Deathblow (7 page)

Her shoulders tensed. “I’m sure that won’t be an intrusion into our lives whatsoever.”

He liked it when her snarky side came out, preferred it to the fear that had been in her eyes when she’d talked about Keith.

* * *

Joe got under her skin.

Keith rarely gave her a choice in anything. Sophie had pretty much blackmailed her into coming out to Broslin. Now Joe was laying down the law about playing bodyguard. Everyone was moving her around as if she was some doll. She was sick of it. She wanted to take back control of her life. She wanted people to respect her wishes.

It all came tumbling out.

“I do work, you know. Taking care of Justin is work. And so is modeling. It’s not empty-headed prancing up and down some stupid runway. I spent the morning settling us in here, and I updated my digital portfolio, I paid the bills online. This is a disruption. I don’t sit around all day and think about pretty clothes. Believe it or not, I actually have a schedule. Tonight I still have to upload close to a hundred images to one of the online stock photo sites.”

She took in his rumpled civilian clothes as frustration coursed through her. “What have you done with your morning? Spent it in bed with a cheerleader?”

Then she caught herself and stepped back, swallowed hard as she waited for the blowback. If she’d said half this much to Keith, he would have thrown her across the kitchen. Oh Jesus, was she stupid? When was she going to learn not to provoke men?

But Joe just looked at her, his dark eyes tired. He put the kitchen towel down. Still, she stayed as she was, on the balls of her feet, poised to run.

“I was out at the murder scene of a friend,” he said quietly. “Then I had to go notify his widow.” He shook his head, looking past her, off at nothing in particular. “She took it badly. I stayed with her until her parents could come over, or I would have been here sooner.”

Oh.

Her heels came down. Okay, she was a total bitch. She’d been scared and confused and frustrated, and she’d ripped into someone who didn’t deserve it. She barely knew who she was anymore, but she wasn’t this. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.” He watched her. “Your life has been majorly disrupted. You’re entitled to feel off-kilter.” He paused. “Listen, you’re both alive and well. Let’s do everything to keep it that way. I’ll do my best to stay out of your way.”

She nodded after a moment. “I was going to run out for groceries. That way, Justin will be half-asleep by the time we get home, so I can put him down for his nap.”

Exhaustion bracketing his eyes, Joe looked like he could have used a nap himself. “All right. Let’s do it.”

He followed them in his own car, went into the store with them, and picked up a few things for himself: eggs, bread, mayo, tuna, and some cold cuts.

“I can take care of the meals,” she offered.

But he shook his head. “I’m here to protect you, not to give you extra work. I do know that you do a lot. My sister, Amber, is a single mom. It’s damn hard work.”

In the checkout line, he dropped a green plastic dinosaur into his cart; then, after they both paid, he gave it to Justin with a wink.

She ruffled her son’s hair. “What do we say?”

“Thank you!” Justin beamed.

And she looked away for a moment to get a grip on herself. Because for Justin’s entire life, his own father had never given him a gift, not a single toy. Seeing Joe do it now so naturally, without even any thought, made her realize how much Justin was missing. Not gifts, that was the least of it. But fatherly care and love.

She swallowed and put a smile on her face before turning back to Joe. “Thanks.”

He shrugged. “No big deal.” And it was clear that for him, it wasn’t.

On their way home, Joe stayed right behind them. She kept looking around too, but if anyone else was following her, she didn’t catch anything suspicious.

When Joe pulled up next to her at a red light, Justin waved the plastic dinosaur at him with a grin. Joe put on a startled face, as if he’d gone wide-eyed with fear. Justin dissolved into peals of laughter.

When Keith was around, Justin usually stayed quiet. Kids had good instincts.

She glanced at her son in the rearview mirror. “Do you like Joe?”

“Joe!” Justin shook the dinosaur against the window and laughed.

Maybe having Joe around for a bit wasn’t going to be as bad as she’d thought it would be. For the past couple of hours, he’d managed to keep her mind off being scared of Keith, and that was something.

