by Kylie Walker
“What is it you wanted to talk about?” she asked.
“What do you think? We left a real shitty mess today, and I wanted to clear it up before tomorrow. Like you said, you want things to be professional. I want that, too, but we can’t be that way if you’re mad at me.” He couldn’t take his eyes off of her. She made his blood run hot.
“I’m not mad at you,” she admitted, looking at her red toenails. Even her feet were pretty, and he wasn’t a footman. He normally didn’t like them, probably because the women he slept with spent most of their time wearing stilettos until their feet were nothing but bruised blister-covered masses.
“What is it, then?”
She glanced up at him. She was chewing her lip. There was so much fear in her that it was almost palpable. He remembered the sadness he saw in her eyes when he interviewed her, along with so many other things. That sadness was huge and deep, and she was looking at him from the middle of it, curled into a ball.
“There’s a lot of stuff about me I don’t feel comfortable talking about,” she whispered. “A bunch of shitty things happened to me years ago. You don’t need to know about it. We don’t know each other very well, and you are still my boss, even if we did do it today.”
“Point taken.” He understood privacy. It’s not like he would have told her about prison, or how he ended up there.
“Sometimes that old stuff gets in the way of my life today. It’s the easiest way I can explain it. I don’t feel comfortable in a lot of situations. I might lose my temper for no reason, or be bitchy or nasty. Or I might shut down. It happens. I shut down today after we had sex. I’m sorry for that because I didn’t explain why.”
“It’s okay. We all have stuff.”
“Some more than others,” she murmured, smiling wryly.
“Yeah, some more than others.”
“I really do want you to want me to work there because I’m good. I’ve worked very hard to learn my craft, and I’m a hard worker.”
“Point taken,” he said again. “I know you’re good.”
“I don’t want it to be like some stupid, cliché situation where I’m screwing my boss so he’ll give me a raise or a promotion or something.”
“That’s a shame since I was going to offer you a full-time position after this campaign was over.” His voice was deep and smooth.
“You don’t even know what I’ll do with the campaign yet,” she accused. “How can you say that?”
“I already know you came up with better ideas than any of the dozens of other photographers who have worked for them—and by the way, they were also better ideas than the rest of the creative team. It’s supposed to be up to them to come up with the scenario behind the photos, not you.”
Her eyes widened. “But you let me work on all those ideas?”
“Because you had them. Because I wanted to see what else you had to offer. And I’ll tell you a secret: Trevor loved your ideas, and so did his father.”
The corners of her mouth twitched. “Really?”
“Really.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t get the chance. You were too much to resist when you walked into my office earlier. I lost control. I’m sorry.”
She picked at invisible lint on her pants. “Do you mean that? Are you actually sorry?”
“Honestly?”
“Yes.”
“No.” She chuckled, shaking her head. He did the same. “Listen, I get it if you don’t feel comfortable spending time together outside the office. I get that you have morals and principles, and you’re a good person. I won’t hold that against you. I want to be with you again, get to know you. But I won’t make you do anything.”
She was quiet for a long time. “You mean that?”
“Of course.” He frowned, staring at her. “You don’t believe me?”
“Let’s just say I haven’t had a lot of reason to believe things like that. Things men say.” She left it there, and he understood a lot more than she gave him credit for. It was all she had to say. He didn’t need to hear the specifics to know that somebody had hurt her. Somebody hurt her badly.
He stood up, stretching after folding his tall frame to fit onto her tiny sofa. “I’ll go now,” he said. “I’m glad we cleared this up.”
She stared at him with uncertainty all over her face, chewing her lip again. That innocent look. It was completely sincere. When she didn’t say anything for a long time, he asked, “What is it?”
“I don’t want you to go,” she whispered. “But I don’t want us to do anything. Does that sound like I’m being a tease? Because I don’t want to be a tease.”
“You don’t sound like a tease,” he assured her.
“Would you mind?” she asked, eyes wide.
“No. I wouldn’t mind.” It wouldn’t be easy keeping himself away from her all night long, but he had to do it. She needed him. He didn’t know why or what she needed, exactly, but she had a deep well of need inside her. And a lot of sadness. So much of it. She appealed to the part of him that needed to be a protector. He wanted to keep her safe, to make her feel taken care of always.
So they went to her room, to the double bed with all the pillows and the handmade quilt. It was so easy to know the kind of person she was just by looking around that bedroom. The stuffed animals on the shelves, the books everywhere. Photography books, history, art, biography. She was so smart. Photos on the walls, gorgeous prints like the ones in the living room. She did have an eye, both in her own work and when judging the work of others.
She curled up against him with her back to his front. He stayed in his clothes, unwilling to free his cock since he wouldn’t be able to trust that it would stay inside his shorts all night with her firm, full ass against it. He waited until her breathing became slow and measured before he fell asleep.
Hours later he woke up with his heart in his throat and covered in sweat. He thought he was back in his cell at first. It took a second to convince himself that he wasn’t and calm down. It might have had something to do with the tiny bed or the tiny, unfamiliar bedroom. She stirred when he jumped.
