Sharon Kendrik - Sweet Madness

Declan was still looking at Sam acidly. ‘I thought I’d left you with enough work until I got back?’

She felt a warm glow of achievement. ‘I’ve done it, actually,’ she said sweetly.

He said nothing, but turned to Michael. ‘I’d steer clear of Sam, if I were you—socially, I suspect she’s a little wild for your taste, Mike.’ He gave a nasty smile. ‘Come through to the studio, will you, Sam?’

Still smarting from his last barb, Sam followed him, her eyes drawn unwillingly to the swing of the lean hips, and the line of the long, muscular legs covered by the clinging denim.

Once there, he cast his eye around at the immaculately tidy studio, and Sam met his gaze with triumphant challenge.

‘Everything to your satisfaction—Declan?’

‘Almost. I think we’ve established that your work is up to standard, so just let me give you a little word of warning about Michael.’

‘ Michael? ’ She found his steely look of disapproval inexplicable, and attempted to lighten the tension. ‘He’s a mass-murderer, right?’

There wasn’t a flicker of answering humour. ‘Let’s get one thing straight, Sam, shall we? Michael is a very pleasant, easygoing man, but he isn’t your type and, what’s more, he has a loyal fiancée who adores him waiting for him at home.’

It would be almost laughable, thought Sam, except that he wasn’t laughing. ‘Just what are you suggesting——?’

‘I’m suggesting ,’ he bit out, ‘that you don’t turn that big-brown-eyed look on him as though he’s just personally delivered the Holy Grail to you. Stick to the bread-roll-throwing types you normally hang around with. Oh——’ and here his eyes became as stormy as the Atlantic Ocean ‘—do me one small favour, hmm? We know you’re tiny, but you’ve proved you certainly aren’t fragile, so do spare me that helpless-little-girl look when I speak to you. You’re twenty-six, not eighteen.’

Pride made her meet his gaze without showing one iota of the hurt which clamped at her stomach at his needlessly cruel words. And, what was more, he was so unjustly wrong—about her, and about her supposed designs on Michael.

Determined that he shouldn’t see how he had the power to wound her, she deliberately composed her face into an expression of mild concern. ‘Shall I fetch you some Alka-Seltzer, Declan?’ she asked in a honeyed voice.

He stared at her as though she’d had a brainstorm. ‘What in hell’s name are you on about?’

She raised her hands up in supplication. ‘You seem out of sorts, that’s all,’ she replied, in a tone which was undisguised saccharin. ‘I thought maybe that you might have indigestion—after your lunch.’

Their eyes met, and for a moment she thought that he was about to explode, when to her astonishment something which could almost have been humour curved one corner of his mouth into a tantalisingly crooked smile, but it was gone so quickly that she thought it was probably her own wish-fulfilment. Declan didn’t smile; he snarled.

‘Let’s light the studio,’ he snapped. ‘The model arrives in ten minutes.’

And that battle appears to be over, thought Sam, as she set about assisting him.

They were shooting a costly diamond necklace for a leading diamond merchant’s advertisement, and the model arrived along with a security guard who was carrying the jewellery, the art director of the advertising agency which was producing the advert, and an executive from the company which cut the gems. Sam made everyone coffee.

The model was called Nicki, a breathtakingly lovely creature of just seventeen, and Sam recognised that she had that indefinable quality about her which spelt stardom. She had the classic model combination of extreme height—most of it in her legs—waist-length curls, pouty lips and superb bone-structure. She made Sam feel like one of the seven dwarfs.

Determined to put Declan and her personal animosities aside, Sam set about making herself useful, rearranging light reflectors and positioning the wind machine which would make Nicki’s glorious golden curls billow magnificently.

But Nicki was new to the business, and perhaps she was intimidated by Declan’s reputation, because she was nervous as hell, Sam quickly realised, and her facial expressions became accordingly wooden. Sam sensed the assembled group holding their breath in anticipation, because they all knew that the success of the shoot depended on the model, and if she was unable to relax and Declan couldn’t get the pictures he wanted then the whole shot would have to be rescheduled using a new model, both costly and time-consuming.

Declan looked up from his camera, a lock of dark hair falling over his forehead, and smiled. It was, thought Sam, a lethal and devastating combination. All that blatant masculinity coupled with blue eyes which could have melted ice. He smiled at Nicki.

‘Is this your first job?’

His tone was nothing but kind and interested and perhaps the girl had been expecting censure, thought Sam, for she visibly relaxed in the sunshine of Declan’s charm.

‘My second, actually.’

He smiled again. ‘You’re doing well. This advert is going to appear in Vogue. Not bad for a second job.’ He cupped his hands over an imaginary crystal ball and bent over it. ‘I see great things ahead,’ he intoned, in a trance-like voice, and Nicki giggled.

The chat continued, and Sam watched, fascinated, as he managed to wrest from her the rather astonishing fact that she was a keen gardener, and he even kept an intensely interested face when she proceeded to tell him all about the caterpillars which were attacking her camellia leaves! And he wasn’t even flirting, Sam realised; he was far too clever and experienced to do that. In fact, Nicki herself was blooming because he was doing what probably no man had done since her youthful beauty had developed—he was treating her as an intelligent person, and not as a sex-object.

Seconds later he said to her, very casually, ‘Right, are we ready to go?’

Nicki nodded, her eyes shining with hero-worship. You and me both, thought Sam regretfully. He doesn’t even have to try. No wonder he’s so arrogant.

He went back to the camera and began to focus in on the girl’s face, while the dazzling diamonds sparked ice-fire at her neck. Sam knew without looking at any contact sheets that the pictures would be a masterpiece.

At six he said, ‘It’s a wrap.’ And the jewels were packed away, the art director and the executive and Nicki all took their leave, all supremely satisfied with the day’s work.

Sam cleared the studio, and when she’d finished she found Declan in the outer office, Michael long gone, leaning over the desk, lost in thought, silhouetted against the fading light.

As she stood silently behind him on the deep-pile carpet of the office, she thought that she had never seen someone standing quite so still. Was that a life-saving skill he’d learnt out in the East, while the battles raged all around him?

Sam stood for a moment studying him, a great rush of unwilling admiration washing over her as she imagined him remembering those days of trial and tribulation. Was he regretting them now, glad of the safety of his new world? Or did he miss the adrenalin coursing through his veins, the kind of feeling which no jewellery shoot—no matter how prestigious—could ever inspire?

And then her foolish imaginings disintegrated as her eyes were drawn to the focus of his attention. Lying to one side of the desk was a large buff-coloured envelope—the hard-backed kind used to send photos. It was marked ‘confidential’, and Michael had obviously left it for Declan to open.

But it was the content of the envelope which filled her mouth with a bitter taste. It was a large portrait-shot of Gita.