LITMIR.BIZ

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I was expecting someone who was supposed to be doing exactly that,’ Gael said drily. ‘But you are not what I ordered. Too short for a start, although you do have an interesting mouth.’

      ‘Ordered?’ Her cheeks reddened as the outrage visibly ratcheted up several notches. ‘I’m sorry that I’m not your takeout from Call Girls Are Us but I think you should check before you start asking complete strangers to strip.’

      ‘I’m not the one who has gatecrashed their way past the doorman. Who are you? Did Sonia send you?’

      ‘Sonia? I don’t know any Sonia. There’s clearly been some kind of mix-up. You are Gael O’Connor, aren’t you?’ She sounded doubtful, taking a cautious step back as if he might pounce any second.

      He ignored her question. ‘If you don’t know Sonia then why are you here?’

      She took a deep breath. ‘My sister is getting married and...’

      ‘Great. Congratulations. Look, I don’t do weddings. I don’t care how much you offer. Now, I’m more than a little busy so if you’ll excuse me I have to make a call. I’m sure you can find your own way out. You seemed to have no trouble finding your way in.’

      The dark-haired woman stared at him, incredulity all over her face as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. Ignoring his unwanted visitor, Gael scrolled through what felt like an endless stream of emails, notifications and alerts. His mouth compressed. Nothing from the agency. With a huff of impatience he found their name and pressed call. They had better have a good explanation. The phone rang once, twice—he tapped his foot with impatient rhythm—three times before a voice sang out, ‘Unique Models, how may I help?’

      ‘Gael O’Connor here. It’s now...’ He glanced up at the digital clock on the otherwise stark grey walls. ‘It’s nine a.m. and the model I booked for eight-thirty has yet to show up.’

      ‘Gael, lovely to speak to you. I am so sorry, I meant to call you before but I literally haven’t had time. It’s been crazy, you wouldn’t believe.’

      ‘Try me.’

      ‘Sonia was booked yesterday for a huge ad campaign—only it was a last-minute replacement so she had to literally pack and fly. I saw her onto the plane myself last night. International perfume ad, what an opportunity. Especially for a model who is...’ the booker’s voice lowered conspiratorially ‘...outsize. So we are going to have to reschedule your booking I am so sorry. Or could I send someone else? We have some lovely redheads if that’s what you require or was it the curvier figure you were looking for?’

      With some difficulty Gael managed not to swear. Send someone else? An image of the missing Sonia flashed through his mind: the knowing expression in her green catlike eyes, the perfect amount of confident come-hitherness he needed for the centrepiece of his first solo exhibition. ‘No. I can’t simply replace her, nor can I rebook. I’ve put the time aside right now.’

      After all, the exhibition was in just five weeks.

      ‘Sonia will be back in just a couple of days. All I can do is apologise for the delay but...’

      It would help, he thought bitterly, if the booker sounded even remotely sorry. She would be—he would never use a Unique model again. He hung up on her bored pretence for an apology. Once Sonia was back she would be of no use to him. Unlike his photographs Gael didn’t want the subjects of his paintings to be known faces. Their anonymity was part of the point. He spent too much time documenting the bright and the beautiful. For this he wanted real and unknown.

      His hand curled into a fist as he faced the bitter facts. He still had to paint the most important piece for his very first exhibition and he had no model lined up. He mentally ran through his contacts but no one obvious came to mind. Most of the models he knew were angular, perfect for photography, utterly useless for this.

      Damn.

      ‘Mr O’Connor.’

      Palming his phone, Gael directed a frustrated glance over at his unwanted intruder. ‘I thought you’d left,’ he said curtly. She was standing stiffly by the elevator, leaning towards it as if she longed to flee—although nobody was stopping her, quite the contrary. Gael allowed his gaze to travel down her, assessing her suitability. Before he had only looked at what she lacked compared to the model he was expecting to see; she was much shorter, slight without the dramatic curves, ice to Sonia’s fire. She wore her bright clothing like a costume, her dark hair waving neatly around her shoulders like a cloak. Her eyes were huge and dark but the wariness in them seemed engrained.

      She took another step back. ‘Do you mind?’

      ‘It is my studio...’ he drawled. That was better; indignation brought some more colour into her cheeks, red into her lips.

      ‘I am not some painting that you can just look at in that way. As if...as if...’ She faltered.

      But he knew exactly what she had been going to say and finished off her sentence. ‘As if you were naked.’

      He had lit the fuse and she didn’t disappoint; her eyes filled with fire, her cheeks now dusky pink. She would make a very different centrepiece from the one he had envisioned but he could work with those eyes, with that innocent sensuality, with the curve of her full mouth.

      He nodded at her. ‘Come over here. I want to show you something.’

      Gael didn’t wait to see if she would follow; he knew that she would. He strode to the end of the studio and turned over the four unframed canvases leaning against the brick wall. There would be twenty pictures in total. Ten had been framed and were stored at the gallery, another five were with the framers. These four, the most recent, were waiting their turn.

      He heard a sharp intake of breath from close behind him. He took a step back to stand beside her and looked at the paintings, trying to look at them with fresh eyes, to see what she saw even though he knew each and every brush stroke intimately.

      ‘Why are all the women lying in the same position?’

      Gael glanced over at the red chaise standing alone in the middle of the studio, knowing her eyes had followed his, that she too could see each of the women lying supine, their hair pulled back, clad only in jewellery, their faces challenging, confident, aware and revelling in their own sensual power.

      ‘Do you know Olympia?’

      Her forehead creased. ‘Home of the Greek gods?’

      ‘No, it’s a painting by Manet.’

      She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

      ‘It was reviled at the time. The model posed naked, in the same position as each of these,’ he waved a hand at his canvases, at the acres of flesh: pink, cream, coffee, ebony. ‘What shocked nineteenth-century France wasn’t her nudity, it was her sexuality. She wasn’t some kind of goddess, she was portraying a prostitute. Nudes at that time were soft, allegorical, not real sensual beings. Olympia changed all that. I have one more painting to produce before my exhibition begins in just over a month.’ His mouth twisted at the thought. ‘But as you must have heard my model has gone AWOL and I can’t afford to lose any more time. I want you to pose for me. Will you?’

      Her eyes were huge, luminous with surprise and, he noticed uncomfortably, a lurking fear. ‘Me? You want me to pose? For you? On that couch? Without my clothes? Absolutely not!’

       CHAPTER TWO

      HE WANTED HER to what? Hope stepped back and then again, eyeing Gael O’Connor nervously. But he lost interest the second she uttered her emphatic refusal, turning away from her with no attempt to persuade her. Hope could see her very presence fading from his mind as he began to scroll through his phone again, muttering names speculatively as he did so.

      Maybe she should just go, try and arrange this wedding by herself. She looked around, eyes narrowing as she took

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