Starlight (Peaches Monroe) (Volume 2) Paperback – September 2, 2013 (3 page)

I did see the resemblance, and I got an unsettled feeling, like I was in the midst of doing something wrong. Was I? This whole underwear modeling thing had only happened because of a chain of events that began with me dating Dalton Deangelo while he was in my hometown shooting a movie. Was I… riding his coattails? And was appearing in sexy magazine spreads being spanked by someone who resembled him… taking advantage of that connection?

Someone was giving instructions, and I shuffled around aimlessly, hoping I was getting closer to where they wanted me.

WHACK!

Keith’s hand landed on my ass. I hadn’t been expecting it, so naturally my reflexes kicked in and I went to slap him.

This time, though, he dodged and caught my hand by the wrist.

More clicks. More photos were being taken, whether I was confused or not.

“You won’t fool me twice,” he growled playfully.

“Keith, I’m the fool.”

“That’s not sexy talk,” he whispered, his eyes on the photographer.

“I don’t feel sexy.”

“Bend over my knee. I’ll make you feel sexy.”

I looked into his warm, gold-brown eyes, searching for guidance, or strength, or wisdom. What the hell was I doing? Everything was wrong.

Keith took my hand and leaned in so his face was close to mine, my palm on his chest. The world kept spinning around me, my thoughts and fears swirling. The clicking had stopped, and now assistants were buzzing all around us as the photographer changed his lens.

Keith’s eyes were steady. He alone was the stillness amidst the storm. My palm rested on his chest.

“Can you feel my heart?” he asked.

“No.”

“Do you ever meditate?”

“No.”

“Close your eyes.”

I swallowed hard and shut my eyes. Without my vision, I noticed what hadn’t been clear before. The weird whispering-chirping soundscape had stopped playing on the stereo, replaced by normal music. A piano. The song was beautiful, and hauntingly familiar. I couldn’t feel Keith’s heartbeat through the muscle of his chest, but I could feel his chest rising and falling with his breathing. I deepened my breaths to match his.

After a moment, I felt a rhythm, though I couldn’t tell if it was the pulse from my hand or from his chest. Either way, the beating soothed me. I could hear traffic on the other side of the studio’s windows, and it sounded almost like water. The air felt moister now, like rain was about to fall.

I opened my eyes to find Keith’s face in beautiful relaxation, his eyes closed. I could see thin red lines on his eyelids. He had the tiniest scar running through one eyebrow. You wouldn’t see it unless you were right up close, like this, and his dazzling eyes were closed.

This is what he looks like when he’s sleeping
, I thought.

He murmured, “Are you staring at me?”

I didn’t say anything, just grinned.

“I can feel you looking at me,” he said, his thick, dark lashes still resting on the tops of his impressive cheekbones.

“Are you wearing mascara?” I asked.

His eyes flashed open.

“None of your business,” he said, pretending to be embarrassed.

The photographer interrupted us to say the lens was changed and it was time to shoot.

Mitchell brought by more water and concerned looks. I assured him I was fine.

For the next hour, I felt like I was outside of my body, watching myself as I bent and knelt and stood and bent some more. I was a marionette on invisible strings.

What was that expression? What awful name had that hoochie reporter woman who’d invaded my bookstore referred to actors by?
Meat puppets.
That was it. I felt like a meat puppet.

The meat puppet purses her lips as she gets spanked.

She looks demure.
Yes, like this.
Like this.

Spank, spank.

The meat puppet does as she is told.

Then she slinks off at the end of the shoot, to visit the washroom and discreetly remove the rivers of sweat from her private cracks.

As I put on my own underwear and clothes, I wondered how I was going to survive more shooting. Today was Sunday, which seemed like an odd day for a photo session, but what did I know?

I had tomorrow, Monday, free to unwind, but was due back at the studio Tuesday. I’d planned to hang out at Dalton’s house on my own, relaxing by his backyard pool and sending him flirty text messages urging him to return to LA sooner, but now I never wanted to see him again. I didn’t even want to walk into his house and smell his scent in the air.

Someone knocked on my door. “It’s me, Mitchell,” he called out.

“Come on in. There’s nothing out that you haven’t already seen today, from a variety of angles.”

Mitchell came in and parked his compact, gym-hard body on a bench. He ran one hand through his close-cropped angelic blond curls as he said, “You should be proud of how well you did today. I know I am.”

“I’m such an amateur. Just admit you were all laughing behind my back when I was getting changed.”

“Not at all. The truth is, everyone was terrified, but that was before.”

“Terrified? Of what?”

His cheeks reddened.

“Great,” I said, reading between the lines. “You all thought I was going to be terrible and ruin all your reputations with my fatness.”

His eyes bulged.

“My curvaceousness,” I said.

“This is brave new ground for us, but I saw some of the shots and they are phenomenal.” He held up one finger to keep me from arguing with him. “I have been known to stretch the truth to make models more comfortable, but I swear on a stack of
In Style
magazines, I’m not lying. The shots were great, and this whole thing is going to be huge.”

“Huge?”

“I can’t say anything right, can I?”

“Fine, I believe you. Thank you for saying that, and thank you for being so nice to me. If you’re ever in my part of Washington, you have a place to stay. I’m serious. It’s just a fold-out couch, but it’s all yours.”

He laughed and looked up for a moment like he was considering a visit.

“But won’t you be moving to LA?” he asked. “To be closer to Dalton?”

I could sense that he was digging for information, but I’d been practically naked in front of the guy all day, and being secretive about my feelings seemed ridiculous.

