Picture Perfect (7 page)

I raced with the others toward the goal, trying to cut off the opposing players so Jefferson could get a clean shot, but a weight slammed into me, sending me crashing onto the ice an
d barreling into the wall, headfirst.

Erik thew down his stick and immediately went for Brayden, who was smirking at me as I willed my vision to go back to singles. Coach’s whistle shrieked as shouts and shoves broke out between my brother and my best friend.

“What’s your problem?” Erik shouted.

“I’ll tell you what my problem is! It’s that that asshole is still on this earth! He wasn’t supposed to come back to the team, and yet here he fucking is!”

I couldn’t move. Those words held me prisoner, turning my legs to jelly. It only confirmed my suspicions.

That Brayden blamed me for what happened to Delia.

A flash of white and red caught my eye, and I turned my head, shooting white-hot flares of pain as a nerve in my neck pinched.

Angel walked down the steps, her hair hangi
ng freely around her shoulders. She wore a white sparkly sweater, Skinny jeans, and tall black boots that made her legs look longer. Her lips were that same cherry red, and her dark lashes framed stormy green eyes.

Eyes that were staring right at me.

Awkwardly, she waved but didn’t smile, and took a seat toward the bottom of the stadium seating.

Darcy followed my gaze, sitting up straighter when she saw Angel. When she turned back around, her petite face had a pinched look to it.

That didn’t have the satisfied effect on me I thought it would, and I had no idea why. Frowning, I resorted to get up before Erik took Brayden’s head off.

By the time I got up off my ass, the entire team had gone in to break apart the fist fight ensuing between Erik and Brayden. Coach was right in the middle of it, blowing his whistle and cussing profusely. I skated over to Brayden, grabbing him and helping pull him away from Erik.

Brayden slapped my hands away, his face red with anger. “Get the hell off me! Don’t you ever touch me again!”

I stared at my brother, remembering all the great times we’d had together as kids, and knowing things would never go back to being the same. That the hatred in his eyes
was real, and I was the cause of the pain I saw buried there.

Erik seethed, held back by our teammates while his shoulders heaved up and down with heavy breaths.

Coach Drake raked a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what the hell is going on between you two,” he said, pointing to Brayden and me, “but you boys better get it together before Saturday, or you’re both off the team. Understood?”

We both nodded, neither willing to cross Coach.

He swore when he glanced at his watch. “This practice is shot. Hit the showers, all of you.”

It was after eight
o’ clock, meaning we’d been on the ice for over three hours. Practices normally ended at eight - Coach didn’t believe in wasting time - which was why he rarely kept us over.

No one spoke as Coach slipped while trying to get to the box, and we all skated off the rink.

Some light chatter broke the tense silence as we took our skates off and meandered down the hall toward the showers.

Erik bumped my shoulder, looking like he wanted to say something, but I shook my head. His brows creased with worry, so I scraped together a smile, and he smiled grimly back, going ahead of me.

The locker room had never cleared out so quickly. Coach was hotheaded by nature, so we were used to his screaming. But he had never sounded fed up with us like he had tonight. As I came out of the shower, I caught sight of Brayden slamming his locker shut and grabbing his gear before meeting Darcy at the entrance. Brayden gave her a quick peck on the cheek, like someone would a child, and pushed past her.

Her head snapped back to me, where I stood watching them, naked from the waist up. Red colored her cheeks, and she blinked a few times before disappearing down the hall.

“That was some show.”

Startled, I whipped about to find Angel leaned against the lockers, arms crossed.

“Girls aren’t allowed in here,” I said, getting chills from the way her eyes had raked over my bare chest approvingly. Stomach flopping, I busied myself with getting dressed. “Could you turn around please?”

She shrugged, a mischievous sparkle to her eyes. “You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before.”

“Oh, that’s right. You’re a stripper.”

Her eyes darkened. “What’s that supposed to mean? That I’m automatically a slut by trade?”

I closed my eyes, biting my tongue.
Way to go, Devin.

“I’m sorry, I’m shouldn’t have phrased it that way,” I said, turning back around. “I don’t know why I said that. I can be an ass sometimes.”

She worried her bottom lip, staring at me like she was thinking of a way to verbally rip me apart. Nibbling her lip like that, she looked sexy as hell. My inner photographer relaxed, knowing I had done well in choosing my model. She was going to dominate the camera.

She stilled, staring back at me with an expression I couldn’t read, and released her lip. Clearing her throat, she looked away and casually said, “So what was that guy’s problem? Is he always like that?”

My mouth set into a hard line as I jerked my T-shirt on. “No. He didn’t used to be.” There was a point in time, in another universe, when we were best friends. Thinking of those memories made me feel old, the kind of age that comes from having survived a lot of shit that left you feeling broken and bruised inside.

“So what set him off?” she asked.

“Me, just by being there, breathing the same air as him. He’s always been competitive for our entire lives.”

“You’ve known him that long?”

“… He’s my brother.”

She nodded, blushing. “Oh.”

She suddenly pretended to be intrigued by a scuff mark on the floor. Almost sporadically, she jerked open her purse and dug around until she produced a tube of Chap Stick.

Taking my chance while she was distracted, I scuttled to the side, hiding my body from view as much as I could. Something light bounced on the floor, and I heard her clothes rustle
. Taking advantage of her distraction, I ripped the towel off, standing stark naked for a few seconds while I pulled my clothes on in record time. When I glanced in her direction, fully clothed, she had her back to me. Her heel tapped relentlessly across the floor, not really in an impatient way, but rather nervous.

“You bring a change of clothes like I asked?” I said, slamming my locker shut.

