Vote Then Read: Volume III

by Aleatha Romig

  Today’s session was another boudoir photography shoot. Carli Simpson had booked through the Naked You website, and while Lizzie preferred photography that wasn’t quite so staged and deliberate, it was a hit here in New Orleans.

  Turns out women of all shapes and sizes really dug stripping down to next to nothing for the camera.

  On the couch, Carli shoved a hand deep into her corset to arrange her watermelon-sized breasts. A smirk curling her mouth, she muttered, “My husband loves these things but I’m telling you, they hurt like a bitch most days.”

  Lizzie hummed a noncommittal response, turning away from her client to face the large windows of her studio. The property sat in the unlikeliest of places: a converted, late nineteenth-century townhouse in the city’s Warehouse District. Her view was the towering St. Patrick’s Church, a neo-Gothic structure where Latin mass was still held weekly. She had more photos of the exterior and interior of that church on her apartment walls than she did tubes of mascara in her collection.

  When she’d taken over the studio space from the previous tenant, her first order of business had been to install blinds that allowed her clients to see activity on the street, although pedestrians didn’t have the same luxury.

  No one could peek inside, and that was exactly how she liked it.

  “I’m ready, Miz Vittoria,” said Carli Simpson. “Got ’em just like my husband likes ’em.”

  Lizzie turned to face the music—and found her sensible shoes glued to the floor at the sight.

  The woman’s nipples were hoisted above the cups of the bustier, and she’d lackadaisically thrown herself over the arm of the sofa like a Kate Winslet wannabe from Titanic. Only, Carli Simpson was missing the one element to complete the image, aside from Kate’s trim form and red hair—the blue pendant.

  Lucky for Mrs. Simpson, Lizzie had something similar—albeit cheaper—tucked away in her office.

  You are such a softie.

  Yeah, she just couldn’t help herself from going above and beyond the call of duty for her clients. Lizzie wanted to make women feel better about themselves, no matter who they were.

  She held up one finger, left her camera on her equipment table, and made the quick walk to her makeshift office where she kept the goods.

  In other words, the jewelry and whatever other more expensive pieces Lizzie wasn’t willing to lay out in the main studio. She tipped open a mahogany jewelry box on her desk, running her fingers through the silver and gold chains and ornamental pieces. Some were made of paste, others were historical artifacts she’d picked up at estate sales.

  All held value to the people who had owned them, one way or another, and in Lizzie’s photography she could continue to give them life.

  Where is . . .

  There.

  She slipped her nail under the silver, filigreed chain. With sunlight streaming in from the window, the vintage sapphire shone beautifully, like the ocean had quite literally been trapped within the gemstone. Perfect. Exactly what she needed.

  Carli Simpson wanted to knock her husband’s socks off for their upcoming anniversary, and Lizzie was determined to do her part.

  One sexy boudoir photoshoot coming right up.

  With a pep to her step, she sang softly to herself. After the swamp debacle, and the subsequent media storm, thanks to her livestream with Gage, this appointment was the only slice of quiet Lizzie had found in days.

  This was what she needed to right her teetering equilibrium.

  Her camera.

  Her studio.

  And a pair of tits the size of her head.

  “I’ve got just the thing for you, Mrs. Simpson,” she said, stepping back into the studio. “How do you feel about a little role play—”

  The pendant fell from her fingers, clattering against the floor.

  Her stomach dropped right along with the vintage piece.

  What the . . . Why the heck was Gage Harvey standing in her studio?

  His broad shoulders and tapered waist greeted her, as did the back of his dark head. With his hands burrowed deep in his black BDU’s, he stared out the window as though he desperately wished to be anywhere else but here.

  She didn’t know whether to be offended or grateful.

  Carli Simpson cleared her throat, and Lizzie switched her attention to the half-naked woman on her sofa. Her breasts were still out, nipples still pointing in opposite directions like they were dying of suffocation from the corset and seeking freedom from the motherland.

  Seated next to her, Lizzie noticed, was another man in a set of BDU’s. Older. Hair threaded with gray. A gut that spoke of years of donuts and coffee, just like every normal human and not the crazy health nut by the window.

