The First Time is the Sweetest (12 page)

“If the two of us are there, we can check out the building and guard the exits. I assume this is an indoor studio, right?”

Sabrina nodded and explained, “We’ll be in the back room, where it’s easier to control the light for this particular shoot.”

She looked warily from Gabriel to Jimmy, hoping they would relent and let her out of the house. She understood the need for safety, but she desperately needed some fresh air. She needed a break from the sexual tension that hung between them, relentlessly coloring every conversation, every glance. Even if the two men accompanied her, she hoped the distraction of the shoot and company of other people would give her libido a much-needed rest.

“Okay, we go in and check it out, guard the exits. Considering how quiet it’s been, the shooter may be off on other business or he may have concluded that she’s too well guarded in the house. Either way, we need to get out of here or we’re all going to go crazy,” Gabriel said, gesturing with his cleaning cloth. Jimmy scowled at him and Sabrina wondered if either man realized how tense things had become. Gabriel fidgeted with his equipment more than necessary, while Jimmy paced around the house like a caged animal. Sabrina found it both annoying and amusing as she’d caught each man more than once stealing glances at the other. They looked sexy even when frustrated. She watched as Gabriel shifted in the seat, trying to adjust himself discreetly.

Jimmy shook his head slowly. “How can we guarantee her safety in that situation?” he asked. His hair stood on end from where he’d run his hands through the strands.
He looks hot
, Sabrina thought. She was so relieved that Gabriel was on her side—Jimmy couldn’t blame her later if something went wrong.
And we really do need to get out of this house
. Then she realized that if she took them to work with her, her former classmates were going to see her interacting closely with two very attractive men. She wasn’t sure if this was good or bad.
Although, if Gabriel and Jimmy let me pretend to be their girlfriend, it would be worth it.
Sabrina imagined the look on the girls’ faces until she realized they probably wouldn’t believe her even if she flat-out told them she had two boyfriends.
Boyfriends
, she repeated to herself, smirking. Sabrina hoped she could actually claim that at some point.

“There’s no way to
completely
guarantee her safety, you know that,” Gabriel said. Jimmy sighed and looked from Sabrina to Gabriel, then back again. She held her breath.

“This is insane,” he insisted quietly, but she could tell he’d capitulated. She smiled and phoned Joy to let her know she’d be coming in today as planned. Gabriel called his partner and explained what they were doing and then called the local police to see if they would do a drive-by while they were in the studio.

* * * *

At four o’clock, the three of them walked into Joy’s Portraits Photography downtown. Before going in, Gabriel made Sabrina wait in the car with Jimmy while he walked around the outside of the building. The small studio was set in the midst of a mini-mall between a bakery and a video store. It was about three blocks down from the bistro where the original shooting had occurred, and busy like usual on a Wednesday afternoon, though the church across the street was quiet. The trees planted along the road fluttered their leaves in the wind and Sabrina contemplated how lovely it felt to finally be out after weeks of what amounted to house arrest.

The studio’s small entry room contained a desk and some chairs where customers could wait for their appointments. Today, all four seats were occupied by the Fourth of July queen, Angelina, and her court. The king and the other three guys stood near the bay front window, joking and talking about basketball as they fiddled with their suit jackets.

Sabrina grimaced as she followed Jimmy inside. She wasn’t looking forward to interacting with them. Happily, she didn’t even have to greet them before Joy came rushing out of the studio’s back room.

“Sabrina! How are you doing? I missed you!” Joy’s arms opened to give Sabrina a hug. The girl returned her embrace, enjoying the scent of the older woman’s orange blossom perfume when her short hair swung around to brush against her cheek. Joy pulled back, and Sabrina smiled at her.

“I’m fine, Joy. Glad to be done with college.” Joy smiled and Sabrina watched as her friend straightened her cream-colored sweater so that it lay smoothly on top of her brown slacks.

