Light Me Up

“I’m pretty busy. I take a lot of classes. Dance and exercise and crafts classes, plus some courses at the university. I think if you’re not learning, improving and trying new things, you might as well be six feet under.” Melissa snapped her mouth shut. Again, she sounded robotic and puffed-up.

He leaned across the table toward her. Melissa held herself still, though her protective instinct told her to pull back. This close she could see the slight stubble around his jaw, the faint lines in his lips. She could tell herself he was an obvious player, bad news, not her type, anything she could think of, but the facts were simple: he was gorgeous and her body wanted to check his out. “I have something new you can try, Melissa.”

Oh, lord. It took two attempts before she found her voice, and even then she only managed a tinge of cynicism. “Oh, really.”

Jack folded his hands on the table, teasing charmer gone, an intensity in his gaze that sounded a loud you-could-be-in-trouble-here alarm. Usually it took Melissa time to overcome her reserve with men. Half an hour after meeting this guy she wanted to grab him and find out what his skin felt like. His hair. His mouth—

Melissa, honey, get yourself under control. Her boss, Barbara, would know what to say to calm her down. Melissa could practically hear her voice. You shouldn’t need a man to feel good about yourself. You shouldn’t need a man at all.

Exactly. Melissa hadn’t needed one since she’d started the process of finding herself, soon after graduation, and she didn’t need one now.

“I saw you for the first time in April, practicing your poses after class. Immediately I knew I had to photograph you.”

“Why?”

“One, because you’re beautiful.” He spoke with a low, slightly husky voice, a bedroom voice, except that his expression was distant, as if he were imagining her as part of his art, which effectively negated any feeling of seduction. Perversely, that made his words even more seductive, and Melissa finally lost the fight with her blush machine. “But also, because your body looks like it’s part of nature when you’re posing. You have an inner light, an incredible serenity, as if nothing could rattle you.”

Spell broken. Melissa barely managed to stifle a snort. Serenity? Oh, my God. If they heard him say that, her doctor and everyone she knew would never stop laughing. “Jack, I don’t think you quite have—”

“I was right.” He blinked and resumed his focus on her. “My camera loves you. I captured everything about you that had already captured me.”

“And you were planning to take more shots of me.”

“Then you disappeared, but yes.” He raised an eyebrow. “Here comes my sales pitch, you ready?”

Melissa glanced at her watch, buying time to think. Sales pitch. She’d been thrown by meeting Jack and seeing those pictures. She was still struggling with her attraction to him. Whatever he was going to ask from her now, she was not going to be able to give him a sane response. She’d do much better thinking first and talking to Barbara. Most likely he was going to ask to continue to photograph her. Could she trade him for a discount on her sister’s wedding? How involved did she want to get with this man?

And wasn’t that a loaded question.

“Can it wait? I need to get to work.” She stood before she went soft and changed her mind.

He caught her forearm. “Meet me for a drink later?”

Melissa wasn’t prepared for that one, or for his touch, or for him to get to his feet, too, which brought him even closer. She had to concentrate yet again on keeping her breath low and slow. Most men’s persistence annoyed her. Why couldn’t she summon irritation now when she needed it? “What’s the nutshell version of your pitch?”

“I want you to model for my new series. The Unko Gallery has already shown interest. You’re perfect for what I need.”

He was still holding her arm, fingers squeezing, as if the tension was tough on him, too. Melissa’s head whirled with reasons, pro and con. Dr. Glazer had warned her about adding more to her schedule, but it was ridiculously open these days after she’d dropped so many classes; she was too often at loose ends. And if modeling meant she could hire Jack for Gretchen’s wedding …

Of course, she would have to pretend to be calm and serene around him for extended periods. That might kill her faster than her blood pressure.

“Look.” She tugged her arm from his warm fingers, needing to put her scrambled thoughts in order. “For one thing, I’ve never modeled before. I didn’t know you took the other pictures. I might be terrible at it when you’re right there with the camera in my face.”

“I doubt it. But we can test tonight, if you’re free.”

“I’m not free.” She was not going to jump for a guy like this who probably had several women already leaping like kangaroos. Besides, she’d need at least twenty-four hours to regain her equilibrium.

“Tomorrow?”

Tomorrow was Friday. She used to have a pottery class at 5:30, but these days she’d be going home to read or meditate or something equally dull. Jack was anything but dull. “How long would this take?”

“An hour. Maybe two.”

