Beauty and the Bodyguard

by Merline Lovelace

  “Still on schedule?” he asked, falling in step beside her as she crossed the compound.

  “Barely, but I don’t think we’ve been missed yet. It looks like Dom’s still not quite set up.”

  From Rafe’s perspective, it look like Avendez was several light-years away from being set up. The photographer stood in the middle of a crowd of technicians, waving his arms and shouting at them to get the damn strobes up and the generator going, now! In black pants and a white shirt and with his half head of flowing black hair, he reminded Rafe of a bad-tempered zebra.

  Stepping over the cables that snaked like thick black spaghetti from the generator, Allie joined the group clustered by the wall. Rafe took up a position some yards away and watched Avendez bring order out of the chaos around him.

  “All right, people. All right! Listen up, dammit! I want to get the first sequence done fast. We’re going for a low-key shot with a natural effect, using the sky as the backdrop.”

  Rafe lifted a brow, amazed at the amount of equipment required to achieve this supposedly “natural” effect. In addition to the strobe lights mounted on portable scaffolding, a swarm of huge reflectors perched on stands like giant mosquitoes with their wings folded. Dom’s senior assistant was bent over a huge trunk fitted with slotted trays that held an astonishing array of lenses and filters and God knew what else. They’d even shipped in a portable darkroom, Rafe noted, or at least he assumed that was the purpose of the small trailer nestled next to Avendez’s casita. If there was anything left in the man’s New York studio, it could only be the toilet.

  Gathering his half head of black hair with a rubber band, presumably to keep it out of the camera’s way, the Zebra jerked his chin at Allie.

  “Let’s get this show on the road. We’ll start with the usual test shots. Let’s have you leaning against the wall, chin up.”

  Allie walked to the waist-high wall that surrounded the sprawling hacienda. Leaning her hips against mud-colored adobe, she placed both hands behind her and lifted her face to the distant mountain peaks.

  Xola adjusted the drape of her suede skirt, then stuck what looked like a bucketful of pins into the back of her blouse to take some of the fullness out of the collar. The hairdresser muttered something under his breath and attacked Allie with a brush in each hand. In seconds, her hair went from a smooth, shining curtain of dark red silk to something the man called unfettered. The makeup director in the blue smock swore when she saw the intensity of the lighting, and strode forward to swipe an assortment of brushes across Allie’s forehead and chin.

  All the while, Dom peered through the view finder of his camera and snarled at various assistants to dim the left strobe and raise the right reflector and to find his damned Zeiss macro lens! Finally he shouted at everyone to get the hell out of the way so he could get something on film before the sun changed their whole frame of reference, for God’s sake.

  “Bring your right hand up higher, Allie,” he directed. “Higher. Tilt your head a little more to the left. Good. Now hold it.”

  Setting aside his camera, Dom snatched the Polaroid an assistant held at the ready. In rapid succession, he got off a half-dozen shots. Instructing Allie to hold her position, he then huddled with the art director to review the Polaroids.

  From the conversations Rafe had overheard on the flight from Minneapolis, Fortune Cosmetics planned a massive blitz of every major women’s magazine, with coordinated TV spots to follow. The print ad campaign would show the new beauty products in every sort of setting, from athletic to casual to business to formal. Santa Fe had been chosen as the site for the initial shoot because the city and its environs carried a cachet of sophistication, yet retained a sense of being close to the earth and sky. Something for everyone, Rafe thought, scanning the small crowd of guests and employees who’d gathered to watch the proceedings.

  Rafe’s review of the registration list with the manager yesterday afternoon had turned up one or two well-known names, which wasn’t surprising for a resort that cost more per week than most people took home in a month. His contacts in Miami were running background checks on the entire guest list. He didn’t think your average obsessed fan could afford to check into Rancho Tremayo for an extended stay, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

  An irate shout from the Zebra drew Rafe’s attention back to the shoot. His face red, Avendez was gesticulating angrily at an assistant, a gangly young man in a burnt-orange University of Texas sweatshirt and a ball cap worn with the bill backward.