“My friends wanted to come with me, watch the shoot, if that’s okay with you?” She waved her hands to indicate Jimmy and Gabriel.

Jimmy lounged against the studio door, looking all sorts of sexy, while Gabriel stood closer to the center. Both men wore a T-shirt and jeans, though Gabriel wore a black leather jacket over his to hide his holster and weapon. They smiled lazily, and she was struck again by their handsomeness. When she saw the younger guys on the other end of the room eyeing them warily, she also realized how dangerous Jimmy and Gabriel looked. She was used to joking around with them, but both men had been in combat situations, and it showed in the way they moved, the strong, lethal grace of their bodies. Gabriel had a way of walking that told the people he encountered that violence lurked just beneath the surface.
Add that hint of danger to a glimpse of his holster and you end up with a very lethal-looking man
, Sabrina thought.

She glanced at Jimmy, who was no longer leaning against the door but carefully prowling the room. He looked outside the window before walking back and eyeing the studio, committing to memory all available exits. He’d told her and Gabriel the other night that he got used to checking out his surroundings while in Afghanistan. He moved like a predator. As Sabrina watched him shift his weight and peer out the window between the blinds, she caught a hint of black peeking out of his back pocket and realized he’d packed his knife. Yup, dangerous. Sabrina smiled to herself.

She exchanged pleasantries with Joy for another few minutes, trying not to stare too obviously at Jimmy and Gabriel. She didn’t want to be unprofessional. However, when the older woman shuffled everyone into the back room, wanting to get started, she caught Angelina looking speculatively at Jimmy and then Gabriel. Then the other girls dissolved into giggles. Sabrina rolled her eyes, though she had to admit, she couldn’t blame them for their interest.

“Let’s get busy, shall we?” Joy said as they paused inside the back half of the studio, chuckling as she caught sight of Sabrina’s disgust. Sabrina loved Joy for her perception and enthusiasm and how generously she shared those qualities. Even at sixty years old, she managed to make every photo session both fun and useful, in between needling her about getting a boyfriend. After Joy rounded up Angelina and the others, she winked and slung her arm around Sabrina’s waist.

“I told you to get one boyfriend, Sabrina, not two!” Joy laughed quietly into Sabrina’s ear before releasing her. Sabrina laughed and began setting up the lights.

“How do you know they’re my boyfriends?” she asked, adjusting a diffuser near the camera.

“Please, don’t insult my intelligence,” Joy replied, bumping her on the arm with an elbow. “I could see the way they both looked at you, my dear.”

Sabrina raised her eyebrows. She thought they’d tried to keep the attraction under wraps while they were in public, but she was delighted to find out that neither man was bothering to hide much. Or couldn’t hide much.
Maybe the moratorium on dating would soon be over, yay!
she thought as she gathered up the other lights and began arranging them around the stools.

The girls and boys in the photo shoot were already exploring the backdrop and the rest of the studio. Jimmy walked the room’s perimeter, peeking into the bathroom and then checking the back door that opened onto the parking lot and garbage bins at the rear of the building. Gabriel had already finished his check, stopping behind Sabrina when she finished with the lights. She looked at Joy speculatively, wondering if the two men had really been looking at her, and Joy nodded sagely as Gabriel laughed, making her jump.

“Oh yeah, Sabrina,” he rasped close to her ear. Sabrina shivered. “We’ve been looking at you.” She twisted to find his eyes brimming with the naughty things he was thinking, but thankfully, he didn’t say any of them aloud. Sabrina flushed in embarrassment as Joy smiled.

“Oh my dear girl, you mustn’t let them get away. And I noticed both you and this fine young man checking Jimmy out over there as well.” Joy sounded positively gleeful.

Joy pointed at Jimmy, and Gabriel smirked openly at the two women. Sabrina flushed at the look on Gabriel’s face, half teasing, half desire. It was really quite extraordinary how easily he’d fit into her life with Jimmy.

