Page 36 of The Christmas Holiday
I stopped mid chew and looked directly at Hunter, my brain shuffling thoughts madly. Had I? Or was he just winding me up? The whole decisionto add Hunter and me to the party had all been fairly last-minute and there had been a bunch of paperwork to sign and things to get ready before I left. Was one of those things the model-release form he was talking about?
‘I can get it for you if you want. I wanted to make sure that if Liv and Sandy – or I – ever wanted to use any of the photos for commercial reasons, everything was alreadyin place.’
I had an awful feeling this was true. Hunter had always been super-organised on the whole legality side of things and would only have got even more professional as he climbed the ladder. He knew others would be looking to him for guidance, just as he looked up to certain photographers himself, and his moral code – something I didn’t think would have changed too much – would havetold him that if people were looking for a mentor, then that mentor ought to be doing things right. Absolutely none of which helped me right now. I swallowed my cake.
‘Hunter…’ I smiled and he raised an eyebrow. ‘Please show me the photo.’
He watched me for a moment before holding up the camera, screen first towards me.
‘Oh!’ I reached for the delete button but he caught my hand.
‘Ah ah ah!’ He laughed.
‘You have to get rid of that! It looks…’
The raised eyebrow came again.
‘Not good.’
Hunter glanced down and did a side-to-side motion with his head. ‘Oh… I don’t know. I think it looks pretty damn good, actually. Or whatever you’re doing does.’
‘You know what I was doing!’ I thumped him on the arm. ‘I was eating cake!’
‘Yeah… I know that, butno one else does.’
‘Oh Hunter, stop being mean,’ Liv chided him. ‘Mia, don’t worry. He won’t use it.’
‘Says who?’ Hunter countered.
‘Says you! Or at least you should.’
‘Got to make a living.’ Hunter grinned, tucking the camera away in its bag, on the other side of the chair to me.
I glared at him again before selecting a delicious-looking, cream-filled concoction. ‘You’re suchan arse.’
