Total Package, page 6
Danya sighed as if outflanked and defeated. “I have to get back to work.”
He looked at each woman and they smiled warmly back at him. Each one drew his head down for a kiss on the cheek. Danya shook his head and started back toward the house he was remodeling. Sidney noticed that two women lying on the beach were locked onto that tall, lean powerful male body striding away; she didn’t like their lustful expressions one bit. She instantly decided not to even ask him if he wanted to model for her.
Sidney studied the Stepanov women, the different coloring, various heights and studied the babies held close to them. Together, they were beautiful and natural, and the contrast with the male counterparts would be exquisite.
Then, because Danya obviously didn’t want her to work with them, she was intrigued, but she had to set the ground rules. She picked up her camera and began shooting the women and children’s pictures, the wind tugging at their hair and clothes, a toddler sitting to sift sand through her fingers.
When she finished, she said, “I’ll see that you get prints of these. I’m living with Danya, but don’t get any ideas about romance in the mix. He’s just offered me a place to rest. It gets hectic at the resort with all the models.”
All three women agreed in a rush:
“Oh, Danya has made that perfectly clear.”
“Crystal clear.”
“He’s already told us that you’re just friends.”
“I’ll think about the family portraits and the brochures, but first I’ve got to finish this contract,” Sidney said. “There’s a big shindig at the resort tomorrow night, and I have to turn up—business, you know. But I’ve got to get something to wear. Is there a dress shop around here? I’ll need something.”
“Not really. It’s mostly tourist stuff. I could maybe put something together for you—or alter it,” Ellie said thoughtfully as she considered Sidney. “Come by the house when you get a break.”
“She’s a whiz with a sewing machine,” Leigh said.
“Thanks. I may need to ask your help. I’m not much into clothes. I just need something that serves.” In an elegant group, the models were moving down the steps of the Amoteh. “I have to get to work. Catch you later. Maybe. I’ll get back to you about the portrait work.”
As the women moved away, Sidney studied them. Clearly they were concerned for Danya.
When the shoot was over, Sidney took her daily takes up to the resort and expressed them to New York for processing. In the luxurious hallway, she met Mikhail. After a short conversation on the progress of the shoot, Mikhail said, “My wife has already told you that I would like you to do some promotion shots for the resort. I hope you’re considering that. We need to update and my staff is comfortable with you.”
“I’ll think about it. Your family has already asked me to do portraits.”
“We are overdue for that. We would so appreciate your attention.”
“They’re all so lovely. I’m considering it, but I don’t usually stay long in one location. I’m a freelancer which means I move around a lot. I’ve moved for most of my life—my dad was in the service.”
“But you are more comfortable staying with Danya, than here at the resort?”
“The resort is really nice, very well run, Mikhail. But this particular gig has too many women in it and they’re crowding me.” After her exchange with the Stepanov women, Sidney’s impression that Mikhail and all of his family hadn’t cared about Danya had changed; she now saw that they were very concerned about him. “He’s a great guy. I know he’s mourning his wife. He’ll find someone someday.”
“Of course.” With a brief smile Mikhail nodded and plucked the pager from his waist. He glanced at it. “I have to go. Some dilemma on the golf course. You are welcome in my home at any time.”
Sidney decided to take more shots around Amoteh and wandered down to the docks. She took several of the tourist pier and children playing on the beach. She felt so much a part of everything she’d seen and done, and yet not a part of anything—as if she’d always been an observer, traveling on the perimeters of life.
She hadn’t realized she was crying until she came to sit on the steps of Danya’s cabin, surveying the evening’s black rolling waves and thinking of the warmth and love of the Stepanov family. Sidney dashed away the tears and wrapped her arms around herself; the Stepanov women had their husbands and children and the images of the day skimmed through her mind. She had nothing in comparison.
Danya seemed to come out of the night, looming over her. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Everything.”
He sat beside her and took her hand. He rubbed it between his warm ones. “What can I do?”
She wanted to be held and cuddled, but she was just having a silly feminine moment; she’d get over it soon enough. “I’m just down in the dumps. I get that way sometimes. It will go away. I’ll be glad to get on the move again, get a new assignment somewhere else, life goes on, yada yada. I never cry, you know. I’m just getting all weirded out for some reason. Everything is off kilter here. Wrong, you know? I don’t feel like myself. I mean, I think my work is really good or Jonesy says so—she’s working on it in New York. But there’s something else here, and it scares me.”
“Ah. Maybe a change is good.” His arm came around her, and Danya drew her close. She quivered again, the sensation that she was feminine and needed a man’s strength was ridiculous, but still there. She moved into the sensation, testing it. She was definitely a great deal smaller than Danya, and probably less strong—but then she was very agile. So being smaller had advantages, too. She could probably be all over him in a minute—
“That’s why you came here from Wyoming, isn’t it? For the change?”
“It’s been good for me.”
Sidney looked up at Danya and studied him. She rarely touched anyone, unless it was to arrange them for a shoot, but just now—she found her fingertip moving over his face, taking in the sensations, the heat, the texture of his skin. He was new and yet familiar; he caused her to relax and to ache to have him. The contrast of all her emotions concerning him terrified her. “I’m scared, Danya. Really scared,” she whispered.
