Author: Bella Andre

The photographer sized Jack up as they shook hands. “I’ve never been able to say no to Mary.”

Jack knew exactly how he felt. There were a dozen questions he should have asked Gerry about the shoot. Instead, he turned back to Mary. “Did the girls get home all right on Friday night?”

“It was closer to Saturday morning,” she said with a little shake of her head, “but apart from leaving a string of broken hearts throughout San Francisco, they came back safe and sound.”

Gerry was looking between Jack and Mary with raised eyebrows when the studio door burst open and Howie and Larry came in with Allen on their heels.

“You’re more gorgeous than ever,” Allen said as he kissed Mary once on each cheek. “I’m afraid I can’t stay, but I wanted to wish you luck, my dear, and thank you again for being a part of our product launch.”

Mary introduced everyone to Gerry, then excused herself from the group to go and take care of putting the finishing touches on her hair and makeup.

Jack and his partners were sitting on the folding chairs at the back of the set when Mary walked back out fifteen minutes later. Jack’s heart nearly stopped beating in his chest as he drank her in. She was dressed in casual black slacks and a soft red sweater that skimmed over her curves. She had put on just enough makeup to highlight her features in a beautifully elegant and simple way.

The campaign they’d decided on was simple and direct. Mary was not going to play a role for the camera. Rather, she was going to let the buying public know, via both still shots and a live-action commercial that they’d be shooting later that week, that she used the Pocket Planner and loved it. The set today looked a great deal like her actual living room and kitchen, and Jack realized it was because she’d brought in some things from home. A pretty blue-and-white vase of flowers. A sculpture of a dancing girl. A bowl of fresh fruit.

As she displayed their invention for the camera, Jack was impressed all over again. She worked nonstop for hours, not just in front of the camera but behind it, as well, as she assisted Gerry with his lighting and props. When Larry and Howie started grumbling about food and drink, Jack suggested they head out to pick up something for everyone. At the same time, Jack could see the faint lines of fatigue beginning to appear at the corners of Mary’s eyes and mouth while Gerry changed cameras.

Standing up and walking onto the set, Jack said, “Time for a break.”

Gerry sighed in clear relief as he put his camera down. “I’m going to run across the street for a triple espresso. Should I bring back one for everyone?”

Jack shook his head. The last thing he needed right now was more adrenaline coursing through him.

“Thanks, but I’m fine, too,” Mary murmured, reaching around to rub a kink out of her neck. “I think I’ll just get off my feet for a few minutes.”

After Mary had left the set for her small dressing room, Gerry told Jack, “No other model of her caliber and fame would even consider assisting with lights and makeup like this. There isn’t another woman like her in the world.”

“You’ve got that right,” Jack agreed.

“I was extremely surprised when Mary called me about your campaign. She was dead set on leaving modeling, and no one could get her to change her mind. Not until you came along.”

“I’m a very lucky man.”

Gerry assessed Jack again with his cool green eyes before nodding once. “Don’t ever forget it.”

Jack headed over to the small room at the side of the set that Mary had disappeared into. At first he only saw the table where Mary had set up a mirror, and her makeup and hair kit. Just as Gerry had pointed out, she normally had a whole crew of people working on her photo shoots. Moving deeper into the room, he saw that she was sitting on a soft chair, rubbing her neck and shoulders as if they ached.

She turned her head toward him when she heard his footsteps. “Jack, do you need something?” She immediately moved to stand, but when he replaced her hands with his own on her shoulders and began to massage the tight muscles, she sank back down into the chair.

* * *

Mary knew she shouldn’t let Jack touch her like this—especially while they were working together—but when it felt so good how could she possibly muster up the strength to tell him to stop?

But she had to stop it. Jack’s strong, warm hands on her would likely lead to more wonderful, deliciously sensual things.

The kind of more that she had specifically told him they couldn’t do while they were working together.

Oh, but what a struggle it was to make herself slide out from beneath his hands to stand. When she felt she’d removed all desire from her expression, she turned to face him.

“Friday night, I know the boundaries of our relationship got a little fuzzy—” Particularly when she’d been begging him for one more kiss. “—but you were right to leave when you did.”

“It was a hell of a weekend without you,” he said in his disarmingly direct way. “The only consolation was that I knew I’d get to work with you today.” He shook his head, his eyes dark and intense again. “I wish just working with you would be enough.”

Lord, the things this man did to her with nothing but a look and a few simple words. She was tingling head to toe, inside and out, as she made herself take a step away from him.

“It has to be enough, at least until the campaign is over.”

“Tell me why we have to wait. Make me understand why I can’t kiss you again right now when we both know how good it will be?”

She went to take another step back from him, before looking up into his eyes and realizing she had done the exact opposite. Instead of moving further away, she’d gotten closer.

“I made a mistake a few years ago. A big one.” A chill moved over her just thinking about Romain. “And what I learned from my mistake is that we should wait until our relationship isn’t wrapped up in the ad campaign, or tracking how many units are being ordered. Then we’ll both be able to think clearly about things.”

