Page 34 of Noah
So, good news first: She loved the pictures I was sending her. And I hadn’t even sent her my best, yet. We’d only done one show, so I hadn’t had a lot of variety in there. But at least she liked what I was sending. Only she wanted them to be sexier. Well, I could do that. I didn’t necessarily think Rivers or Matt or Hudson were sexy–I’d known them too long to think that–but I could manage it. Rivers loved to go on stage without a shirt, so I’d just move around and get some pictures of his chest highlighted by the stage lights.
And then avoid Lila like the plague.
Matt would be tougher, but I thought he might do a shoot with me in some sort of urban setting. Make it grainy and very emo. He’d be great at that, and girls would go out of their heads for it. Hudson... Alone in a coffee shop, I thought. Staring around him like the world was trying to hurt him, those big brown eyes of his acting like magnets to any female in a 50-mile radius. Softer focus, for him. Maybe in sepia tone to make it moody but still emotional. It would be perfect.
And then Noah. She wanted a bedroom session of Noah. With him in the nude.
Of course she did. All the girls wanted to see what Noah looked like under that armor he always wore. But the thought of doing that shoot with him made me feel like I was going to throw up. I couldn’t do that. First of all, Noah was my best friend. It would be weird. And he’d never agree to it. He hated being vulnerable or soft in front of people. He was very private with his real self, as shocking as that sounded.
He would tell me no right off the bat.
But my job was evidently depending on it. I went back and read the last line again, and there was no way to misunderstand that; if I didn’t do sexier photos–and this session with Noah–Janette was going to fire me.
Shit.
If she’d wanted something like that, I wished she’d told me when she gave me the assignment so I could have turned it down. I would have told her that Noah didn’t do things like that, and maybe try to sell her on using Matt instead. He wasn’t as dangerous and sexy as Noah, but he was definitely hot, and had plenty of fans.
Maybe I could still talk her out of Noah. But what would I use as a reason? “Sorry, Janette, I fucked him last night and now the thought of photographing him naked makes me feel like I might throw up.”
That wouldn’t go down very well. Also, it would mean admitting that I’d already broken her cardinal rule of not getting involved with anyone I was covering.
Fuck, did she know what I’d done? Was that why she suggested Noah? Holly hell, did she have spies watching me? Was she already working up to fire me?
I broke out in a cold sweat at that, positive that she must know what had happened between the two of us, and that was why she was asking for this. Oh God. Oh God, oh God, I’d finally managed to get a good job and I was going to get fired after my first assignment.
Because I slept with Noah.
Maybe I could still save it. Get him to do the photo shoot with me and she’d have to forgive me, right? I’d just bite the bullet and ask him, straight out. Pray that he’d be willing to step up and save my job. Two months ago, I would have asked him without thinking twice, and we would have laughed about how stupid it all was.
Right now, it seemed like such a loaded question I could hardly bear it. We’d already made a huge mistake sleeping together once. Get us into a room and half of us naked, with me shooting pictures of him, and it was all going to get a lot worse.
How the hell was I supposed to go back to not feeling anything for him in that situation? I didn’t trust him, and I didn’t trust myself. I had no idea how he actually felt about me, so I wasn’t going to risk my own heart on the situation. Hell, I’d seen him get rid of girl after girl in the past.
Maybe he was going to wake up and get rid of me, too.
“Why are you so twitchy?” he asked suddenly.
I jumped, proving his point, and then laughed. Twitchily. “Just pressure from the magazine. Nothing serious,” I lied.
He hummed in response, like I’d just said the sexiest thing in the world, and pulled me toward him. “I dreamed about youthe other night. About that time I had to save you from Trevor. When you first started wearing a bra.”
I almost died right then and there from mortification.
“Oh my God, please never say that again.”
He giggled and nuzzled into me. “Why, what’re you going to do about it?”
“I’ll tell everyone who’ll listen that you got the crap beat out of you by a kid half your size,” I said primly.
He jerked up and stared at me, looking both shocked and betrayed. “Trevor was years older than me and twice as heavy.”
Now it was my turn to giggle. “Not the way I’ll tell it.”
He tackled me and took me back onto the bed, his fingers busy tickling me as I kicked out at him, trying to get away. When he stilled, though, his eyes were serious.
“I was ready to kill him for messing with you.”
I gave him my most gentle smile. “And I thought you were a fucking hero. I was so infatuated with you. You saved me more times than you should have.”
