by Dawson, Zoe
“Oh, shit,” I whined.
Verity walked to my bathroom, talking all the way. “Yeah, that’s only the beginning. He’s all over the net too. Fashion blogs, Tumblr, everywhere.” I heard water running and she came back into the bedroom, handing me a glass and some painkiller. “Which is good, but mostly bad. You know what this means?”
“Stop talking so loud,” I groused, tossing the pills in my mouth and gulping down the water.
She lowered her voice and plopped down on the bed. “Great exposure for us, but if someone snaps him up for their campaign, we’re screwed.”
The picture had been taken when he was standing on the end of the runway looking all exotic in that scrap of a bathing suit, and the headline read, Deke West Shakes Up Fashion Week. “Why does he have to be so damn good-looking?” I moaned and clutched my head.
“Minnie, that is beside the point. What do you want to do?”
“We’ll have to offer him the campaign.”
“Exactly what I was thinking. We don’t have anyone locked in yet.”
“No, not yet.”
“We need to lock him in. But, Minnie, I have to warn you. It’s not going to be easy.”
“Me? He’s your husband’s former employee. Deke will do it for you.”
“Oh, I think he’s more interested in you. Besides, you’ll need to be the one to handle him. I’m going home in a few days.”
“Oh, bollocks. You’re right.” I clutched at my head again, drawing up my knees. Then what she’d just said registered. “Why won’t it be easy?”
“He might have looked unaffected yesterday, but modeling is not something he’ll be excited about doing.”
“Why?”
“He doesn’t like to be objectified. I overheard him talking to Boone about how much he hates it when people look at him and just see his looks.”
“Oh, bloody hell. Freaking bloody, bloody hell!” I didn’t want to see that man almost every day during our ad campaign. I had narrowed my list down to one male model, but he wasn’t my first choice. Deke had been my first, last, and in-between choice, and I knew it. That was why it had been so hard to choose someone else.
“He’s coming sightseeing with us today. Ask him then.”
I cradled my aching head, remembering, even after all the alcohol I’d consumed, what it was like to be straddling his lap. “Bollocks,” I said again. “I’ll be having sex with him before the week is out.”
My head came up and Verity eyed me. “Tell me I didn’t say that out loud.”
From the look on her face, I could see I had. Bloody hell. I needed a drink. “Okay, if that’s what it takes to get you up, showered, and ready to storm the Deke gates. He’s not a professional model. He’s a down-home country boy. Nothing fazes him. Just be honest with him, for God’s sake, and if you do decide to sleep with him, be careful. Don’t hurt him, because I’m not sure I could forgive you.”
“Me? Hurt him?”
“Yes, it’s easy to see he’s crazy about you. Don’t encourage him if you’re not serious.”
“Verity, he’s kind of irresistible and too young for me…and did I mention sexy as hell? The press will have a field day if they get wind of this. I don’t want to be compared to Angela and her penchant for pretty young boys.”
“Oh, bollocks,” she mimicked, and I laughed without humor.
“Yeah, exactly.”
“Okay, well, keep it professional, then. Offer him a job. Tell him there’s no way there can be any ‘you know,’ and you both have to keep it platonic.”
“Yeah, how did that work for you and Boone?”
“Oh, bollocks ten times over!”
I leaned against the headboard and blew out a breath. “Professional. Platonic. I could cooperate, but what about him? He wasn’t cooperating last night.”
“What happened last night?”
“He kissed me.”
“Oh, damn.”
“Hot damn is more like it. Verity, I really like him. I have a very hard time concentrating around him. Maybe you should do this.”
“No, Minnie. I can’t. I have a husband and a child. I need to be with them. I can’t stay in New York that long. Boone needs me now. With Booker gone, it’s shaken them up. They won’t admit it, but he wouldn’t tolerate me away for months and neither would Duel. You can do this. Now get up and jump in the shower, pronto.”
“Yes, missy,” I said, slipping out of bed. “For a country bumpkin, you’re pretty pushy.”
“We didn’t go through all this hard work so some competitor could upstage us by snagging one of the hottest new males in the industry. Deke will do this for us. But only temporarily.”
“Yes, well, he might have a decision to make afterwards. My gut tells me he could be big, work in the industry for a long time. I’m thinking supermodel.”
“Agreed. But baby steps. Right now let’s just get him to agree to this campaign.”
In the shower, all the powerful sensations that had stormed through my system last night returned. My skin was sensitive, my nipples ached. It had been such a long time since I had been with a guy.
I got out and dried off, got dressed, and took some more painkillers along with my orange juice. By the time, the elevator opened and Deke got off, I was feeling almost normal.
“Oh, love. What happened to your eye?” It was black and blue and his cheek a bit swollen. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d reached him, my hand cupping his jaw, my thumb going gingerly over the bruise. The fact that he’d been hurt went through me like a knife. “Blimey. Did you get mugged?”
“No, just blindsided by my roommate. We had a misunderstanding and he clocked me. It’s okay, Minnie. I’m fine. Really. It barely hurts. Ouch,” he said when I touched what must have been a sensitive spot.
“Right, tough guy,” I leaned forward and placed a soft kiss on the bruise, kissing along his cheekbone and eye socket.
