Harder than Steel

by Jane Galaxy

  “I shouldn’t leave you alone like this,” she said. “I can stay. I’ll tell him I’ve got something more important—”

  Claudia looked at her for a long moment with a strange expression.

  “No, you should go. You’ve always wanted to travel. Isn’t that why you spent so much money on that passport in the first place?”

  Vanessa looked at her sister. They hadn’t been apart from each other since their parents had died, and Vanessa had always made sure Claudia made it to her appointments on time, took her medication correctly, had enough to eat, and wasn’t in too much pain on bad days. . . .

  “Trina down the hall comes over for coffee—I’ll check in with her. Call me when you get there. And . . . let’s talk when you get back,” said Claudia. “After you tell me about it, I mean.”

  Vanessa had never been in one of the town cars celebrities were always disappearing into. The inside smelled like freshly cleaned leather, and it felt remote, like an experience that didn’t quite belong to her. The backs of her thighs stuck to the seats, and she peeled them away slowly to maintain some dignity in front of Natalie, who, it turned out, was silent on any other details of the trip.

  A white plane with blue stripes down the body and low wings sat in the middle of a concrete field, already humming with a high-pitched whine. On the horizon, the sun was setting, purple and orange with thick foamy clouds, nighttime gathering in pinpricks of white light overhead.

  Vanessa was going somewhere on a private jet, one with its own crew to welcome her up the small set of stairs, to take her bags and pull the hatches closed behind her with kind smiles.

  It was exactly like the movies.

  There were overstuffed leather chairs and benches, and Jax was already sitting waiting for her with two glasses and a bucket with a champagne bottleneck poking out. He grinned.

  “Hello,” he said melodiously.

  For just a moment, Vanessa felt a curious mixture of giddiness and unrelenting self-consciousness.

  “Hi,” she said, probably too loudly.

  Something kicked in the forward compartment of the plane, and Vanessa half-sat, half-fell into the lounger opposite him.

  “So,” she said.

  “So,” said Jax. “How do you feel about a working vacation in Juan-les-pins?”

  Chapter Nine

  JUAN-LES-PINS was nice this time of year. Hell, Juan-les-pins was nice any time of year. Jax leaned against the windowsill that overlooked a stretch of sandy beach. There were a few early risers stretched out on the sunbeds among the palm umbrellas, but not nearly as many as during the high point of the season.

  Sex in the warm Mediterranean waters wasn’t exactly impossible or in short supply, and the cobblestone streets and old art deco décor felt utterly removed from reality. Juan had withstood an influx of youthful and nubile new money, and it would keep doing just that. His experience of the place had always differed from the look of the old world, though: there had been that orgy on some producer’s superyacht a few years ago—

  “Sorry, what are we doing here again?”

  He’d said that. Hadn’t he said that? This was not a good time to think about Cara Benario’s thighs.

  Vanessa had one hand held thoughtfully up to her chin, and he could only guess that she was still studying him from behind the dark sunglasses. Existence here could not be truly tolerated without concierge services; even now, someone was dedicating their morning to perfecting Vanessa’s day right down to a series of surprises comfortable enough for him to not bother feeling self-conscious about. She’d woken up to an outfit with a broad hat, linen trousers, and low espadrilles at the foot of her bed. The off-the-shoulder top made the skin on her collarbone glow warm amber like it was asking him to trace his finger along the curves. And then run his palms down to slide it off her altogether.

  “That can’t be how it’s pronounced,” Vanessa had said on seeing the name painted on the side of a bridge. “Juan-les-pins.”

  “Juan-les-pins.” He said it correctly, the French way, with a soft zh.

  Vanessa had just cocked an eyebrow and made a hmmm sound in the back of her throat.

  Jax had had very little in the way of a formulated plan for this trip. Of course. That was the way his mind worked: while grabbing coffee somewhere in Manhattan, an everything-bagel clenched between his teeth, suddenly the invisible PA system came on inside his head.

  Take Vanessa to the French Riviera and have her photograph you doing things.

