Stereo (4 page)

Adam had caught her.

He kept his arms wrapped around her waist, knees bent, and slowly stood tall, bringing Shaun awkwardly back up with him.  It took everything he had to ignore the sensation of her full ass pressed into the zipper of his jeans. It felt so incredible that he found himself gritting his teeth for control.

She stumbled to a stand and turned to face him, a loose curl falling haphazardly into her wide eyes.  Holding his arms in a death grip, she managed to steady herself, gazing curiously down at his biceps as she did.  She didn’t know how someone as busy as him could find the time to work out, but he clearly did.  As if reading her mind, his arms flexed under her small fingers, making the various beautiful tattoos he had almost come alive. Shaun’s heart stopped at his strength and she found herself yearning to be wrapped up in him, again.

“I’m such a spaz,” she said, unaware that her hands were absent-mindedly tracing the designs on his tattooed arms.

Adam’s hands lingered on the delicate, womanly dip at her waist, not missing the soft smell of whatever perfume she was wearing.  With effort, he took his hands off of her, and put them back in his pockets. “I was convinced that all models came out of the womb in Louies.  I guess you’d be the exception.”

Shaun was confused. “Louies?”

“Yeah…” Adam nodded and, upon seeing the perplexed look in her eyes, gave her a side eye. “Louis Vuitton?”

“Oh right!”  Shaun said with a wave of her hand. “Louis Vuitton...  Because that’s what the inside of my heels say.  Louis Vuitton.  Yeah.  That is… correct.” She jammed her eyes shut.  This was taking a turn.

Adam’s face grew curious. A Cheshire grin spread across his lips slowly.

Shaun attempted to play it cool by tilting her head back and poking out her lips. “Yeah. I wear these all the time. Yep, I always spend obscene amounts of money on… horribly painful, stupidly high heels.  In fact they give them to me for free… you know, because I’m a model.  So, yeah.” She looked away, now well aware that she was floundering right where she stood in those wobbling heels.  “Louies. I knew what that meant.  I totally knew that because… I’m a model,” she announced, again, before biting her tongue and looking off.

“Wow.” Adam’s eyes narrowed as he nodded. “You’re kind of a… bizarre girl,” he stated seriously, before a bright smile crossed his face.

“Yeah… I’ve heard that.” Shaun looked off into the distance.  There was no way in hell she was going to pull this off.  They hadn’t even made it into the restaurant and he already found her “bizarre.”  She was suddenly getting horrible flashbacks from her high school years and how nervous she got around any guy she found even remotely attractive.  If she’d been able to deny how good looking Adam was up until that point she no longer could.  She forced herself to look at anything but him.

Adam found himself dreading this dinner a lot less than he had been when the night began.  At least this girl was entertaining… if not a little crazy.  He liked his people a little crazy though, and found himself taking her hand in his and licking his lips when she looked up at him with wide eyes.  She was like a wild animal, curious but suspicious.

He tugged her hand, steadying himself when the sudden movement panicked her so much that she had to plant both high heeled feet into the sidewalk.  He waited for her to look up from where she was staring down at her shoes.

“I got you.”  His green eyes shone under the streetlight as he showed her a set of perfect teeth. “I won’t let you fall.”

--

“So I’ve got a question,” Adam said once he’d swallowed down the last of his second beer and taken a monstrous bite of sashimi.

Shaun raised her eyebrows, unable to speak around the huge bite of sashimi she’d just taken herself.

Adam wiped his mouth.  “I need to know how the
hell
you’ve managed to make it down any
fashion runway alive?”

Shaun choked on her food.

Adam motioned to the door of the restaurant. “I mean, you could barely make it inside this restaurant in those heels, and you almost took this entire tablecloth with you when you tripped over that waiter.”

“He tripped over
me
.”

“Okay. He tripped over you. Right,” Adam taunted, tilting his head dubiously.

Shaun stared down at her plate, refusing eye contact.

This only made Adam’s smile grow.  “I’m just saying… I’ve seen the heels that they make you guys wear.  My ex is a Victoria’s Secret model and she can walk in ten inch heels with her eyes closed. But you…”

Shaun gave him an eye. 
‘My ex is a Victoria’s Secret Model.’
  She almost chucked her chopsticks at him, and the salmon roll clutched in between them, too.  She hated that she was so obviously
not
a Victoria’s Secret Model to him, that he could already see right through her.  Angrily, she checked her watch. “Wow Adam, you made it a whole twenty minutes without mentioning that you’ve dated a Victoria’s Secret model. I’m guessing that’s a new record for you.”

“I’ve just never met a model who let the shoes wear her. I practically had to carry you in here.”

“You didn’t carry me.”

“You had a death grip on my arm.” He held out the arm that she’d clenched like the Jaws of Life during their walk to the table. “Pretty sure I’m gonna have a massive bruise in the morning.”

Shaun made herself think about her job… her future.  “If you
must know
Mr. My-Ex-Is-a-Victoria’s-Secret-Model, I don’t do a lot of runway work.  I mostly do… print. Commercial work,” she said with a nod, satisfied with her answer.  She was suddenly thankful for all of the America’s Next Top Model re-runs she’d wasted her life watching over the years.

“Ah…”  Adam nodded. “Okay. So who’s your favorite photographer?”

Shaun opened her mouth to give him an answer, only to panic when she realized she didn’t have one.  Clearly she hadn’t been paying quite as much attention to those re-runs as she thought. She was suddenly irrationally angry at him.  Did he know that she was lying?  Was he going to throw every industry question he could at her until he finally hit her with one she couldn’t answer, leaving her exposed as the callous liar she was?  Why couldn’t he just eat his sushi and shut the hell up?

“I don’t have a favorite,” she said, glowering at him.