She was amazed. “For the series?”

“Oh, no.” Jack shook his head, grinning. “I thought you meant the tests. The series would take longer.”

“How much longer?”

He narrowed his eyes speculatively. She guessed he was figuring out what she wanted to hear. “Depends on how the pictures turn out, how the creative process evolves, whether I get the shots the way I want them.”

Uh-huh. He wasn’t risking specifics. If this only took a few hours, fine. She certainly couldn’t spend any longer than that pretending she was serene.

“By the way, blatant bribery. If you’ll agree to model for me, I can do your sister’s wedding for nothing.”

And there it was. She didn’t even have to ask. A photographer of his talent would be an amazing gift to Ted and Gretchen. All Melissa had to do was …

Be around Jack. Alone with him for long stretches of time. He’d be posing her, touching her. She’d have to pretend none of it affected her.

Dangerous to her sanity and to her health. And so tempting. She needed to talk to Barbara. Her boss, mentor and stand-in mom had helped clear her head more times than Melissa could count, and had started her on a wonderful journey of self-awareness.

“Let me know what you decide.” Jack held out his hand. “You can come by the studio after work tomorrow. Wear or bring black if you have it—something on the tight side for a good silhouette. We’ll have a drink, talk it over, maybe take a few shots and see what we have.”

“I’ll give it some thought.” Melissa shook his hand, proud of her ability to meet those killer brown eyes calmly with her insides still a mass of yes-please and no-thank-you confusion.

Give it some thought?

She could already tell that for the next day and a half she’d be thinking of little else.

3

BONNIE TURNED THE KEY, locking the front door of Bonnie Blooms. Her back ached. Her feet hurt. She had a crashing headache. Her parents had been right. She shouldn’t have opened this store, she didn’t have the experience. A pie-in-the-sky venture, launched on a wing and a prayer, and what other clichés could she use? Who ate pie in the sky anyway?

She was exhausted. Grinding through each day, hoping business would get better, putting on a good face for everyone. Wedding season always gave her a boost, and she’d painstakingly learned how to design a new funky website and blog page for the store with as much color and as many touches of humor as she could get away with while still appearing professional. Talk about a learning curve. She wasn’t convinced the site was perfect, but it was better than the template-based one she’d started with.

Orders were dribbling in, both local and through the FTD network, but only dribbling. She was still in the hole more than she should be, still dipping into savings more than she wanted to. How could she get people and companies and organizations and agencies to buy more flowers? What did she have to offer that no other florist did?

Nothing. But Bonnie couldn’t see that when she started this business. She’d been swept away by the can-do camaraderie of the other Come to Your Senses members, and had figured if they could do it, why couldn’t she? She had as much passion as any of them. While other girls had been into ponies and princesses, Bonnie was designing gardens on paper, in the backyard space her parents put aside for her, and eventually took over the entire backyard when she proved to have more talent than her mother.

But that didn’t make her a good businesswoman. She should have kept her job at Blossoms Dearie, making a steady, if small, paycheck.

Except then she wouldn’t be part of this terrific fivesome. Well, foursome if you didn’t count Demi, which Bonnie generally didn’t. Not belonging to this crowd would be a terrible tragedy. She smiled, thinking of poor Jack’s face when he’d finally found his beautiful Melissa and thought Bonnie and Angela were going to move in and ruin everything. That kind of teasing between people who knew each other so well, trusted and supported each other, teasing with genuine love at its heart—Bonnie couldn’t get that from old Mrs. Blatter at Blossoms Dearie.

She shuddered at the thought of her tyrant former boss, and trudged past Jack’s and Demi’s studios to the elevator, pocketing her shop key. All hope was not lost. Something would work out, some marketing idea would kick in, some corporate account would materialize, her blog would catch on. Something. In the meantime, it was summer—Bonnie’s favorite and most profitable season, Seattle’s most beautiful—and denial was her friend.

On the second floor, she headed down the narrow hallway. She’d painted two twining lines of roses down either wall. When Seth and Jack felt their manhood threatened by the floral decor, she’d mischievously painted a line of tanks along the baseboard, guns aimed high, as if to blast the flowers into shreds of petal. They’d all had a good laugh. That was when they’d been a solid fivesome, when Caroline was still around.

Her key hit the apartment’s lock at the exact moment her cell rang, as if the key had set it off. Bonnie hauled the phone out of her pocket and pushed inside, snapping on the foyer light.