  “Mmkay,” he’d muffled around the bagel at his brain, and called Natalie after the carb rush started to kick in.

  Jax considered asking his brain now what it had meant by that, to remind him what the higher purpose here was apart from PR and sex, but his inner monologue had gone a bit slow and quiet in the recovery from jet lag. And from the way the breeze kept fluttering at Vanessa, brushing her top close against her breasts.

  “If I photograph like I would normally,” Vanessa was saying, “it’s attention-grabbing, but not in a fresh way. It’d be done before it started. There’s a hook—you on a private vacation—but it needs something more.”

  The wind pulled again and revealed a stretch of skin near her navel that was smooth and toned, the kind of curve he’d like to brush his palm against.

  There was something he had been meaning to do. Jax tried to will his brain to tell him what it was, but somehow that felt like staring into a dark lake that was deeper than he’d been expecting, and he mentally took a self-preserving step back.

  “It needs to be more . . . intimate.” Vanessa came to stand next to him at the open door leading out to the balcony. Now he could see that her bare shoulders were stippled with dark freckles. “You’ve gotten people’s attention with the set stunt; now you need to hold on to it to make your audience absorb and contemplate this version of you.”

  She turned, and he could see the dim whites of her eyes behind the sunglasses.

  “You’ve been conspiring with my publicist, haven’t you?”

  “You asked me to do this,” said Vanessa softly, gesturing with one hand. “If you want help documenting your astonishing transition—” She tilted her lenses down slightly to give him a sardonic look. “You did ask me here for work-related purposes, right?”

  “It’s true, it’s all true,” he said, squinting at that word work.

  “We need to think about who the main demographic is for an item like this,” said Vanessa, moving away from him and starting to sound like a numbers person. Jax watched a boat speeding along the horizon in the far distance. The sun was rising along some line in the sky right to the point where it would feel hottest mid-morning. “You want to appeal to women, but you don’t want to alienate men. You want to exude power, but not arrogance—”

  Jax reached out, lifted the camera from where she’d set it on the deck, aimed it at his face along his bicep, and pressed the shutter button.

  “No way that was in focus,” said Vanessa placidly.

  He shrugged and turned the body over to find himself staring right at himself, up and out. Not bad. Slightly amused, not a little bored, with the boat in the background. His face had wound up positioned off to the side of the frame like he was trying to point out the yacht to her.

  Vanessa stood looking at it a moment, then tilted the camera back and pressed it into her chest.

  “Oh,” she said. “Now there’s an idea.”

  “Letting me take all the photos probably would give off a little arrogance,” he pointed out. “And blurriness.”

  “No, I mean—all the shots could be from the point of view of your audience. Instead of observing you, it’s their perspective as they’re with you. Like, every woman who picks up whatever magazine this winds up in is spending a day on the Cote d’Azur with you.”

  “How to Date Jax Butler.”

  Vanessa laughed and switched off the camera.

  “Alright, what’s the plan?” she asked. “Apart from sandy beaches and European men in tiny
bathing suits.”

  Jax grinned.

  And when they made it downstairs and out the front doors of the hotel, he started clapping his hands together ridiculously, mostly at the look on Vanessa’s face.

  “You wanna drive it?” he asked.

  “What?!” She started and looked at the electric-blue car again. “I can’t, I don’t have a license.”

  “Don’t say that in front of him,” said Jax, gesturing to the hotel doorman.

  “I’m not driving that thing. I don’t even know what it is.”

  “A Bugatti Chiron.” Jax took great pleasure in saying that out loud.

  “See, you could just be naming characters from Legends of Eldritch.”

  He opened the driver’s side door, and Vanessa stayed firmly put on the front steps.

  “Aw, come on, it’s fun to drive a supercar. It’s super faaast,” said Jax in a singsong. “We’ll get out on the highway and switch seats doing sixty on a blind curve. I won’t tell anyone you can’t drive.” He held his palm open at shoulder-height to catch the set of keys an obliging valet tossed his way.

