The Gift of Love

by Lori Foster

“Sorry,” he said quickly, dismissively, “there’s no one here by that name.”

  With any luck, the intruder would take him at his word and go back the same way she’d come.

  One corner of the woman’s mouth quirked and she took a step forward, decidedly not going back the way she’d come.

  “Really? Because you look an awful lot like Rob MacGregor, former high-fashion photographer from Manhattan.”

  His gaze narrowed. “Who are you?” he asked, studying her more closely, but unable to place her. Of course, considering how drunk and high he’d been in those days, he wasn’t entirely sure he’d recognize his own mother if she walked in the door.

  The woman flashed a winsome smile and took yet another step forward. “Come on, Mac. I know it’s been a few years, but I haven’t changed that much, have I?”

  She was within arm’s reach now, so he studied her, really studied her. Long blond hair the color of rolling wheat fields. Bright green eyes and a heart-shaped mouth on a narrow face with great bone structure.

  She was wearing a long, brightly flowered dress in some thin, flyaway material that covered her from chest to calf and shoulder to wrist. Attractive enough but not gorgeous, and she was a woman who could pull off gorgeous. If she put her mind to it, he suspected she could be downright hot with a capital H.

  And that’s when it hit him. He pictured her out of the dress and in a gold lame string bikini instead. Four-inch heels; hair curled, teased, and shellacked; a pound of cosmetics making her features pop.

  “Soph?” He jerked as though he’d been slapped, the shock of seeing her again—here, of all places—leaving him nearly speechless.

  With a laugh, she closed the remaining distance between them, pressing a kiss to his stubbled cheek while she hugged him close.

  “Sophia LaRue.” He breathed the name that hadn’t passed his lips since he’d left New York and his former life behind. “I can’t believe it.”

  Pulling away mere inches, she rolled her eyes. “It’s just plain Sophie Lawrence these days, Mr. Rob MacGregor of Happy Endings Photography.”

  A ripple of embarrassment went through him at what he’d become, followed immediately by a wave of anger. What did he have to be ashamed of? He’d made some mistakes, done some things he wasn’t proud of. But he’d gotten help, gotten his life back on track, and was doing just fine.

  “Yep, that’s me,” he muttered. Disentangling himself from her hold, he backed away and returned to what he’d been doing—resetting his equipment and backdrop for a toddler shoot the next morning.

  “Hey,” she said, coming up behind him and once more laying a soft hand on his arm. “I didn’t mean anything by it, Mac. I’m proud of you. You were a mess the last time I saw you, and I was terrified you were going to overdose or do something equally stupid to get yourself killed or thrown in jail. Every day I opened the paper and didn’t see your name in either the obituaries or police log, I breathed a sigh of relief.”

  She didn’t know how close she was to the truth on that. He’d had a few run-ins with the law because of his drug and alcohol abuse, and with the amount of junk he’d been shooting and snorting toward the end, he was damn lucky he hadn’t wound up on a slab in the morgue. He knew it and reminded himself of the fact every single day.

  Turning to face her again, he let out a long breath and met her moss green gaze with a dark, serious one of his own. “Why are you here, Sophie?”

  One side of her lower lip disappeared as she worried it between two rows of perfect white teeth.

  “The ‘just dropping by for old times’ sake’ thing isn’t working, hm?”

  It was a rhetorical question and they both knew it, so he didn’t bother answering.

  She licked her lips and on a sigh admitted, “I need your help, Mac.”

  SOPHIE’S stomach clenched with nerves while she held her breath, waiting for Mac’s reaction. He couldn’t know what it cost her to come here, to track him down and lay herself bare—both figuratively and literally—in front of him.

  He wasn’t her last hope … he was her only hope. There was no one else to turn to, no one else she trusted as much as she trusted Mac, no one else who could help her get her life back the way he could.

  Anxiety wasn’t the only thing rippling through her belly and making her heart beat faster, though. She’d been attracted to Mac the first time she’d met him, several years before. With his shock of spiky blond hair, chocolate brown eyes, and lean, muscular build, there wasn’t much not to be attracted to.

  In those days, she’d been much more carefree, more live-for-the-moment and out to have a good time. Mac had been at the pinnacle of his career, partying hard on a regular basis to celebrate his success. Which was why it hadn’t taken them long to fall into bed together.

  There had been something between them … a friendship, a camaraderie, something more than simply a model sleeping with one of her photographers. Not that they’d ever had the chance to explore whether or not there could be more to their relationship than casual sex. She’d been too flighty, too self-absorbed, and he’d been too high.

  But she was a different person now, and so was he.

  “What kind of help?” he asked, drawing her thoughts back to the present. His low voice slid through her blood, heating her from head to toe.

  “If you need a head shot or are looking for a family portrait, I’m your man. Otherwise, I’m afraid you’re shit out of luck.”

  Rather than blurting out what she wanted of him, she side-stepped and changed the subject slightly. “You heard about my accident?”

  She made it a question rather than a statement because she wasn’t sure he had heard. It had been big news back in New York, and to a lesser degree across the country, but Mac had been fighting his own demons around that time and could easily have missed it.