Wendy focused back on traffic, pretty sparse compared to city standards. Broslin had a calming effect on her. The town was warm and welcoming, peaceful. Couples strolled down the sidewalk arm in arm; kids rode three-wheelers. The shops were all prettied up, everything clean and cared for, no garbage blowing on the side of the road, no graffiti on the buildings.

The quintessential all-American town surrounded by farmland, cows, and horses. The mushroom capital of the country, complete with signs for fresh-picked mushrooms everywhere. She briefly stared at the mushroom hats in a boutique window. There wasn’t enough money in the world to make her wear that. The mushroom soup and mushroom pie advertised in the diner’s windows, on the other hand, had potential.

She found the mushroom craze amusing. She’d never thought of fungi as something people would get excited about to this degree, but the town even had a mushroom festival. Sophie had invited her last year. She couldn’t come. Keith had dropped by to see her and had simply refused to let her leave.

That wasn’t going to happen again, she promised herself as she pulled up the driveway. She couldn’t, wouldn’t go back to living that way. Things were going to change.

Joe helped her haul in the groceries. She put Justin down for his nap, then edited and uploaded her hundred new photos to the stock photo site where she was building a sizable inventory of everyday images. By the time she was done with that, Justin was up.

She played catch with him outside for a while. Fresh air was important for kids, and movement too. She didn’t want her son to grow up in front of the TV.

Joe made a dozen calls and worked on his laptop, tracking down leads for a case. She figured it had to do with his friend’s death and stayed out of his way.

When dinnertime came, she made chicken and rice and invited Joe to join them.

“I meant what I said about not giving you extra work.”

She shook her head. “I have to cook no matter what. It’s no extra effort to put another plate on the table.”

She’d worked hard at improving her cooking skills and enjoyed creating a healthy meal for herself and her son. The kitchen at Keith’s penthouse had been for show. He ate out every night, liked to network, liked to show off his model girlfriend. Starting to cook was another way to assert her independence and make her own choices.

“All right.” Joe sat by the table. “But then we’ll take turns at cooking.”

She wasn’t going to hold her breath on that. He was a nice guy, but he was still a jock and had probably been surrounded by women most of his life. She doubted he’d done much work in the kitchen.

But he did help her clean up after dinner, then played ball with her son until she took Justin upstairs to give him a bath. She read him a picture book, then he “read it” back to her, more or less. He knew the words by heart. He was so proud of himself.

Then, of course, as his reward, she had to sing the sheep song, complete with the bleating. She sincerely hoped Joe couldn’t hear that.

Once Justin was asleep, she went back downstairs to settle down in front of the computer.

Joe was watching the local news. He glanced over to her. “Checking out colleges for Justin already?”

She turned the screen from him on reflex. She didn’t want him to mock her for trying to take some college classes. But since he’d caught the college logo already, she had to say something.

“It’s an online class.” She swallowed. “For me. Digital photography. Manipulating digital images.”

He raised a questioning eyebrow. “Want to know what it’d be like on the other end of the camera?”

She rubbed her palm over her knee. “Do you think it’s stupid? Modeling is not exactly a steady, long-term occupation. Photography isn’t much better, is it? There’s a reason for the expression
starving artist
.”

But he didn’t rush to say that she better rethink it. Instead, he said, “If you’re looking to branch out, you could check the Broslin Tourist Board’s website. They have a photo contest each year with some pretty good prize money. And if you win, you might get some commissions for flyers from local businesses. Weather’s supposed to be nice this week. I’ll show you and Justin around. You could snap some pictures. We have art shows twice a year at the high school. You could put up photos there and sell some, maybe.”

Okay, that completely overwhelmed her. “Why do you want to help me?”

“Why wouldn’t I? Not everybody has an agenda, Wendy.”

She nodded uncertainly.

He relaxed back in his seat. “How did you get into modeling?”

God, that seemed like a lifetime ago. “I was discovered in a shopping mall in Upstate New York when I was sixteen. It felt like winning the lottery. I had to move to New York City, everything arranged by the agency.”

“Your parents must have been worried.”

