Читать книгу Sheer Decadence - Tanya Michaels, Tanya Michaels - Страница 11

SINCE MICROMANAGING was not part of her leadership style, Olivia stood to the side, shoes kicked off, the sand cool and smooth beneath her bare feet. Though intermittently windy, especially here by the water, it was a beautiful day—unseasonably warm, if still a little chilly for the bathing suits they were photographing. Squinting against the sand-flecked breeze, Justin took the white diffusion dome from an assistant and measured the light with a handheld flashmeter.

Olivia’s personal feelings about him notwithstanding, he’d been doing a great job. She watched him adjust an aluminum reflector to modify the way sunlight fell across Stormy.

While none of Sweet Nothings’ models was a famous Frederique or Tyra, several of them were becoming increasingly well known, and the hotel staff was excited to be hosting such a glamorous endeavor on its private stretch of beach. Like their bigger competitors, such as the notable Victoria’s Secret, Sweet Nothings was taking what it knew about push-up bras and tummy-flattering panels and applying it to sexy swimwear.

Stormy and Felicia posed in daring suits while everyone else wore clothes more appropriate to the early-spring weather. Resplendent in a bright red string bikini, Stormy was blond with eyes that actually were the gray-violet of storm clouds, thanks to the modern miracle of colored contacts. Chestnut-haired, green-eyed Felicia wore a blue one-piece with so many cutouts and straps that she managed to reveal as much flesh as her counterpart. Both women were perfectly, if artificially, tanned.

The sirens of old lured men with their songs, but you won’t need to sing a note to catch his attention while wearing one of our signature bathing suits.

Unable to shake her copywriting roots, Olivia dreamed up ad passages while Justin took picture after picture, first with a digital camera, then a traditional one. She couldn’t help noticing that Felicia put a little extra something into her smiles. And why not? Justin had been openly admiring her since the shoot had begun.

I don’t care that he flirts with models.

But indifference shouldn’t burn and stick in her throat. When Justin stopped to reload film and the models stepped behind the portable changing screens to don the next preselected suits, Olivia stole a moment for herself, strolling away a few feet. She inhaled deeply, breathing in the salty musk of sea and sand, hoping to dispel her fixation with the photographer who was as adept at charming women as he was at snapping pictures.

THOUGH Justin was looking through the viewfinder of his camera, he knew the moment Olivia started across the beach. His involuntary awareness of the woman was unshakable.

In the car, she’d been almost stiffly businesslike. He’d tried not to let this newest shift bother him. Today was about business. But after they’d arrived here, and he’d seen how friendly she was with others…

Earlier, Justin had been both distracted and annoyed by Olivia laughing with Rick, a makeup artist who freely admitted he’d gone into this line of business to be around beautiful women. Olivia certainly qualified. Probably in deference to the wind, she’d pulled her hair up today, somehow containing all of it in one of those toothy plastic clips that defy the laws of physics. The feminine curve of her neck and elegant features of her face were impossible to miss. Justin could no more ignore her than he could understand why he was the only one on the receiving end of her all-work-no-play demeanor.

So many things about Olivia contradicted each other—her confident professionalism and the occasional vulnerability he thought he glimpsed in her gaze, the moments of awareness that had simmered between them, only to be replaced by aloofness, the way she kidded with those on her crew but kept her responses to Justin on a speak-when-spoken-to basis.

Maybe his perverse preoccupation with her was just a determination to solve the mystery of her behavior, but he couldn’t resist reeling her back in as she wandered toward the water. “How much more do you want out here?”

They’d discussed in the car that he should also take some shots at the hotel’s heated indoor pool where the lighting was easier to control and the water warmed.

Olivia walked back toward him while the models had their makeup retouched. “We should get as much as we can this afternoon. Rick said there’s a cold front moving in tonight, which makes tomorrow perfect for the inside stuff.”

Once again, though there was nothing openly antagonistic in her words or expression, she seemed to stare through him more than see him. A frustration Justin didn’t normally encounter with the opposite sex filled him. He was self-aware enough to know most women found him attractive. There had even been moments when he would have sworn Olivia did.

But what did he know? Because he’d also believed they’d reached a turning point in their working relationship, and today had dispelled that myth.

Now wasn’t the time to pursue the issue, though. Felicia and Stormy headed down the beach, ready for the single round of shots that would take place in the water.

“Gorgeous,” he told Felicia as she frolicked in knee-deep surf. “Men will hyperventilate when they see this.”

“They’d better.” She pursed her lush lips in a mock pout. “This water is freezing.”

He recalled how closely Olivia had been standing earlier to Rick of the bleached white teeth. Why had Justin been paying attention to that instead of focusing more on the invitation in Felicia’s smiles? The model was playful and flirtatious, the type who would enjoy herself during a fling but not take it too seriously afterward.

“Don’t worry,” he promised her. “I’ll get you warmed up as soon as this is over.”

Her meadow-green eyes widened. “I’ll hold you to that.”

“What about me?” Stormy demanded, throwing her head back and pausing as he snapped a picture. “I’m cold, too.”

“No guy with working eyesight could forget you,” he said. “And don’t worry I’ve got plenty of…coffee and blankets to go around.”

Stormy laughed. Not to be ignored, Felicia upped her vamping for the camera. Damn, but he was getting some great shots. The next two hours flew by, and Justin’s love of photography temporarily eclipsed his tension.

