Practised Deceiver

There was a desk in one corner and as she recognised the man standing beside it an odd little frisson of heat feathered down her spine; everything she had read about him had warned her that Ross Elliot was not a man to suffer fools gladly, and that impression was strongly reinforced as she gazed at him in an awe-struck daze.

He had to be something over six feet tall, and he was wearing a faded denim shirt that moulded an impressive breadth of shoulder. His dark hair was drawn back into a ponytail, and he wore a gold earring in one ear, but there was nothing effeminate about him—nothing at all. He was uncompromisingly male, still branded with the stamp of the tough streets of Glasgow where he had grown up. And he had a magnetic physical aura that made her mouth go suddenly dry.

He didn’t even bother to look up as she advanced tentatively into the room; he was bent over the desk, studying a sheet of contact-prints, scribbling over them with a red china-pen, and without lifting his head he called out, ‘Tina?’

A pint-sized dynamo in a scarlet T-shirt and leopard-print leggings darted in through a door behind the desk. ‘Oh, hi,’ she greeted Alysha with a smile as broad as her Australian twang. ‘You’re the two o’clock, right?’ She ran one purple varnished fingertip down the appointment book on the desk. ‘Alysha Fordham-Jones. I’m sorry, I don’t seem to have taken a note of which agency sent you along?’

‘I...wasn’t sent by an agency,’ Alysha confessed apologetically. ‘I made the appointment myself.’

‘Oh...’ The other girl hesitated, uncertain. ‘Ross?’

He straightened, not troubling to conceal his irritation at having to drag his attention away from what he had been doing, and Alysha found herself subjected to a coolly detached appraisal from a pair of deep-set eyes the colour of hardened steel. ‘I only work with girls sent by a reputable agency,’ he informed her dismissively.

She felt a rush of pink to her cheeks. ‘Oh...I’m sorry—I...didn’t know,’ she stammered, disconcerted both by his manner and by something else she couldn’t quite define; maybe it was because for at least the past year she had grown accustomed to invoking stunned admiration in most of the callow young men she was allowed to associate with, and to be confronted with six foot four of mature, hard-ground male who seemed completely indifferent to her charms had come as something of a shock.

‘Well, now you do,’ he responded, turning his attention back to his task.

It was that offhand arrogance that stung her into a countering disdain. ‘I can pay,’ she informed him in a tone of haughty condescension. She put her hand into her bag, and drew out her purse. ‘Cash.’

She had been saving up her allowance for weeks—if she was going to be a model she would have to give up sweets and crisps anyway—and not knowing how much the session would cost she had brought a hundred pounds with her, in crisp ten pound notes she had drawn out of the post office that morning.

Ross Elliot lifted his eyes slowly to look at the money, and then to her face—and the glint of icy anger she saw in them made her insides shiver. Somehow she had insulted him far more than she had intended... She was just about to apologise when he smiled, a smile that didn’t reach those glacial eyes.

‘So you want to be a model, Miss Fordham-Jones?’ he queried, the voice with its rough-edged Glaswegian accent quiet but unmistakably laced with menace. ‘All right.’ He held out his hand, and dumbly she put the money into it. He didn’t bother to count it, just dropped it into a drawer in the desk in front of him. ‘Show her the changing-room, Tina.’

The other girl glanced at him in frank bewilderment, but met only a blank response, so with a small shrug of her shoulders she turned to Alysha. ‘This way,’ she invited, opening the far door and ushering her through into a long, narrow passage. ‘Have you brought some different outfits with you?’

Alysha nodded. ‘Er...yes. A trouser-suit, and an evening dress, and a swimsuit. Is that all right?’

‘Fine. We’ll start with the trouser-suit. And I’ll give you a hand with your make-up and hair—usually the agency would fix up a team to work on the shoot, but...’

‘But I wasn’t sent by an agency,’ Alysha concluded with a wry smile. ‘I’m really sorry about that—I hope...I mean, I wouldn’t want you to get into trouble over it or anything.’

Tina laughed. ‘Oh, no—don’t worry about it,’ she assured her blithely. ‘Look, you don’t want to let Ross scare you, you know—he’s all right really, once you get to know him. His bark’s a lot worse than his bite.’

Alysha cautiously decided to reserve judgement on that one.

Tina opened a door at the end of the passage, and flicked a light switch. Alysha found herself in a small, brightly lit changing-room. There was a white-painted dressing-table, surmounted by a huge mirror with light bulbs all round it, and another long mirror on the wall. On a hatstand in the corner was an eclectic collection of hats and scarves and belts and bead necklaces, and on a shelf above the small hand-basin were rows of half-empty bottles of nail varnish, cans of hairspray, and every shade of lipstick the creative imagination of the cosmetic houses of Europe and America could dream up.

‘Here we are,’ Tina announced. ‘I’ll leave you to get changed, and then I’ll come back in ten minutes and we can start on your face. Oh, and I’ll bring the model-release for you to sign. Ross always insists on it—it’s just so he can use the pictures if he wants to.’

Alysha couldn’t imagine that he would, but she nodded. ‘Oh... Yes. Thank you very much.’

She put down her bag, and sank down on the stool in front of the dressing-table, gazing around her in a kind of awe. Just think of all the fabulous top models who must have sat here before her...! Would she be one of them one day—her services in demand from all the top designers for their catwalk shows, her face on the covers of her favourite glossy magazines?

At this moment, to be honest, she would really much rather have run away, jumped on the train back to school. But she wasn’t going to let Ross Elliot intimidate her. And after all, he had taken her hundred pounds—and she didn’t much fancy the idea of asking him to give it back.