He cocked his head. “How can you not have a favorite?”

“I’m so sorry. I thought this was a dinner, not an interrogation.” She took in the surprised look on his face and sighed deeply, reaching into Celia’s purse, pulling out the small red notepad she’d been scribbling in all day.  “Look, I’ve been making a few notes.  You know…
guidelines,
about this little arrangement of ours.”

Adam’s mouth hung open, an uneaten piece of ginger sitting on the tip of his tongue.  This woman had just said his two least favorite words, ‘notes’ and ‘guidelines’.

Shaun flipped through the red spirals. “I think this will all run a lot smoother if you and I are both on the same page so I’ve come up with three core rules that I think we should always follow. One…” Shaun held up a finger. “No Real Intimacy.  That means we can hug and hold hands, but there will be no kissing of any kind, no grabbing of inappropriate body parts, and no sex. Two: No Families.  This is not a real relationship.  You don’t meet my family and I don’t meet yours.  Friends are okay but at a
minimum.
And finally, Three…”

As Adam listened to her he was vaguely reminded of Janelle.  He reached across the table and snatched the notepad from her hand.

Shaun’s eyes widened. “Hey,” she cried, making a swipe for the pad.

Adam calmly placed it in his back pocket and, without a word, went back to eating his sushi.

Shaun huffed. “You’re out of your mind if you think we’re going to get through the next month without having a serious discussion about how we’re going to handle ourselves.”

“And you’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to let you tie a leash around my neck and tell me what to do.  Like you said, this isn’t a real relationship.  You’re not my girlfriend and, even if you were, that still wouldn’t give you the right to tell me how to live my life.”

“I’m not trying to tell you how to live your life. I’m just trying to explain to you the very brief and very reasonable list of rules I think we should follow so that this remains professional. Now if you would kindly give me my booklet back so I can finish?”

Adam dropped his chopsticks and leaned his elbows on the table. “You know, if I’d had any idea that it was possible for a model to be this tense I would have given you an IQ test before I agreed that you were the right girl for this job.”

“Are you calling me stupid?”

“Exactly the opposite.”

“So you have a problem with smart women?”

“No. I have a problem with crazy women.”

“So now I’m
crazy?
Just because I’m trying to bring a little order into this mess?”

“I saw that look on your face when I brought up my ex.  Did Victoria’s Secret spit on your shoes and throw you out the door when you auditioned for them or something? Because you’ve been acting completely antagonistic to me since the moment I brought it up.  Clearly you have some sort of problem with them or me.”

“Well, now that you mention it, the second I saw those skinny jeans you have on I
definitely
had a problem, so maybe my aversion to Victoria’s Secret is just residual annoyance from thinking about how ridiculous you look.”

“Never met a model who could
pronounce
the word ‘residual’, let alone put it in a sentence.”

Shaun cursed softly. 
Note to self
, she thought,
sound more stupid
.

“No wonder you can’t walk in those shoes,”  Adam said. “Try thinking a little less, walking a little more and maybe you’ll book a runway gig or two.  You’ve only got so much time you know, a model has a very, very short shelf-life.  No room for ten dollar words like ‘residual’.”

“With that ‘short model shelf-life’ I guess I’d better hold on to my ten dollar words with an iron fist.  They’ll eventually be all I have left.”

“Yeah I guess so,” Adam agreed. They sat frowning at each other for a ridiculous amount of time, food on the table forgotten.  Shaun was the first to smile, the tiniest little lift in the corner of her mouth, which brought something alive in Adam that he couldn’t help but smile back.  “Are we having our first fight?” he asked.

Shaun laughed softly, covering her face with her hands.

Adam leaned in closer and took in the sight.  She had a beautiful smile.  “What the hell are we even arguing about?”

“I have no idea,” she said, leaning back in her chair and wiping her mouth with a shake of her head. “But we better learn to like each other quick if we’re ever going to convince anyone that we’re…”  Her words slowed to a complete stop when she turned to look out of the restaurant window and saw swarms and swarms of cameramen on the other side snapping their picture.

The restaurant’s wall to wall windows were teeming with flashing lights.  Even the unlucky cameramen who’d shown up late and ended up stuck in the background weren’t taking no for an answer, opting instead to hold their camera’s high up in the air, snapping blindly.  Some were even sitting on the roofs of their cars, parked along the street.

“Holy shit,” Shaun gasped softly, realizing for the first time that night that not only were they being photographed to death but also stared at by nearly every person in that restaurant, including most of the staff.  She suddenly felt deeply invaded, alarmed, and she wanted to get out of there as quickly as humanly possible.

“Ignore them,” Adam said. His soft voice was far too relaxed for the thunderous panic Shaun was suddenly feeling inside.

She looked to him, her eyes wide.  “How long have they been there?”

“I’m guessing since right around the time you tripped over the waiter.”

“How in the world do you deal with this?”

“I think the more appropriate question is how in the world do
we
deal with this?”  His eyes burned into her, attempting to catch her eye. “We come in a set now.  Remember? You and me.”

“You and me?” she asked, her eyes still riveted to the hectic scene outside the window.

“Hey.”  Adam reached across the table and covered her hand with his.  He waited for her to look at him, then whispered, “you and me, Shaun.”

Shaun pulled her hand back.  “What did you do?”

He blinked. “What did I do?”

She nodded. “Yeah, what did you do? What in the world did you do that you have to drag me all around town like some kind of pawn in your weird rock star game?”

Adam leaned even closer to her. “You mean you don’t know?”

“I know this may come as a shock to a man who performs for arenas that are wall to wall with blind worshipers, but not everybody has their nose planted that far up your ass.  I have my own life to live, so no, I don’t know what you did.  That’s why I’m asking you.”