“Are you all right?” she asked in a sleepy voice.
“Yeah. I’m okay. I just had a bad dream,” he muttered.
“Oh.” She yawned, settling back in against him. “I have them sometimes, too.”
Chapter 11
Jordan
Jordan’s camera fired rapidly like a machine gun, whirring as she held down the shutter button. The tiny little girl she was aiming at smiled brilliantly as she walked, twirled, and skipped around the luxury SUV. The car was currently parked at the edge of the grounds of one of the perfectly sculpted golf courses at Bethpage State Park in Farmington and Jordan was taking pictures while Chase looked on. He looked slightly amused and a little confused by the new addition to the shots.
After a week of tossing around ideas and doing mock shoots in the studio at the Louis building, Chase, the clients, the creative department and Jordan had all agreed on one of her ideas. They were going to shoot five of the top-selling luxury cars, each in a different one of the most beautiful state parks in New York, using nature as the backdrop. There were 180 State Parks in New York, so once they decided on the idea the next step was to pick the five parks. After a lot of research and a series of intense meetings, the team got the list whittled down to about twenty. Chase assigned his creative team to come up with lists of pros and cons for those twenty parks and after a grueling six-hour meeting the day before, they had finally settled on one. They were all exhausted when they walked out of that conference room and that was the moment Chase chose to tell Jordan that he wanted her to drive out to Farmington with him first thing the next morning to do a mock shoot so the client would have something to look at before they moved forward. She didn’t have a choice but to agree. It was her job and she couldn’t let her conflicting emotions get in the way of that. She had spent the week after Chase held her all night long in her bed avoiding sit
uations where she would be alone with him. It hadn’t been hard because they had been consumed by the project and surrounded by the team most of the time. When Jordan’s head wasn’t wrapped around work, however, her thoughts were all about Chase. She’d had more than one late night conversation with Natalie about him and her and the whole situation and they had even pulled Lauren in on it to get another opinion. Her best friends had both presented her with a list of pro’s based on what she had told them about Chase and they had challenged her to come up with a list of cons that outweighed them. She couldn’t do it. Before he told her they were spending Saturday together, she had already decided that she was done fighting.
Saturday morning he sent a car to pick her up and take her to the client’s luxury car showroom. He was dressed in a pair of well-worn jeans and a black polo shirt. It was long-sleeved so she couldn’t see his sexy tattoos, but it hugged his hard chest and arms in all the places that she wanted to so she could live with it. She had worn jeans too and a button-up white cotton shirt and tennis shoes. Her long hair was braided and pulled to the side and she had worn very little makeup. She had left the apartment feeling comfortable but definitely not beautiful or glamorous. The way Chase looked at her when she walked into the showroom said that he thought differently. The way his green eyes took in every curve of her body in a glance sent shivers down her spine. She wasn’t sure her panties would survive an entire day alone with him…if she kept them on that was.
She tucked those thoughts away for the moment as they looked at several cars together before settling on a deep burgundy Jaguar F-PACE Crossover. It was one of the cars the clients wanted to showcase and judging from the photos Jordan had seen of the park she thought it would be perfect. It was exquisitely detailed when they picked it up from the showroom and it was also the nicest car that Jordan had ever ridden inside of. The leather seats were so soft that they felt like butter against her skin and it had every new piece of technology inside of it that she could have ever imagined.
The park was twenty miles from the city. They spent that time mostly in silence and talking about work. She was a little worried that after she had put up such a resistance that he had given up on the idea of them and she wasn’t sure how to bring it up. By the time they reached their destination she had resolved that on the way home she would talk to him about what she had decided and she would just have to live with it if he had decided otherwise.
By the time they got to the park the shiny new car was coated with a fine layer of dust and road grime. Jordan was surprised and a little amused when Chase rolled up the sleeves of his black polo shirt and took out a black leather case from the back. He opened the case and took out a brand new chamois cloth and a container of some kind of wax and she watched him as he carefully and almost tenderly wiped down the car. She was even shamelessly turned on as she watched his muscles flex and his big hands rub the cloth against the car in slow, delicate circles.
It was an hour after they’d arrived and Jordan had taken photos of the car from every possible angle. They had moved it several times too to get a different angle of the landscape in the background. It was just the car and nature and as good as that had sounded in their meetings, Jordan wasn’t completely sold on it now. She agreed with the decision that the team had made not to use the standard models or celebrities. That had all been done before and it was old news. But something about the photos she had taken this morning just seemed lonely to her. Something was missing and when she saw the cute little girl playing in the grass not far away, she thought maybe she knew what it was.
