Total pages in book: 23
Estimated words: 21893 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 109(@200wpm)___ 88(@250wpm)___ 73(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 21893 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 109(@200wpm)___ 88(@250wpm)___ 73(@300wpm)
“Ivy, would you mind going out and grabbing a couple of iced coffees from Maddie’s for me?” I ask. I’m not actually in the mood for coffee, and my guess is Christine isn’t either, but if I’m going to finish up this shoot, I need Ivy the hell out of the studio.
“Sure,” Ivy smiles, showing me that unbelievable beauty again.
“Just grab some cash out of my wallet,” I tell her. “And take your time. It’s no rush. Grab yourself something if you want too.”
“I’m fine, but thanks.” Her voice is like listening to music. If only I could be around her all day. But then I’d get nothing done.
I pretend to mess around with my camera until she’s gone, then I turn back to Christine.
“Ready?” I ask.
“Is that a joke?” she counters. “Let’s go.”
Our second shoot of the day goes even better than the first one. Christine is on, just like she was before, and my focus is even more honed than it was before. My mind is still on Ivy, but at least she’s not here to tug at my gaze the way a black hole’s gravitational pull tugs at every other celestial body around it.
I have to do something about this. About her. I can’t just send her away during every single shoot I have. She won’t be a very useful assistant if I have to do that. I guess I could just fire her, but that’s pretty cruel. Fire a girl because I find her so sexy that I can’t keep my eyes off her?
No, there’s something in between those two moves, and that’s what I’m going to do.
“Okay,” I say to Christine as I take a deep breath and lower my camera. “That’s it. We got it.”
“And we actually got it this time?” She’s teasing, but I can see she’s still pissed off from earlier.
“We got it,” I reply, removing the SD card from my camera and plugging it into my computer to begin the image transfer. “Vogue is going to love these, and I truly apologize for what happened earlier.”
“So do I. Zack isn’t normally like that.”
Yeah, right.
Christine is finishing getting dressed just as Ivy is coming back with the coffees. She takes one, but I can tell she’s just being polite, and I take the other as we’re saying goodbye. I tell her I’m looking forward to the next time we work together, but the truth is, I’ll never work with Christine again. If this shoot hadn’t been for Vogue, I would have kicked her out of the studio after Zack went off on me like that.
Normally, I don’t let boyfriends come along to shoots for that specific reason. They get jealous, go crazy, want to give their input into how they think the shoot should go—it’s just a whole big mess. But because it was Vogue and Christine, I said yes this one time.
I clearly shouldn’t have.
“So how’d it go?” Ivy asks, her eyes bright and shining. You’d think after what happened and how Zack came after her that she’d be in a terrible mood, but she’s still upbeat and a joy to be around. I couldn’t find something negative about this girl if I tried.
“Well, aside from my horrible fuckup? I’d say it went well.” I smile. “Vogue will be happy, and so will Christine.”
“Well, it wasn’t that horrible.”
“It was,” I reply. I know she’s just trying to make me feel better, which is her job, and it’s helping…slightly.
“It’s not like you,” she adds. “You seemed a little distracted today. Is everything okay?”
I almost laugh. I can tell by the way she’s looking at me that she’s semi-probing, trying to make sure that nothing bad has happened in my personal life. Here she is trying to see if there’s been a death in the family or if one of my parents is sick or something, and I just had my eyes locked on her perfect ass at the beginning of the shoot. If only I could explain that to her.
There’s no way a traditional relationship with Ivy as my assistant is going to work. She’s right; she’s too distracting, but she doesn’t even know it’s her that’s distracting me. I’ve got to do something about this and quickly.
“Yeah, everything’s fine,” I reply. “Listen, Ivy, why don’t you and I go out to eat on Monday? There’s this new restaurant called 4Pine that just opened, and it’s supposed to be great. We could check it out. My treat.”
I can tell by Ivy’s reaction that she was not expecting that. She blinks hard, looking down and away and then back to me.
“You…you’re asking me to dinner?”
“Yeah,” I reply. “It’ll be fun.”
“Like…a date?”
I chuckle. “Sure. You could call it that.”
Deep thought comes over her face, almost like she’s contemplating if I asked her whether or not she wants to come be my assistant in Europe for the summer and leave everything she’s ever known behind.