  It had taken several trips and very large tips before the head concierge would allow that kind of behavior among hotel staff. Jax had spent time and perfectly good money just to get keys thrown at him to look cool. Life was a rich tapestry.

  He turned to open the other door for her and watched Vanessa twist the lens again. He hadn’t even heard the shutter go off.

  “Look at that, I knew you were a worthy adversary,” he said, and grinned again.

  “So what’s there to do here for fun?” asked Vanessa inside the car. She kept looking over all the little panels with hypersaturated blue lights glowing out at them. “What do you normally do when you’re on the French Riviera?”

  “Normally? I don’t know if you want to hear about normal.” He shifted, and the scenery flashed through from white buildings to palms and a rolling stretch of blue that split somewhere between the sky and sea.

  “Jax, I’m paparazzi, I’ve both seen and—remarkably—photographed varying levels of shit.”

  He chuckled and drummed the steering wheel.

  “Well, normally, I get drunk, have sex with a lot of people, sometimes all at the same time, and avoid answering the phone for a week after.”

  A strange look came over her for a moment, and Jax realized it was a slow growing expression of delight. Had she even heard him? He wondered if she was getting used to the outrageousness of his bullshit. Or maybe, said a small voice in the back of his head, it genuinely didn’t bother her.

  “You look like a car ad suddenly,” she said in something as close to awe as he’d heard out of her. He pulled a huge face, sticking his tongue out and looking right at the camera instead of the highway, and she lifted the lens again.

  “But objectively,” said Vanessa, uncrossing her legs on the seat, “What is there to be done in a place like this? Apart from violating traffic laws?”

  “I’ve heard tell of a mythical inlet where they grow billionaires in the shallows, like brine shrimp, called . . . Billionaire’s Bay,” said Jax, and braked hard, bringing them to a full and sudden stop. “Oh look, we’re here.”

  “My God,” said Vanessa, playing along, “It’s almost like you know what you’re doing.”

  “Like I planned this or something!” he cried, and they both scoffed loudly.

  As they went down the path along the rocky outcroppings toward the sound of waves, Jax turned and held his palm out to her to help her step clear of a root. She pressed the shutter again before taking his hand.

  “Hmm, planned something,” said Vanessa as they went down the path. “Like thinking ahead? Like having a boat waiting for you on the docks?”

  He didn’t even have to turn to know it was there, just as she’d said. Good concierge. Even better Natalie. Vanessa’s shutter clicked as they boarded, Jax taking her hand again, while the pair of uniformed crewmembers undid the mooring ropes and began steering them down the coastline, the blues of the sea looking like a juicy curaçao cocktail. The tops of white and terra cotta villas peeked out from between dark olive-green trees along the hillsides, and shadowed silhouettes of mountains in the far distance rose and fell.

  Jax stood at the bar mixing drinks with his feet planted hip-distance apart. She and her camera would take advantage of the moment if he fell. He expected nothing less of her. Vanessa took the glass from his hand—“Literally a drink called a French Riviera,” he said—and set the camera on the little round table between them.

  “So what do you think?”

  “It’s a strong drink for nine in the morning,” she said.

  “And here? This whole place?”

  Vanessa took in the yacht’s cabin with a long, slow glance.

  “I’m not sure. I’ve never been to sea before. The closest I ever get is the Hamptons, and that’s not quite the same as a resort suite with a private infinity pool overlooking the Mediterranean.”

  He watched her remove the sunhat and place it on a chair, combing her fingers through her windswept glossy brown locks. Bits of red and gold came through when the sunlight hit them just right. She looked different out here in the throes of luxury—relaxed, he realized, a sudden awe coming over him. He’d never seen her look that way before.

  Hiding behind a slouch and a hoodie—sure, he’d seen that. Climbing around on rusty fire escapes—her specialty. But languid and easy he’d never seen. Jax suspected that possibly no one had. It felt like a delightful secret.

  “I’ve got an idea for a photograph,” he said.

  “My shadow’s going to be in the way,” said Vanessa a few moments later. “It won’t look right.”

