Page 44 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

I decide I’ll make all the pics black and white. Definitely black and white. It’ll match his art style and do approximately devastating things to the contrast of ink against skin.

One of his eyebrows pops up and I get a quick snap of his sardonic look before he opens his mouth.

“I feel ridiculous. Don’t you have enough by now?”

“Are you kidding? We want to batch a month’s worth of content. And believe me, the Instagram girlies will be eating this up.”

“Instagram girlies? I thought we were trying to boost my clientele list. Not crowd my DMs.”

I shake my head back and forth. “A little of both kinds of engagement will really get the needle moving. Give in to the gifts the good Lord gave you, bro.”

“Bro? So I’m your bro now?”

For a second our gazes connect, and I feel that sizzle all the way through my belly down to my toes.

I lower the phone and bite my bottom lip. “You are technically my ex-brother-in-law.”

“Right.” He drops his eyes.

The room does something. Like tilt a little and go a little swimmy.

Except, no, that’s just what’s happening inside my belly when I look down at my phone screen at the last photo I took. His sardonic eyebrow, the gaze that cuts straight through me with the corner of his mouth tilted up.

He photographs like someone who’s never once been self-conscious in his life.

It’s entirely devastating.

And what keeps getting in the way of the professional I’m trying to be.

“I need action shots,” I say. “You posing is great but the real content is you working. Hands holding the needle with the art happening in real time.” I look up. “You have any clients tomorrow morning I could shoot?”

“First booking’s at eleven.”

“Could I come in before? Set up and get some ambient shots of the space?—”

“Shop opens at ten.”

“What about before ten?”

He looks at me.

“I’m there at nine,” he says. “Doing setup and prepping. It’s not very exciting.”

“It doesn’t need to be exciting, it just needs to be real. Authenticity is what performs.”

I’m warming up now, the part of my brain that is genuinely good at this switching online. It’s a relief to be in a professional competence mindset because that feels like much more solid ground than whatever… may or may not be going on flirtation-wise between me and this gorgeous man I had earth-shattering sex with two days ago.

No, who you had a one-night stand with two days ago. Who also happens to be your legally-current-husband’s brother.

Which is why we’re focused on professional mode. “The behind-the-scenes stuff, the prep, maybe you doing some sketches—” I stop.

The sketchbook.

His face does something. He saw thatI sawthe angel with my face. My incredibly accurate face on the intricately beautiful angel.

“Forget the sketchbook,” I say quickly.

“Forgotten,” he says, equally quickly.