by Jill Shalvis
His house.
Damn if that didn’t have a nice ring to it.
“Amber?”
“Yes—” She cleared her throat and the slightly nervous little sound had his eyes narrowing. “I’m…here.”
Christ, not again. Not Emma. He opened his mouth to demand answers, then shut it. He only had this one job left, then he was done. Finito. Finished. In light of that, he didn’t want to hear what the hell Amber and Emma were up to. He didn’t want to hear anything. He was tired of the game, tired of all of it.
But honest to God, he didn’t know if he could handle Emma again. It wasn’t the long flowing hair or the willowy, curved body and outward beauty. Hell, he was used to beauty—his world was swamped with it. And he’d seen Amber’s body enough that he should also be immune to Emma’s curves.
But what had drawn him about Emma went beyond skin deep. In her eyes had been a host of things that made him curious, and lurking behind her nerves had been a woman he wanted to know more about. Photographing Emma had been an experience like…like making love to a virgin. Intoxicating, exhilarating and…
Shockingly arousing.
He’d put his heart and soul into those pictures with her—more than he’d done in years—and it had thrown him. All damn week now he’d been wondering about walking away from this life of photographing others, because Kauai had been sheer and simple joy.
“I’ll be there,” she said. “I won’t forget.”
“Good.” For one idiotic moment he wondered what else he could say, how he could keep her on the phone, how he could get a promise out of her, but then he came to his senses. “Thank you,” he said, and hung up.
“So which twin is it going to be this time?” Stone came through the sliding glass door carrying two beers, one of which he handed over before he sank to a chair. “Diva Amber or Queen Emma?”
“Emma.”
Fascinated by this tale of twins, Stone had looked into one Emma Willis. He’d discovered that she was part of a team of soap opera writers for Live And Love, with a reputation for being all work and no play.
She was Hollywood, firmly entrenched there, the one place Rafe wanted out of.
He twisted the cap off his beer and tossed back his head for a long pull on the cold brew.
“Interesting.” Stone put his feet up on the table, rolling his eyes when Rafe pushed them off. “This whole twin thing. They should do a shoot together, something without clothes, of course—” He broke off when Rafe snarled. “What? I’m just wondering.”
“Go wonder about one of your beach bunnies.”
“Hey, this is Amber I’m talking about. Amber drives you insane and tells everyone I’m gay. So why would you care if I—” He broke off, going from confused to speculative. “Damn.”
“What?”
“She got under your skin, in just one day.”
“Amber never gets under my skin.”
“I’m not talking about Amber—she could get under the skin of an elephant. I’m talking about Emma.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“You dated Amber once and didn’t sleep with her,” Stone said. “Are you never going to sleep with Emma, either? Let me know, man, and I’ll stop picturing her in that thong.”
Rafe glared at his friend, who laughed and stood, pulling off his shirt, leaving him in knee-length, sunshine-yellow swim trunks. “I think it’s time for a swim. Why don’t you call your gorgeous sisters over here so I can have some bikini scenery to keep me company?”
“Don’t make me hurt you,” Rafe said seriously. “And besides, Tessa’s taken now.”
“That leaves Carolyn. Tell her to wear that white two-piece she’s got, because the water’s chilly, and—” He halted with a laugh when Rafe growled at him. “Hey, it was worth a shot.”
“I’ve got a shot for you.”
“Jeez. Talk about being an overprotective older brother. I can’t ogle Carolyn and you won’t let me even think about Tessa. The least you can do is indulge my Amber-Emma fantasy.”
“Swim, Stone. Swim.”
Was he overprotective? Yeah, probably. But even before his parents had retired to Florida a few years back, he and his sisters had been close. They went to each other for money, support, friendship—whatever was needed.
He relished the relationship, but at the moment felt far more disturbed at the possibility that Stone had some interest in Emma.
Rafe watched him dive into the pool and start swimming laps. Would Stone go after her? And why did it matter?
