Maximum Exposure (15 page)

It had to be that stuff about the outfit she’d worn that day to Dustin’s, how he’d thought her covering her body meant she wasn’t serious about hiring him. Or else he’d insulted her by spelling out the truth of what she did with her clothes—or her lack thereof.

He didn’t care how huffy she got with her denial. He did not have that wrong. She used her body to get what she wanted, end of story.

How did he know? He’d seen her in action. Cigar Paolo, anyone? Hell, he’d been on the receiving end, and he wasn’t talking about the photo shoot.

But the day in front of the bistro? And the evening they’d spent at Dustin’s gallery? And if he wanted to get down to the nitty-gritty, exposing herself to him through her office window?

All of that was about getting him to take this job. Wasn’t it? Or was he being a real dick about this and closing his eyes to something obvious that canceled out any other sensitivity he might claim?

He knew he needed to do more than enjoy her body—visually or physically—to get into her head. And when she’d walked out on him this morning, that was what he’d determined he was going to do. He wanted to know her. Not what she looked like. And not in the biblical sense, though he wouldn’t say no to that happening again soon.

She was a hell of a complicated chick, and it had been a long time since he’d run across one who hit all his notes the way she did.

On one hand, she was so sure of herself. On the other, she was hiding some big monster thing, maybe from her past, or hell, even from her present, which canceled a lot of that certainty with scary, dark doubts.

Staying out of her way, Carmen’s and Roland’s way, even Splash & Flambé’s customers’ way, hadn’t been a problem. Finn had hung out on the second stretch of staircase, which gave him a clear view of most of the store. Olivia and her managers had nudged him to move for the occasional trip up and down, but mostly, no one had paid him any mind.

Okay, that was a lie. Olivia had paid him a lot. He liked that she had. Liked the way she would push back her hair when talking to shoppers and cast him a surreptitious glance.

And the way she had needed to grab something out of her office when she was on the sales floor, or had forgot something at the round checkout kiosk when she was upstairs.

She was sneaky, but he wasn’t born yesterday. And because he wasn’t, he was pretty damn sure she wouldn’t say no to sharing a pizza at the end of the day.

So he headed out through the storeroom exit fifteen minutes before closing, came back forty-five minutes later with a box so hot, he needed Kevlar mitts to carry it.

He winked at Olivia as she caught the scent of garlic, tomatoes, and fresh-baked dough and looked up from the kiosk, where she was working, just before he made the turn from the landing to the second stretch of stairs.

“I hope there’s enough there for me,” she called after him, and he hollered back, “If you hurry.”

Since he was living the simple life, roughing it when it came to eating accommodations, he tossed one of the blankets to the floor in front of the futon, turning his pizza into an impromptu picnic.

He had a couple of beers and sodas in the room’s mini-fridge, so drinks were covered, as were napkins and disposable forks, knives, and plates.

He’d just popped the top on a cold one when Olivia walked through the door. “Beer?”

“Sure,” she said and kicked off her shoes. “Lucky for you, I’d already locked up.”

“Lucky for you, you mean,” he said, handing her the can, returning to storage the throwaway cup she’d declined. “I could’ve been slamming back the last piece by the time you got here if you’d taken time for that.”

“Or you could’ve waited,” she said, settling on the blanket, her back against the futon frame, her legs stretched out and crossed.

“And let this puppy get cold?” he asked, joining her and opening the box. “I don’t think so.”

She chuckled. “That puppy will take days to cool down.”

“It won’t last that long,” he said, pulling a slice from the sixteen-inch circle, dropping it onto a plate he’d lined with napkins to keep it from melting.

“Your cast-iron stomach must be a lot thicker than mine,” she said, taking the plate from his hands when he offered it.

He took it as a good sign that she could tease. A long, busy day separated them from this morning, when her mood had been more about snapping his head off than anything. “There’s very little I can’t stomach. Though women spending hours deciding between two identical belts is a close call.”

“Those belts were not identical, and hanging out was your idea. Don’t blame me.” She bit into her pizza, wound up a long string of dangling cheese with her tongue. “Besides, I thought you were spending the day watching me.”

“I did some of that, too.”

“Did you learn anything new? I saw you had your camera with you for awhile.”

What he’d learned was that he had a hell of a hard time taking his eyes off her. Even now he could hardly pay attention to the food he was stuffing into his face for wanting to watch her eat.

He loved the way she used her fingers, pressing the crust of the pizza inward to keep the toppings from sliding off, holding her other hand beneath her mouth to catch anything she dropped. He stared when her lips parted, when her teeth bit down, when her mouth closed, when she caught him looking and smiled.

“Good stuff, huh?” was the only thing he could think to say that didn’t sound but halfway lame.

