She chewed on a strand of hair and gave him a lopsided smile.
“It’s kinda nice. No one’s ever worried about that shit before,” she said, as she took her game of Candy Crush to the next level. “Most guys are sleazy.”
“Well, someone should worry about you,” Nick said gruffly.
She gave him a smile that was older than her real age by many years.
“They wouldn’t get very far in this industry if they tried. Did you say your name is Nick?”
“Yep, Nick Renshaw.”
“Oh yeah, the guy Massimo recommended…”
He had?
“Well, Nick Renshaw, I might be able to work another ten years, but maybe not. I could be old news by the time I’m 16. Not everyone gets to have a career like Giselle or Naomi or Kate. Most of us are finished by our mid-twenties. My agent says I have to prepare to retire by the time I’m twenty.”
Nick stared at her with sympathy and some understanding as her eyes focused on her phone.
“No one tells me what to do,” she said. “I call the shots.”
Nick felt the weight of her naivety in those words, meeting her adult gaze as she side-eyed him carefully.
“You seem kinda tense. Do you need something to take the edge off?”
“What?!”
Cee Cee shrugged.
“You just look mega stressed.”
“No, I’m fine.” He grimaced. “Thank you.”
“Whatever. I saw you taking something earlier so I figured you were cool.”
Nick frowned, cornered and on the defensive.
“It was ibuprofen. I’ve had surgery on my shoulder.”
“Sure, whatever, man.”
She popped a small blue pill into her mouth and sucked down some water from her bottle. At least four people saw her do it, but no one said a word.
Her name was called and she was escorted to the set for principal shots.
As she walked away, she swung around to face him, walking backwards on tiptoe, a huge smile on her face.
“Is it me, or is it weird that they picked the nicest guy in the biz to play the Devil?” and she laughed.
Nick was reeling from her admission, and uncomfortable that he’d been called on his use of painkillers. It was a good thing Anna didn’t know. But they helped. He’d slept badly and his shoulder ached. He needed them. He definitely needed them.
I should stop.
Seeing this kid taking drugs on set and no one giving a damn, it gave him serious pause for thought.
This was such a weird situation: the thirteen year-old girl was acting like a thirty year-old, and Nick was adrift in a sea of shifting morals that he didn’t understand. He just knew that the entire crew were eyeing him with a mixture of pity and impatience.
Part of him wanted to walk, but the part that refused to fail, fought for him to stay.
He decided to take Anna’s advice—if he started feeling uncomfortable once the shoot started, he’d walk, and to hell with the consequences.
“Hey, Nick! How ya doin’? I’m Alan Schafhaus, the photographer. I hear you have some reservations about what we’re doing here. I completely understand,” and he held his hand over his heart, “but I promise you, I have nothing but respect for my models and want you to feel completely relaxed.” And he laid his hand on Nick’s shoulder. “We’re all professionals here. You feel me?”
Taking a deep breath, Nick nodded and forced a smile.
“Sure.”
“Great! Then let’s get started!”
Like a conductor bringing the orchestra to a crescendo, Alan directed, organized and ordered.
Nick shrugged out of his robe, and immediately a woman ran up with a bottle of glycerin and rosewater, spraying him with a fine mist so his skin seemed to shine, his tattoos gleaming darkly. Another hairstylist darted forth, teasing Nick’s curls into black coils that caught the light, snakelike, a diabolic and very masculine Medusa, a warrior.
When Nick caught sight of himself, it was with a shock at the strangeness and familiarity combined. He looked predatory; he looked as if he was about to steal someone’s innocence. He thought back to the name the British Press had given him when he’d been accused of a series of affairs with his teammates’ wives, all untrue: ‘Nasty Nick’.
And maybe there was a tiny part of him that was looking forward to living up to that for once. As his mum used to say, ‘You may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb’. He’d already done the time for his supposed crimes…
Nick looked inside himself and found that there was more than the boredom and depression inside: there was a deep well of anger that injury had robbed him of one last year of rugby; one last year of being the man he was meant to be. Despite his charmed career, despite the years of success following the dark days of bad injuries, bad judgement and damn bad luck, there was a small flame of fury inside him, one that could be fanned into a roaring furnace, if given the chance.
Nick let a little of that anger seep through, suffusing his skin with heat, a glint in his eyes that warned you not to fuck with him, an imperious arrogance that said he found this whole process of modelling a lot vain and a little ridiculousness.
Despite the people surrounding him, arranging his hair, fixing his makeup, sprinkling his skin, he stood in isolation, tolerating but not participating.
Alan Schafhaus was filled with excitement. He sensed that this photoshoot was going to be epic. The weird angry vibe of the British model had the intense focus, the dangerous, predatory allure of a dark god, and Cee Cee’s drugged up innocence would play perfectly against that. With the sixth sense of a man at the top of his profession, he knew that today would be great. He was almost salivating, desperate to let his camera get to work, but he played the conductor, his baton poised. And he had the perfect music to work by: Danse Macarbre.
Nick was spot-lit among shadows, a red filter turning the light eerie, and Cee Cee lay languidly, diffused yellow light giving a soft haze to her pretty, doll-like face.