  “My husband was doing surveillance nearby,” Mrs. Simpson carried on, touching her fingers to the older man’s face reverently, “and I thought it would be fun to surprise him with this.”

  That’s the point of the photobook, ma’am.

  Lizzie swallowed the hot retort and nodded swiftly, all yeah, yeah, no worries. Even though it was anything but.

  Although she often had couples attend shoots together, they never brought an extra . . . guest.

  She looked to Gage again, who hadn’t moved.

  “It’s not a problem, Mrs. Simpson. We can just . . . did you want to finish up today?”

  Carli Simpson had the grace to blush. “Oh, I don’t know if my honey-bunny has time for that, Miz Vittoria. He and Harvey just came for a quick look-see.”

  That did it.

  Gage’s shoulders jerked and he whipped around, avoiding the sight of Carli Simpson altogether, and zeroing his dark eyes on Lizzie. Only on Lizzie.

  She had absolutely nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of, and yet her heart fluttered with nerves and she swallowed audibly. If she’d thought him sexy in his off-duty attire, it was nothing compared to the appeal of him in his city-issued BDU’s.

  Black military pants paired with a matching long-sleeved, button-down shirt; the cuffs were rolled up his forearms, exposing the ink on his arms. In place of his customary LSU hat was a black ball cap with “NOPD” stamped in white across the front. He stood with an air of authority, his black gaze cool and bereft of its usual humor.

  No doubt about it, Gage Harvey was a panty-melter.

  And Lizzie’s would be the first to go.

  Her smile strained, Lizzie held up her hands in a welcome-to-my-home gesture. “It’s, uh, great to have y’all here. Officer Simpson, Officer Harvey, it’s lovely to meet you. I’m . . . Lizabeth Vittoria.”

  If she listened closely enough, she could feel the pits of Hell cracking open under her feet for lying. She’d never felt guilty for doing so before—Naked You was a brand, just as ThatMakeupGirl was a brand, and the two were separate entities.

  She needed them to be separate entities.

  She met Gage’s eyes unflinchingly, silently asking for him to keep quiet.

  A tick in his jaw caught her eye, and then he was striding toward her. Purposefully. With so much intent that Lizzie’s heart squeezed and her lungs squeezed even tighter.

  “Nice to meet you, Miz Vittoria.”

  His voice was low, like a dark caress down the pearls of her spine. When he clasped her hand, it wasn’t for a quick, efficient shake. No, that wasn’t the Gage Harvey way. His index finger brushed the center of her palm, eliciting a shiver across her shoulders and a hitch in her breath. Damn him.

  This wasn’t the time for him to turn on the charm.

  In this space, in Naked You, she wasn’t Lizzie Danvers, international makeup queen.

  Hell, she never even wore makeup when she stepped into her studio. Lizabeth Vittoria wasn’t that girl; her hair was up in a bun, her face free from everything but moisturizer; she wore comfy jeans, and a simple V-neck shirt. Black, because this version of herself went for classy and sophisticated as opposed to flamboyant and glam.

  “Harvey,” Mrs. Simpson said from the sofa, prompting Gage to drop her hand,
“if you’ve got a girlfriend, you have to bring her here. Us women love to get dolled up, although”—she giggled—“perhaps it’s best to say dolled down, given the circumstances?”

  Gage’s throat worked with a swallow as he stared down at Lizzie with narrowed eyes. “I might do that, Carli. I’ve got a feeling this is exactly what my girlfriend would be into, much to my surprise.”

  “You have a girl, Harvey?” asked Officer Simpson, who had yet to leave his wife’s side. “How come I didn’t know about that?”

  “Didn’t come up.”

  Mrs. Simpson clapped her hands, which admittedly did wonders for her breasts. “Oh, oh!” More jiggling from the twins down below. “This is so exciting, Harvey! You know you’re like a son to us. We’d love to have you and your girlfriend for dinner one night. Oh, my God. I’ve thought of the best plan! Miz Vittoria, what if we invited you over to take photos of all of us together!”

  An anxious giggle tore from Lizzie’s throat.