As soon as they were finished and he was packing up his cameras, however, Olivia rushed back to the forefront of his mind. Though she was discussing something with one of the crew, her gunmetal-gray eyes were zeroed in on Justin, the disapproval in them canceling out the warmth of the afternoon sun.

Now what?

He’d been flirting, but it hadn’t been with her, so she couldn’t object this time. If Stormy and Felicia weren’t complaining, where was the problem? The results, caught on film, would benefit everyone at Sweet Nothings.

“We got some great work done today,” Olivia told the assembled group. “Enjoy your evening, but remember we have an early start, so don’t make it a late night.”

Was he getting paranoid, or did she aim that at him?

He stalked toward her, wanting answers. “May I talk to you?”

“Um, sure. Just not now. I’m feeling kind of gritty and want to get cleaned up. We’ve got a private dinner buffet in one of the dining rooms. Talk there?”

Before he could answer—hell, before she’d even finished her question—she pivoted on her heel and headed toward the hotel. The feeling that he’d been summarily dismissed grated on the one nerve he had left regarding that woman.

“Nice shoot.” Felicia sidled up to him, wrapped in an oversize towel. “You’re good.”

He managed to subdue his anger with Olivia long enough to respond. “Thanks, but my job’s easy when I have models like you and Stormy to work with.”

She inclined her head in gracious acknowledgment of the praise. “Any plans after dinner? I was thinking about checking out that indoor pool area before tomorrow. You know, like research. I understand there’s a hot tub. And you did offer to make sure I got warm again.”

“I—” Realizing that his bad mood had almost led to passing up hot-tubbing with a lingerie model, he mentally kicked himself. Was he insane? “Sure. Hitting the hot tub sounds great.” Yet not as great as it should.

Olivia’s fault. She had him so ticked off that he couldn’t fully enjoy what any man in his right mind would recognize as paradise. Which just ticked him off even more.

She might have postponed their conversation, but he and Olivia Lockhart were going to get this settled. Very soon.

OLIVIA LEFT the dining room, the soles of her canvas shoes thudding against the lobby’s marble floor as she tried to ignore her sense of guilt. Maybe it was just her dark sweater and jeans that made her feel like a thief sneaking away in the night. She’d come down for a quick bite to eat, and having accomplished that, she was now returning to her room—without having that discussion Justin had wanted. Was it her fault if he’d been too busy talking to Stormy to notice Olivia?

Okay, so she’d slunk into the room after she’d known everyone else would already be there and had only stayed long enough to gobble down half a salad before leaving while he was still otherwise occupied, but the principle of the thing was the same. Sort of.

Stopping at the elevator bay, she pressed the up button and waited. One day down, one left, then she’d be back home, not standing on a beach forced to spend hour after hour watching her sexy photographer.

You don’t think he’s sexy, you think he’s a jerk.

A sexy jerk.

Inside the elevator, she punched the number for the appropriate floor and rolled her eyes inwardly at the orchestral intro to a made-for-elevators remix of an old Police tune. As the doors began to slide closed, a hand shot between them, followed by an arm in a long-sleeved gray shirt she unfortunately recognized. The doors sprang back, and Justin Hawthorne entered, his expression triggering an automatic uh-oh inside her.

Blond brows scrunched together in a scowl, eyes hard as emeralds, he did not look happy.

Now that the doors were open, she glanced out in the lobby, hoping for someone else who needed to go upstairs. Luck wasn’t with her, but one would think she’d be used to that.

“Wh-which floor do you need?” she asked. Darn it, she hadn’t meant to sound all breathy, as though she were nervous. Or, worse, attracted to him. She stoutly refused to be either. Number fourteen was already lit, but she wished she had an excuse to hit three and leave sooner.

“I’ll just ride up with you.” He made it sound like a challenge. “We were supposed to have a chat, remember?”

His accusatory stance and the way he crossed his arms over his chest set her teeth on edge.

“I remember that I was supposed to be headed off on vacation tomorrow.” Though she’d sworn not to broach this topic, bringing it up made her feel better, as if suddenly she could breathe more deeply. She wasn’t the type to be quietly wronged.

“Vacation? Is that why you’re being so uptight?”

He was criticizing her?

She jabbed her index finger into his chest, hating that she noticed how tightly muscled it was. “I’m sorry if you’ve confused my adult restraint with being uptight, but not all of us have to hit on every member of the opposite sex we encounter.”

“Every member?” Green flame flared in his eyes. “When was I hitting on you? Or is that the problem—jealous, Liv?”

Men and their egos! “Try relieved. I’d hate to be like Kate or that cute little blonde at the restaurant and get suckered in by your—”

“Blonde? Restaurant?”

The words avalanched out of her, her tone growing colder with each syllable. “The ritzy one downtown, where I saw you and the blonde in the black dress on your date last night. You know, the date that was so important you inconvenienced my life without so much as a second thought. Since when is wining and dining someone—”

He pressed a finger to her lips, and Olivia gasped in surprise, startled by the heat of his skin. She felt branded.

“That blonde,” he said, “was my kid sister Andrea. She’s going away to school in Europe. It was her last night in the States, which I wasn’t about to miss. And I tried to tell you about it in your office the other day, but you cut me off.”

Olivia couldn’t have been more uncomfortable if she’d been wearing a thong two sizes too small. She’d seen a hot guy with a pretty young woman and had taken a running leap toward the nearest conclusion without even considering other logical possibilities. Obviously previous experiences had left her jaded, but her past wasn’t Justin’s fault.