Seducing Helena
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Seducing Helena
Copyright © 2014 by Ann Mayburn
ISBN: 978-1-61333-614-4
Cover Art by Mina Carter
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC
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Seducing Helena
The Calendar Men Series
By
Ann Mayburn
People are like stained - glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Helena Flores leaned over the smoky glass table at the Vision Quest Modeling Agency and tried to see what had her shoot partner for the afternoon, Leonardo, so entranced. Leo was your typical New York hot model, practically perfect in every way: dark hair, Greek good looks, and a sparkling smile. He was the fashion world’s ideal man, which was probably why she wasn’t attracted to him. She liked her men a little rougher, with real-world experience and character.
Strolling around to Leo’s chair at the conference table, she sat down across from him and admired the awesome new pair of Chanel black-and-white suede heels she’d gotten as a token of appreciation for the shoot she’d done for
Vogue
, modeling their spring line. Fifteen years ago she would have never even been considered for such a coveted shoot, but the fashion industry was slowly catching on to the fact that not everyone was white, ultra-thin, and almost six feet tall.
Helena knew her beauty was considered unconventional for the modeling world, with her curves, dark brown skin, and bold nose. Before she’d landed the cover of the
Sports Universe
swimsuit issue two years ago she’d been called everything from fat, to having tits like a porn star, to being told she might land a job if she were a little friendlier with the casting director. She’d always told them to fuck off, but she knew girls in the industry who gave in and did more than a few hours on their backs on those couches.
Modeling was not for the faint of heart.
Thankfully, the curves that made her an absolute no-go for the runway at traditional fashion houses, with their size-zero models, attracted the eye of the top high-end lingerie empire, Sirens. Leo and Helena were getting ready to go for a fitting with the Vivienne Vanity, the head designer of Sirens and someone Helena considered a mentor. The photo shoot they were going to do over in Hong Kong was a huge production and Leo was spacing out on her when she needed his head in the game.
Helena snapped her fingers in front of his face, breaking his eye contact with the screen of his tablet. “Hey, wake up,
chico
. We need to get going.”
He blinked up at her and gave her a sheepish grin. “Sorry. I have this project I’m working on, and it seems to be taking over my life.”
They walked out of the office together, each moving with the studied elegance of a model on the job. Once she left the agency she went from being Helena, only daughter of a Brooklyn preacher, to Helena Supermodel. She had to psych herself up every time she went out in public and remember that half of how people perceived her was in how she carried herself. She no longer walked with a comfortable swagger. Now she lifted her chin and shifted her shoulders back, putting a slight sway into her hips that was exaggerated by the four-inch heels on her shoes.
Next to her, Leo did his version of the same transformation, standing straighter, his expression becoming more serious and yet still sensual. One of the reasons she loved working with Leo was that he was a professional. Neither of them had grown up with a silver spoon in his mouth and they both knew how fleeting the money from modeling could be. The only thing that would guarantee their longevity in the field was their professionalism and the ability to take a good picture.
They rode down together in comfortable silence. As soon as they entered the foyer, the noise washed over Helena and snapped her back to the present. Leo, a consummate gentleman, held the door open and escorted her across the vast space. Her driver and cousin, Gary, waited for them at the curb with her Mercedes sedan. As soon as they were both inside, they let out a breath at the same time.
“Well, it’s nice not having to fight off overly-enthusiastic fans while you’re here, Leo.”
He nodded and returned to staring down at his tablet. Curious as to what had him so distracted, she leaned over to get a better look, but wasn’t ready for her visceral reaction to the image of the man on the screen. Her breath froze in her lungs. The hair on her arms stood up. Then a warm tingle washed through her, and every cell and atom in her body began to buzz with excitement.
The guy on the screen was amazing, everything she found attractive in a man all wrapped up into one masculine image. He had a distinctly American badass look about him she loved. In the modeling world, everyone was a “type,” a brand to be marketed and sold. While Helena’s type was considered seductive-ethnic, the man on the tablet would be called ruggedly handsome. And his eyes…. God, he had killer baby blues.
His sandy-blond hair was cut very short, shaved to his skull on the sides, and her gaze traveled down the harsh planes of his face, past his kissable mouth, to the dimple in his chin. She imagined kissing that dimple and had a sudden flash of heat, low in her belly. A silver chain hung around his neck, and she leaned over to study the two rectangles of metal dangling against his rock-solid chest. They were dog tags, and as she examined him further, she could detect scars on his body, some old and some new, along with a nose broken more than once. As her gaze wandered lower, skipping over the dents of his well-developed abdominals, she noticed the fatigue pants the model wore and wondered if he was in the military or if wore them because he was fucking sexy as hell in camouflage.
