Page 42 of Tempted To Be Mine

I looked back at my screen first. I needed to pretend he didn’t exist. Just for fifteen minutes. Long enough to clear my head and get my brain back on track.

14

JEREMY

The cold didn’t bother me anymore. Or maybe I’d just gone numb. Either way, I stood on the frozen lake in a slim-fit tuxedo that cost more than most people’s cars and tried to look like this was exactly where I belonged.

“Turn your head slightly to the left,” the photographer called out. “Good. Now give me intensity. You’re a man who owns everything he sees.”

I gave him intensity. I gave him the smolder, the power stance, the whole package. It was automatic at this point, muscle memory built up over years of doing exactly this. I could do this in my sleep. In fact, I had been told by a few people I did pose in my sleep. If I’d been drinking a lot, I was known to walk the runway while dead asleep.

But today, my mind was somewhere else entirely.

I kept glancing toward the shore where Lucy sat huddled near the production monitors. Every time I looked, she was staring at her laptop screen like it contained the secrets of the universe. She hadn’t looked up in at least twenty minutes. The first part of the shoot she’d been staring at me but not in her usual way.

Usually, she watched the shoots. Not in a creepy way, just present. Aware. Ready to jump in if something went sideways. But now she seemed determined to pretend I didn’t exist.

And that stung more than I wanted to admit.

“Beautiful,” the photographer said. “Let’s reset for the next setup.”

I stepped off my mark and an assistant materialized with a heated blanket. I wrapped it around my shoulders, grateful for the warmth, but my eyes kept drifting back to Lucy. She still wasn’t looking.

What the hell had happened this morning? We’d fallen asleep on the couch but that had been all. Fully clothed, completely innocent. I’d brought her food because she was cold and tired and refused to eat dinner. I’d stayed because she’d fallen asleep on my shoulder and I didn’t want to disturb her.

That was the whole story. Nothing scandalous. Nothing inappropriate.

But the way she’d reacted when she woke up, like she’d found herself in bed with a stranger instead of her friend of several years? That had thrown me. And then all that talk about lines and professional boundaries and how we couldn’t do it again.

I understood the logic, of course. She worked for me. There were power dynamics to consider. Complications that could arise if things got messy between us.

But the thing that really bugged me was that every other woman who’d ever woken up next to me had been thrilled about it. Delighted. Sometimes they wanted breakfast. Sometimes they wanted round two. But never, not once, had any of them looked at me like I’d done something wrong just by being there.

Of course, I’d done more than sleep with those women. That was the whole point of them being in my bed in the first place. Maybe that was the problem. Lucy had only gotten a small piece of the experience. The cuddling without the sexy time.

But still. Was it really so terrible? Waking up next to me?

I replayed the morning in my head for the hundredth time. I’d slept better on that couch than I had in weeks. There was something about having her there that had settled something in me.

That was the confusing part. I’d woken up next to plenty of women. Beautiful women. Interesting women. Women who definitely knew what they were doing. And sure, those mornings had been pleasant enough. Fun, even.

But none of them had made me feel like this. That sense of rightness. I don’t remember ever feeling like I was exactly where I was supposed to be. Not since I was a kid living at home. And then I started modeling and had been on the move ever since. It was hard to feel at home in a hotel. And even though I had my own house, I still felt restless.

With Lucy, it was different. And I had no idea what to do with that.

“Jeremy, we’re ready for you.”

I handed off the heated blanket and took my position on the ice again. The female models joined me, arranging themselves in artful poses around me. One of them, a gorgeous brunette named Katya, pressed close to my side for the shot.

I felt nothing. Not even a twitch.

She was objectively stunning. Tall, graceful, with stunning perky breasts and pouty lips that made a man think all kinds of naughty things. A few days ago, I might have flirted with her between takes. Tested the waters. Seen where the night might go. A little on-site hookup was kind of the norm. Now I just wanted to finish the setup so I could go check on Lucy.

What the hell was wrong with me?

The shoot wrapped as the light began to fade. I changed out of the tuxedo and into my regular clothes, then made my way toward the production area. Lucy was packing up her laptop with her earbuds in.

“Hey,” I said, stopping beside her. “Long day.”