkening downtown skyline and muttered, “Privacy is obsolete.” Jordan glanced quickly at his strong, masculine profile. Her gut was telling her that Ian wasn’t a psycho and he wasn’t out for anything other than a photograph. In fact, she suspected that he didn’t see her as a woman in the sexual-object sense of the word; his examination of her was much too...clinical for that. He wasn’t really looking at her, but seemed to be taking an inventory of her features.

  “Were you serious about the money?” she asked in a lowered voice.

  Ian didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

  Jordan leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. The bangles on her arm slipped forward and jangled on their journey down to her wrist. “But why? Why would you give some woman you spotted on the street that much money?”

  “Some of the best models have been discovered exactly that way.” He paused for a split second and then added, “And it’s not all that much money.”

  “Maybe not to you.” Jordan wrinkled her brow. “Either way, I’m no Gisele Bündchen.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to be,” Ian replied. “But interestingly, Gisele was discovered in a McDonalds by scouts, so...”

  Jordan knew that he had wanted to make a point with that comment, and the truth was he succeeded. It wasn’t a secret that many famous models were discovered on the street or at a mall. She hadn’t known that about Gisele, but it didn’t really surprise her. In fact, this wasn’t the first time she had been approached. She was five foot ten by the time she was fourteen, so she had been asked to model before. The problem was that she wasn’t what one might call photogenic. And even though the money was extremely tempting, Jordan was convinced that she couldn’t pull it off. She simply photographed badly. Always had. Every single one of her school pictures was hideous and she had always been the one blaring flaw in the yearly Brand family portraits.

  “Listen, I appreciate the offer, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the money sounds good, but I can’t model for you.” Jordan watched the muscle in Ian’s jaw clench as he listened to her. He was completely unaccustomed to the sound of the word no. “And even though I think that it was totally out of line for you to stalk me, I’m still sorry you wasted your time.”

  “I’m a little confused about why you won’t even agree to test for me. Is it the money?”

  “As in, not enough money?”

  Ian gave a slight nod; Jordan laughed. “No, it’s not the money. Trust me—the money’d be great right now.”

  She had the distinct feeling that if she had said it wasn’t enough money, he would have immediately offered her more.

  “Then what?” Ian appreciated the way Jordan’s eyes crinkled at the corners when she laughed. She laughed as if she really meant it.

  Jordan sat back and crossed one leg over the other. “Look. I’m going to be honest with you so we can drop this subject for good and you can go find a different model for your book.”

  “All right.”

  “I’m not photogenic,” she said simply.

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “I’m telling you the truth. Whether or not you believe it is your business. You’re not the first person who’s tried to turn me into a model. But for whatever reason—” Jordan waved her hand in front of her face “—this doesn’t look the same in a photograph as it does in person.”

  As the trolley pulled into the next station, Jordan stood up. She extended her hand. “Well...it’s been interesting.”

  Ian stood, as well. Jordan hoped that he didn’t intend to follow her off the tram.

  Instead of taking her hand, he slipped a business card into her fingers. “When I photograph you, you’ll be able to see yourself as I see you. Pure avant-garde beauty.”

  Her heart gave a quick, hard thump at his words. This man had a way of twisting a woman right around his well-manicured pinky.

  Jordan took the card. “If you can make me look good in a picture, you would be the first.”

  “Come to my studio tomorrow and let’s find out,” he said.

  “What do I have to lose?” she asked out loud, more to herself than to him.

  “Twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  The trolley doors slid open. “Touché, Mr. Sterling.”

  “Ian.”

  Jordan stepped down onto the curb. “Touché, Ian.”

  “You’ll come to my studio, then.”

  She turned to face him as he stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets, sunglasses back in place. Tall, broad shouldered and built for a woman’s appreciating eye. He appeared to be perfectly at ease on the surface, but Jordan picked up a tension in his jaw that belied his relaxed, confident stance.

  “What time?”

  “Eight in the morning.”

  “Too early.”

  “Ten, then.”

  As the trolley door began to slide shut, Jordan flashed Ian a peace sign and said, “I’ll be there around eleven.”

  * * *

  “Rise and shine, lazybones.”

  The next morning, Jordan was rudely awakened by the sound of her twin sister’s “cheerful early riser” voice. She groaned and stuck her head under the pillow as Josephine pulled open the blinds and let sunlight flow into the room. Jordan squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to ignore the sound of the thick plastic blinds slapping against each other as they settled back into place.

  Josephine plopped down on the bed next to her and began to shake her shoulder. “Wake up. Wake up. Wake up....”

  “Oh, my God, Jo!” Jordan grumbled loudly. “Knock it off!”

  “Not a chance.” Her sister laughed as she grabbed the pillow and pulled it off her head.

  Jordan made a frustrated noise as she dragged the covers over her head. She hadn’t planned on being awake for at least another hour or two. “Go away!”