  “Take that damn light meter, get your butt over next to Allie’s, and give me an accurate reading this time!”

  Apparently the test shots weren’t “natural” or “low-key” enough for Avendez. Disgruntled, the photographer hunched over the viewfinder and fiddled with the huge lens protruding from his camera. Strobes were moved, dimmed, brightened. Filters were switched. The hairdresser darted in to unfetter Allie’s hair some more.

  Through the entire process, she didn’t move. Her hands remained planted against the adobe wall, and her eyes stayed fixed on the jagged peaks of the Sangre de Cristos. After his recent bout with a cramped thigh muscle, Rafe could only admire her ability to command her body.

  Finally, Avendez was ready for the real thing.

  “Okay, Allie, do your moonling bit. Wipe your face clear. Clear, dammit! Come on, we don’t have all morning!”

  Eyes narrowed, Rafe watched Allie’s expression. From where he stood, she didn’t appear to move a single facial muscle. Didn’t tighten or loosen her lips, or alter the angle of her eyes or chin. Yet her face seemed to take on an emptiness, like a pale white canvas waiting for the first stroke of a brush.

  “That’s better.” The camera shutter clicked. “Now try for dreamy. Yeah, dreamy!” Click. “You got up at dawn, for God’s sake. You’re still half-asleep. Better. Hold it. Hold it.” Click, click. “Now wake up a little. A little! Don’t go bug-eyed on me. Just look like you have something better to do today than— Oh, hell! Xola, get that damned ruffle off her neck. Allie, hold the position.”

  While Xola adjusted the offending lace, Allie maintained her pose. Seconds, then minutes, dragged by. Rafe’s muscles began to tense in sympathy. How the hell long was she supposed to keep her chin tilted up like that and her neck arched back?

  For hours, it seemed, although it was probably only another ten or fifteen minutes. Then she and Dom began a choreographed, highly stylized dance that blended liquid movement, utter stillness and a range of expressions that ran the gamut from tender to playful to downright sensual.

  “Bend to the left a little,” Dom instructed. “Just a little. Good. Now show me some surprise. Surprise, not a gape! Good. Good. Hold it. Hooold it.”

  While Avendez shot eight or ten rolls with Allie in various poses against the wall, an assistant scurried to produce contact sheets after each roll. Between takes, the photographer and the art director examined the sheets with a magnifying glass, circled those shots they wanted printed, then shot more. It took three hours to capture the look Avendez wanted.

  Then Allie moved from the wall to the tall gate and leaned against the weathered cedar beam, and the entire process began again.

  With each passing hour, the sun heated the air until the early-morning chill was no more than a faint memory. In the process, the sky lost its dazzling clarity. Huge, puffy clouds built up as the warm air rose from the high desert plateau to clash with the cooler air at the tops of the peaks. Dom cursed with each shift in the light and took out his temper on the entire crew indiscriminately, until everyone but Allie glowered at him and at each other.

  “I don’t know how she does it,” Xola muttered to Rafe after one trying episode. “Every day I work with the man, I swear it’s my last. Allie just lets his temper roll off her back.”

  She let a lot of things roll off her back, Rafe noted. Endless criticism. Constant direction. The intent, intense professionals who swarmed around her like flies at every break in the shooting to repair her makeup
or her hair or take light-meter readings.

  “Tuck your chin, Allie,” Dom snapped, oblivious of everything but the composition in the viewfinder. Rafe suspected a Tomahawk missile could plow into the dirt beside him and he wouldn’t notice it.

  “Bring it down a little more. More. Now look to your right. Jesus, your other right!”

  In a languid movement, Allie tilted her head in Rafe’s direction. Her eyes flickered for an instant as they snared his.

  “Let’s have a smile. No, not that one! That’s the one you’d give your maiden aunt from Hoboken. Give me sultry. Give me the one every man wants to take to bed with him. That’s better. Hold it. Hold it.”

  Rafe stiffened as Allie slanted him the kind of smile a man dreams of getting from a woman he’s touched and kissed and rolled around in the dirt with. The kind that said she was ready to do it again, any time he wanted. He wanted. Lord, he wanted.

