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Nicole eyed him. Even as a kid, Jordan could always find an angle to work. The high school science teacher had thought he’d make an innovative researcher because of it. The soccer coach had proclaimed him the next star because he was so clever and agile. Everyone had liked Jordan, saying he’d be great, whatever he decided to do.
They hadn’t said the same thing about her. The assumption had been that she would use her appearance to make money until she married rich or something. Perhaps she’d been too sensitive about it, but that was the impression everyone had given.
Lord. What was that line from the Jane Austen Book Club movie...about high school never being over? Nicole didn’t believe it had to be that way, but it was a challenge not to remember adolescent growing pains when one of the ghosts of high school past was writing about her current life.
“How about it?” Jordan coaxed.
“For serious labor, okay,” she agreed, deciding it was time to exorcise this particular ghost, once and for all.
“I’m here until it’s done,” he promised.
“Or until I throw you out,” she corrected him.
“Okay.”
Nicole led the way to her breakfast bar and Jordan glanced around. “You weren’t kidding about liking modern kitchens. This one is top-notch. Are you interested in cooking?”
“I’ve never had much time for it, but I’ll do more once my schedule isn’t as crazy. You know kitchens?” she asked.
He put the take-out bag on the counter next to the pizza. “I enjoy cooking, especially the dishes I’ve encountered on my travels.”
“That’s right, I saw your column about the subtleties of Thai and Indian curry.”
“You read my work?”
“Occasionally. I don’t look for it, but I don’t avoid it, either,” she said truthfully. From what she’d read, she had concluded Jordan’s columns were often cynical, yet could also be sharp observations on society and the world, and occasionally funny. At least his humor was no longer cruel.
“Hey.” Jordan waved a hand in front of her. “Where did you go?”
“To the land of mean jokes.”
“I didn’t tell one.”
“You used to, especially your senior year.” She knew because she’d been one of his targets.
“I was a teenaged boy. That isn’t an excuse, but...” Jordan stopped and a shadow seemed to crowd his eyes. “I was angry because of my parents’ divorce and taking it out on every person available. I’m not proud of the memory. Now I dislike gags that laugh at people instead of with them.”
He seemed sincere and Nicole decided to take him at his word. Lots of kids were rotten during high school, and, hopefully, most of them got over it.
She pulled out paper plates and found plastic silverware. “My apologies for the inelegant dinnerware. My kitchen stuff is still in boxes. I only moved in a few weeks ago.”
The food he’d brought was from the local Chinese restaurant and Nicole ate quickly, enjoying the Szechuan dishes alongside the vegetarian pizza she’d ordered.
“I’ll leave you to finish eating,” she said. “I want to get going with the painting.”
Jordan joined her in the living room a few minutes later and crouched briefly in front of Toby, ruffling his ears. “Hey, girl. How are you doing?”
“He’s fine,” Nicole corrected. “His name is Toby.”
“Oh. I didn’t mean to offend you, Toby.”
With both of them working, the primer went on quickly, and it dried while they did the dining room. But once the top coat was on all the walls, Nicole stared in disgust. It was streaky and she wondered how the professionals got it to look good.
“I thought it would be better than this,” she muttered, “but at least it isn’t green any longer.”
“It should be okay once it’s dried overnight. What made you decide to do your own painting?” Jordan asked.
“Is there something wrong with wanting to handle it myself?”
“No, but it seems unusual. For you, that is.”
“Why me?”
He snorted. “Come on, Nicole, don’t pretend you don’t understand what I mean.”
“I’m not a model any longer. Can’t I do normal things the same as any other person?”
His lips twisted. “Oh, that’s right, poor Nicole couldn’t live a real life because of her supermodel status. I’ve seen the pictures and I’m sure the whole world feels bad for you, going to all those parties and enjoying the international first-class travel.”
* * *
THE MINUTE THE words left his mouth, Jordan knew he’d crossed the line.
Nicole straightened and sent him an icy stare. “What?”
“I shouldn’t have said that,” he told her hastily. “It was inappropriate.”
She planted her hands on her hips and he couldn’t help noticing how the movement drew attention to her slim waist.
“But you opened your big mouth, anyway,” she retorted. “So, you think it’s ridiculous for me to want a regular life. Maybe you think I don’t even have a right to normalcy. But, for your information, those parties were invented by the paparazzi, along with various photos that made it look as if I was in the middle of an orgy. I sued and it was proven that those pictures were faked.”
There was a smudge of paint on her cheek and a few strands of her gold-spun hair were stiff with primer. She must have brushed against the wall at some point because the tight T-shirt she wore had a smear of paint over her right breast. Regardless, no one would mistake her as “normal.” She looked like a supermodel in a paint company’s commercial.