She whirled around, her face beet-red. “Huh? Oh, right. The clothes. Yeah, got ‘em right here.” She patted her bag.

I walked toward her, eyes narrowing. “Something wrong?”

Her throat moved as she swallowed and shook her head. “No,” she said coolly. “Everything’s fine.”

I thought about pursuing it because there was something undeniably cute about watching her squirm, but I decided to drop it. “All right then, come on. The studio’s clear across campus. Did you drive?”

Her expression shifted to a scowl. “No,” she mumbled. “My roommate dropped me off.”

“Okay.” I dug around in my jeans pocket for my keys. “I’ll drive us then.”

CHAPTER 8

Angel

CONVERSATION WAS STILTED BETWEEN
us on our way to the art building. He asked me about my schedule, what my days off were and when my classes ended for the day, but that was about it. As I sat in the passenger side of his sporty Dodge Challenger, the smell of cigarettes clinging to the upholstery began to make my throat itch. I twisted the bottom of my sweater into knots and avoided Devin’s gaze.

I hadn’t meant to, but when I’d dropped my
Chap Stick and bent to retrieve it, I’d caught a full-on view of his naked backside. It was so perfect it didn’t look real, the tight butt, lean hips, and chiseled curves that gave his shoulders and leg muscles definition. He had what Tammara dubbed “the yum factor.”

“We’re here,” he said, pulling up in front of the modern-looking art building and throwing the gear into park. “You can leave your purse here if you want. I’ll lock it up.”

“That’s okay,” I said, a little too quickly. At his odd look, I hastily added, “But thanks, though.”

After the Curtis i
ncident, I’d picked up a can of Mace and tucked it within easy reach in a side pocket of my purse. No way was I going inside a most likely empty building with a man I barely knew who could easily subdue me. Fear and paranoia suddenly locked up my muscles, making it hard to climb out of the car and walk up to the building.

Devin looked harmless enough. He seemed to be preoccupied with his own problems. But that didn’t mean I fully trusted him. Though Curtis creeped me out when I first started at the club, I had ignored that vibe, dismissing it to my imagination, and look where that had gotten me. From now on, I was trusting my gut.

Like all buildings, this one required student ID clearance after eight o’ clock. Devin swiped his badge, which hung from his lanyard, and opened the door for me when the light flashed to green. Mumbling thanks, I forced myself to go inside, making sure to keep him within my sight at all times.

I’d only been in the art building once for an art appreciation class my freshman year. It was nice and perpetually smelled like paint, which was a welcome change to the education building’s usual odor of mold and dust.

We turned at the end of the first hall. The shadows seemed to darken as we walked. I strained my ears, listening for any sign we weren’t alone, but the building sounded completely empty.

“You guys don’t offer night classes?” I asked casually.

“For grad students we do, but they don’t meet tonight. Everybody’s pretty much gone this time of night.”

“Oh.”

Crap.

My heart slammed against my sternum as he unlocked a door cloaked in shadows and flipped on a light. With trepidation, I stepped across the threshold, darting my gaze quickly around the studio and noting where the exits were.

It wasn’t as big as I expected. Walls covered in dark curtains rose up on all sides, with a high ceiling lit by studio lights and a concrete floor mostly covered in black carpet. A large, wide white wall rose up from the middle of the room, pooling onto the floor in a long white mat. Cameras and lights of varying shapes and sizes, along with one of those umbrella-looking lights I couldn’t name, sat in presumably strategic positions around the white space.

Devin sat his briefcase down and pulled out a small packet and a pen. “This is your contract,” he said, handing it to me. “It’s for a minimum of five hours per week, split up into two two-and-a-half hour sessions over the course of eight weeks. Like any other job, you’ll be paid biweekly. I’m going to get things set up while you look it over. Let me know if you have questions.”

I could barely concentrate on the clauses. Instead, my eyes kept flicking up, watching where he was, looking for any sign of impending danger. He didn’t pay me the least bit of attention, busying himself with checking all the camera angles after hauling a bloodred leather couch onto the snow white “stage”.

By the tim
e he came back over, I had scanned through everything, finding it straightforward and fair. I sloppily signed my name and dated it. “So what happens next?” I asked, handing the contract back to him.

He ripped the last page off with the signatures and handed the packet back to me. “This is for your records, in case you need it or want to go back over it later.”

I folded the papers and tucked them into my bag, seeing my phone. It would probably be a good idea to let someone know where I was and who I was with, in case anything happened. You know, like I went missing or got gagged and bound in his trunk. “Do you mind if I message my roommate real quick? She texted me, wanting to know what time to pick me up.” She actually hadn’t, but he didn’t need to know that. All he needed to be aware of was that someone would be coming for me, in case he was thinking of trying anything.

“Yeah, sure. Ten is fine. We’ll only be doing a few shots tonight, to let you get accustomed to everything.”

I glanced at my watch. That gave us little over an hour.

I smiled at him, pulling up Tam’s number and typing in a quick message.

Devin Thompson. Art building. Pick me up at 10?

A few seconds later, my phone chirped.
LOL Okay. =)

“Ready to get started?” he asked, sounding a little tense.

“Um, yeah. What do I do?”

“You can leave your things there. What you have on is fine, so just come on over to the couch and have a seat. I’ll tell you what to do from there.”

The thought of leaving my purse so far away made my skin crawl, but I couldn’t pull out my Mace and take it with me. If I was wrong about him, he could become offended or think I was crazy and cancel the gig altogether. And $2,500 extra cash a month was hard to let go.

Dropping my things as close to the stage as possible, I walked over to the couch and took a seat. The leather was cool, zapping my heat through my jeans, and my hands began to turn clammy.