Total Package, page 5
That little quiver shot through Sidney again and she almost choked on the shrimp linguine he had expertly prepared. She lifted the wineglass and drank quickly.
“Okay?” Danya asked with concern.
He was such a nice guy, and she was thinking about that mouth and what it could do and what it would taste like—
Sidney reached for the bottle of wine and in passing, scorched her hand on the candle’s flame—“Ouch!”
She started to rub it on her thigh, but Danya’s hand took hers, his head bending.
His lips touched her hand, suckled the small wound slightly, and Sidney held her breath, fighting the sensations wrapping around her, tugging at her. “You can stop that. It doesn’t hurt anymore,” she whispered.
“Does it not?”
His voice was deep and intimate, with that bit of accent tugging at her—as if it were meant just for her. It hurt somewhere deep inside her, an unfamiliar sensitive part of her heart that she hadn’t expected.
On the other hand—she wanted to jump him, take him, work up a real heated froth and exorcise that taut ache within her.
But then, she would be taking advantage of a sweet guy. Danya hadn’t a clue, and he was still in love with his wife. Sidney watched him pour another glass of wine and noted that after he finished a sip, his lips were glossy and smooth.
She breathed deeply and quickly drank her wine. Danya leaned back in his chair. “Rough day?”
“I’m not a portrait photographer. It’s tougher than I thought. I’m not used to arranging bodies and waiting for makeup and hair to be corrected. Earl, the makeup guy, got insulted when I asked him to help me with the light meter. The reason they wanted me for this gig was that I’m pretty good at natural settings and using natural light. Freelancing world catastrophes does a lot for picking up the pace and spotting good shots. Once, Ben and I were on the cusp of this volcano and the lava river swerved right toward us—”
“I see. How about having our wine out on the porch? It’s relaxing to listen to the waves after a hard day.”
On the porch step, Sidney sat beside Danya. “I never should have taken this job. I’ll ship the takes to New York and they’ll be processed there. I just didn’t want to meet Ben and he doesn’t do these gigs. It’s more work than I expected—portraiture, I mean. Sometimes people freeze up and won’t let the camera in. Even the models sometimes do that, and they’re pros. I’ll be glad when it’s finished and I can see the finished product. Everything looks different once they do the graphic work and crop it.”
Danya was holding her hand again, resting it on his thigh. He was silent, staring out into the ocean—probably missing his wife again.
He seemed so lonely and Sidney was glad that she was with him. “You’ve got to get out of this funk, guy,” she said softly. “You’ll meet someone and the first thing you know, you’ll be adding cousins to the list already here.”
“I would like children very much. Would you?”
“No. Rather, I never thought about it. Ben—”
“I would rather not hear about Ben, if that is okay with you.”
“Oh, sure. I’ve been talking too much. It’s boring, I know.” Sidney yawned; she had began to feel the effects of the hard day, the good dinner and the wine.
“Tired?”
“Mmm. But I don’t want to move. This is nice—the sound of the ocean, the tinkling of the wind chimes.”
“Then rest here, against me.” His arm came around her, easing her closer.
Just buddies in the night, Sidney thought, as she settled against him. “You’ll get over this,” she whispered.
“I don’t think so,” Danya returned unevenly as she slid into sleep with the ease of an experienced traveler, who took rest when possible.
Sidney awoke in Danya’s big bed to the sound of deep strained breathing. Danya was on the floor, concentrating on push-ups. “It’s still night, isn’t it?” she asked drowsily as she eased to sit upright. “I usually do those in the morning.”
“Morning is not far away. I am just getting a head start.”
Sidney stood, yawned, stretched and shimmied out of her cargo pants. She tossed them over a chair and reached under her T-shirt, unfastening her bra and drawing it out one of her sleeves. She tossed it onto her pants and yawned again. “I’m beat.”
Danya hadn’t said anything, but in the shadows, his stare was hard and narrowed upon her. He returned to his vigorous push-ups.
