Bared

“Of course it does.”

Emma sighed.

“So about my trip…”

“What about it?” Emma’s wariness was back.

“I was wondering how you felt about Joshua Tree National Park.”

“Huh?”

“Joshua Tree. The desert just east of you?”

“I know where it is, I was just trying to figure out why you’re asking me how I feel about it.”

“Yeah, see, I thought maybe you’d want to go. Maybe experience the great outdoors a little more, and while you were there—”

“Amber—”

“—you could maybe just pose for a few more pictures in my place. Tomorrow. They’re shooting April there.”

“Oh, no—”

“It won’t affect your work,” Amber said quickly. “It’s just Saturday. One day.”

“Amber, I can’t be you again.” She thought a bit desperately of filmy white costumes and being in front of the camera when she hated being in front of the camera, not to mention the strange and inexplicable yearning she couldn’t seem to handle when she was—

“Rafe will be taking the pictures—”

“He’s going to figure it out, Amber.”

“No, he won’t. Look, people see what they want to see. And when they look at me, they see a beautiful, but slightly empty brunette who’s good at one thing and one thing only—posing for pictures. You could do that blindfolded. You could, Emma. You have so much more talent than anything I’ve ever had.”

“That’s not true. Your job is hard, too, in a different way than mine.” Characters forgotten, Emma pushed her laptop away. Elbows on her desk, she rubbed her temples and bit back a sigh. “Why can’t you do it?”

“Well, I’m still in the Caribbean with Ricardo, and—”

Ah, yes, Ricardo. “Can’t you just put Rafe off for a few more days? I mean, why did you sign up for this job in the first place if you want out of it so badly?”

“For the money, for starters.” Amber sighed lustily. “I’ll share it with you, I promise. But it’s more than the cash. This calendar is studio distributed. It’s going to be everywhere, Emmie. Everywhere. It’ll be just the push I need to get a good series or movie this season, I just know it.”

“Then, come back,” Emma said, pitifully close to begging. No one wanted her sister to be successful more than she did. Because if Amber got successful, or at least happy, she’d stop leaning on Emma so much.

Emma could almost hear her mother laughing at that hope. No, Margaret Willis didn’t have much faith in her daughters, either of them, but especially Amber. Emma had no idea if that was because her daughters were so incredibly different from her, in both looks and temperament, or if it was simply that she regretted having children so young and being held back from her career.

In any case, it had been a difficult upbringing. At least Emma used her brain, Margaret often said, having no idea that Emma had chosen to use her brain rather than her beauty simply to please the woman it turned out couldn’t be pleased. Her mother had been so hard on Amber over the years that Emma—the oldest by three minutes—had always felt the need to step in and mediate.

Twenty-six years and she was still doing it.

“Please, Emma? Please won’t you do this for me? Do this so I don’t have to come home right now.”

“Why did you let me think that you and Rafe had a past together?”

“We do.”

“One date isn’t a ‘past.’”

Amber laughed. “Silly me, I probably had a crush on him at the time. Truth is, he wasn’t into me. He’s not into models or anything else Hollywood.”

“So why do you kiss him after each shoot?”

“What?”

Emma was getting a bad feeling here. “So you…don’t kiss him?”

“Of course not. Look, maybe I dated him that one time and maybe I like to mess with him on the set sometimes, but if I was going to kiss anyone, it would be Stone. I mean, my God, have you seen his eyes? If he wasn’t gay…”

“But Rafe—”

“He’s far too into his camera.”

Code for he wasn’t into Amber enough, of course.

So he’d gotten a kiss out of Emma under false pretenses.

What did that mean?

“So, will you do it, Emma? Go as me?”

“No. What’s the costume?”

“Camper girl,” said Amber. “It’ll be full coverage, no doubt. Jeans and a tank, something like that. Please?”

Full coverage, nothing sheer, nothing so outrageously sexy that her every nerve ending quivered.

“Please.”

No. “I don’t know…”

“You won’t regret this,” Amber said in a rush. “You’re the best. I’ll give Rafe’s assistant the number where they can reach you. You posing as me, of course.”

“But I didn’t say I’d—”

The dial tone sounded in her ear.

“—do it,” she finished, then she hung up and stared out the window of her house to the yard she’d neglected so badly that it had become nothing more than overgrown bush. She’d meant to get out there this year, but something had always come up. Work related, of course.