Picture Perfect (6 page)

Soft golden lights dotted the room, the walls of which were hidden
by dark blue silk curtains. Unscented candles burned on the two onyx tables in the room, highlighting the sensual, relaxed atmosphere. Beneath the curtains, the walls were padded, making them all but completely soundproof from the noise out on the main floor. Plush satin pillows dripping in tassels lay strewn about the floor, gathering next to the centerpiece of the room - a massive throne carved with the same embellishments as the tables.

Spying the figure lounged in the chair, my ruby lips pursed then twisted into a sly smile. “Huh. What do you know. You did have the cash after all,” I said as I sauntered forward.

The stranger from earlier never flinched. One dark brow rose in a comical arc. “Do you always start these things by insulting your clients?”

“Depends. Do insults and word play turn you on, or are you a more of a physical kind of guy?” I grabbed a sash from atop the pillows, grasping both ends before hooking it around the stranger’s neck and climbing onto his lap. Most men shivered or showed some semblance of intimidation when I came close, but not this guy. He held himself like a man who was comfortable around women. Something dark and hot stirred deep inside me, shooting adrenaline into my veins.

Challenge accepted.

He rested his hands on my thighs, holding on like he was afraid I would fall. When I shifted my weight, his palms slid further down my legs, gliding onto the rim of my thigh-high black leather boots. “I’m not here so you can grind up on me, and something tells me that’s not what you want to do either,” he said.

No one had ever rendered me speechless, but in a string of direct words, this guy I’d only met a few minutes ago had me pegged. Not seeing any other alternative, I scrambled off him and pitched the sash onto the pillows. “So what are you here for then? I know you didn’t drop seventy-five dollars because talking was all you had in mind.”

“Actually, it was.”

I stared at him. “Seriously?”

He shrugged. “I told you earlier I had something to talk to you about, and that’s what I meant.”

For the first time since I saw him, I really scrutinized his attire. The shoes were designer leather, which I knew from plenty of window-shopping experience didn’t come cheap. Neither did the Ralph Lauren polo, marked by the small polo player emblem sewn into the left chest.

Anger scorched my insides, driven by the jealousy I always felt when looking at his type. I bet money had never been a problem for him. Hell, he probably wiped his ass with twenty-dollar bills.

“All right, so talk,” I snapped, pacing. I needed to move, needed to get the supercharged feelings of lust and bitterness out somehow.

The stranger grabbed my hand, stopping me. “Where I come from, we usually introduce ourselves before making business propositions. Hi, I’m Devin Thompson. And you are…?”

“Angel,” I clipped.

“Oh. I thought maybe you had a real name.”

I glared at him. “That is my real name.”

His jaw clenched. “My mistake.”

I ran his words over in my head. “I’m sorry,” I said, jerking my hand out of his grasp, “but what exactly do you mean by
business propositions
? I hope to God you’re a lot smarter than to ask me to be your hooker.”

His eyes widened to the size of saucers before he chuckled. It sounded weird on him, like he hadn’t laughed in a long time and had forgotten how. “Whoa, you have the wrong idea. I’m not a pimp, and I didn’t come here to ask you to be my
ho. I want you to be my model.”

I blinked. “Your model?”

“Yeah, through a private contract. I’m a photography major over at Sanhope, and I’m trying to flesh out my portfolio for the exhibition at the end of the year. And I was wondering if you’d like to pose for me a few nights a week for some good, easy side cash?”

I drooled at those last few words. “There’s no way I could do a few nights a w
eek, not with my job and schoolwork. Not that I’m agreeing to do this,” I added hastily. If it was one thing Curtis taught me, it was never to enter into contracts without fully knowing what you were getting yourself into.

His face fell. “How often could you pose?”

“How long do these things usually take?”

He shrugged. “Maybe two hours tops, including wardrobe and scene changes.”

I nodded. “And what would I get in return?”

“Two hundred and
fifty dollars per session.”

I did the math in my he
ad. “Wait, that’s one hundred and twenty five dollars per hour.”

“
Is that not enough?”

Not enough? What, did this guy run a drug cartel on the side? “No, that’s a lot more than I was expecting.”

His brow arched again. “What were you thinking?”

My face flushed. “Er, I don’t know. Twenty or thirty dollars per hour maybe?”

The fullness of his lips squeezed together as he fought to keep from smiling. “If it’s one thing I am not, it’s cheap. I take care of my own.”

Those last six words warmed me, sounding surprisingly sexy coming from him. It also made me ten times warier than I had been before. “When would I start? Do I have to sign anything?”

“Tomorrow evening, and yes, you would. I like to keep a paper trail.”

Business savvy and sexy.
I weighed the decision. Tuesdays and Sundays were my nights off, and usually I guarded my free time like an angry Doberman. While the thought of giving up my only free time - which technically went to studying or sleeping - I couldn’t deny that an extra five hundred dollars a week would go a long way toward stabilizing my tenuous financial situation.

“So will you do it?” he asked.

I pressed my lips together, popping them with a nod.

His shoulders relaxed with a long sigh. “Thank God. You have no idea how much I appreciate this. Can you meet me tomorrow night in the hockey arena, around
eight o’ clock?”

“Sanhope has a hockey arena?”

“Yes, but since the last game before play-offs is on Saturday, we’re practicing at the Maxwell Arena downtown.”

I pictured him as a badass hockey player, gliding over the ice like a predator. Admittedly, it wasn’t a bad image.

Maybe Tammara would give me a ride before her shift.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

CHAPTER 6

Angel

“
SO I HAVE A date Saturday night.”