He sighed and the sound of it went through me like thunder.
“I should get him to bruise me up more often. How about my mouth?”
I pulled back. “Did he hit you there?”
“No.”
“Cheeky devil.”
Verity cleared her throat as she came down the stairs, and I moved away from Deke with a guilty hop.
“Minnie, did you…?”
“No, not yet. Why don’t you lot go into the kitchen and get your breakfast. Give me a few minutes with Deke.”
Verity turned and crowded her husband, brother-in-law, and friend toward the kitchen, Brax gave Deke a wink, and River Pearl smiled, saying, “What’s going on?” to Verity.
Deke shook his head. “Geez, you’d think this was high school.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“I want to talk to you, too.”
“I think we have different things to discuss.”
“I’m sure. Look, Minnie. Can I take you out?”
“Deke, have you seen the paper?”
I showed it to him and he grabbed it. “Shit, that’s me. I hope my grannie doesn’t see me like this.”
“That’s not all. You’re all over the net, too. Did you get any offers?”
He looked up from the paper. “Offers?”
He was so damned adorably clueless. “For modeling?”
“No. I had more than a hundred messages on my cell, but I’ve been afraid to turn it back on.”
“Verity and I need to ask you a favor.”
“Are we exchanging favors?” he said, his brow raised.
I was tempted to do what I had never done before. Throw caution to the wind and take what I wanted, even knowing the consequences. But then I realized how awful it would be. How they would laugh and compare me to Angela, and just the thought of it galled me and chilled me. That woman had never been much of a mother to me unless it suited her. With her too-tight, much too youthful clothes, her desperate attempts to keep her face youthful with plastic surgery, and her outrageous behavior as Hollywood’s most notoriou
s aging starlet scandals, I was actually grateful she didn’t mention me very often.
I reached up to touch his soft hair, looked into those ocean blue eyes, fighting the internal battle of want over need, losing it in every way—physically, emotionally, romantically, spiritually—and not particularly caring. He made it too easy.
One look from him, and I felt like he was the fire that could melt me down to the very essence of who I should be. It was a wonder we didn’t combust into a raging inferno.
Dancing on the edge of this made me feel so alive. He could ruin me. Which made what I was about say right now the epitome of foolishness.
“I can’t lie. I am trying to avoid you, because I’m finding it difficult to be near you and not want something more.”
I put a hand on his chest, and that was a mistake. It was supposed to hold him back until I said my piece, not remind myself of how solid he was, how warm his skin was, and how smooth. My hand ached to move all over him.
“Wait. Before we do anything we can’t take back, we’re going to need you to work for us…me and Verity…exclusively. We can’t have our competition stealing our thunder. We’re about to launch an ad campaign for the Bespoke brand, and now you’ve made such an impression on the movers and shakers of the fashion world, you will be hounded with offers.”
“You’re offering me a job?”
“Yes, we would pay you.”
“I’m no model. I don’t know the first thing about it. I’m not interested in what you can do for me in your world. I just want a chance with you. And, I hate being objectified. Especially for money. And, even more, I hate that the money is coming from you.”
“This is such a complicated situation.”
“Shug,” he said, teasing the corner of my mouth with his thumb. “I wouldn’t betray Verity in any way. Why can’t I just fade into obscurity?”
“Because the fashion world won’t let you.”
“Then, okay. I’ll work for you.”
“Now the hard part. You have to keep your distance until this does die down.”
“No. No deal. Don’t try to wrangle me, Minnie. It won’t work.”
“Deke….”
“No.”
“Damn you. Stop being stubborn. Can’t you just keep your distance until the prep for this campaign is over? It’s just a few weeks of shooting.”
“No. I’m negotiating. If I do this for you, I want to take you out. Get to know you.”
“I can’t go out in public with you Deke. It’s about gossip and tabloids and scandal. I can’t see you in public.”
His mouth tightened and he shifted. “I don’t like sneaking around and being your closet boy toy.”
“It wouldn’t be like that and you know it. This business is catty at best and I have other stressors regarding dating younger men. But I would like to get to know you better, just not in a public setting where people will talk. This would be private between us. Can you at least agree to that? Besides, you’ll soon learn that we probably don’t have much in common except how much we want to get physical—”
“You want to get physical with me?”
“Like you have to ask that. I want to get close to you, but I…can’t Deke—”
“Minnie. About the physical. I’m, ah, a virgin.”
I blinked. “What did you just say?”
“I’m never been with a woman.”
“Blimey.”
“I want the first woman I’m with to be you.”
I couldn’t respond since Boone and Braxton came out of the kitchen, play-battling with each other, with Verity and River close behind, telling them to stop horsing around. Everything changed. My whole perspective on him. Here I thought he was experienced in more than just being charming. He wanted me to be his first? I was overwhelmed and touched.
“You guys ready?”
I nodded not taking my eyes off him and he smiled as if all I had just thought flitted across my face. It was the first time I had seen him look so tentative. But there was no time for conversation.
We trooped down to the street together and caught the tour bus. The first stop was the art museum.
“Kandinsky is one of the exhibits,” I said, hyper-aware of Deke’s presence and the stuff that was still not resolved between us.