It didn’t. Instead, he concentrated on the carpet samples, but his doorbell rang, the sound wafting through the open sliding glass door. Walking through his unfurnished living room into the foyer, he found a teenage kid standing at his front door.
“Hey, mister, is this cat yours?”
Rafe looked down. At the kid’s feet sat the ugliest brown and gray cat he’d ever seen. In spite of the way its fur was matted and filthy, the thing lifted its chin regally and stared at Rafe from eyes so pale a blue they looked like glass. Never having been a cat person, he easily shook his head.
“Nope. Not mine.”
“You sure? He’s been wandering around but seems to know your place.”
The cat kept his gaze over Rafe’s shoulder as if it couldn’t care less what the humans around it thought.
“I’m sure,” Rafe said.
The kid shrugged and started to walk away.
“Hey, you’re not going to just leave it here.”
“It’s a cat,” the kid called back. “It’ll go wherever it wants.”
Rafe stared at the cat, who made a big production out of yawning. “Go home,” he said.
The thing didn’t budge.
The house across the street had recently sold and a woman stood on the end of the driveway watching him. She was tall, and had her red hair piled on top of her head. She wore a short-sleeved pink sweater and floral capris with pink sandals, and, in keeping with the Suburban in her driveway, she seemed to personify a soccer mom, albeit a hot-looking one. When she saw him looking at her, she crossed the street toward him.
“Is that a stray cat?” she asked him, looking worried.
“It’s a stray something.”
“Oh, the poor thing.” She kneeled next to the cat and stroked it. “Poor homeless thing. What are you going to do about him?”
Rafe had planned on going back into his house and shutting the door but found he couldn’t do that with her watching him. “Are you my new neighbor?”
“Oh!” She smiled and offered him a hand. “Yes, I’m Irena Dotriana, part-time interior designer, part-time mom.”
“Part-time mom?”
“I share my kids with my ex-husband.” She shot him a smile. “So…do you have an ex-wife?”
He laughed. “No.”
“A not-so ex-wife?”
“Nope.”
Her smile widened just a little. “Well, then. Need a designer?”
“I just might.” They chatted for a few more minutes, with Rafe promising to contact her soon for “designing” purposes, and when she left, the cat was still there.
“What’s this?” Stone came through the house, rubbing a towel over his wet head, not bothering to dry off the rest of him so that he left a trail of wet footprints.
Rafe groaned. “You won’t be doing that once I get my carpeting in.”
“Yes, Mom.” Stone eyed the cat. “That’s the ugliest cat ever.”
Rafe took another look at the feline, who sat as if it were royalty, while its fur stuck up in some places and was matted in others. “Go get me a can of tuna.”
“If you feed it, you’ll never get rid of it.”
“His ribs are sticking out. If I feed it, I think he’ll go away.”
Twenty minutes later they were in the backyard again, with the cat at Rafe’s feet.
“Told you not to feed it,” Stone said, eyes closed, face tilted up to the sun.
Rafe glanced at the cat, whose ey
es were slits. “He’s just going to take a nap. He’ll leave after that. You know how cats are.”
Stone shook his head. “There’s a sucker born every minute.”
Maybe, but Rafe had never been anyone’s sucker. Or so he told himself, all the way up until the next morning, when the cat still hadn’t left.
But Rafe had to. At dawn, he kicked the cat out to the front porch and drove his Jeep a couple of hours to the designated meeting spot for the day’s photo shoot.
Joshua Tree National Park was one of his favorite spots to photograph. Something about the stark, barren landscape drew him, made him itch for his camera. He parked near the other cars already there.
Sitting in a chair beneath an umbrella, getting her hair worked on and her face done, was his model for the day. A miracle. She still wore her own clothes, or what he assumed were her own clothes—jeans and a zippered, hooded blue sweatshirt.
She looked like Amber.
Her eyes were closed, her face in a relaxed expression, but her body sat tensely in the chair and her hands were fisted on the armrests.
Not Amber.