  Next, Jo started to bounce up and down. “Get up. Get up. Get up!”

  Jordan finally kicked the blanket and sheets off her body and glared up at her. “Holy crap, Jo, you’re annoying! What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be learning how to sue people?”

  Josephine, whose friends and family called her “Jo,” was her identical twin. They were mirror images of each other in appearance, but exact opposites in life. Jo was an “early bird gets the worm” student working on her law degree, while Jordan had dropped out of graduate school five weeks into her masters. Jo loved to shop, was a political junky, recycled religiously and thought that it was perfectly normal to date a young environmental lawyer named Brice. Besides the recycling, Jordan could live without all those things—especially a boyfriend with a country-club name.

  Jo smiled at her sister�
��s trademark early-morning grouchiness. “I’m meeting Brice and his parents for brunch in Van Nuys. I thought I’d drop by for a quick visit.”

  Jordan pushed herself up and leaned back against the headboard. “I find you to be rude and offensive on all possible levels.”

  “You love me.” Jo smiled broadly.

  Jordan squinted at her sister through sore, puffy eyes, wishing she had the motivation to get up and shut the blinds again. The bright sunlight was only making her pounding hangover headache worse. To look at the two of them, someone would be hard-pressed to make out that they were twins at all. Josephine always looked like the healthy girl next door with her flowing, sun-kissed hair and glowing, sun-kissed skin. Jordan, on the other hand, was a rebellious night-owl artist with a multicolored faux hawk and pale skin that barely saw the sunlight. In a lot of ways, they were truly night and day.

  “How you can date someone named Brice is beyond me,” Jordan said as she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. “Much less have brunch with his parents.”

  “Quit being such a snob. He didn’t choose his name,” Jo teased. “By the way, you look hungover.”

  “That’s because I am hungover, Nancy Drew.” Jordan squinted at her. “Joelle had a pink-champagne fountain at her bachelorette party. Who does that?”

  “You could’ve said no.” Jo went into the bathroom; she grabbed a glass of water and two aspirin. “Here.”

  “Thanks.” Jordan popped the pills in her mouth and then chugged down the water.

  “I thought you liked Brice anyway.” Her twin perched on the edge of the bed again in her pretty forest-green wrap dress.

  “I like him in theory.” Jordan put the empty glass on the nightstand.

  “Whatever that’s supposed to mean....”

  “It means that he seems like someone who’d be perfect for you, but he’s not because he’s actually a total knuckle-dragger.”

  Jo raised her perfectly shaped eyebrows at her before saying, “Subject change.”

  “Agreed.”

  Jo pulled her phone out of her purse, flipped through her text messages and then held up a picture for Jordan to see. “I’m dying to know... How’d you end up with a picture of the Armani guy on your phone?”

  Jordan stared at the picture she had taken on the trolley. He looked handsome, of course, and ticked off. “That’s Ian. He’s a photographer.”

  Jo looked at the image with a shake of her head. “Well, then, he must have been a model before he was a photographer, because I’m telling you, that’s the Armani guy. How you could have your fantasy man sitting right in front of you and not recognize him is a total brainteaser.”

  “I didn’t recognize him because it isn’t him,” Jordan said as she climbed out of bed. She pulled on a pair of jeans that had been crumpled up on the floor. “I need emergency coffee.”

  The twins climbed up the narrow spiral staircase to the second-floor kitchen and dining area. Amaya was sitting at the small dining table eating sushi with finely carved black-and-gold chopsticks.

  “Coffee?” Jordan asked her roommate at the top of the stairs.

  Amaya nodded and pointed to the kitchen. Jordan grabbed a cup of coffee for herself and one for Jo before she headed to the table.

  “What time did you get in?” Amaya asked in her Cambodian-accented English. She had twisted her silky blue-black hair into a thick topknot at the crown of her head and she still had a smudge of purple eye shadow above her dark chocolate eyes from the night before.

  Jordan slumped into her chair and gratefully took a sip of piping-hot coffee. “Three, four. I’m not sure, really.”

  Her roommate swallowed a bite of food before she said, “What’s up with that picture you sent to me last night? Who is that guy?”

  Jordan dropped her head onto her arms with a groan. “He’s a photographer. Wants me to model for him.”

  Jo’s eyes widened. “The Armani guy wants you to model for him? You didn’t tell me that!”

  “Jesus...he’s not the Armani guy. His name is Ian Sterling.”

  “Seriously, Jordy? I can’t believe you didn’t recognize him.” Her twin shook her head as she searched for something on her phone. Once she found what she was looking for, she held up the device triumphantly. “Take a look at this, sis. Tell me that isn’t the same guy.”

  Chapter Three

  Jordan’s forehead wrinkled as she stared at the photograph on Jo’s phone. It took a split second for her to recognize Ian in the Armani ad. His hair was longer and his face thinner, but there was no doubt it was Ian. No wonder he looked so familiar to her! She had this exact ad hanging up in her room...framed. How had she missed that?