I barely heard what Tammara said. We’d gotten off work a
bout a half hour ago and walked into the apartment fifteen minutes later. Though it was two a.m., I still had a paper for my Applied Learning Theory class to finish that was due at the crack of dawn. The words on my computer screen blurred as sleep and exhaustion tried to take over, which triggered a sip of my steaming coffee, courtesy of Tam. “Oh?” I said from my perch on our hand-me-down couch. It had more holes than Swiss cheese, but I liked to think that gave it more character. “Is it with that guy you’ve been talking non-stop about?”

Tam was a night owl. She usually sat up with me, studying at the kitchen table. We didn’t understand a thing about each other’s majors, but we had this silent respect going on for each profession. Though she’d make a lot more money than me eventually, I’d clocked just as many hours studying and slaving over coursework as she had.

“Am I really that obvious?” she said. She was sitting at the bar, with one bare foot kicked up on the bar stool, and her blond wig in one hand and a can of hair spray in another. Her short-cropped black hair was a flat mess, thanks to being clamped down all night in a hairnet. I’d opted to dye my hair to avoid the wig, since another girl already had dirty blond hair, and I didn’t mind the color once it had darkened.

I stared at the blinking cursor on my laptop screen, searching for the right word to end my sentence with. “Maybe a little,” I mumbled. “‘Hot, sexy, and fuck-worthy’ kind of gave your feelings away.”

“Hey now. When you say it like that, you make it sound like I’m a slut,” Tam said with a smirk. “I’m kind of nervous. I mean, I haven’t been on a date in a while because I just don’t have time for it. Which you know all about.”

Yeah, I seriously did. It had been ages since I’d been on a date, and even longer since I’d had a steady boyfriend and gotten laid. My toys were some of my most cherished possessions because a girl’s got needs, but they only went so far, and the thought of a one-night stand never appealed to me. I wanted something more, something that made me swoon and want to forget about the world and how bleak it seemed.

“Ugh! I hate this damn thing,” Tam growled, wrestling a frayed curl into submission with another heady dose of extra strength hair spray. “Consider yourself lucky for not having to wear one. I wish Curtis would allow short-haired girls to go without wigs. That whole thing about long-haired girls earning more money in tips sounds like bullshit.”

Curtis
dominated everything about his Foxes, from our wardrobe, down to our makeup and hair.

“Eh, I guess I should just be thankful I found a job that offers tuition assistance,” she added a moment
later. “I hate what it entails and the image it paints of me, but it’s so gonna be worth it. Loan repayment will still suck, but not as bad as it would have before. Curtis is kind of wonderful, isn’t he? I mean, I thought you only found jobs like that in Corporate America.”

My fingers typed harder on the keyboard. “Yeah. Great,” I managed through gritted teeth. Not willing to talk about Curtis, I opted to change the subject. “Hey, Tam… do you think I’d be good at modeling?”

“Sure, babe,” she muttered absently, scrunching up her face as a cloud of hair spray engulfed her wig. “You’re hot as hell.”

Subconsciously, I crossed my legs, hiding my scarred one beneath the other. Even though I was wearing fluffy pajama bottoms with kitty cats all over them, I could still feel the brush of the fabric against the raised skin, constantly reminding me of what I’d lost.

“The question is - do
you
want to do it?” Tammara said.

Half asleep, I’d mumbled something about it to her on our ride home, but I hadn’t given it much thought since meeting Devin. Things had been too busy, my mind was too fried, and I
had needed to devote every drop of energy to keeping an eye on Curtis, who thankfully hadn’t made another move.

Tam’s voice echoed in my head. What did I want? That list was easy: claw my way out of my mountain of debt, stop being so damn angry all the time, and be able to enjoy life. But it was never simple like that. There was always - and forever would be - something standing in my way.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I’ve never thought about it much.” I relayed to her the offer from Devin, which I’d left out in our conversation on the way over.

She whistled. “Damn, that’s rent in one week. Does he need a pair of models, by chance?”

“Not sure,” I said absently. The words on the computer screen were starting to split into doubles as my head bobbed to my chest. I jerked upright, catching myself before I could face-plant onto my keyboard.

“Well, I say go for it.” Satisfied with her work, Tam tossed her wig onto the mannequin head on the counter and swiped her book bag from the floor, plopping down at the kitchen table. “Who cares if you like it or not? It’s easy cash.”

Thinking about posing made my stomach twist into knots, but I wasn’t sure why. Too tired to unpuzzle it, I let my mind wander to other things.

Things that included the memory of intense brown eyes, and the feel of soft hands gliding across my thighs.

CHAPTER 7

Devin

“
NO, NO, NO! WHAT the hell are you doing, Devin? The fucking goal is three feet to the right!”

“Sorry, Coach,” I mumbled, circling back around for the next play. I felt like I’d been saying sorry a lot more often lately. Why couldn’t I get it together?

Brayden snickered as I passed, slapping me with his stick. He probably thought it would impress Darcy, who sat in the seat closest to the glass watching the rest of our practice. I couldn’t believe it when I saw her walk in, thinking maybe she thought enough of me not to put me through hell. Obviously, she didn’t, and because of it, I’d endured the practice in a state of constant distraction and raw edginess, like a cornered dog.

Erik skated up to Brayden, going chest to chest with him and easily towering over him by a foot and a half. “Back off,” I heard him growl.

Even Brayden had enough sense not to go against Erik “the Pounder” Daniels. He glared at the enforcer, skating backward away from him, and when Coach Drake blew the whistle, we all lined up for our next defensive maneuver.

“Watch your back, bro,” Brayden said as we got into position.

The whistle sounded and our sticks struck as we fought over control of the puck. Brayden stuck his foot in the way of my pass, trying to screw with me, but I countered and altered the angle by about an inch so it slid smoothly past the blade of his skate. It went straight to my left winger, who passed it off to our right winger, Jefferson, right down the ice toward the opposing goal.