Sidney took in that long taut length, his bare back, those bulging muscles, that hard backside clad in jeans. “You ought to pace yourself, Danya.”
“I am trying very hard to do just that.”
“I don’t remember getting into your bed, but I’ll move to my sleeping bag. Thanks for letting me sleep a bit.”
“Uh-huh,” he said grimly.
Sidney walked into the bathroom and braced her hands against the closed door. Then she flattened herself against it and breathed hard, trying to understand what was happening to her. Danya, working up a sweat, had caused that quivery something inside her to tighten and hum and ache. She opted for a really cold shower, changed into her comfortable boxer shorts and T-shirt and came out into the room. Danya, probably exhausted, was lying stomach down on the floor, his head resting on his folded arms.
She thought about that nipple to nipple thing and tried to push it away—it wouldn’t go.
Sidney lay down on her sleeping bag and covered up with her sheet. “Want to talk about it?”
He was lying very close on the floor beside her, and turned to stare at her. “With you? No.”
“Why not?”
He jackknifed to his feet, stood over her and slowly took in the length of her body. The hard bulge beneath his jeans told her that he was aroused.
She could make use of that—if he didn’t deserve better—some woman who would take good care of him.
On the other hand, waste not, want not—she thought as she stared up at him. “You’re having a sexual moment, aren’t you?”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
“I’ve got no objections.” It was the best invitation she could come up with and it had been good enough for Ben in close quarters.
Danya wasn’t Ben—his smile wasn’t nice, just a wolfish flash of teeth in the shadows. “But I do. We are friends, are we not?”
“Look, I know how it is with men. I was friends with Ben and we—”
“Just ships passing in the night, needs meeting needs, right?”
There was a taut, angry edge to his tone that caught her off guard, and caused her to feel guilty for some reason. She had the uneasy sense that if Danya wanted, he could be very dangerous. She wasn’t certain that she liked “dangerous”; “comfortable” was much better. “It would be over in a minute. No strings attached. You’d sleep better.”
“I would ‘sleep better’? So you would sacrifice yourself? Your body to me and ask nothing, so that I would sleep better? Is that what you think lovemaking is between a man and a woman?” His head had tilted, his silvery blue eyes challenging her and that rigid jaw said that someone had crossed invisible male-female protocol lines.
Sidney thought of what she would be getting in return—quite a sizable commodity. “I’d be fine with that,” she managed unevenly.
“I wouldn’t be.”
“Oh, your wife. I understand.”
“I doubt it. You see, I need a little bit more than Ben apparently did.”
Danya turned and walked into the bathroom and the shower began to run. When he emerged, he walked naked to the bed, and lay down with the sheet covering him, his back to Sidney. “Go to sleep, Sid.”
Restless now, unsettled by the sight of Danya’s naked body, it was a long time before Sidney could sleep.
He’d said “lovemaking,” not “sex.” Lovemaking had big connotations that Sidney did not want.
She had loved Ben, and she had been hurt.
Plain old sex served good enough in tight situations.
She tossed onto her stomach and fought the ache there and in her breasts. Sex was good enough, she repeated to herself. She’d leave “lovemaking” and “romance” to women who got soppy when they watched old movies and who wept at getting a bouquet of flowers. All those things were for people who had time for them; she didn’t.
Sidney’s restless turning, the muttering of Ben’s name, had caused Danya to leave the cabin early. He walked down the beach and out onto the tourist pier where the row of shops was quiet and shadowy, the bright flags overhead flapping gently in the breeze. His father was sitting in a camping chair, a bucket of bait on the boards beside him. Dawn caught the thin silvery line stretched from Viktor Stepanov’s pole into the huge dark waves.
“My son,” Viktor said quietly. “I like this peaceful time. It reminds me of the old country, before my brothers and I leave. I am glad to be here with Fadey and my sons—my new granddaughter, Danika Louise. Someday, she will come fish with me, just as you and Alexi did as boys…. You want this woman, Sidney, for your own? I am glad. It is time. Sit. Talk with me.”