“Oh God. My mother cried her eyes out. But I was living in a dream and talked them into letting me go. What sixteen-year-old doesn’t think that she’s ready for anything?” She flashed a half smile. “They simply didn’t have the energy to fight me. My mother was forty-five when I was born, my father fifty-five. By the time I was a teen, they were planning retirement.”

He nodded. “Mine passed on last year. Dad had colon cancer. Mom died of a broken heart three months later. Her heart just stopped.” His brows furrowed. “She wasn’t even sick.”

Oh.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”

He looked toward the window, silent for a moment before turning back to her. “Was modeling as glamorous as you thought it would be?”

And he waited for the response, as if really interested in her, not just being polite about it.

“As glamorous as expected,” she told him, “but more cruel. I was never tall enough, definitely not skinny enough. If a picture doesn’t come out right, it’s always the model’s fault. You’re assumed to be empty-headed and superficial, and definitely easy. Some of the clients routinely came around to ask for
dates
. Models who declined were struck from the roster with one excuse or the other.”

She shrugged. “What I remember most of the early years was the hunger. I was expected to lose weight. Endlessly. If a model has to drink, do drugs, smoke, or throw up on a regular basis, she’s expected to do it and keep her mouth shut about it. In the world of high fashion, appearance is everything.”

He held her gaze. “That had to be difficult.”

“Early on, I was so dazzled by the city, by the sparkles, I barely noticed anything else. Later….” She pressed her lips together. “Having no voice, no choice in even the most personal things became difficult. Others controlled the color and length of my hair, the makeup I put on, and the clothes I wore.”

Her career had never been her own, not from the moment she’d signed on the dotted line at age sixteen, next to her mother’s signature as guardian.

“My career belonged to the agency. My time belonged to the customer. My body wasn’t my own. Even my fears weren’t my own. I was asked once to pose naked, wrapped in giant snakes. I just had to suck it up and do it.”

She folded her hands on her lap. “Big boo-hoo, right? Being a model and living on the top of the world. People would kill for a chance like that. It’s not like doing shift work in a factory. I was lucky.”

His face remained expressionless. “You were a kid. All that had to be scary.”

Sometimes it had been. Other times, the city and the job were exhilarating. “I met Keith in New York.”

He waited a beat. “How old were you then?”

“Eighteen. He was older, educated, sophisticated. He knew about wine and could quote black-and-white art movies.” She’d thought Keith was her knight in shining armor. “When he walked in on a client manhandling me in the hallway, Keith put the man in his place and threatened to rip off his head if he came near me again.”

Keith had been her protector. He’d been a real man, not like the boys her age she’d been partying with.

“How old was he?”

“Thirty-four.”

“He seduced you,” Joe said in a flat tone.

“It wasn’t like that. We were friends first.” He’d been kind back then, interesting, exciting. “Apartment prices being what they are in New York, I rented with three other models who were more into the party scene than I was. Drinking, some light drugs, bringing home strange men.”

She made a face. “When Keith eventually offered his plush apartment, it was like a Cinderella story come true. He wooed me, and I fell for it.”

She’d been so incredibly happy for a while. The happiest she’d ever been. But then he told off more of her clients. And then he told off her agent. He went behind her back and canceled photo shoots that he didn’t think were appropriate.

“Eventually, my agency dropped me. At around the same time, Keith’s company was opening a new office in Wilmington, and he was transferred to a more senior position here. He asked me to come with him.”

The New York fashion world was for airheaded whores, he’d told her. In a smaller city, she’d find more family-centric work. They could spend more time together. He tossed the word family around until she was dreaming about white weddings.

But that wasn’t what she got after they’d moved from New York to Wilmington. Keith became more and more controlling, and she didn’t have her New York friends for support. She had nobody she could go to for help.

Joe turned off the TV, although the news wasn’t over yet. “When you met him, you were so used to others controlling every aspect of your life, it seemed natural to give him control over everything.”

Her first instinct was to deny that, but she couldn’t. Honestly, she was just trying her best not to cry, because, by some miracle, Joe seemed to understand. Not only did he know that she’d been weak, stupid, had let herself be abused, but somehow he didn’t judge her for it. She pressed her lips together.