Chapter 3
Carla
I stood, hunched over the Plexiglass desk in the reception area. It was mid-afternoon, my office was empty, and my heart raced as I tried for the umpteenth time to enter my password into the head-shot database.
The computer made the same ‘wonk’ sound every time it denied me, flashing the same irritatingly passive-aggressive message each time—‘Incorrect password detected. Please try again.’
I’d called the helpline number, but since Selena had apparently used her own information to open up the account with HeadShotStorage.com, I was currently persona non grata—and shit out of luck. I’d either have to start a new account or beg Selena for the information. So far, my ex-assistant wasn’t returning any of my dozen text messages—each more blunt than the last—or my half-dozen panicked voicemails.
Normally, it wouldn’t have mattered. I represented less than two dozen models—most of whom freelanced between my gigs—and averaged a few magazine shoots or local shows per week. But my biggest client, Sidelines Sports Apparel, was expecting a digital file containing all the models I had in mind before auditioning them on Friday. That left me only two days to figure out how to access my own damn files.
“Password problems?”
I flinched, gasping reflexively as I glanced up from the thirty-two-inch monitor on Selena’s old desk. “Jesus!” I blurted, too startled to keep my composure. “When…did you come in?”
The hunk on the other side of the desk flashed a perfect smile before sliding off his mirrored sunglasses with a practiced ease. “A few minutes ago. You seemed so frustrated—I didn’t want to disturb you.”
I arched my back, stretching my neck after another long, tense day in what was starting to feel like an endless string of them. “That’s one word for it.”
The sexy devil grinned, looking flawless in a fitted, dark burgundy dress shirt and clingy slacks that left little to the imagination. “Which one?” he teased. “Frustrated? Or disturbed?”
I laughed—a rare sound in the past seventy-two hours—the amount of time that had passed since Selena had stabbed me in the back over a Cobb salad at Empanada’s! “Both, at the moment.”
He nodded sympathetically, his eyes so bright they almost matched the color of the sky. He looked familiar, but then in this business, all the pretty young boys tended to blur into one homogenous, picture-perfect face after a while.
Sinking down into the desk chair after another long day on my feet, I fixed a smile. “Can I help you with something?”
He peered behind me to the larger office suite where I normally resided. That is, when my back-stabbing ex-assistant hadn’t sabotaged all my files. “Is your…boss here?”
I smiled. “I’m Carla, the owner of Miami Models. Can…I help you?”
The blush that crept across his cheeks might have been more prominent if his young, flawless skin wasn’t so gloriously bronzed from the sun. “Oh, well…” he stammered, and only when he moved to open it did I notice the leather portfolio he’d placed on his side of the desk.
“I was wondering if you had any openings.” He handed over a head shot, crisply colored, featuring his handsome young face headlining a Swiss watch ad.
Impressed, I turned it over to read his name. Kellan Montclair. So that’s why I recognized him. Sliding the head shot back onto the desk, I laced my fingers in front of my chest—a nervous gesture. He noticed. His handsome face crumpling slightly as he stood, anxiously, on the other side of the desk.
“Will you sit down?” I chuckled. “You’re making me nervous.”
“Not if you’re just going to give me bad news.”
“Suit yourself, Kellan.”
He sat anyway, sinking down into the white leather chair across from me and looking as tired and beaten down as I was. “So what am I?” I asked him, too tired to be my usual professional self. “Your last resort?”
His bashful smile, quickly gone though it was, confirmed my suspicions. “No,” he insisted anyway. “There’s still porn!”
We laughed, a feeling I’d almost forgotten in the last few days. “Look, Kellan, I wish I could help you out, but I’m a small firm, very, very selective, mostly because my clients come to me for clean, hot, wholesome models.”
His face wrinkled in denial. “Is there such a thing?”
“You’d be surprised. I do a lot of Christian catalog work, family magazines, sports apparel, private university catalogs.”
“Doesn’t sound very glamorous.”
I chuckled. “You said a mouthful, kid. But it’s a living and, more than that, it’s a start. So you can see how someone with your… criminal past… wouldn’t exactly appeal to my client base.”
He sighed, gripping the sides of the leather chair with white knuckles. “I was fourteen,” he insisted, the cockiness that had been on display when he’d teased me about my password alert, all but vanished. “It was a stupid, stupid mistake and I spent three weeks in juvenile detention. Three weeks. In juvie! This town is making it out like I go out at night in a hockey mask murdering innocent fucking virgins!”
I snorted despite myself. Holding up a hand, I shook my head. “No, I’m not laughing, I’m just…look, we’ve all made mistakes. A few years from now, if my clients are less conservative, I’d be all over you.”
He smirked, at last, dipping back into his endless pool of confidence. “You’d be all over me as a person?” he teased. “Or my agent?”
I went to answer when, as if on cue, the password alert bleeped again... and again. It sounded like an alarm, then I realized I’d moved the wireless mouse over the ‘Enter password’ button by mistake.
He stood and approached me. Tall and regal, he looked flawless, almost breathless, in his crisp South Beach summer attire. A spicy scent, expensive cologne and perhaps a hint of strong coffee followed him as he came closer.
“What…what are you doing?” I asked, alarmed that his trajectory seemed to coincide with mine. Not alarmed that he was approaching me—alarmed at how excited I was about that fact!