Ignoring both Emma and the odd and inexplicable tug on his gut at the sight of her, he turned his back on the scene and studied the land. He’d been out here many, many times, the most recent being two weeks ago when he’d come to hunt down the specific spot for this shot.
Joshua Tree National Park was a strange and beautiful place. They were only a couple of hours east of Los Angeles, and yet they might as well have been on another planet. Instead of concrete, glass and brick as far as the eye could see, wide open, high desert prevailed, outlined with sharp, rocky mountains. He couldn’t wait to shoot it, to capture the vast open space, the wild, eerie cactuslike Joshua trees.
People said Los Angeles was sex personified. But to Rafe, this place, with the wild primroses and sunflowers peeking out of the rock formations or springing from the base of the ghostly Joshua trees, with the violent, unpredictable weather and the biggest sky he’d ever seen, beat out Los Angeles for sexy any day.
From where he stood, he could see the exact place he wanted to set up. It appeared to be a large rock formation, jagged and pointing to the sky. It was only about two hundred yards away, and from his last visit, he knew it wasn’t a tough climb by any means. In fact he knew which trail would take them nearly to the top. He figured he could get his model up there, standing on the point of an outcropping with the open space sprawling behind and below her, so that she would appear to be on the very edge of the earth.
Perfect.
And when he finished with the shoot, he could say he was a third done with this, his last job.
Even more perfect.
“FINISHED,” JEN SAID.
Emma opened her eyes. “Thanks.” She reached for her bag, wanting to write down all the script changes that had come to her while she’d been sitting there. She had no idea how Amber handled all the idle time. It would drive her crazy.
When she’d finished, she looked up and started to smile at Jen, but caught sight of herself in the mirror. “Oh my God.”
Jen smiled. “You look terrific, don’t you think? Hot and sexy, but innocent somehow, too. You’ve got such great hair, Amber.”
Amber sure did. Emma’s wasn’t quite as thick and pampered, but apparently Jen hadn’t noticed.
Which made her feel like a big jerk. “Thanks.” She took one last look at the artfully messy hair, her huge eyes and lightly glossed lips. She couldn’t decide if she looked like she’d just gotten into bed, or out of it. “Um…what comes now?”
“You put on your outfit.”
Terrific.
“I left it in the changing area.” Jen pointed to another makeshift bamboo-and-sheet dressing area. “You know…don’t take this the wrong way…but you’re really easy to work with lately.”
She said this with such surprise, Emma nearly grimaced. Amber had gotten herself quite the reputation. “Thanks.” She glanced over at the hanging sheets, wondering what would be waiting for her this time, wondering if she’d have any free minutes between now and camera time to work on the laptop in her bag; she needed to fix a scene she was worried about. She looked around, then felt someone staring at her. Craning her neck, her eyes collided with Rafe’s.
His gaze was dark, inscrutable. He gave nothing away, this man, at least nothing that he didn’t want to give away.
Was he thinking about the kiss? Because she was. Why had he wrangled one from her when Amber would know they didn’t normally do such a thing?
Because he knew she wasn’t Amber?
Her pulse skipped a beat at that, but he revealed nothing as he looked at her. He appeared the same as he had in Kauai—full of carefully restrained energy. He wore faded Levi’s, the fibers white in all the stress points, of which there were many, and a cream cable-knit sweater shoved up at the elbows. He looked lean and rugged and more than slightly annoyed. Her pulse tripped again.
She wished she’d told Amber no. If she’d refused, she’d be hard at work right this very moment, lost in a script she controlled instead of wondering what was going to happen.
He gestured ahead of him, where she could see a dusty trail leading off to what looked like a daunting mountain. Everyone around her—Stone, Jen and two lighting techs—started off, carrying whatever it was they would need.
Emma felt her mouth drop open a little. They were…taking a hike?
Rafe let out a grim smile. “You’re going to want to change now—there’ll be no privacy at the top.”