Seeing her shiver, he slid his hands over her arms to warm her. “What I’m feeling for you has absolutely nothing to do with units or ad campaigns.”

She wanted so badly to believe him, especially since her own feelings for him were growing at an exponential rate. His hands on her felt so good, so comforting and arousing at the same time, that her body instinctively shifted closer yet again.

“You’ve worked toward fulfilling your dream for ten years,” she reminded him. “You shouldn’t even consider putting anything or anyone else first right now.”

“Whoever it was that hurt you,” he said in a low voice that rumbled through her, “was an idiot.”

They were just inches apart as she agreed, “Yes, he was.”

“Rumor has it,” he said with a small smile that drew her in closer for the kiss she was trying not to give him, “that my IQ is quite high.”

How could she possibly fight her feelings for him when he didn’t just make her burn but made her laugh, too?

“Is that so?”

“One hundred sixty, and my mother still has the test results to prove it,” he said with a grin. “Although I’ll confess that sometimes I get an idea in the shower and forget to shave because I’m hurrying to get it down on paper.”

She almost sighed out loud at how sweet and cute and sexy it was that his brain worked so fast he could hardly keep on top of normal, everyday things like shaving. Did his socks match, she wondered? But worse even than mulling over his socks was the fact that she wanted to nuzzle against the dark bristles he’d forgotten to shave away that morning.

Trying to keep things light between them—even if she knew she was only delaying the inevitable—she dropped her gaze to his beard-in-the-making. “You look good scruffy.”

“Now that I know you think that, I’ll never shave again.”

She laughed again. “Remind me to look you up in two years to see how long your beard is.”

“All you’ll have to do is roll over in our bed to see that.”

She’d never been with a man this confident—so sure they were meant to be together. And she’d never wanted to kiss anyone this much, either.

In order to distract her lips from the kiss they were dying for, she said his name instead, meaning it as a warning. “Jack.”

He distracted her right back, not with her name, but by saying, “Angel.”

It was an endearment that made her knees wobble every single time.

So when he slid one hand into her hair and another around the curve of her hip to pull her closer, she didn’t have the strength of will to keep fighting this kiss any longer. All it took was the press of his lips against hers to dissolve the fierce reminders of how she’d been hurt before. All her intelligent thoughts vanished, as well.

“Mary, I know you said you were cutting back on caffeine, but I brought you—”

Gerry was halfway into the room by the time he realized she was wrapped around Jack like a teenage girl stealing a kiss from her secret boyfriend when she thought no one was looking.

“Sorry about that, folks,” he said in his easy, seen-it-all way. “I’ll just go take care of that film that needs changing.”

The second Mary heard Gerry’s voice, she should have jumped out of Jack’s arms. Especially given that she shouldn’t have been in them in the first place. But his kiss had made her limbs feel too loose and rubbery to do anything but stay right where she was.

Finally, she gathered up enough self-control to make herself shift away, one inch at a time until Jack had no choice but to let her go. “I can’t believe we were doing that…and that Gerry caught us. Thank God, it was him and not your partners.”

“What if they had seen us? We’re not hurting anyone, or anything, by kissing each other.”

But what if you do end up hurting me?

Mixed into her fear of being hurt again by someone she worked with was the lingering memory of how humiliated she’d been by the knowledge that everyone in her circle knew just how foolishly she’d given her heart…and then been tossed aside. She couldn’t stand for that to happen again, not when she was supposed to be older and wiser.

“Have you told them about Friday night, about what happened between us at my house?”

Jack looked more than a little insulted by her question. “Of course I haven’t. I don’t kiss and tell, Mary. What happens between us is private.”

A moment later, Howie and Larry poked their heads into the room. “Hey Jack, Mary, we brought back a sandwich for you both.”

She could easily read the frustration on Jack’s handsome face as she told them she’d join everyone in the common area in a couple of minutes. They all left the room and her hands were trembling as she sat down at her mirror and picked up her hairbrush. A moment later Gerry walked in and closed the door behind him.

“I thought something was going on between the two of you.” Gerry grinned at her in the mirror. “Now, before we start shooting again, tell me everything about that gorgeous man who can’t keep his hands off you.”

As she ran a straightening iron over a lock of hair to get ready for their second set of shots, she had to work to keep her hand steady so she didn’t burn herself.

With another photographer she might have tried to hide what she was feeling. But, with the man who had known her for her entire adult life, there was no point in pretending Jack’s touch had been innocent. Besides, there was a reason Gerry was such a great photographer—he saw things other people didn’t.

“Jack is different from any other man I’ve known,” she admitted.

She knew she shouldn’t say anything more, but she was dying to talk to someone about Jack. She couldn’t possibly have discussed him with the young models she was looking after, not when she was trying to set a good example for them. But Gerry had watched her grow up. First, from behind a camera lens, and then later when they became friends. He’d held her hand and let her cry when her various romances hadn’t ended in happily ever after. If anyone would understand how confused she was right now, he would.