  It was one of those moments where the more you tried to tell yourself not to laugh, the more unnatural it sounded and the more impossible it was to stop.

  And that was her, right here, right now.

  The awful giggling? There was no end to it.

  It was on a loop, high-pitched and constant, and tears sprung to her eyes, and there was nothing she could do to stop the madness.

  Gage did it for her.

  He dropped to his haunches, picking up the dropped necklace off the floor. Then, still squatting, he peered up at Lizzie, brim of his ball cap shielding the top half of his face. “This yours?”

  Heat rose to her cheeks as a naughty visual ended her stifled laughter with a strangled cough. He was at the perfect height to . . . Don’t you dare think about him going down on you in the middle of your place of work, while there are CUSTOMERS ten feet away.

  But Gage Harvey tempted her like no other, and it was with every ounce of professionalism that she calmly took the necklace from him, squeezing the pendant in a tight fist. “Yes, thank you, Officer.”

  “My pleasure.” Princess. She could see that he wanted to say it, could see the way his black eyes snapped with annoyance and his full mouth tugged down with displeasure.

  Lizzie stepped back, away from temptation, away from the visual of him throwing her leg over his burly shoulder and pressing his lips to the apex of her thighs. “Are you interested in finishing up today, Mrs. Simpson?”

  The woman hmmed and hawed, then boldly stuffed her breasts back into her corset as though she had no company at all aside from her husband. “I suppose we can call it a day. You got some good photos, Lizabeth?”

  “Absolutely.” Lizzie stepped around Gage, fighting the urge to look back at him. “I’ll have everything edited within forty-eight hours. If, for any reason at all, some of the photos aren’t to your liking, you can come back in.” She flashed a bright smile, her YouTube smile. “All on me. How’s that sound?”

  Carli Simpson’s mouth stretched wide with joy. “You’re one of a kind, Lizabeth, one of a kind. I can’t imagine anyone who can compare.”

  Oh, the irony.

  “Harvey, shift’s almost over,” Officer Simpson said, taking his wife’s purse and slinging it over one arm. “Wanna take the cruiser back to S.O.D.? I’ll take the wife home now, since I’m here anyway. Clock me out?”

  A long pause, in which Gage lifted his NOPD hat off his head and swiped it against his pant leg. “Go right ahead, Kevin.” He looked to Lizzie. “I can handle it from here.”

  11

  The door to the studio clicked shut with a tinkering of an old-fashioned bell, leaving Gage alone with Lizzie.

  Gage moved to the display of windows, noting the blinds as well as the deadbolt. “Mind if I lock this?” he said casually, engaging the bolt and sliding the lock home before she could answer.

  He needed a moment to gather his thoughts, to get the image of his coworker’s wife’s breasts out of his head. The fact that he often met up with Kevin Simpson for pickup basketball games, and that Carli stopped by S.O.D. unannounced at least once per week, meant that this whole showdown was beyond abnormal. It was damn near scarring.

  The last thing he needed was to sit down at their dinner table, the two Simpson kids flanked to his right and to his left, and be thinking of their mother’s nipples.

  Fuck.

  He scraped his hands through his hair, then dropped his NOPD hat on the closest set of counters. Distracted himself with soaking in Lizabeth Vittoria’s studio, as though she hadn’t completely lied to him. Lied to the world. Did her brother even know that she took photos of naked people?

  Gage shook his head, fingers curling into fists at his side.

  From what he could see, Naked You was all white walls and white floors. There was so much white, there was a good chance he’d stepped into the North Pole. His gaze snagged on a white fluffy area rug in one corner of the room. She didn’t seem the sort to buy actual polar bear fur, but damned if that wasn’t where his mind went to first.

  He flicked his gaze to her, absently noting the very still way she held herself, as though nervous to make a move. Her rapid blinking gave it away—either that, or she had one of those damn false lashes poking her.

  “How long you been pretendin’ to be Lizabeth Vittoria?”

  His deep baritone startled her, he saw that. Her caramel-accented bun twitched on the top of her head, and she clutched that blue necklace in her palm like a lifeline.