  “Now more. More. Come on, Allie. Give. Oh, yes, that’s good! Hold it. Hold it.”

  Perspiration slicked Rafe’s palms.

  “A little more to the right. Hold it.”

  His loins tightened.

  “Drop your chin another notch. Hold it. Hold…. Oh, hell, I’m out of film.”

  For an instant longer, Allie’s eyes held Rafe pinned, like a rare species of insect mounted on a board. Neither of them moved. Rafe didn’t breathe. He couldn’t.

  Then she blinked and slowly straightened.

  Only then did Rafe realize that the locked thigh muscle he’d experienced this morning was mild compared to what he was experiencing now. With a concentrated effort, he relaxed his wire-taut body. The idea that this woman could exercise such power over him with just a look and a smile shook the hell out of him.

  Her back to Rafe, Allie clutched her hands together to hide their trembling. Good grief, did the man have any idea of how much he could affect her with just a look? She hoped not. She sincerely hoped not. She hadn’t felt this shaky since she’d started school without her twin glued to her side. Rocky had come down with the flu, the rat, and left Allie to face the terrors of first grade alone.

  What was this fascination she seemed to have with Rafe Stone? Usually she was able to blank her mind during a shoot and make lists of the things she had to do, like pick up the laundry or sweep the dust balls from under the sofa before her mother’s next visit to New York. Today, her mind refused to blank.

  Allie was used to people watching her during a shoot. Everyone watched her during a shoot, for heaven’s sake. Usually with eyes trained to detect the slightest ripple of a shadow on her skin or a setting that overpowered the subject. During a studio shoot, the professionals picked her apart and put her back together again. On location, small crowds gathered, as they had here. Allie had never been distracted by either sharp-eyed technicians or gawking spectators before.

  But Rafe Stone distracted her. Big-time. When she caught his steady gaze a few moments ago, she’d felt the jolt clear through the invisible shield she always erected between herself and the faces ringed around her.

  For a few moments, she’d followed Dom’s instructions instinctively. As ordered, she’d smiled. She’d thought about the way Rafe had kissed her this morning, and smiled. Only somehow the kiss had taken over where the smile was supposed to leave off.

  Focusing on that kiss was really…dumb, she told herself. About as dumb as letting it happen in the first place. The next time Dom wanted sultry, she’d think about… About… Something!

  Dom snarled an inarticulate order at his assistant and snatched his camera out of his hands. Stomping back to the gate, he glowered at his model.

  “You ready?”

  Allie drew in a steadying breath and turned her head so that Rafe wasn’t anywhere within her peripheral vision.

  “I’m ready.”

  The shoot would keep her busy, she told herself. The shoot, and her nightly sessions with Dom and the others, going over the contact sheets and the next day’s schedule. Except for the early-morning run, she wouldn’t be alone with Rafe. And she’d make damn sure he warmed up before they started, so that his leg didn’t draw up in another cramp.

  After the shoot, maybe she’d have time to sort out this illogical, persistent attraction she felt for the man. After the shoot, she might call him, or look him up when she was in…

  With a start, Allie realized she didn’t know anything about Rafe Stone. Where he was from. Where he’d gone to college. Whether he’d gone to college. How he’d become so scarred. She swallowed suddenly. She didn’t even know whether or not he was married.

  “Allie, for God’s sake!” Dom shouted. “We’re trying to convince people to buy this makeup for their faces, not use it to clean toilets. Get rid of the sour look and give me some charm.”

  Behind a face carefully reconstructed for charm, Allie’s mind worked furiously. How could she have been crazy enough to squirm all over a man she knew nothing about? How could she be so…all right, so attracted to him? She’d been burned once by a fiancé she thought she knew and discovered she didn’t know at all. Maybe she ought to make a phone call and get someone to do a background check or two, as Rafe had done on the resort’s guests. As he’d done on her and her family, he’d casually informed her.