Jordan tried to keep his body from reacting. “I’d forgotten about the lawsuit. But you talk about wanting normalcy as if you’ve been deprived,” he said carefully. “Yet you have fame, fortune and beauty.”
“Are you suggesting I feel sorry for myself?” she returned sharply. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Frankly, it sounds as if you’ve already decided what you’re going to write and how you’re going to characterize me. If that’s the case, just go home and write your articles. Save me the effort of dealing with you, because I’m too busy for pointless pursuits.”
Jordan winced. It was true that he had preconceptions about Nicole. The irony was inescapable. When Syd had asked him to do the articles, she had suggested it would be good for him because he’d be forced out of his “reflective reverie.” He’d found her words annoying.
“I was out of order,” he said quickly. “I genuinely want to listen to what you have to say. I can’t promise not to have other biases, but I’ll do my best not to let them influence what I write or my approach to the interviews.”
For a long moment Nicole regarded him suspiciously, then she nodded. “Very well. I have my own prejudices about reporters.”
“I’m not a reporter.”
“Right,” she drawled with patent disbelief.
“Okay, for the moment I’m sort of a reporter. I’ve been one in the past and might be again, on a limited basis.”
“Acknowledging your problem is the first step on the road to recovery.”
Jordan glared. “Very funny.”
“I thought so, but I’m just the total idiot who didn’t even know to use a primer when painting over bright colors, right?”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to, your tone said it all. Not to mention the expression on your face.”
He wanted to deny it, but he had been surprised she didn’t know something that seemed basic to him. Yet even Syd—who was a very sharp lady—hadn’t known about primer, nor her husband, who was a brilliant neurosurgeon. All at once Jordan was reminded of an editor he’d known when starting in the business. Fred had been fond of saying “intelligence and information are different beasts.”
“In case it’s too basic for you to understand, everybody has to start somewhere,” Nicole continued. “The clerk was frantically busy at the hardware store when I bought the paint and somehow he didn’t tell me about primer.”
“Did you get better advice when you went in this time?” Jordan asked, wondering if the clerk had been distracted by Nicole’s physical attributes. His own brain had short-circuited earlier that afternoon for the same reason, though he didn’t think he’d been obvious about it.
“I hope so. This time a woman helped me. She was very professional. Tell me, is it possible for a woman to be as smart as a man about painting?” Nicole’s voice dripped sarcasm.
Oh, Lord. Jordan felt a chasm opening at his feet. Not only had he opened himself to claims of journalistic bias, now she was challenging him about male chauvinism.
“Absolutely,” he said. But a measure of self-honesty made him wonder if he still possessed caveman attitudes on some level. His sisters teased him about it now and then, but he’d figured it was just sisters being sisters. After all, if he was a total caveman he would have run Chelsea’s latest boyfriend off with a bat and told him to stay away from her.
“I’d forgotten you were a runner,” he said, pushing the thought aside. He wasn’t crazy about doing emotional inventories at the best of times.
Nicole flashed a smile. “What’s wrong, didn’t the research department include my being a runner in their file on me?”
“What makes you think I have a file?”
“Jordan, no matter what some people assume about models, we have brains. A file comes with the territory. The PostModern research department must have worked overtime to get you all the available details.”
“Does it bother you to think I have a file?”
“Being a reporter makes you bothersome, the rest just goes with the territory. I’ll admit I wouldn’t mind checking it for accuracy. Reporters have gotten things wrong so often it’s laughable.”
“I don’t understand how you can complain about reporters when you’ve benefited from them making you even more famous. PostModern is also publishing these articles because of your fame, and your agency will profit by it.”
“Fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” she returned. “I haven’t sought out publicity and have always tried to have a private life, which the press seems to resent. Sure, I’ve modeled clothing, represented various products and said lines in television commercials—that’s my job—but I’ve never been on reality TV and haven’t cared if my name was known to anyone except photographers, agents and people wanting to hire me.”
“Don’t be a hypocrite. They wanted you in those ads because everyone knows who you are.”
“Not everyone. My face is known in some circles, but my name wouldn’t be familiar if it wasn’t for the paparazzi following me around and trying to dig up saucy little fictions to titillate their readers. Which, by the way, the legitimate press has often repeated without an ounce of proof. I hope PostModern won’t follow suit.”
Jordan closed his eyes, partly to collect his thoughts, and partly to shut out the impact of Nicole’s well-formed figure. For years—in the rare times he thought about her—he’d seen her as a face in a photograph. A face that reminded him of old annoyances. In person, she exuded a vibrant energy that sent his senses reeling.
“I’m doing a genuine interview,” he said, looking at her again. “PostModern doesn’t want sensationalistic stories. The editor demands in-depth material about real people. Right now she’s interested in individuals who make radical changes in their lives, what their challenges are and how they find fulfillment.”
