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Oh, please. Not him. Anyone but him, he’s the last one for you. Pull yourself together.
Giving my head a small shake, I spun on my heel and sped down the hallway to the elevator.
Escaping behind the sliding doors, I slumped against the mirrored wall. Taking deep, even breaths, I pressed my palm over my churning stomach, as I slowly came to terms with the fact that I was attracted to my nemesis.
Who’d just cleaned the clock of one of my models.
The hollow in my chest expanded. I shuddered at the thought of them together, then eyed my reflection as I lightly banged the back of my head against the wall.
Hope, you have the worst taste in men.
Ares
So. It wasn’t just me.
I winced at the look on Hope’s face. The woman could not hide even one of her thoughts never mind her emotions. And she had a lot of them.
Awareness of her plagued me all day. Never had a woman distracted me like this. Not even Julianna. Not even when I was photographing her.
But Hope? I could feel her presence.
I tracked her, knowing exactly where she was at any given moment. I listened for her voice. Her whispered directions. Her laugh. A wild, snorting thing that made me smile.
Internally, of course.
The light perfectly bounced off her gorgeous mane. I knew this because I shot it. The light was just as generous to her beautiful face, the shape of her legs through her backlit skirt, and her madly expressive hands.
At the end of the day, I couldn’t escape fast enough.
I knew she wanted to see the photographs. She’d mentioned as much that morning, but there was no way I could flip through the roll with her. Not with the number of photographs of her. One photo of her in the mix was one too many.
And I’d lost count.
As soon as I got to my room, I downloaded them onto my laptop and cleared the cache on the camera. I’d just started to move the pictures of Hope into a separate file when a soft knock sounded at my door.
Like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, I slammed the laptop closed and crossed to the door, frantically searching for a reason to deny or delay her access to the photographs.
The relief that hit me upon opening the door must have looked an awful lot like welcome because Nadia, or maybe it was Natalia? Nadine? Whatever, she sailed through the door and crossed to my bed where she made a show of sitting down and crossing her long legs.
My eyes wandered upwards, beginning with her tiny ankles. If I touched her, she’d snap like a damn twig.
In any case, after Julianna, models all looked the same to me: bad news wrapped in a bad decision. I had no interest in dipping my wick.
Not with her.
The pictures of Hope on my laptop, the ones impatiently calling for my attention, flashed in my head.
I crossed my arms over my chest. I hadn’t even changed my sweaty clothes from earlier. I sorely needed a shower, and social skills were not my forte, especially at the end of a long day. Getting her out of here without hurting her overinflated ego would drain the rest of my energy.
“What can I do for you?”
She slowly uncrossed her legs. Nina? She rose from the bed. “I was thinking more along the lines of what I can do for you.”
Cliché. But I doubted she won men over with her conversational skills. I cocked my head to the side and smiled.
Her eyes lit up, and she lay her hand on my chest above my crossed arms.
Impatience urged me to throw her out but pissing her off would be detrimental to my end goal of making her shine tomorrow.