  But who could she call? Not Rocky. Her twin would never let Allie live down this sudden curiosity about the so-called goon’s personal life. Certainly not Jake. Her father would want to know why, and Allie hadn’t been able to share her personal thoughts with him since he’d started substituting his work for his family.

  Her brother Adam, maybe, or her older sister, although Caroline had worries enough without Allie piling a personal quest on top of them. But her cousin Michael, now…

  “Charm’s not your strong suit today, Allie,” Dom said in disgust. “Let’s try for happy. Good. That’s good. Tilt your head to the left. Left, dammit! Now hold it. Hooold it!”

  Workaholic, entrepreneurial Michael, Allie thought gleefully. Fortune Cosmetics’s vice president for product development. He could find out anything and everything about Rafe Stone. Or his oh-so-efficient secretary could. Julia Chandler knew her way around the business world as well as her boss did. Allie would give her or Michael a call when they broke for lunch today. Assuming they ever broke.

  She snuck a peek at Dom and bit back a sigh at his scowling face.

  Not for a while yet, apparently.

  Six

  During the next few days, Rafe kept Allie within visual range fourteen to sixteen hours a day, but they were alone together only during the quiet moments just after dawn. The arrangement suited Rafe just fine. Given the fact that he couldn’t wipe the feel or the taste of her from his mind, he didn’t need time alone with her. Still, he found himself forcing his protesting lungs and legs to extend their run a little more each day.

  He pushed himself for Allie’s sake, or so he told himself. The woman was surrounded from dawn to the time she firmly shut her casita door at night, insisting on eight hours of sleep before the next day’s shoot. The only time she really let herself go, the only time she could be herself, was during this hard, driving run. For these few moments, she didn’t smile or tuck her chin or tilt her head, as directed. She didn’t slip on dark glasses to keep her makeup from melting between takes. She put her face to the sun and ran.

  By the fourth morning, Rafe still wheezed like an old-fashioned steam engine, but he managed to keep up. Puffing slightly, he ran beside her and feasted on the face turned up to the sun. With makeup, it was flawless. Without, it was damn close. Yet he’d discovered during the past few days that Allie viewed her stunning beauty with a down-to-earth practicality. She accepted it as a gift, like a musician’s ear or a singer’s voice, and disciplined herself as rigorously as any talented artist would to keep his skills finely tuned.

  Her patience and grace under fire amazed Rafe. She never bristled defensively at the criticism that came from everyone from Avendez to the rancho’s handyman, who’d dropped by one afte
rnoon to watch a shoot. Rafe, on the other hand, was having to clench his jaw more and more often these days to keep from telling them all to back off. Remembering a particularly vituperative session, he grunted.

  Allie threw him a quick glance. “You okay?”

  “No.”

  A small smile tugged at her mouth. “Want to head back?”

  “Yes. But let’s see if we can make it to the state road first.”

  “Keep this up, Stone, and you might just start to enjoy running.”

  “Don’t bet on it.”

  Her laughter floated up to him. With a start, Rafe realized this was the first time he’d heard her laugh. His jaw squaring, he put one foot in front of the other. Clouds of dust puffed with each step. Cool morning air lanced into his lungs with each breath.

  He’d make the state road if it killed him.

  It didn’t, but he was sure glad when they reached their goal and turned around to head back. Once through Rancho Tremayo’s gates, they slowed to a walk to cool down. Side by side, they crossed the courtyard.

  Rafe sniffed appreciatively at the tantalizing aroma of frying onions that drifted from the main kitchen. A loud, long rumble from the vicinity of his stomach signaled its demand for immediate replenishment of the calories he’d just burned off.

  “Sure you don’t want me to bring you some breakfast?” he asked Allie. “A real breakfast.”

  Her nose wrinkled. “You’re not really going to chow down on fried onions before seven o’clock in the morning, are you?”

  “What are huevos rancheros without onions?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  He halted in mid-stride and swung her around. “Are you telling me you’ve never tasted fried eggs served on tortillas? With frijoles and chili sauce piled on them? Topped by onions and cheese and everything else left over from the night before?”