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The other side of it was the rumor mill. She was no longer as much in the public eye, but if it got out, some people might assume she was using sex to get the kind of article she wanted from Jordan.
Toby had jumped up next to Nicole on the bed and his chin was contentedly planted on her ankle. Everything about him suggested he’d achieved nirvana that evening. How lovely to have the ability to simply exist in the moment, with no yesterdays or tomorrows to think about.
“Hey, little guy,” she murmured, but he was fast asleep. While she’d heard people debate whether letting your dog sleep with you was a good idea, she didn’t mind. And it wasn’t as if she expected to have someone in her life who’d complain about it, not anytime soon, at any rate.
An image of Jordan floated through her mind and she ground her teeth. For a woman whose face and body had been used in marketing for sex appeal, she actually understood very little about the opposite sex. What had Rita Hayworth said…men went to sleep with Gilda, her most famous film role, and were disappointed when they woke up with her? Nicole had heard that line in the movie Notting Hill. It had struck an instant chord with her and she’d quickly added that film to her secret collection of romantic movies.
Nicole yawned. The evening had been fun until she’d seen Jordan. While walking past the baseball field she’d stopped and said hi to some of the kids and the next thing she knew she was umpiring a game. It had been wholesome and genuine, uncomplicated and…she yawned again.
Sleep was a good idea. Hopefully, her dreams would be of baseball, ice cream cones, puppies and pizza. Not Jordan, she told herself. Definitely not Jordan.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
NICOLE WOKE IN the early morning, unable to remember what she’d dreamed, or if she had dreamed at all.
For the moment she was relatively current on her paperwork, so she sat on her deck, enjoying a cup of tea and reading a book, before heading to the office.
Once there, she arranged several go-sees and bookings and reviewed the folder of pictures collected at the career fair. The girls had been eager and hopeful; it really was the worst part of her job to tell dreamers that she couldn’t be the one to help them. Yet it would be cruel to take someone on as a client, making them believe they could succeed, when she didn’t think it was going to happen. Not that she ever told them the last part. She wasn’t going to be the one to kill a dream, and there was always the chance she was wrong. More than one star had succeeded where the experts had said it wasn’t possible.
Jordan arrived shortly before she planned to leave and check on modeling jobs in progress.
“Really?” he asked. “Do you get time for anything else?”
“I’m probably doing more of them than most agents because I’m new,” she explained. “I was hoping you’d get here before I left to see if you would like to tag along. Today I’m mostly doing spot checks.”
“That sounds interesting.”
Nicole smothered a smile since he obviously found the entire process a bore. But maybe he was also getting the picture that modeling wasn’t a cakewalk. Of course, some people saw only what they wanted.
At the reception area, she handed a stack of folders to Chelsea to record the bookings, then headed to her car, wondering if Jordan would want to take his vehicle. Instead he settled without protest into her passenger seat. She’d planned the visits carefully by location to minimize driving time. It went smoothly, with Jordan observing, taking notes and occasionally speaking with the models.
The last stop was at a carpet store where the model—dressed in a Cleopatra-type costume—was being unrolled over and over from a length of carpet for a local television ad. The director looked as if he planned to keep doing it the rest of the day.
“How about lunch?” Jordan asked as the young woman’s hair and makeup were refreshed.
“Oh, sure. Let’s just pick up a sandwich or something.”
“Fine with me.”
She wasn’t as oblivious to him as she was trying to appear. While sitting and making notes, Jordan in the seat next to her, she’d tried not to take in his clean male scent, or notice the dark waves of his hair and remember how it had felt under her fingers.