But half an hour later all her reservations were forgotten. She had thought she was quite good at putting on make-up, but the effect Tina had achieved was stunning. With subtle skill she had highlighted her delicate cheekbones, emphasising the soft curve of her mouth and lending a strange, smokey mystery to her eyes. Then she had twisted her hair up into a simple, elegant style that made her look a good five years older.

‘There—you look great!’ Tina approved with satisfaction. ‘Don’t you think so?’

Alysha stared back at her own reflection in that enormous mirror, bemused by the transformation. ‘Y...yes,’ she murmured. ‘Thank you very much.’

‘I’ll tell Ross you’re ready,’ Tina added, her eyes dancing. ‘He’ll be absolutely knocked out when he sees you!’

Alysha doubted that—he had studied too many really beautiful women through the eye of his camera to be even remotely impressed by her. But even so, that unfamiliar person she could see, gazing back at her with her own amber-flecked eyes, looked very much the part.

Her mouth felt a little dry as she walked through into the studio. Ross was already there, setting up the lighting around a simple set that consisted of a tall wooden three-legged stool in front of a backdrop of bleached cotton draped from a track hanging from the ceiling. He didn’t even glance up as she came in, just waved her into place with a casual gesture of his hand.

She wasn’t sure what to do, so she perched on the stool, one foot on the floor, her hands clenched in her lap.

Ross bent to look through his camera. ‘Try to look a little less as if you’re about to have a tooth extracted,’ he appealed, a sardonic inflection in his voice.

Behind him, Tina placed her hands on her hips, turning her shoulders slightly. With a grateful smile, Alysha mirrored her actions.

‘Better,’ Ross approved, oblivious of his assistant’s prompting. ‘Lift your chin. Slide that left leg forward a little more.’ He moved to adjust one of the lights a little. ‘Tina, if you’ve nothing better to do than stand there, go and turn the tape-deck on.’

Tina grinned wryly, and obeyed, filling the room with the sounds of Genesis, and then with a small wave to Alysha she slipped out of the room.

The next couple of hours were the hardest work Alysha had ever known—if she had dreamed of modelling as a glamorous career, she was quickly finding out that standing perfectly still for endless moments, or repeating the same small movement over and over until he was completely satisfied, made her ache with cramp until she longed to scream.

As the afternoon wore on, she became convinced that he had only agreed to do the session to teach her some kind of lesson. He was ruthless in his demands, barking instructions and impatiently critical when she was wooden or awkward. But though she was exhausted and close to tears, she refused to let him defeat her.

The sensational backless black evening dress she had splurged so much money on drew no comment from him whatsoever; Tina had changed her make-up, using a darker shade of lipstick and more shadow on her eyes, creating an image of sensual sophistication, but she might as well have been wearing a paper bag over her head.

It was getting late by the time they were ready to start on the swimsuit shots, and Ross had sent Tina out to pick up something from the dry-cleaners. She seemed to work like a galley-slave for him, without expecting even a word of thanks, Alysha reflected as she brushed out her hair to let it fall loose around her shoulders; she was probably in love with him.

She was a little nervous of posing in front of him wearing only the cerise-pink designer swimsuit she hadn’t dared let anyone else see; cut high on the thigh and low between her small, firm breasts, it clung like a second skin. But Ross Elliot betrayed not the slightest sign that he found her blossoming curves even remotely alluring; his indifference was humiliating—she wasn’t used to being treated in such an off-hand manner. Everyone else thought she was beautiful, they were always saying she ought to be a model—but apparently he didn’t agree. And he ought to know—he was the professional. Had all this been for nothing, after all?

They had been working for twenty minutes when he told her to take a break while he loaded his cameras with fresh film. With a sigh of relief, Alysha stepped down from the set, glad to be able to stretch her weary limbs a little. During breaks in the shooting she had wandered around the studio, gazing enviously at the pictures taped all over the walls; many of the models she recognised—beautiful women, the ones whose faces regularly graced the covers of Vogue and Harper’s. One day...?

There was a low table and some chairs at the back of the studio, for meetings, and on the table was a thick bound folder of mounted photographs. She flipped it casually open to look; the pictures were all of those same top models—and they had posed for him in various states of elegant undress, some of them even naked! Yet there was nothing at all pornographic about them; they were pure art—strong images of women confident in their own sexuality, photographed by a man who had a genuine liking and respect for them...

‘Do you like them?’

She stared as Ross spoke close behind her—in his battered old tennis-shoes he had made no sound across the studio floor. ‘Oh...yes,’ she stammered, her heart thudding so loudly she was afraid he would hear it. ‘They’re...fabulous.’

A strange glint was lurking in the depths of those mesmerising grey eyes. ‘How would you like to try some like that?’ he asked, nodding towards them.

Her cheeks flamed scarlet; the thought had already crossed her mind—maybe that would be the way to get some positive reaction out of him! But she had told herself at once not to be so stupid; she could never compete with the stunning creatures in those pictures. And besides, the thought of taking her clothes off in front of Ross Elliot...

‘Oh... No, I couldn’t,’ she protested breathlessly. ‘I...’

She felt the chill of his anger, tautly controlled. ‘Suit yourself,’ he responded with a dismissive shrug of his wide shoulders. ‘If you don’t want to do it, that’s fine by me—there’s no need to come on like some prudish little schoolgirl. Do I look like one of the dirty-mac brigade, for Pete’s sake?’

She swallowed hard, shaking her head. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...’

He seemed to relent a little, conceding a grim smile. ‘Look,’ he coaxed, his voice taking on a gentler note as he flipped over the pages of the folder. ‘Look at those women. You know who they are. Do you think they’d have let me take those pictures if they hadn’t trusted me? I don’t have any ulterior motive—if I want a woman, I don’t have to resort to underhand tricks, believe me. I want to take your picture because you’re beautiful—that’s all there is to it.’