The top. She craned her neck to even see the top. The mountain looked gigantic, dark red and extremely…sharp. Good God. She swallowed hard. Hiking wasn’t her thing. Anything aerobic wasn’t her thing. Give her a nice, stress-relieving yoga tape any day.
“I don’t hike.”
His grim smile didn’t falter. “I’m not surprised, but this isn’t a hike, it’s just a little walk. You’re not afraid of a little walk, are you…Amber?”
The way he said her sister’s name made her glance at him, but he’d slid on a pair of dark sunglasses with reflective lenses, so she couldn’t begin to tell what thoughts were running in his head.
“Do you need help changing?” he asked softly.
“No,” she said. Or squeaked. She whirled away and hid behind the hanging sheets. A narrow full-length mirror hung off the bamboo, and hooked on to it was a pair of jean shorts and a bright-red halter top. On the floor sat a pair of thick wool socks and brand-spanking-new hiking boots in her size.
Not bad, she thought, letting out a breath of relief she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She’d be fully covered. She liked that, because the thought of facing Rafe in the light of day with anything less than a full set of armor felt a bit…daunting.
She stepped out of her own jeans and top, and then pulled on the shorts.
Uh, oh.
“Problem?”
She jumped a little at the sound of Rafe’s voice just outside the dubious protection of the sheets, and hurriedly slipped on the halter top.
“Amber?”
She stared at herself in the mirror wondering who the hell was staring back. Certainly it wasn’t her with the piles of makeup designed to appear “natural,” the artfully messy hair and the eye-popping clothes, because she’d never looked so naturally…hot. Maybe it was the way Jen had teased her hair, making it seem as if she’d just stumbled out of her lover’s bed—although, no one really looked this good in the morning.
And the outfit…“Man, oh man,” she whispered just as Rafe pulled back the sheet.
Standing behind her, he slowly pushed the sunglasses to the top of his head. His eyes met hers in the mirror, then traveled down, over the red halter top that left her shoulders bare. It also exposed plenty of cleavage all the way to the middle of her torso and that’s pretty much where the top ended. Her belly rose and fell far more quickly than she would have liked as his gaze dropped lower, to the hip-hugging shorts that were so low, the black
elastic band of her panties showed around the top.
She didn’t want to think about what else showed. She’d thought the thong last week had produced a wedgie beyond belief, but that was nothing to the feel of the denim riding up and exposing at least half of each cheek. She’d peek, but she didn’t want to bring it to his attention—
“It’s good,” he said, his voice even.
How did he do that? Remain so cool, while her heart threatened to burst right out of her chest just from seeing him look at her. “There’s…not a lot of coverage.”
His gaze cut down to her behind. “Nope.”
She stared at herself in the mirror, careful not to look at his reflection—his sharp eyes, his lean unshaven jaw or the way the wind had tousled his hair into a mess that her fingers suddenly itched to touch.
Clearly, she had lost her mind.
But it was hard to keep it when he was a mere inch behind her, when she could feel his breath on her neck, when she was watching him watch her. Even as she thought it, her nipples puckered into two tight buds.
Terror, she told herself. It was the terror at being in front of a camera again, exposed. At his beck and call.
But even as she thought it, she didn’t believe it.
No, what she felt wasn’t terror, but…excitement. Arousal.
And she had no idea what to make of that. Or of herself.
6
IN THE END, Rafe had to hold her hand. It was that or lose her on the last leg of the climb to the top of the rock formation, and he used the word climb loosely.
Really, it’d been nothing more than a slightly taxing walk. But not to his model. “Let’s go,” he said over his shoulder, practically towing her. The sky was wide open and so blue he could have drowned in it, but that was only directly overhead. From the west came a rather vicious wind and he could see the white clouds darkening as they swirled together and gained momentum.
How many times had he been here? he wondered. The rocks, the sky, the amazing foliage that survived the harsh winters and violent summers…it all amazed and calmed him in a way little else did.
But his experience told him what those clouds meant. He knew they might have an hour before the unexpected spring storm hit…or five minutes. “Come on.”