Amazing, thought Alan, that such emotional truth can be caught in the eyes of a child.
Although in the eyes of the modelling world, Cee Cee was a seasoned professional, and Nick was the ingénu.
Intuitively, Alan Schafhaus knew that he couldn’t rush this shoot. Gradually, he brought his principals closer together—a touch, a gaze, a lingering longing in the eyes.
In the end, there was nothing the least bit intimate about the poses Nick had to do with Cee Cee. Yes, she was close to him, their faces nearly touching, but it was more like a game of Twister, trying to put arms and legs in strange positions, flex his muscles, and show the expressions Alan wanted on his face.
He tried to be stoic, but the anger was there, and the photographer seemed to deliberately draw it out of him, making him repeat his poses time after time.
Over and over again, the poses were adjusted minutely. Over and over again, the lighting was altered, or Alan ripped his camera from the tripod and came in for a close-up, talking, commanding, ordering the whole time.
Cee Cee wrapped her long, coltish limbs around Nick; a leg around his hip, an arm around his neck—her wide-eyed innocence more apparent than real.
A wind machine blew her corn straight hair in a sheet of silk over Nick’s shoulder and across his chest; her hands swept over his stomach and thigh. It certainly didn’t feel like he was the seducer in this scene.
The camera loved the beautiful child-woman and the man-devil—and all the behind-the-scenes people felt the magic of what they were creating.
At the same time, it was all far more frenetic than the serene peace of Massimo’s studio. Nick reached for his inner calm when his patience was all but gone after two hours of holding his body in unnatural positions as a simmering rage threatened to escape. But Cee Cee seemed to float above it all, connected but distant, never complaining.
Nick didn’t know what she’d taken, but it was definitely working for her. He was almost jealous. Almost.
&nbs
p; Finally, the shoot ended and Nick was handed a towel. He wasn’t surprised to see that real sweat had replaced the glycerin and rosewater spray.
“Great shoot,” said Alan, clasping Nick’s shoulder. “The client is going to be blown away.”
Nick nodded and stepped back, then remembering he was supposed to want a career in modelling, he added, “Thanks.”
Cee Cee smiled at him languidly.
“Good working with you, Mr. Nice Guy. You didn’t even try to cop a feel once.” And she pointed a long, skinny finger at him. “I like you.”
Nick watched her drift away, still high from whatever she’d taken.
A cloud of worry descended on him: my child will never be abandoned like that.
He and Anna had talked about children, some vague and distant point in the future when the time was right, but at that moment, Nick longed for his family—for Anna and their one-day child.
What the fuck am I doing here?
IT WAS MANY months later when Nick first saw the results of the shoot with Cee Cee. He was shocked. The photographs for the perfume ad were far more erotic and intense than had seemed on set, with the photographer coming in close for several shots, catching Nick’s expression of discontent and Cee Cee’s youthful naivety, which was more apparent than real.
Leaping flames had been photoshopped in behind Nick, adding to the drama of the scene.
Nick winced: he seemed enormous next to the young model, hulking and dark, whereas she was ethereal and light; and it really did look like he was seducing her.
He wondered what Anna would think when she saw the pictures. What anyone else thought didn’t matter, although he could almost guess the response from the British Press:
Naughty Nick and Teenage Nookie.
He heard the echo of Anna’s words in his mind: a photograph in the Press is forever.
Oh shit.
“GOD, IT’S GOOD to hear your voice!”
Nick had been in New York for three months, having only returned to London once for a brief visit.
Since his shoot with Cee Cee, he’d worked almost constantly on a range of small and medium-size campaigns. Things were beginning to work out for him, and he knew he had decisions to make.
He slumped on the bed in his tiny room, eyes closed and a smile on his face as he listened to Anna’s voice. She sounded so close and he wished for the thousandth time that she was here in this room with him.
“Hey,” she said happily. “How’s your day been?”
He heard Brendan’s voice in the background.
“Are you still working?”
“Just finishing up a few things over a bottle of wine. Oh, Brendan says hi and where did you get those boxer briefs in those photos you sent me?”
Nick laughed.
“Tell him I’ll bring some back for him.”
He heard a muffled disagreement in the background and Anna whisper-shouting, “I’m not telling him that!”
“What’s all that about, luv?”
“Oh, just Brendan being Brendan.”
“Do I want to know?”
“Definitely not!”
Nick laughed again, the lonely ache in his chest easing.
“Okay.”
“So how’d your day go?”
Nick grinned into the phone.
“I got a new contract today—Miami Swim Week. Guess I’ll be strutting my stuff on an actual catwalk. That’ll be different.”
He felt pleased with himself and was looking forward to trying something new. Plus, it felt like being a real model.
Anna’s voice sounded a little shocked.
“Oh wow! An actual catwalk! That’s awesome! Wait, what will you be wearing?”
Nick chuckled.
“I think the clue is in the name: swimwear. Apparently it’s the biggest tradeshow for swimming stuff in the world. Well, that’s what Adrienne said.”
“Swimwear, huh? That sounds … hot. When is it?”
“In a couple of weeks, mid-July.”
There was a long pause and Nick glanced at the phone, wondering if the call had been dropped.
