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But it would be best if it didn’t happen too fast.
The door to Lili’s studio was ajar. Shut, it meant Lili was with a photo subject and he shouldn’t just saunter in. The women she photographed were usually knockouts—tattooed Goth chicks, hot-to-trot soccer moms, fresh-faced sorority girls, all dying to get naked for Lili’s art. He was in the wrong business.
It was a relatively small space that had become more roomy when Lili’s studio mate Zander moved out and onto greater things in New York. Jack had offered to build Lili a studio at their townhouse but she preferred to come to this separate space to work. Tad stole a few enjoyable moments taking in the skin on the walls, but then stilled when he heard Lili’s low murmurs of encouragement echoing from the other side of the studio. He pulled up short, ready to retreat. A thick pillar blocked his view.
“Tip your chin up—yeah, just like that.”Click.“Now lean forward, lemme see those puppies.”
“Lili,” came the slightly embarrassed reply.Jules.
“Come on, don’t be shy. You have an amazing figure and—oh, perfect. Hold that.”
Click.
Tad’s heart thudded insanely fast. He crept a few inches forward until he had cleared the pillar with his gaze. Lili had her back to him, shielding her subject, but he got a very healthy view of shapely legs inadequately covered by something red and soft-looking.
“You know, if you ever felt comfortable enough to go bare, I’d love to photograph you.”
Jules snorted. “I can see Jack’s face now.”
His cousin laughed. “We could insist he put it up in the dining room at Sarriette. He’d be so torn between wanting to encourage my art and being totally skeeved out.”
More giggles ensued.
“My wild days are behind me,” Jules said on the downside of a laugh. “You wouldn’t believe some of the shenanigans I got up to back in London.”
He heard her breathy sigh of reminiscence and strained to hear what salacious details might follow. This London version of Jules sounded like a woman he’d like to know.
“Oh, yeah? Spill, girl.”
“Well, there was one time I jumped in a fountain and stripped down to my—”
“Hey, cuz,” Lili said to him, a sly smile quirking one corner of her mouth. “How long have you been there?”
He patted the pillar he had just been leaning against/hiding behind like they were great pals. “Just got here.”
Lili’s smile turned slyer. “Didn’t expect you.”
“Do I need an excuse to come see my favorite cousin?” It came out a touch testy.
“Not at all. I just thought you’d be busy stroking your Cabs and Pinots.”
“Only do that on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Should I leave?”
“No, we’re just finishing up.” Lili sat at her iMac and hooked up the camera with a cable.
“All right?” Jules asked, almost shyly, as though they barely knew each other and in a way it felt like he was looking at her anew. The dress she wore was one he hadn’t seen before, a cherry-red, draped affair. One of those wrap-around deals that separated her breasts and flared over her waist. Not especially sexy but…
In that dress, she looked like she should be running the PTA, then going down on her husband in the Subaru in the school parking lot. Thankfully, that was years off because Evan was just an ankle biter … unless she hooked up with some lonely widower who already had school-age kids. Damn, that was a real possibility. He bet those websites were crawling with lonely widower fathers.
He was having problems catching his breath, a hitch that extended to his cock, which suddenly needed breathing room. To be perfectly honest, if Lili wasn’t there, he would be seriously considering unwrapping that dress and exploring the finely curved gift underneath. Jules stared back, probably wondering why he was ogling her like a just-released convict who hadn’t seen a woman during his fifteen and a third in the clink.
“Hey,” he said, finally responding to her greeting of about ten minutes back. He diverted his eyes away from her breasts to a good twelve inches north. Women 101. They preferred when you looked at their faces.
“Getting your photo taken?” he mumbled in a clear case of graduating summa cum laude from the School of the Freaking Obvious. His IQ had just dipped a hundred points.
“Uh huh. For my profile.” She blushed, and that’s when he noticed that she was wearing a lot of eye make-up. The smoky, sexy eyes that you saw on magazine models. She had done something different with her hair, too. It was tousled, fuck-me hair.
“My glamour shot, as Lili calls it,” she said with an eye roll.Can you believe whatthey’re trying to make me do?