“Of course. So am I.” His kiss was light and friendly and with enough impact to stun her.
Sidney tried to catch her breath and suddenly she felt herself being lifted to sit on Danya’s lap. “What’s this? I’m not a kid and I’m not some overaged baby doll—”
“Shut up and stop squirming,” he said pleasantly. “Has no one ever held you before? Like this? A man?”
“No one,” she whispered back as she noted how Danya’s hair felt in her fingers, the waves and the crisp texture.
“You can relax a little—against me.”
It was a companionable thing to do, easing against Danya’s hard body, testing the fit, the heat churning silently around them. “I don’t know why I’m shaking,” Sidney whispered.
“Neither do I.”
“Shouldn’t we be doing something? I mean we can’t just sit here.”
“Why not?”
“It’s wasting time….” She wanted to stake him out and have him. But the poor guy was coping with enough problems. Sidney pushed away from Danya, stood, and rubbed her hands together. “So what’s to eat? Shall we go out somewhere, pick up something?”
Danya’s big hands settled on her hips and he drew her to stand between his knees. “Why are you so nervous, Sid?”
She couldn’t say, Gee, I’m having a sexual moment, Danya, and I want to nail you.
Instead she said, “So you’re going to be my date tomorrow night, right? Boy, I don’t want to do the party thing. I usually just take off somewhere until the agony is over.”
“Ah, that reminds me. Ellie said to get your measurements. She’s already started on a dress—she’s good at fittings and gauging from sight—but she wants you to stop by tomorrow afternoon for final adjustments. She sews for everyone and made me a shirt—she’s made all the men in my family a shirt. Their women have embroidered them with old world designs—from some that my mother did for us as boys. Mine is as yet plain.” He drew out a tape measure from his shirt pocket. “May I?”
Her body started doing that quaking thing—on the outside and the inside. “Sure,” she managed. “Ellie can put a dress together just like that?”
“Mmm.” Danya had slid the tape measure around Sidney’s bust. He looked up at her. “Stand still. Stop fidgeting. Am I bothering you?”
His hands were resting over her breasts, bringing the ends of the tape measure together. In the moonlight, he leaned close to read the tape.
Sidney could have grabbed his head and pulled it close to her breasts—
Danya nodded and measured her waist, then her hips. He tucked the tape measure away and then fitted his hands around her waist, easing them up and under the loose shirt she wore. “Don’t worry, Sidney,” he whispered softly. “This will all work out.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re nervous of me.”
She’d been through battlefields, avalanches, volcanoes, floods, earthquakes. She’d slept beside men in the African bush and on ship decks. “Hey, I work with men all the time—”
“But this is different, isn’t it?”
But this is different, echoed in Sidney’s mind as she tried to sleep later. Very different.
She was killing him, inch by inch, Danya decided early the next morning.
Restless and tossing on her sleeping bag, Sidney had talked in her sleep. Ben’s name was noted frequently again. Danya intended to replace that name with his.
Sidney lay like a child, curled beneath the light sheet, her feet exposed. She had absolutely no idea of how attractive she was, how feminine.
How much of a curse she was to a man who had decided to take his time, building a solid relationship with her.
Danya answered the light rap on the door and with a sweep of his hand, invited Alexi into the cabin. “You brought them?”
Alexi took the small box from his shirt pocket and handed it to Danya, who indicated Sidney, sleeping on the floor. “I’m just fixing breakfast. Have some coffee?”
Alexi nodded and watched Sidney stir restlessly. He studied Danya in the way of one brother preparing to test another. “My wife says that if Sid needs a place to stay, she’s welcome at our house.”
“No.” Danya cracked eggs into a bowl and added milk. He whisked the mixture briskly before pouring it into a skillet sizzling with butter.
“Then Aunt Mary Jo and Uncle Fadey have plenty of room, even with our father staying there—”
“No.” Danya eyed Alexi. “No, and double no.”
“Oh. But look, she is sleeping on the floor. The least you could have done would have been to give her your bed.”
“No.”
Sidney yawned and turned to look at the men. “‘Morning. Hi, Alexi.”
She stood and stretched and started touching her toes. Her boxer shorts and Danya’s overlarge T-shirt did little to hide her curves as she walked to the bathroom.
Alexi looked at Danya who was tracing the sway of her hips, his throat drying and every molecule in his body taut and aching.
“Your eggs are burning.”
“Uh-huh. It is a nice day.”
“It’s snowing outside.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So she’s the one, huh?”
This time, Danya turned to his brother. “She’s driving me nuts. Not a clue.”
Alexi started to chuckle and Danya scowled at him. Sidney chose that moment to walk out of the bathroom. She walked to the table, sat, placed her feet on the opposite chair and picked up a piece of toast, munching on it. “What’s so funny?”
Danya carried the rest of the breakfast to the table and picked up her feet, placing them over his thigh as he sat. He held her ankles by gently resting his hand over them. When she tried to remove them, he shook his head. “The floor is cold in the morning. You aren’t wearing socks…. And my brother has a strange sense of humor. He’s just leaving.”