“I love Meaty’s pizza and eat it way too often without working out to make up for indulging. I like to indulge,” she said, shrugging, then taking another bite. She chewed most of it before adding, “I do not like to go to the gym.”

“You don’t like to sweat, or what?” he asked, without thinking of more than keeping the conversation alive.

But the moment the words were out of his mouth, he remembered tasting her when her skin had been damp and salty and hot. And the look in her eyes told him she was remembering the very same thing.

She dropped her gaze as she reached for her beer. “You saw me dance. What do you think?”

He thought he’d better find a way on to another topic, because as much as he wanted to take off her clothes, he was her photographer and she was his client, and things would go better for both of them if they stuck to the plan.

And so he said, “I bet there’s something else that keeps you away from the gym.”

She followed his lead, putting them back on a safer track. “It’s the boring routine. Around and around, doing laps that go nowhere. Pedaling without moving forward an inch. Climbing stairs and never getting off the floor. Ugh.

“As long as I don’t eat like this very often and don’t sit at my desk all day, I figure I’m good. But I can’t see how learning about my metabolism or my loathing of exercise helps you plan the next shoot. That’s why you stuck around today, isn’t it? For inspiration?”

See?
He’d been right to turn the conversation back to work. He nodded, an innocuous enough response. He’d decided on Friday where he wanted to shoot next. “Can you get away from the store for a couple of days next week?” When she frowned, he downsized his request. “Or at least for one?”

“Yes. I suppose. Why?”

He slid another slice of pizza onto his plate. “Think fun in the sun and the sand.”

“You want to shoot on the beach?”

“But not here. It’s too crowded. I want to take you to my beach.”

“To your beach?”

This time when he nodded, he meant it. “Miami’s a snarl. Even the private beach at Dustin’s condo isn’t private enough.”

“I’m not stripping, you know. Not that I’d look out of place if I did,” she added, with a self-deprecating laugh.

He wanted to tell her he would notice, but again. Wrong conversation. “I know. But for this, I think we’d both be more comfortable without an audience.”

She shook her head. “Funny how Dustin’s vision has morphed from me being photographed while letting people look to the photographer being the only one looking.”

“It was your suggestion, performing for me.”

“Yeah, I know. I just feel like I’m letting him down. Not giving him what he wanted.”

“How do you know that you’re not?”

She set her empty plate in the pizza box, wiped her mouth and hands, and added her napkin, tucking her legs to her body and bracing an arm on the futon. “I’m just assuming everything would be different since the whole dynamic has changed.”

“I dunno. One doesn’t necessarily have to follow the other,” he said, as if he knew what he was talking about and opening himself up to what came next.

“Well? Have you looked at the photos you took in the warehouse? Do you have them here? Can I see them?”

Heat rose unexpectedly, and she did what she could to deflect it before he looked at her too closely and figured it out. “Honestly, I don’t care if you have or not, but I’d like to see them.”

“Uh, I haven’t, no, but I can boot up the laptop, sure.” He waited, as if what he wanted was for her to tell him not to bother.

Instead, what she said was, “I can wait till your finished eating.”

“That’s okay,” he said. Then he set his plate on top of hers, cleaned his hands, and hopped up. His camera bag was on the desk. He unzipped it and dug inside for the memory card, then grabbed his wheeled computer case and came back.

It didn’t take him but five minutes to plug in and boot up, launch his software program, and slide the card into the reader slot. The photo browser pulled up thumbnails of over two hundred shots. That couldn’t be right, could it?

“I had no idea. How long did I dance?” He’d given her directions several times, moving her here and there as he circled her, climbing up a ladder or lying on the floor to capture her at different angles. But she couldn’t believe she’d danced long enough for this.

“I wasn’t watching the clock. The CD had a dozen tracks on it, and it played almost all the way through.”

“That was forty-five minutes at least. It didn’t seem like ten!”

“Which proves you do just fine keeping in shape without the boring routine of the gym.”

She gave him a distracted laugh, too focused on the photos, the black background, the single spotlight. Her arms overhead. Her head back. Her back arched.

She was only looking at tiny squares; she couldn’t see any details, but to see herself repeated over and over was just plain unsettling. And memories of what had gone on after Finn laid down his camera returned.

“How do I look at them individually? And make them larger?” she asked, admitting to herself that this probably hadn’t been the best of ideas.

She should’ve had him burn the collection to a DVD so she could browse through at home, lingering over the photos and studying them, looking for what Dustin had hoped Finn would capture. Looking for what Finn had seen.

Looking, too, for anything of herself that would help her understand the things she was feeling for Finn.

He had set his laptop on the flat surface of the futon, and he adjusted the program’s settings, showing her how to zoom in and out with the touch pad, to pan from top to bottom, side to side. She saw how he would be able to crop the photos for closeups or leave them full size, printing her out from head to toe.