  Jax folded his arms onto the back of the boat to stop himself from bobbing up and down. He looked up at her where she was blocking out the sun above him, standing on the back edge where he’d stripped down to a bathing suit.

  He’d taken his time with that, turned away from her inside the cabin for the illusion of preserving modesty. There had been a telltale trace of red on her glowing face, and Jax had dived into the water half-hoping that his white Speedo would come off, just for the privilege of seeing the look on her face.

  “It’ll look like your audience is taking the picture,” he said. She didn’t move. “You’ll fix it in post! Go on, put the hat back on, just humor the beefcake in a tiny bikini,” he said, and she did, with an irresistible smile. Jax pushed off the edge of the boat and floated on his back, smiling contentedly up at her while she fiddled with the lens. The water was warm and salty, and he could fall asleep right here, never mind any lingering jet lag or whatever was going on back in New York.

  The sound of her shutter bouncing over the water was soothing, like distant birds chatting to each other. Back home, the noise always sounded cold and hard, echoing off buildings and chasing him through tunnels and in and out of parties and beds while he looked for something he couldn’t find and couldn’t quite name.

  He drifted, letting the sun warm his arms as a thought came slowly to him. This was actually relaxing—it wasn’t just Vanessa who seemed more at ease. Even though he was working, being out here with his one-time adversary felt different than all the other times he’d been here. No driving urge under his skin to find the nearest open bar, the tightest pair of muscled and tanned thighs to lose himself in. It was so cheesy: here he was, Jax Butler in his element, performing for the camera—and yet for once he was playing the role of himself.

  Jax opened his eyes and squinted up to find Vanessa still looking at him, pausing with her camera close to her chest. She blinked and turned to go back inside the boat. It had been an odd face, like he’d caught her. He knew that look. She was slightly guilty but mostly surprised that she’d been staring at all. Vanessa’s shadow appeared again, moving quickly as she took a running leap off the back of the boat and dove in next to him with a splash. Jax caught just a glimpse of her in a bikini with psychedelic neon print, and already felt his body responding to
the flash of tight muscles and sun-kissed skin.

  He flipped underwater and waited for her to come up. The clear water made it easy to see her turning this way and that, trying to find him. Jax waited, then brushed his hand against the bottom of her foot, trying not to laugh when he heard her squeal above. Breaking the surface, Jax ducked a torrent of water from her splash and began chasing after her as Vanessa shrieked with laughter and weaved back and forth to dodge him.

  “Well, well, well,” said Jax. “Looks like she’s got an off-switch after all.”

  Vanessa paused, then gave a self-deprecating laugh.

  “I can see why you all like to escape out here,” she replied, and turned to float on her back, arms spread out to the sky. Jax tried to not let his gaze linger for too long over the way the clear water lapped at the curves of her body.

  And mostly failed.

  They spent the morning swimming and lying around on the back of the boat, Vanessa sunning herself, and they motored back in time for lunch in a restaurant off the marketplace. He tried to throw her the keys to the car in the afternoon, but she wouldn’t go for it. So Jax got one of the valets to show up with an apple-red scooter, which she guessed she could manage, and steered them through winding back routes along the coast.

  It was amazing how easy and comfortable it felt to let her take control, wrap his arms around her waist, and let Vanessa drive while he could take in the view. Not being anyone or anything specific, just existing and absorbing the details around him. Jax realized he’d never really looked at the ocean from the cliff-side road, not with the thrill of cars or road head from whoever was in the passenger seat. He took the camera in hand and turned it to photograph himself with a few strands of her hair slipping from a scarf blowing in the breeze, caressing his face.

  Later, he walked out across a rock and cement path over the water to a ruined tower while the sun turned the seafoam lavender and white, and hoped that she had gotten the shot of him he meant for her to have. Not a movie star on international street-spotting duty, but a man standing against the enormity of the sky. One for her portfolio, maybe. A small, unspoken gift. Jax felt sure that her eye for detail would catch that, even if he couldn’t exactly figure out how to tell her.