  “Ho-ly crap.” she muttered. “He’s the frickin’ Armani guy.”

  “Told you,” Jo said smugly.

  “What am I missing?” Amaya asked.

  “Jordan had this ad hanging above her bed when we were in high school—she used to kiss the guy’s picture every night. Swore she was going to marry him,” Jo said, before she blew on her coffee.

  “Do you think that might have been an overshare of my personal information?” Jordan asked her sister.

  Jo ignored her and continued, “As it turns out...” She turned the phone toward Amaya. “This guy and the guy from last night are one and the same.”

  “Freaky.” Amaya studied the picture. “He’s seriously hot.”

  “Yes,” Jordan agreed, as her high school fantasies flooded her brain. “He is.

  “Does he really look that good in person or was he edited to look like that?” Amaya asked before she took another bite of her sushi.

  Jordan shook her head. Ian Sterling didn’t need to be edited. He was damn near perfect. “No. He really does look like this.”

  She groaned as she dropped her head into her hands and rubbed her temples. How could she have missed this when she’d found him on Google? How could she have missed it when she’d sat across from him on the trolley? And now she was supposed to go to his studio—the Armani guy’s studio—looking as if she had been on a week-long bender? Unimaginable.

  “Start from the beginning—tell us everything,” Jo said, her blue eyes sparkling.

  Jordan lifted her head and took a deep breath in through her nose and then blew it out. She told them everything—from Ian saving her from a ticket to him tracking her down at the condo and offering her a job.

  She finished her story with, “I’m supposed to go to his studio today for a test shoot.”

  Jo smiled at her as she reached out and shook her arm. “It’s serendipitous! You always make fun of me when I tell you stuff like this happens. But come on.... What are the chances?”

  “Slim to none,” Jordan admitted as she stared at the Armani ad.

  Amaya asked bluntly, “And you’re sure he’s not a wacko who’s gonna chop you up and stuff you in his freezer, right?”

  “I’m pretty sure he’s not a psycho.” Jordan said.

  “Then this is great news. You’re saved! Rent’s due in a week and I can’t cover the spread for both of us again this month.”

  “Why did she have to pay your rent last month?” Jo asked, concerned.

  “It’s not a big deal.” Jordan brushed off the question before she responded to Amaya. “I don’t think I can do it. I feel like death warmed over and...”

  Amaya gave her an incredulous look. “Let me get this straight. You’ve got a hot photographer wanting to pay you to take your picture, and you don’t know? Are you nuts? You’ve gotta pull it together, Jordy, and go make bank. If you don’t, you’re gonna have to take up panhandling, or even worse, go crawling back to your family. You don’t want that, do you?”

  “God, no!” Jordan knew her roommate was right. She was almost broke and the last thing she wanted to do was run back to h
er parents for money, not with her mom’s one-woman campaign to get her to move back to Montana.

  Jo continued to stare her down as Amaya took her plate to the kitchen. “What?” Jordan asked defensively.

  “Why didn’t you make rent, Jordy? What happened to the money you get from Grandpa’s trust?”

  “That stopped once I dropped out of graduate school. I won’t get the balance until I’m thirty.” She shook her head.

  “And you couldn’t ask Mom and Dad? I know they’d help out.”

  Jordan sighed in frustration. “Of course they would. But there’s always strings attached with Mom, and you know it. And for some reason, ever since...Daniel, she’s fixated on the idea of me moving back to Montana. She already has Tyler at the ranch with her—why is she hell-bent on having me there, too?”

  “You’re the baby.”

  “By ten minutes!” Jordan exclaimed. Her mother had had five children. Luke, the eldest son, had had an identical twin named Daniel, who had died in the Iraq war. Tyler, the middle child, was being groomed to take over Bent Tree, the family ranch, once their father retired. And then there was Josephine, and finally herself—the baby of the family.

  “You know she only wants what’s best for you,” Jo said as she finished her coffee.

  “I know.” Jordy agreed easily. “But she’s driving me crazy—and this time she’s just flat-out wrong.”

  “Well, sis, if you’re gonna keep a roof over your head or have the occasional meal, it looks like your best bet is to take Mr. Armani Ad up on his offer.”

  Jordan stared at her twin for several seconds and let her words sink in. She couldn’t deny that her levelheaded sister had a point.

  “Crap.” Jordan finally dropped her head into her hands yet again. She had no doubt this was going to shape up to be a horrifying day.

  * * *

  Jordan arrived at the Samuel Fox Lofts at 12:30 p.m. She made certain that she parked legally before heading up to the third floor. She pulled Ian’s business card from the back pocket of her skintight black jeans and looked for the apartment number. At the end of the hall, she found the loft door adorned with a small plaque that read Sterling & Axel Photography.