For the first time since Dustin had concocted this scheme, she found herself doubting his instincts, found herself, too, doubting that pizza and beer had been a good idea. Her stomach clenched and burned, and if she could’ve gracefully changed her mind, she’d have done so in a snap.

Instead, she convinced herself this picnic was a business dinner, her viewing Finn’s photographs an unscheduled meeting to check on the project’s progress. After all, she was his client, and he a professional she’d contracted for a job.

While he sat back to finish off the pizza, she started with the first of the photographs. There was a hesitation in her eyes, which she remembered feeling, not knowing when she’d agreed to dance if she could make Finn’s idea work.

Her hair was still artfully arranged in a loose twist; her makeup was still flawless. She cringed when she recalled the disaster she’d been at the end of the shoot.

She’d spent ten minutes with her engine idling, working at tangles and smears before driving home. She’d been that crazy messed up.

But when she’d first started, she’d looked good. She’d also looked stilted, her movements less fluid than in later shots, though it hadn’t taken long to relax.

She remembered that, too, how the music had taken over, how she’d loved the way her muscles had felt, flexing, stretching, working harder than they had in a while. God, she’d been way too lazy lately.

Following Finn’s instructions had been intuitive; she’d never been quite sure if she was hearing them over the music or imagining them, because the moves came so naturally.

There, her face bathed in light, her neck long and arched, her gaze cut sharply toward the sound of his voice as she searched him out. It was the sort of look she could see Dustin wanting, with the whites of her eyes so bright.

“These aren’t too bad,” she heard herself saying, because the only sounds in the room were of her breathing and the pizza sliding from the box to Finn’s plate.

It was strange to look at herself without him saying a word, especially because of what had followed the dance, and how they’d yet to talk about making love.

“Scroll down a few to where you hit your stride.”

“My stride?”

“Yeah,” he mumbled as he chewed. “You got into it. You relaxed. Those should be the best.”

She did as he’d instructed, mousing down the first column of thumbnails and choosing one to view full size. Her hair had started to tumble, loose locks curling, strands sticking to her damp neck. Her body had a sheen of perspiration here, which had been absent before, but it was her expression that was most changed.

She didn’t remember what she’d been thinking, or exactly what Finn had been telling her to do. But she did remember looking back at him over her shoulder—or at least glancing in the direction of his camera’s last flash, never being quite sure where he was—and thinking of what it had felt like to strip for him in front of her office window.

She’d poured that rush of sensation into her dance, running her hands down her sides, casting him a sultry glance, performing for him like she’d never performed for anyone else. Her eyelids were lowered; her lips parted. If she’d been facing him, he would have seen her nipples in full pout, peaking from beneath her top’s fringe.

Her stomach quivering, she zoomed out on that one as far as she could, then clicked on another farther down the queue to bring it into the screen. Big mistake. Her mascara was smeared—so much for being waterproof—and her lips were swollen, as if she’d been thoroughly kissed.

This was what she looked like when she was fourteen and the police came to the house. She had run to the bathroom, had stared at her reflection, searching for something to explain how things had gone so wrong. She’d had to be coaxed out to talk by the female officer who, with her partner, had answered the call.

“We can’t use these. Maybe a couple of the first ones, but not these.” She didn’t want anyone seeing her like this. Not even Dustin. Certainly not Finn—a ridiculous thought when he’d been there all along.

Finn moved closer, his shoulder bumping hers, settling against hers. “I don’t understand. These are amazing.”

She looked for the differences between these photos and what she remembered seeing in the mirror. Her cheeks weren’t rubbed raw by beard stubble, for one thing. Her bare shoulders weren’t covered in bruises from fingers digging into her skin. Her eyes weren’t red from crying, but from the sting of sweat and her damn cheap mascara instead. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. These wouldn’t do.

She closed the laptop before Finn could object, hiding the secrets from her past. And then she got to her feet; straightened her dress where it had hiked up her thighs; smoothed her vest where it covered her breasts, belly, and hips; slipped her feet into her shoes.

“I need to get home—”

From where he was sitting, Finn reached for her hand. “Olivia, what’s going on?”

It would take eons to tell him, and she didn’t want to think about that night ever again. But his hold was kind, not demanding, and so she gave him a minute before she pulled away. “Tomorrow’s my only day off, and I’ve still got a few things to wrap up tonight so I can enjoy it.”

“It’s getting dark,” he finally said in response. “I’m going to walk you to your car.”

“You don’t have to. I do this every night.”

“When I’m not here, yeah. But I am, so I’m walking you out.”

She couldn’t argue with chivalry, and she didn’t want to argue with Finn. The fight she was going to have with herself over continuing this project was going to be draining enough.

Now that her history had entered the picture, she wasn’t sure she had the energy to see it through to the end.