“I want to marry her, Father. I want a home and children with her.”
The Russian language flowed freely between Danya and his father now, the intimate quiet talk. “What is the problem then, my son?”
“She has not left the love she feels for another man. She moves quickly and will soon be gone.”
“Then you will follow,” Viktor stated with a shrug.
“Of course.”
“Of course. But I think she fears what she feels for me. That it is confused with what she feels for this other man. I need time—”
“Give her what she needs. She will find you to be a good man and she will love only you, this I know. You bring her to your uncle Fadey’s home, my home now. You let her meet us, see what we are. Pretty soon, you love, you marry, you have my grandchildren.”
Danya smiled at his father’s simple picture and looked at the gray sky foretelling morning and a clear day. The urge to make love to Sidney was strong, but he intended to move slowly, surely, into a relationship where she thought only of him—
Sidney had started working early, making use of wind and water to paste the model’s swimsuits against their curves. The salt-scented ocean breeze lifted those masses of textured and colored hair up and away from beautiful, sculptured cheekbones. Earl was at his best, bronzing faces and long, bikini-clad bodies.
Sidney shot automatically, focusing on the best advantage of each face. Marvelous Calendars wanted every shot possible, for potential use in other sales promotions. They also wanted natural shots, the behind the scenes stuff for a potential documentary.
While Earl was working on Miss November, a blue-eyed sweet farm girl type from Wisconsin, Sidney swung her focus to Miss June. Alice Ann Michaels, in a worn flannel robe and huge black rimmed glasses, was absorbed in a thick book on law; Alice Ann was worried about passing the bar exams and she crammed every available moment.
Miss April sat in a beach chair, crocheting something big and maroon that she hauled from a tote bag at every available moment.
Miss February was skimming her notebook with one perfectly manicured fingernail, and talking earnestly on her cell phone. She was probably trading stocks and building her portfolio.
They were a good bunch, even if they were models and did obscene things to enhance their beauty, Sidney decided as she snapped away at the various models, waiting their turn at the camera. The models weren’t so bad, really—if they didn’t push to remake her into something she wasn’t. Bulldog had never liked primpers.
Sidney directed Miss November’s body draped over the light gray driftwood log. “Elbows back, face up, this way…just a little. Earl, get that strand of hair away from her face, and do something with that lip gloss—it’s picking up too much sun….”
Because the day was warm and she was moving fast, leaping upon driftwood for better angles, crouching on the sand for upward shots, Sidney had skimmed down to her comfortable cutoff jean shorts and a sturdy black sports bra that allowed more freedom.
Sidney granted a long lunch break and rest for the models; they would begin calendar work again at three o’clock in the afternoon. Meanwhile, she placed a shirt over her sports bra and strolled around Amoteh, taking in the sights. She shot the colorful shops on the pier, the seagulls high in the clear blue sky, vacationers strolling hand in hand.
She spread a beach towel on the sand, leaned back and closed her eyes. She tried to picture Ben, a blond scholarly looking man, and instead Danya’s rugged image came into her mind.
She thought she caught his scent, and smiled softly, then slowly opened her eyes to see Danya looking down at her. He was standing close and the wind had caught his hair, taking it back from those vivid blue eyes. “Hi,” she whispered.
“Hi. Tired?”
“Mmm. Just relaxing. Sit down and pull up a piece of sand.”
He sat beside her, staring out into the ocean, and Sidney studied him. “We were talking earlier about linking up—you know, men and women. What more do you need, Danya? I mean other than sex.”
He watched a seagull darting among the strands of seaweed lying on the sand and took his time in answering. “I am old-fashioned. I need romance, I suppose.”
“Kissing, foreplay, after play, et cetera. That kind of stuff?”
“Uh-huh.”
“French kissing? Open lips, tongue on tongue, that sort of thing?”