“Anna?”
“Oh, yes, sorry. Wow, really? A catwalk in Miami! That’s awesome.”
“You think so?”
“Gosh, definitely.”
Nick tucked his free hand behind his head and closed his eyes.
“Adrienne says there’ll be a couple of hundred models there, mostly girls, I think. But yeah, it should be fun. Good exposure for me, lots of contacts, you know?”
Anna could imagine what sort of exposure would be involved only too well.
She missed him.
She missed him so much she ached with loneliness. Filling her days with work and more work and occasionally hanging out with Brendan wasn’t the same as being with her soulmate.
And right now, he was so far away. She’d been tempted so many times to go to him, to take her work with her, but something always held her back—Nick’s need to make it without her help. They’d fought about that—which meant that Anna had raised her voice and Nick had walked away. What she saw as giving support, he seemed to see as a weakness. It frustrated the hell out of her.
And she wished he’d tell her that he missed her, that he needed her: he never did.
But finally Anna’s patience had run out—she missed him too much not to see him. So when he mentioned Miami, she had a brainwave…
“That sounds great. Really. Okay, wait … um … Nick, I could fly out for that, spend some time, what do you think?” Her voice was tentative. “I could see Mom for a few days then meet you in Miami. I don’t want to get in the way of your work or anything…”
Nick was surprised by the lurch of happiness he felt. He thought he was getting used to being apart from Anna, but her offer opened the door on the loneliness he’d been trying to hide from himself.
“Really, you can take the time?” he asked cautiously. “I thought you were working on your book.”
“I am…” She paused. “But it can wait. Send me the dates and I’ll get a flight. I want to see you, Nick.”
The longing in her voice travelled across the miles of ocean between them.
“Yes, God, yes!” Nick replied, his voice tightening from emotion. “That would be amazing.”
Once again he heard some muffled discussion in the background.
“Brendan wants to come, too,” Anna said, and Nick could hear the amusement in her voice. “He said … actually, you don’t want to know what he said. Is it okay?”
“Yeah, why not. I hear the after-parties are something else.”
There was another pause, then Anna gave a short laugh.
“I think he just fainted. Meh, he’ll be fine.”
“Do you want to tell him now or later that it’s 85% women on the catwalk?”
Anna laughed softly and Nick felt his spirits soar.
“I think we’ll let him find out for himself. Looks like I’ll be seeing you in a couple of weeks!”
“I can’t wait.”
Anna replaced the phone, a goofy grin on her face. I’m going to see Nick! In all honesty, she thought he might say no, that he’d be too busy to spend time with her. But he hadn’t.
“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Brendan said, squinting at her, his eyes vulnerable without the glasses he usually wore. “Miss I-must-give-him-his-independence. He’s probably been pining for you as much as you’ve been pining for him.”
Anna snorted and grabbed the muffin top hanging over her jeans.
“Do you call that pining?”
“I call that comfort eating, Dr. Scott. Time to get your little tush down to Nick’s home gym and work off the flab.” Suddenly Brendan’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh wait! Are you up the duff?”
“Am I what?!”
“Pregnant, knocked up?”
Anna’s cheeks blazed red.
“No!”
“You’re not pregnant?”
“I’ve hardly had the chance, hav
e I?” she replied tartly.
“So you’re just carrying a little timber. Time to cut down on the full-fat caramel Frappuccinos. You’ll get stretch marks before you’re preggers.”
“I haven’t … I’m not that big…” she huffed.
Brendan narrowed his eyes at her.
“You told me you’d put on ten pounds since he went away, but I’m seeing at least twenty. Man up, Anna-banana—Miami is going to be full of skinny bitches with great tits. Get thee to the gym, woman, before your self-loathing writes its own autobiography.”
“I really hate you,” Anna muttered under her breath. “I told you that in confidence. You’re breaking the BFF code.”
Brendan gave her a megawatt smile.
“You don’t hate me. Telling you the truth is the job of a BFF. So I’m telling you and your love handles to start planking like a carpenter at a home-build expo.”
“Strongly dislike then,” Anna griped as she went upstairs to change into her roomier yoga pants. “Really rather detest.”
“Suck it up, buttercup!” he yelled after her. “I don’t want you and your extra luggage making me look bad!”
God, she hated it when he was right.
Anna knew that she didn’t want Nick to see her like this, especially since he’d be surrounded by beautiful girls a decade younger than herself. But not only that: even when he was injured, he’d never let himself go. Never.
Except for that one time before they’d gotten together and Trish said he’d started drinking.
It was hard to imagine because Nick was so fanatical about eating healthy and exercising every day.
God, every day!
She yanked on her favourite stretchy yoga pants and wrapped her hands around her new belly fat. She wished, she so wished it was the roundness that meant she was carrying his child. But it wasn’t. And unless she and Nick found their way back to each other, it never would be.
With a grim determination, she tied her hair back and headed for the treadmill in the basement.
She had work to do.
After speed-walking for half-an-hour while Brendan lazed on Nick’s weights bench shouting motivational quotes at her, Anna was pouring with sweat and having homicidal thoughts about her best friend.