  His brows—a darker brown than his bleached hair—knit in concentration. “Yeah. I mean … I think I remember hearing …”

  His voice trailed off and he ran the flat of his hand over the top of his head. “Sorry, no. I’ve been away from that world for a while now, and I wasn’t exactly sober when I was in it.”

  She nodded, lifting a hand to the top button at the front of her dress. “Two years ago, I was sharing an apartment with three other girls.”

  Her fingers slipped the first button through its hole.

  “One of them came home late from a party, drunk and probably a little high.”

  Button number two fell free.

  “She left a lit cigarette on the nightstand in our room before passing out on the sofa.”

  Three.

  “I’d taken a sleeping pill so I could get a good night’s rest and so I wouldn’t hear anything when my roommates came home and started banging around the apartment, but that meant I also didn’t smell the smoke or hear the flames when the curtains and bedclothes caught fire.”

  She loosened buttons four, five, six, opening the full-length, brightly colored dress more than three-quarters down her body.

  “I was lucky not to die of smoke inhalation before the fire department got there, but I wasn’t lucky enough to escape completely unscathed.”

  With that, she shrugged the dress off her shoulders, letting it fall to the crooks of her arms to reveal the flesh beneath.

  Being in the modeling industry since she was eighteen had lowered her modesty levels significantly. She’d posed naked, walked runways in swimsuits that were little more than strands of dental floss, stripped down to nothing in front of umpteen people backstage at fashion shows while changing from one outfit into another.

  So standing in front of Mac—a man she’d slept with once or twice in the past—in her matching bra and panties, dress still on, if not fastened and covering her, was nothing. She wasn’t even particularly concerned about someone entering the studio behind her.

  The only thing that made her moderately self-conscious about her appearance was the burn scars marking her body like a crude map of the continents.
They weren’t nearly as bad as they had been, but they were never going away either, no matter how many lotions or ointments she slathered on twice a day. The wide red splotches and puckered white lines were a part of her now. Forever.

  “I was burned over more than twenty percent of my body,” she told him softly. “I was in the hospital for months and rehabilitation for nearly a year after that.”

  Mac’s gaze, she noticed, was riveted on her torso, on the worst of the scarring. But to his credit, he didn’t look disgusted or horrified. His expression bordered on pity—a sentiment she’d seen too damn much of since the accident and had quickly learned to despise—but was saved by the hint of genuine concern she saw reflected in his coffee brown eyes.

  “I’m happy to be alive, believe me. And well aware that it could have been worse. But looking like this doesn’t exactly lend itself to a burgeoning modeling career.”

  two

  Mac couldn’t tear his eyes away from Sophie. Yeah, the burns were a distraction. His stomach tightened at the pain and trauma she must have suffered to get them, but they didn’t make her any less beautiful.

  Maybe it was because he hadn’t been with a woman in … God, he couldn’t even remember. Not since before his recovery, that was for sure.

  Maybe it was because they’d been together before and he knew what she looked like completely naked, knew how soft her skin was, knew her breasts were firm, knew the cradle of her thighs was more than welcoming.

  Or maybe it was simply Sophie herself who took his breath away. She always had. Even when he’d been under the influence and hadn’t known his ass from a hole in the wall. Even with a hundred other gorgeous models strutting around, flashing their Ts and As in his face in an attempt to catch his attention.

  Something about Sophia LaRue—a.k.a. Sophie Lawrence—had always called to him, drawn him in like a moth to a flame. Their few brief sexual encounters had been blistering hot, no doubt about it, but they’d also stuck with him more than any of the others he’d had with the random models and actresses who’d trotted past his camera lens and into his bed.

  Arousal thickened in his veins, sending long-dormant signals of longing and want to his groin. But then, there was a half-naked woman flaunting herself in front of him, so it wasn’t like anyone could blame him for having such a reaction.

  Even the scars didn’t deter him from looking his fill and enjoying every minute of it. There was no rhyme or reason to the markings; there was simply a blotch here on her upper right arm, there just below the bra line of her right breast, then to a larger, more encompassing degree along her waist and down to her left thigh.

  She was right that the burns would make a modeling career difficult. In an industry that revolved around perfection, that pushed its models to be stick thin and where “heroin chic” was considered healthy and attractive, the smallest flaw could keep a model from booking jobs and even securing agency representation.

  Swallowing hard, Mac dragged his attention up from her white lace bra and panty set with the tiny pink flowers embroidered on each and away from all the pale, soft, mouthwatering flesh the garments didn’t cover, and forced himself to once again meet her eyes. He was well aware that not all of his brain cells were firing properly, thanks to the massive amount of blood that had abandoned his gray matter and taken off for places much farther south.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I hadn’t heard.”

  And it really was a shame to have such a beautiful woman marred in such a way, especially when the injury would have had the added trauma of putting a screeching halt to her promising career.

  “I’m not sure what that has to do with me, though,” he added, hoping the statement didn’t sound too harsh. It wasn’t that he wasn’t sympathetic to both what she’d been through and her current circumstances, but he had to be careful of who he got involved with and how much he let into his life.