“Kan—who?” Brax said.
“Wassily Kandinsky. Russian artist. He was actually a lawyer and economist before he studied art. Even though he came to art later in his life, he challenged other artists to capture the essence of their vision or story through a reduced means of expression. His woodcuts, for example, were a vehicle for articulating his romantic tendencies.”
All of us stopped and stared at Deke. He was studying one of Kandinsky’s woodcuts, and I was completely blown away that he even knew who Kandinsky was. The man was one of my favorite artists. I even had one of his prints in my office.
“What?” Deke said when he noticed our expressions.
“Geezus, huckleberry. You’re a brainiac,” Braxton said, but there was pride in his voice.
I moved closer, finding his intelligence extremely sexy. “What do you think about him as an artist?” I asked, stimulated by the way his eyes sharpened.
I couldn’t get over the idea of being the first woman to touch his body in an intimate way. Initiate him into the carnal. Every move he made, every breath he took turned me on. I wasn’t intimidated by his inexperience, because I couldn’t imagine that Deke would be clumsy, he was such a fast learner. But I was blown away by his ability to overcome his own appetites and abstain from sex when the teenage boy years were so intense in both sexual exploration and experimentation.
“You love this, guy, am I right?”
“I do.”
“I think he’s an awesome artist, and I got interested in him when I was looking up the firsts in the art world.”
“One of your surfing projects?”
“Exactly. Kandinsky’s career was a progressive move toward abstract painting. His early works show scenes from his childhood in Russia, and then he was using Impressionist tones similar to Monet. Bright planes of color coming together to form easily recognizable houses, rivers, and cloud-filled skies.”
I couldn’t resist adding, “Then he gradually transitioned to less-distinguishable shapes, like the ones exhibited here.”
Deke smiled and nodded. “I love that he was the first abstract artist, ever. Apparently Kandinsky saw the different artistic movements that were developing while traveling throughout Europe from 1911 to 1913, and he later blended the Impressionistic ability to depict sentiments rather than objects with the ability of Pointillism to give a flat surface the illusion of depth, and the powerful Fauvist use of color.”
“Exactly! You really do know him.”
By now, Brax, Boone, Verity and River Pearl had moved on, but I was locked in this fascinating discussion with Deke. “His paintings from this time are still made up of colorful shapes, but their meaning is more open-ended.”
“The thing I love most about him is he was a deep thinker when it came to his art,” Deke added. “His devotion to what he called inner beauty, spirit of fervor, and spiritual desire were personally important to him. He called it inner necessity.”
“That’s one of the things I found most interesting about him,” I said, “his philosophical approach and his belief that art is necessary. I have a print of his Composition VI hanging in my office. I get great inspiration from it. Want to see it?”
“What about—?”
“We can catch up with them later.”
We left the museum, and it was just a quick trip by cab over to my 18,500-square-foot loft design studio in Hell’s Kitchen. It was pretty quiet just now, since my staff was at lunch. I took Deke up the stairs to my modern office space with the Kandinsky hanging in abstract glory right across from my desk.
He stood in front of it, propping his mouthwatering backside against my glass and metal desk. “What do you think?”
He tilted his
head. “It’s classic and beautiful, just like you. Abstract and complicated.”
I stepped closer to him. “So, this is true, not just a line? You’re a virgin?”
“Um, yeah, I should have mentioned it, but how do you introduce that unless you’re getting down with a lady?” His arm came out and snagged me around the waist. “You going to help me out here?”
I couldn’t believe that I was going to say yes. But I did. I said yes.
His face brightened at the word. His mouth dropped to mine and I pressed my body against his, full-length.
“Yoo-hoo? Anyone home?”
No! I froze and my gut tumbled over and over. I thought I was going to be sick. I jumped away from Deke like my clothes were on fire.
#
Deke
When Minnie jumped out of my arms, I stiffened, and then it registered. A voice calling out. A woman appeared in her office doorway.
“My darling. How are you?”
She was talking to Minnie, but her predatory eyes were on me. I straightened, recognizing a man-eater when I saw one. I also knew her. Angela Harding. A bona fide movie star. For a moment I was completely caught off guard.
“What are you doing in here with my daughter? Surely she hasn’t thrown caution to the wind? After all, she’s British.”
“Angela, please,” she pleaded, biting her lip. I didn’t like how upset she looked.
“Oh, Minnie, sweetheart, please introduce us and stop being a little tight-ass.”
“This is Deke West.” She gave me a long-suffering look.
This woman was Minnie’s momma? Holy shit. She was notorious for…ah…that was why Minnie was worried about being seen in public with me. Her mother wasn’t shy about consorting with a lot of young guys. I didn’t dare offer her my hand, since she’d probably eat it, so I nodded. “Miz Harding.”
“Oh, my,” she purred, running her hand down my arm. “Such a dreamy accent. Exactly how old are you?”
“He’s eighteen,” Minnie said, shouldering her way between us and making her momma step back. “He’s off-limits.”
“Oh, he is? Yours? Well, you are a chip off the old block, huh?” She gave her daughter a bright smile and a nudge. Can’t we share?”