Nicole’s chin rose. “If that’s really the story you’re planning, then I’m in, but don’t expect me to put up with any garbage. I’ll give as good as I get.”
Somehow, Jordan didn’t doubt that for a second. She stood there, devoid of makeup or glamorous trappings, angry and full of life...and he was struck by her beauty in a way he’d never felt before today.
It annoyed him all over again.
Of course she was beautiful; she’d been the classic golden-haired tot and had grown into a sexy, gorgeous woman whose image was used to sell products around the world. He’d seen her on magazine covers and in television ads for most of his life. But he had never been personally attracted to her when looking at photos or watching ads, and hadn’t expected to be on this assignment.
But his hormones had jumped to attention, the lousy traitors. He left as quickly as possible to go home and take another shower.
A cold one this time.
* * *
NICOLE RESISTED SLAMMING the door as Jordan left. She’d been foolish to let him into her house to either eat or paint. It would have been best to keep things formal, meeting at the office and doing standard interviews.
But at least he’d revealed his biases ahead of the game. And as she’d admitted, she had her own biases when it came to reporters, particularly the ones she classed as paparazzi. She shuddered, remembering the woman who’d gotten a job as a hotel maid and then gone through her letters, even sneaking a photo of her coming out of the bathroom wearing only a towel. That member of the “press” had worked for one of the sleaziest rags going.
But Jordan wasn’t sleazy. However sardonic he sounded in his columns, they were also intelligent. Initially she’d expected to make fun of his writing and ideas; instead, he had mostly impressed her, tending to look at subjects from a different point of view and make his readers think about the ways things worked in the world. Maybe his articles weren’t always as deep as they could be—with a breezy, entertaining tone—but how much depth was possible in such a short format?
He was also quite clear about where he was coming from. If he wrote about kids, he reiterated that he wasn’t a parent himself and never expected to be. The same with marriage, saying he was happily single and intended remaining that way. Maybe he’d do something similar with the articles he planned to write for PostModern, being frank about their dislike for each other as kids and how that could affect what he was writing.
It might even be better this way. Another reporter would probably have preconceptions as well, but it would have been harder to get at them. With Jordan everything was out in the open from the get-go.
Still, Nicole wished he wasn’t involved. It was an added stress she didn’t need, especially while she was hunting for another office manager. Kevin McClaskey’s wife had previously handled the job and he hadn’t been able to face replacing Allison after her sudden death, just bringing in temps. It wasn’t the best way to run the agency, so one of Nicole’s first tasks after taking over had been to hire someone permanent.
It hadn’t gone well.
Moonlight Ventures had now run through three different office managers and was back to using temps. It turned out that each of her hires had wanted to use the job as a backdoor to becoming a modeling client. One had even shown up at a photo shoot for a commercial, claiming the agency had sent her.
Nicole gritted her teeth. It had taken hours to resolve the mess. But she hadn’t expected everything to be easy and would just have to fix each problem as it came, one way or another. With that thought, she went upstairs to shower and climb into bed. Fortunately the second floor of the house hadn’t required as much work as the first. Mostly she’d just needed to buy a new bedroom set. No paint was needed, although most of the rooms remained unfurnished.
She closed her eyes, ready to drift off, but Jordan’s annoyingly handsome face filled her mind. Nicole punched her pillow. She only had to put up with him for a while. Just because they lived in the same city again, that didn’t mean they’d cross paths constantly.
Well, apparently he used the same fitness trail, but she’d only seen him there once... Sure, he’d been in Fiji for part of the time, but she’d been using the trail for months before moving to the house and hadn’t seen him.
Hitting her pillow again, she tried to forget his lean, powerful body in running clothes. Disappointment in romance hadn’t turned off her response to the opposite sex, but that didn’t mean she had to pay attention to it.
* * *
THE FOLLOWING DAY Nicole was busy at her desk when she heard a tentative knock. A young woman stood in the doorway.
“Can I help you?” Nicole asked, thinking she’d seen her visitor before.
“I’m Chelsea Masters, one of Jordan’s sisters.”
The years peeled away and Nicole remembered the girl who’d always seemed unhappy and wistful. She didn’t look much happier now. She was also wearing a heavy foundation that didn’t entirely conceal dark bruises on her cheek and jaw.
“Chelsea, of course. How nice to see you again.”
Nicole wondered how many of the Masters family would be coming to Seattle. Chelsea had been nice enough, but her siblings and their parents? Nicole shuddered. No wonder Chelsea had seemed unhappy while growing up.
Chelsea smiled uncertainly. “I thought Jordan might be here since he’s doing those articles about you and the agency.”