He sounded strangled and cleared his throat. His gaze lowered to her chest and Sidney realized that she was too warm—probably because of the afternoon sun, magnified by the ocean waves—and her nipples had unexplainably hardened beneath the spandex confinement. “That would be acceptable,” Danya agreed slowly.
“But all that would take a lot of time.”
“That’s true.”
She had to have more answers. Ben had never wanted to talk about sex, and neither had Bulldog. In fact, Sidney’s father got all flustered, huffy and reddish when his daughters pressed him. Danya seemed to have reliable information and wasn’t averse to answering questions. “But—say one partner or the other got really aroused, and things went too fast and gee, there you were, all ready and nowhere to go?”
“I would take extreme care to see that my partner was—satisfied.”
She patted his thigh. “I’m sure you would.”
She wondered, while staring into Danya’s very blue eyes, what would happen if her hand just happened to wander upward. She squeezed lightly, testing the solid pad of muscles beneath the denim.
“Don’t,” he ordered unevenly as his hand clamped over hers. “Don’t even think about it. You’re scaring me.”
“Who me?” she asked and tried for a bland, innocent expression.
Danya inhaled abruptly, scowled at her, and stood. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
Sidney came to her feet slowly. She didn’t want him to go. She stood looking up at him, helpless with her emotions. Sidney wanted to run away from whatever was happening inside her—and she wanted Danya. Because she was uncertain, she hooked her thumbs into her cutoff shorts pockets.
She tingled and ached and couldn’t look away from Danya’s deep blue eyes. “I can’t and won’t take her place—your wife’s place,” she said unsteadily and wasn’t certain what had caused that statement.
“You’re nothing like her.” The statement was soft and low and curled inside Sidney. Then Danya nodded to the woman coming toward them, an infant sleeping in the carrying sack in front of her. The woman’s hair was black and sleek, tossed by the breeze. “This is my sister-in-law, Jessica, and that little beauty is Danika Louise.”
Danya frowned at another woman with sun streaked hair walking toward them, carrying a baby. A young girl near her chased a giggling toddler. “That would be Ellie, Mikhail’s wife with Tanya and Sasha.”
He sucked in his breath and added, “The woman with all those curls is Leigh, Jarek’s ‘Precious’, and she has my cousins, of course. They want to meet you. I had hoped to—”
“Oh, hi, Danya,” Ellie said as she came to stand near them. “I didn’t know you took work breaks in the middle of the day.”
“Yes, I see that. Ah, here’s my Sasha.” He reached for the little girl who had come running and giggling into his arms. Danya made growling noises and nuzzled her throat while she squirmed and giggled happily.
When all of the women stood near, Danya introduced Sidney. “She likes to be called ‘Sid.’”
“Oh, you’re the photographer who’s been taking pictures of the models,” Jessica said. “We were wondering if you could take family pictures for all of us. If you have time—There isn’t a photographer nearby and to get us all packed up and the children rested for a family portrait would be so much more difficult than having one taken here.”
Danya cleared his throat and seemed uneasy. “She’s not really a portrait photographer. This assignment is unusual for her. I’m sure she wouldn’t have the time, anyway.”
Ellie smiled sweetly. “But she just might want to, Danya.”
He frowned at Ellie. “Of course. It is her decision.”
Sidney stared at him; Danya didn’t seem to want her to take pictures of his family. “He’s right. I’m learning. I usually do documentary type things, magazine spreads. This gig is new to me.”
Danya lowered Sasha to the sand; he crossed his arms over his chest and looked forbidding as Ellie continued, “You must be good to be hired for calendar work. Mikhail may be asking you to do some shots for his new promotion brochure, and his mother is redoing the sales brochure for Stepanov Furniture.”
“Ladies—” Danya began in what seemed might be a protest.
“And we thought maybe you could take pictures of us in Fadey’s house, maybe do something for Fadey and Mary Lou’s anniversary in late July,” Leigh added. “Maybe something with Viktor and Alexi and Danya? Have you met Viktor, Danya’s father? I think you should come to our afternoon tea and get a real feel for the family, and then you can decide.”