The little girl was about five or six years old and she had long wavy black hair that hung to her waist. She was wearing a blue sundress with a pair of matching leggings and little black hiking boots. She had been doing twirls and cartwheels in the grass while her mother read a book and watched her from a lawn chair a few feet away. The little girl had chubby cheeks and big dark eyes and when Jordan heard her laugh she couldn’t help but look her way. She was sitting on her bottom after a failed attempt at a cartwheel and two long curls hung down across her forehead and in her eyes. She was smiling from ear to ear. That smile was contagious and Jordan gravitated toward her. Chase looked confused when he looked up and saw her talking to the girls’ mother.
“Hi, I’m sorry to bother you. My name is Jordan and that’s my boss over there, Chase Louis. We work for Louis Advertising and we’re doing some test shots for a campaign we’re doing. I was wondering if I might borrow your little girl for a few of them. If we decided to use her in any of the campaign shots it would only be with your permission and compensation of course.”
The mother had lowered the book she was holding in her lap to look up at Jordan. She looked over at her daughter then and said, “Chloe can this lady take some pictures of you?”
The little girl giggled and nodded. She came over and Jordan introduced herself to her and with the innocence and trust that only a child had, she slipped her tiny little hand into Jordan’s and let her lead her over near the car. She got a pair of raised eyebrows from Chase, but he didn’t say anything as Jordan told Chloe to just continue her play around the car as if they weren’t even there. He watched with interest as she began to snap one picture after the next and after she had finished and took the girl back over to her mother he finally asked, “What was that about?”
“Here,” she said stepping close to him. She had to give her head a little shake to clear it. Just the proximity of his gorgeous body set every nerve ending in hers on fire. She sucked in a shaky breath and said, “Look. These are the first photos I took of just the car and the backdrop.” She scanned through the digital shots one by one. The look on Chase’s face definitely did not say impressed. “Now, look at these,” she told him. She scanned through the ones with Chloe in the shots and it was like someone had flipped a light switch on inside of him and it shone out through his already dazzling green eyes.
“You’re brilliant.”
She felt a rush of warmth flow through her veins and she smiled as brightly as Chloe was smiling earlier. “Thank you. So you think the client would approve of us hiring her?”
“Can you email me a couple of those pictures? I’ll shoot them an email right now and ask them.”
“You got it, boss.” She sent the email to Chase and he sent it to Trevor and his father. Then he looked at the Rolex on his left arm and said, “How about we get some lunch while we wait?”
“That sounds amazing, I’m starving.”
“Let’s go make sure our little model isn’t going to take off on us first and then we’ll walk over to the clubhouse.”
They walked back over to where Chloe’s mom was sitting. When she looked up and saw Chase she didn’t just put her book down in her lap like she had when Jordan approached her earlier, it actually slipped out of her fingers and fell to the ground. She ignored it. All of her attention was focused on the gorgeous man in front of her. Jordan wasn’t surprised. She had seen him have that same effect on every woman he came into contact with at work all day, every day. She couldn’t deny that there was a little flicker of jealousy that ran through her when she watched him in action…but at the same time, it was sexy and thrilling. That slow and sexy smile that had sold her the first time she had seen him spread across his face as he said, “Hi there, I’m Chase Louis.” The woman actually reached up and smoothed down her hair before putting out her hand to shake the one he offered. She had to clear her throat before she said,
“Hi, I’m Louise Barker.”
“I’m happy to meet you, Mrs. Barker. I wanted to thank you for letting us use Chloe in the shoot. She’s a beautiful little girl.”
She giggled. Jordan had to bite her lip to keep from smiling. “Thank you. She’s quite a little ham,” the woman said.
“She must know her own potential, that’s great.” Chase was schmoozing her and it was working. “I was wondering if you two might be around for a while. I’m waiting to hear back from my client and if he likes the i
dea of using Chloe in the campaign I’d like to make you an offer today.”
“Would you need her to come in and model for you at your studio?”
She looked slightly disappointed when he said, “No. I think my photographer here would rather shoot this today if we get the go-ahead, wouldn’t you Jordan?”
Jordan smiled and nodded. “Her naturalness is what is so attractive. The way her hair is in her face and she’s just comfortable in what she’s doing and wearing. We’re not looking for a professional model shoot here. If we get an okay I’d like to take some more of her with the car and then some of her just by herself so maybe we could photoshop them in later. I’m not sure yet, but yes, I like her the way she is today.”
“Okay. My husband is playing 18 holes and then he’ll probably be in the club for an hour or so with his friends when he finishes. I’m sure we’ll be here for a while.”
“Good,” Chase told her with another dazzling smile. The woman actually blinked like she was blinded by it. “We’re going to get some lunch and I will let you know as soon as I hear back from the client.”
“Thank you,” she said. She hadn’t asked about the contract or money. Jordan knew Chase well enough already to know that he would have Brigitte prepare and email the contract right away and he would make sure Chloe’s family was handsomely compensated…but this lady didn’t know him from Adam. She was agreeing to this simply because she had been sucked into his orbit and she was powerless to pull away. Jordan knew that because she was right there herself. She had tried to fight that magnetic pull but if she was being honest, she knew all along that it was futile.