Chapter 4
He doesn’t move when she shoves him.
Anna might as well have shoved a tree. But instead of retreating like I expect, the man takes a step toward me anyway. He’s close enough that I have to actually look up.
Way up.
I have not looked up at a man since the eighth grade. I have spent twenty years looking at the tops of men’s heads and pretending I wasn’t.
I have hunched. I have slouched. I have stood in the back of every photograph ever taken of me. I have taken my shoes off at parties like an idiot.
And now there’s a wall of leather standing eight inches away and I have to tip my chin back to find his face.
His eyes are blue. That is not fair. I love blue eyes. Always have. Probably always will because mine are boring.
Leather scent rises from him, a fitting smell for a man that looks like he’s carved for mayhem.
“Okay! This is so good. Right here! Right here in the parking lot. I’ll frame it with the river in the background.”
Anna is circling us. There’s no other word for it. She’s circling like a bird that’s found something dead.
“Both of you put your hands on the box.”
“Is this a prop?” I ask, still confused.
“No, hold it,” Anna instructs as she angles her head to this side, then the other. “Hold the box. Hold it right there against your chest, that is adorable.”
She snaps her fingers without looking. “Big guy. Hand on her waist.”
He doesn’t move and I want to die.
Please let me be dead.
I want the ground to open up under this gravel and take me down into the earth, because I know exactly what is happening right now.
She has asked a strange man to touch me and he is standing there like a statue on a courthouse lawn.
“It’s fine,” I force myself to say. It’s said in my client voice. I steal a glance at the whirlwind circling us, firing her trigger finger like she’s on cocaine.
“Anna, honestly,” I say, “He clearly doesn’t want to be here, and I’m not going to make a total stranger put his hands on?—”
“Where?” he rasps, cutting me off.
I stop cold. All my organs cease to function.
It’s the first thing he’s said in a full minute. The sound is as rough as gravel going down a chute.
“Go on,” Anna cheers.
He’s not looking at Anna. He’s looking right at me.
“Where?” he says. “Your waist. Where do you want it?”
Every word in the English language leaves my head at once. “Huh?” I mumble.
He waits.
He is enormously, monstrously patient about it, and somehow that is worse than if he’d just grabbed me.
“There is fine,” I manage, and I make a vague little gesture at my own body, which is a stupid thing to do to a body like mine, and I hate that I did it.
His hand latches onto my waist.
It doesn’t hover. It doesn’t do that thing men do, the polite little hand that touches you the way you’d touch a hot stove. This is like being grabbed by a bear paw.
His hand is the size of a dinner plate. In silence, he settles it just above my hip. The whole weight of the paw rests against me like he’s not worried about breaking anything.
I make a sound. Out loud. A lot like, oof.
Fantastic.
“Oh, that’s good,” Anna breathes, and the shutter starts thumping like a woodpecker.
“That’s the shot. Do not move. Do not breathe.”
My heart has decided to skip right out of my chest.
“Chin up, Vera. Honey, you’re hiding on me.”
I’m not hiding. I’m standing at my full height for the first time in a decade and it feels like being naked in a line at the grocery store.
Anna laughs widely. “Yes. Oh, you’re going to hate me but I’m going to say it. You two look like a bad idea.”
“Thank you?” I mutter not at all sure it’s a good thing for her to say.
“That’s a compliment and it’s the whole business model.” She’s flat on the gravel on her back. Like the gravel means nothing. “Big guy, look right at her.”
“I am looking at her,” he grumbles.
His rough voice makes a hot bolt of energy rocket from my collarbone straight down to my knees. It pisses me off.
Because when you’re a woman built like a brick house, you learn the difference between a man looking at you and a man looking around you.
You get very good at it. You get so good at it that you stop giving people the benefit of any doubt at all.
But this man is looking at me like I’m the last helicopter out.
Which is impossible. So I’m misreading it. And that’s the part that makes me mad. I’ve got my defenses. Need them, and he’s scrambling my senses.
With a mental shake I look up at him. He’s still looking down at me with that strong, blank wall of a face.
When I lick my parched lips, his fa?ade cracks for about a quarter of a second around his eyes. It’s there and it’s gone.
Dammit. If I was under oath I could not tell you what I saw.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say in a hushed tone, just for him. “Genuinely. You can walk away. I’ll cover for you. I’ll tell her you got a call.”
A muscle jumps in his jawline.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says in a clipped, dark tone as his hand tightens on my hip.
Anna, from somewhere down on the gravel behind the camera, in the happiest voice I have ever heard in my life, says, “Vera! Sweetheart! Open the box!”