  With a delicate shrug, she pulled the dress back up over her smooth shoulders and began to rebutton it down the front. Mac did his best to roll his tongue back into his mouth but had to admit he was sorry to see her cover all that glorious female flesh.

  “The scars make a modeling career difficult, but I’m hoping not impossible,” she said.

  Several beats passed while he waited for her to finish her thought and reveal what she needed—or perhaps simply wanted—from him.

  With the dress once again wrapped neatly around her tall, shapely form, she dropped her arms to her sides. “I need a new portfolio, with photos of me now, so I can start looking for a new agent and hopefully start booking new jobs. And I want you to be the photographer.”

  THE silence was daunting, filling the oversize studio space like the inside of a deep, dark cavern with no discernable exit. Sophie held her breath, so hopeful that Mac would agree to shoot a new portfolio for her … and so afraid he wouldn’t. Her heart pounded in her chest, her palms damp as she fought the urge to fidget.

  Just about the time she thought her lungs would explode, he dropped his head, gave it a small shake, and replied, “Sorry, no. I don’t do that anymore.”

  “Oh, come on, Mac.” Rushing forward, she grabbed his arm and held on tight, doing her best to convey her desperation. “You’re the best; you always have been. And there’s no one I trust more to help me with this.”

  He shrugged her off, not roughly but enough to move away and return to toying with his equipment just as he’d been doing when she first walked in. “I can’t, Soph, I’m sorry. You don’t know what it took for me to leave that world … or what that world did to me while I was in it.”

  The words were soft and filled with regret, and suddenly Sophie understood. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help her or that he’d lost his edge where his photography was concerned, but that he was afraid of falling back into old habits of excess and abuse.

  Walking a few steps away, she took a seat on a small white platform draped with a dark blue fleece where she assumed children sat or were propped during their photo sessions.

  “You told me once that all you’d ever wanted to be was a big-time photographer. It was your dream to live in New York, capture beautiful images of models and celebrities on film, and have your photos appear on the covers of magazines, billboards, and in major ad campaigns.”

  He gave a derisive snort, pretending to be more focused on fiddling with the camera currently attached to a tripod between them than she suspected was truly necessary. “Yeah, and you see how well that turned out.”

  “Don’t knock yourself,” she told him, propping her arms behind her and leaning back slightly. Legs crossed, she negligently swung one sandaled foot back and forth. “You were amazing. And you were much more talented when you were sober than when you were hopped up on God knows what.”

  He glanced in her direction, flashing her a wry smirk. “Gee, thanks.”

  She chuckled at his obvious annoyance. “It’s true. I never understood why you got messed up with that junk. Oh, I get the lure,” she added.

  Lord knew the stuff flowed freely in certain circles within the modeling industry. She’d been tempted herself a few times. But she’d seen too many friends get strung out and either destroy their careers, become all about the drugs, or worse yet, lose their lives.

  “But you were better than that, and I always thought it was a shame you chose drugs over a brilliant career.”

  “I didn’t exactly choose them,” he murmured quietly. “I just couldn’t stop once I got started.”

  She nodded again, because she knew exactly what he meant. “But you’re doing better now, right? Got yourself back on track and under control?”

  He sent her another sidelong glance. “Yeah. But you know what they say—one day at a time.”

  Sophie studied him for a second, wondering just how hard a struggle sobriety was for him. There was a time, not so long ago, when she wouldn’t have cared. She would have considered an addict weak and probably stupid to boot.

  Then she’d had her
own accident, and while in recovery and rehab, she had met a number of different people working to overcome any number of different things. In the hospital, she’d made friends with other burn patients, but also those who were sick with both terminal and treatable diseases or who had been incapacitated in some way. In rehabilitation, she’d spent time with others who were trying to regain their mobility or to learn to live and function in a wheelchair.

  It had humbled her and also made her realize how lucky she truly was. Sure, she might have been in a fire, might have burns covering her from chest to pelvis both back and front, but she was alive. She had all her limbs and was able to return to her old life—give or take—without constant, unbearable pain or a major change to her physical body.

  She’d also come to understand that everyone was dealing with something. Whether it was an injury or an illness or an emotional stressor from some type of ongoing negative situation, no one ever really knew what another person might be going through in their personal lives. She tried to keep that in mind now when dealing with others and hoped it was one lesson she would never forget.

  Which was why she hoped so much that Mac had been able to truly banish his demons and overcome his addictions.

  She still needed his help, though, and hoped asking for it—pressuring him into it, if necessary—wouldn’t jeopardize his sobriety.

  three

  Mac didn’t know why, but he let Sophie stick around. Not just stick around, but talk him into going out for dinner.

  No doubt so she could spend a few more hours trying to convince him to shoot her portfolio.

  The problem was, he wanted to.

  Having Sophie waltz into his studio had awakened more than his long-dormant libido … it reminded him of how he’d felt when he’d been behind the camera shooting magazine covers, swimsuit issues, and ad campaigns for everything from Calvin Klein underwear to Estée Lauder perfumes.

  He’d felt like somebody back then. Powerful and confident and destined for greater things. Now, he wasn’t destined for anything more than senior pictures at the end of the school year.