  “Naked You started a few years ago.”

  Gage recognized that he was taking her omission too personally, especially as he’d only known her for a week. Under that. Maybe six days. Seven. Hell, it didn’t matter, not really. What did matter was that she’d put him in a position where he’d been forced to lie to a coworker.

  And, no, their fake relationship hadn’t made the circuit around S.O.D. yet, but it was only a matter of time before someone saw their trending photos and videos on social media, and put it all together.

  Then, what would he say?

  That his girl had seen half of the city naked? Not much of an issue, except that there was a good chance that if Carli Simpson was here, then Lizzie had photographed a good number of the other wives and girlfriends in the NOPD. Cops were worse than TMZ and People put together—there was no such thing as a secret within the police department.

  Hell, everyone was still talking about how Heather Hull had nailed her husband with a taser—while he’d been buck-ass naked—in some sort of ridiculous form of foreplay in their house. And that didn’t even take into account the time Jarvis Reed had stood up in roll call and called out his Lieutenant for being a liar when the L-T had claimed he’d never let a dude suck him off . . . and yet he’d let Jarvis Reed do just that the night before.

  So, this whole Naked You thing?

  It would only end terribly.

  Gage had spent way too many years working his ass off in the department to be brought down by this—by becoming gossip fodder for his coworkers.

  You hypocrite. You didn’t have an issue with faking a relationship for the cameras but this you’ve got a problem with?

  Yeah, he did.

  Because this one involved people he knew firsthand.

  Lizzie could lie to whoever she wanted to, but Gage wouldn’t do it. Not for the sake of keeping her identity a secret, which was clearly what this whole Lizabeth Vittoria thing was about.

  He stopped by the sofa Carli Simpson had perched herself on and gripped the padded back. “How are you able to keep this a secret within the department? Your brother knows everyone.”

  She wrung her hands before her, then straightened her back as though determined to stand him down. “I never show my face on social media with Naked You, not ever.” She paused, almost deliberately, then added, “Generally speaking, I also do some research on my clients before they came in. Finding Mrs. Simpson’s husband here was not part of the plan.”

  “How often does it go off script?”


  Her chin lifted at his dry tone. “In three years, it’s happened twice, today being the second time. It might not have occurred to you, but I’m a businesswoman, Gage, which means that I do my homework. I don’t allow for slipups.”

  He lifted a brow. “Today you did.”

  “Today,” she bit out, her crystalline blue eyes narrowing, “was an exception. One I’d prefer you kept to yourself.”

  “Trust me, princess, this shit goes no further than me. Plus”—his hands settled on the back of the sofa again—“if you recall, I’m not dating Lizabeth Vittoria. But it seems that Lizzie Danvers and I have a date with the Simpsons.”

  Her hands flung into the air and she let loose a frustrated half-scream. “God, you are so frustrating!”

  Screw this.

  Gage cut around the sofa and closed the distance between them. “I’m frustrating?” he demanded, jabbing his thumb into his chest. “Do you hear yourself? Let me get this straight. You browbeat me into agreeing to this fake relationship. Thirty days, you said. Fine, got that part. But you never once stopped to ask how I’d feel about the deceit, about telling all my buddies I’m with a girl, when we both know that it’s not real.”

  Her mouth pursed. “You could have told me no.”

  Gage’s teeth clacked together. “I did.”

  “You didn’t.” She neared him, hands already outreached as though she planned to shove him back to relieve her anger. He stiffened his core in preparation. “You didn’t,” she repeated. “Instead you asked for one night in my bed.”

  Silence.

  Only the sound of their heavy breathing saturated the studio.

  It was foreboding.

  It was also hot as hell.

  “What the hell are we doing here, Lizzie?” His fingers itched to sink into her heavy hair, to loosen the bun and watch the strands frame her face. Gage dragged in a heavy breath. “I’m not looking for complications, and I’m sure as hell not looking for a real relationship. You want me to play the boyfriend card? We can do that, but this”—he gestured at her studio—“I’m not joining this aspect of your life. I’m not getting any deeper than what we agreed to. That’s not what our deal was about.”