Sidney dug into her eggs and toast, ran the back of her hand across her lips and sipped her coffee before speaking. “This is great.”
When Alexi had gone, Sidney wiggled her toes against Danya’s belly, just to see if whatever had passed between them last night was still simmering.
“Stop that,” he ordered and lifted a piece of bacon to her lips. Sidney took a bite and decided to exchange the favor. She lifted another piece to his lips and wondered what he would do if she moved onto his lap…if she leaned against him as she had last night.
Danya’s eyes darkened. “I don’t know that I would like what you’re thinking.”
“About the dance?” she lied to divert him. “I was thinking that social hours and dances are a waste of time. I can’t dance anyway. Never learned. I’m kind of a freestyle girl. I do really well at aborigine celebrations.”
“Socializing and dancing are about getting to know each other. That takes time.”
“I’ve never had a lot of time. Too busy.”
“Make it.”
“Why?”
With a brief smile that didn’t reach his eyes, Danya released her ankles and stood, clearing away the table. “Ellie has your measurements. You’re to stop at her home late this afternoon for a fitting. I’ll meet you here and we’ll go to the resort together.”
“But I could meet you there.”
“I will take you—that’s how it works, Sidney. The man escorts the woman. You are the woman, and I am that man.”
He seemed to be setting rules for her and that nettled. “Not if I have to be all coy and frilly.”
Danya leveled a look at her. “Have I asked you to do that?”
“Just getting everything straight between us, guy. And by the way, I won’t embarrass you by hanging all over you like some women do.”
“If we go as a couple, there would have to be a certain amount of touching, don’t you agree?”
“Just enough to get by, for looks,” Sidney agreed and wondered how close and tight she could hold him to get a really good impression of that great body.
Four
“I
can’t wear these,” Sidney said that evening as she looked at the delicate chandelier earrings resting in Danya’s big callused palm. They were lovely, a circular shape shimmering with garnets and tiny fragile slices of gold dangling from them. “They were my mother’s. I would be honored.”
“Well, that’s just the point. These aren’t cheap and what’s more they are sentimental pieces. Your wife wore them, didn’t she?”
“My wife preferred more modern jewelry.”
Sidney ached to try the intricately fashioned earrings, just once, to see how she looked. Ellie’s creation, a long, basic black gown moved sensuously along Sidney’s body and she felt like a different person. “Oh. Still. I can’t wear them. What if I would lose one?”
“You won’t. It would please me, Sid.”
“Well, okay. You’re suffering enough, acting as my date. I feel exposed in this dress.”
Danya bent to carefully insert the earrings into her ear lobes, then leaned back to study the effect. His fingertip flicked one of the earrings and he grinned. “Beautiful.”
He bent to give her a brief kiss that shocked her, then shrugged, dismissing the intimacy. “It is an occasion, is it not? You and I on a date? This is my first one in a long time.”
“I…I’ve never had one. Sometimes Dad and Stretch and Junior and I go together.”
“I hope I’ll do.”
Sidney was still dealing with that brief hard kiss when Danya ran his fingertip over the tiny shoulder straps and downward to trace the square tight bodice that lifted her breasts into curves. “You are lovely, Sid. Why fight it?”
“This is just so much of a waste of time and energy. I do good work. They’ve already said so. I don’t know why I have to go through this agony.”
Danya was staring down to her breasts and when his eyes lifted to meet hers, they were dark and primitive and shook something deep within her. “There’s one more thing.”
He walked to the refrigerator and removed a plastic box, placing it on the table.
Danya was beautiful, tall and in a white shirt, tie and a dark fitted suit; he could have been a male model posing for an exclusive clothing ad. He looked sleek and dangerous and experienced—very experienced and gorgeous.
As he walked toward her, the fragile orchid corsage in his hand, Sidney’s heart started that strange flip-flopping again. She held her breath while he carefully bent to insert his fingers into her bodice and pinned the corsage. Because everything was too quiet and still—except within her shaking emotions—Sidney tried to speak. “I’m going to take your family’s portraits—after this gig. I’ve got to do some stuff in New York to finalize, but I’ll come back. It’s the least I can do for this dress Ellie made. She’s a whiz. She even borrowed a pair of shoes to match. I don’t usually wear high heels—I hope I don’t fall and embarrass you.”
He seemed very intent upon fastening the corsage to the square cut of her gown. “Mmm.”
“Shoes?” Sidney repeated, her mouth drying as his fingers slid inside her bodice to protect her from the corsage’s pin. The pale orchid spotted with maroon drops was gorgeous. She’d press it and keep it and savor it after she had left Amoteh, just as she’d heard that other women did with flowers from special occasions. She had to have something to remember this night with Danya, even if it was a girly thing like a dead flattened flower. “They’re going to be after you tonight. The models, I mean. Some of them are—well, man hungry like I told you, and on location they get—lonesome. I’ll protect you, Danya. It’s the least I can do for all this trouble.”
“Thank you.” He slowly removed his fingers and studied her. “What were you saying about shoes?”
“That Ellie borrowed just the right size to go with this dress. Look. I shaved my legs.”