The good Lord knew she adored a man in uniform.
Leo gave her a gentle elbow to the side. “Mind not climbing over me to drool over Seth?”
Flushing, she sat back in her seat and made a show of smoothing her dress. “Who is he?”
Now it was his turn to look a little flustered. “He’s a buddy of mine.”
“Annnndddd?”
After blowing out a harsh breath, he turned to face her, excitement warring with a tinge of sadness. “You know my brother was killed overseas, right?”
She nodded. Everyone knew about Leo’s loss. For as vain, fickle, and utterly self-absorbed as the fashion community could be, they also had enormous hearts. The passing of Leo’s brother had struck them all.
“Well, I decided to do a charity calendar for a group called the Fallen Warriors Family Fund. They help the widows and extended families deal with the loss of their loved ones, including financial support. While the widows do get some cash from Uncle Sam, it isn’t enough to do more than barely get by, you know what I mean? So I’m doing a beefcake calendar to try and raise some money for them.” He turned back to the tablet and tapped the screen. “Seth is one of my models.”
“He’s delicious.”
Leo’s lips curved into a grin she knew meant nothing but trouble. “He’s overseas right now with the Marines. I’m sure he’d appreciate a hot new pen pal.”
“I’d love to.” She cleared her throat and tried to regain her poise. “Is he married? Or does he have a girlfriend?”
“Nope. No girlfriend, either. You may find this hard to believe, but not many chicks want to date a guy who is gone nine months out of the year.”
Pretending to examine her nail polish for chips, she had to resist the urge to grab the tablet from Leo so she could stare at Seth some more. Her unusually strong reaction bothered her, but she’d always been the kind of person who went with her gut, and in this case her gut was telling her to go for it. Her body agreed and moistened at the thought of touching Seth’s hard, unforgiving muscles with her tongue. She wondered if he was the kind of guy to take charge in bed.
“Do you think he’d like to correspond with me?”
He laughed and patted her knee. “Baby, he’s gonna think he died and went to heaven.”
“Do you think you could keep it on the down low about who I am?”
“Why?”
“I’d like to talk to him like a normal person.” She stared out the window as they passed through Times Square and watched the tourists take pictures. “You know how it is. Once someone figures out who you are, you go from being a guy named Leo to Leo the Supermodel.”
“Yeah, I get it. But you will tell him eventually, right?”
“Of course.”
***
Later that night, Helena slipped on her comfortable blue terrycloth robe and grabbed her glass of milk and bowl of trail mix off the counter. Making her way across her big-by-New-York-City-standards living room, she took a seat at her chrome-and-glass computer desk. She set her snack aside and opened her e-mail, ignoring the stuff waiting for her in her in-box. All day during the fitting she’d been thinking about Seth, wondering who he was and why she was suddenly obsessed with him. It wasn’t like she was lacking for male attention. If she ever had the urge to scratch an itch between boyfriends, she even had a little black book with the names of men who could always be relied on to deliver in bed without the complications of a relationship.
She typed in Seth’s e-mail address, something she’d already memorized, and paused. How exactly was she supposed to start this and not come off like a weirdo? More importantly, should she tell Seth what she did for a living? She didn’t like lying but at the same time she wanted to see how Seth would treat her before he found out she was the owner of what
Maxie
magazine had voted “the world’s best T&A.”
Some guys couldn’t handle her being famous. They either turned all fanboy on her, got pissed about her crazy schedule, or couldn’t stand the attention that came from going out with her in public. She’d tried to explain she had to work as much as she could now because she planned on retiring in three years, but none of them had wanted to deal with her being on a different continent a couple times a month. For most guys, the idea of dating a supermodel was the stuff of fantasies, but the hard reality of it made for some really short relationships.
A quiet voice, the voice of the girl in high school who got dumped because her boyfriend’s white family didn’t like him dating a black girl, popped up.
What if he doesn’t date outside his race
? She squashed the voice and focused on the screen. Either Seth liked her for who she was on the inside or he didn’t. She wasn’t going to tell him what she did for a living so she would be Helena from Brooklyn, instead of Helena, Swimsuit Cover Model and Siren. She should probably use her middle name while writing him in case he made the connection. After all, she and Leo had done more than a few photo shoots together.