“He hurt me,” I said. “I’m confused and I don’t know what to do.”

He nodded.

I added, “Easy come, easy go.”

“Let’s get some sushi and talk.”

What was my other option? I thought about returning to Dalton’s modern house, all alone. That didn’t seem fun. I should have been exhausted, given my lack of sleep, but I wasn’t. My nerves were still tingling from the photo shoot, and I didn’t feel like slowing down at all.

Mitchell said, “I could use some fun, actually. I’ve barely done anything but work and sleep for months now. We don’t even need to talk about your personal stuff. I’m sorry if I was being nosy.”

“At least you care,” I said. “I can’t talk to my roommate-slash-best friend, because she’ll rub it in that she warned me.”

He squealed. “My roommate-slash-best friend is the exact same way! And he gets cra-a-azy jealous, too.”

“Shayla’s really nice, though.”

“So’s my roommate.”

I shook my head. “Roommates.”

“Can’t live with ‘em, can’t manage the rent without ‘em.”

I finished getting my hoodie jacket zipped up. “Sure, let’s get some sushi.”

Keith walked into the room without knocking. “I love sushi. Come on, I’ll drive.”

Mitchell gave him a dirty look, but underneath the glare was some amusement. He didn’t love the guy, but he didn’t hate him, either.

Mitchell said, “I’ll drive, but my Miada’s only a two-seater. Peaches will come with me.”

Keith said, “We’ll flip for her.” He pulled a coin from his pocket, tossed it high in the air, and caught it on his palm. “Heads, she’s coming with me.”

Mitchell said, “I didn’t call it. You’re a cheat.”

I pulled out my phone and held it up, recording video. “Guys, could you start over? Try to make it really clear you’re both fighting over me, Peaches Monroe. Maybe say my full name.”

They both looked sheepish, then Keith tousled his black hair with one hand and said, “Peaches, drive with me. I’m a very safe driver.”

Mitchell crossed his arms over his compact body. “It’s not his driving I’m concerned about,” he said to me.

“I’m twenty-two,” I said to Mitchell, still recording with my phone. “How about I drive to the restaurant with Keith, then you can give me a lift home? Seems a lot safer than the other way ‘round.”

They both agreed to that, which cut my little video short, but at least I had something fun to show Shayla when I got home.

When Keith led me to his vehicle, I thought he was playing a joke on me. It was an old van, painted a vivid sea green.

“Is this thing a movie prop?” I asked. “Does it actually run?”

“Don’t laugh, it’s paid for,” he said, holding open the passenger door. An earthy scent wafted out.

“I wasn’t laughing,” I said as I stepped in. “This funky green van is better than what I drive, which is nothing.”

As he circled around to the driver’s side, I glanced into the back, which held plants in green plastic pots along one side, and bags of soil along the other side. No wonder the van had an earthy, yet pleasant, scent.

“I’ve been running a landscaping business with my sister,” Keith explained as he got settled into his side and started the engine.

“In addition to being an underwear model.”

He flashed me a grin. “Modeling is nice work when you can get it. In between the days spent in see-through briefs, playing make-believe with luscious women, I muck around in the dirt.” He pulled the van out of the parking lot, following Mitchell’s blue Miada. “What about you? When you’re not shaking your fruit for the camera, what do you do?”

“I manage a bookstore called Peachtree Books.” I stared out the window at the billboards and passing traffic. “That’s where everything started. I met Dalton Deangelo when he came running in, looking for a place to hide. Then we talked for a bit, and he said he wanted to get to know me. Little did I know—”

My throat started to close off, stopping my anecdote short of where I’d thought it was going. Dalton had only wanted to know me so he could use the research for his movie role. His sudden interest had seemed so romantic at the time, like the foolish notion of love at first sight, but now all I felt was the shame of being so naïve.

Keith didn’t need to know the details, and he didn’t seem to be asking.

“I’m just having fun now,” I said. “That’s the most important thing.”

“If I saw you fully clothed in a bookstore, I wouldn’t have looked twice at you,” Keith said, staring straight ahead at the road.

“Um. Thanks? Thanks for your honesty, I guess.”

“No, I’m sorry about how that sounded. I meant it as an admission of my shallowness.”

“Okay.”

We drove in silence for a few minutes, until finally it became so awkward, I reached for my phone. No new messages from Dalton, which was a relief. I wanted to confront him in person when he came back to LA on Wednesday, and I didn’t want lovey-dovey text messages to weaken my stance. He had strung me along, using lines cribbed directly from his indie film script, and I deserved an explanation. I would officially end the relationship with him, but first I wanted to see him squirm.

Keith broke the silence, saying, “You scare me. My confidence is all an act. Even after hours and hours of meditation and self-reflection, I’m as insecure as fuck. But you’re just… you. And even when I tried to intimidate you on the set, you never backed down. What’s your secret?”

“I’ve got nothing to lose.”

“Explain.”

“Nobody expects me to be good at any of this. I know I’m a colossal joke, a publicity stunt. I’ve got nowhere to go but up.”

“The
whole thing
is a publicity stunt. I knew it.”

“At least I’m getting paid,” I said.

“What’s the going rate for something like that? For being someone’s pretend girlfriend?”

“You tell me,” I said with a laugh, pretending to know what was going on.

What the hell was Keith talking about? Not that it really mattered what he thought. His job was to stand next to me and fill out underwear, and he was more than qualified for that. Perhaps a little overqualified. My cheeks reddened as I realized I’d been glancing over at his package.