“Caught,” Gabriel replied, placing his hand over his heart. “How can I help it? They’re both so delectable.” His voice dropped very low as he looked at Joy, who smiled gleefully. Joy pulled Sabrina along while she struggled to recover from what his voice had done to her. When she caught Jimmy looking at her quizzically, she realized that only a minute or so had passed during the exchange. And why, suddenly, was Gabriel flirting so openly? After days of hiding everything?

* * * *

Two hours later Sabrina was ready to throw the light diffuser at Angelina and her friends. Or maybe the lights—they were harder and would do more damage. The four girls giggled and simpered at Jimmy and Gabriel, who ignored them. Unfortunately, the girls’ behavior did not go unnoticed by the four guys who were their dates in the Fourth of July court.

Angelina’s boyfriend, Mike, openly glowered at Gabriel, while Sabrina tried once again to adjust Mike’s pocket handkerchief so that it could be seen more clearly in the photograph. He kept craning his head around to see what Angelina was up to, pulling on the small piece of fabric until she wanted to scream. To her disgust, Joy took the antics in stride, laughing openly at how ridiculous the girls and guys were behaving. Every time Sabrina glanced at the older woman, she smirked. Of course, she’d been a photographer in New York and this little studio was her retirement job, so she could afford to find amusement in others’ misery, Sabrina thought darkly.

Adding to her frustration, Jimmy and Gabriel, in their own perverse way, had suddenly decided that a bit of open flirting with her would only add to the fun atmosphere in the studio. They winked at Sabrina while she adjusted the lights and positioned the boys, and studiously ignored the other people except for Joy. Angelina and her little posse didn’t notice at first what was happening, but once they did, trying to get them to pose correctly and smile caused Sabrina no end of irritation. Of course, as soon as Mike snarked at her about how badly she used to dress, Jimmy and Gabriel began paying even more attention to her, stroking her arm when she walked past and calling her “babe” and “darling.”

She sighed, trying to pretend exasperation, but as embarrassing as it was, she loved it, even if it made the shoot next to impossible. Sabrina felt like they were photographing puppies.
Non-housebroken puppies
, she muttered to herself. All she wanted to do was go home, strip off her clothes, and sink into a relaxing bath, which was ironic considering how badly she had wanted to leave the house just a few short hours ago.

“Honey, that’s perfect, right there,” Joy said and Sabrina stepped back, brushing a piece of lint from Mike’s jacket. He stood behind Angelina for the “King and Queen” shot while the rest of the court wandered around the studio, touching things and generally making a nuisance out of themselves. Joy looked from her computer to the couple, took a few photos, then moved her camera to shoot from a different angle. They only had a few more left to take before the final group photo.

Sabrina rubbed her aching eyes, but even with her hands over her face, she saw Angelina glaring at her. She ignored the girl and stood next to Jimmy near the exit. She sighed as he slung his arm around her neck companionably, leaning over to kiss her behind her ear.

“Man, I will be so glad when this is all over,” Sabrina said to him, staring flatly back at Angelina.
If looks could kill, I’d be dead
, she thought.

“They always so hostile?” Jimmy whispered, kissing her again. Joy was trying to persuade Angelina to smile while Mike picked at the handkerchief Sabrina had just arranged, to her irritation.

“Yeah,” she replied, rolling her head around to loosen the kinks. “I’m used to it.”

Jimmy frowned, and then, from the corner of her eye, she saw Gabriel checking them out from across the room. She nudged Jimmy and inclined her head to indicate the other man’s gaze. Gabriel deliberately hitched his jeans a bit lower on his hips when he saw he had their attention, adjusting himself and not at all discreetly. Sabrina choked on a gasp, while Jimmy froze.

“Jimmy, I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” she whispered when she could breathe again. Gabriel smiled at them. Sabrina glared at him but he just grinned wider. The rest of the girls were staring back and forth from Jimmy and Sabrina to Gabriel, while the boys stood sullenly in a corner, looking for all the world like a group of six-year-olds in time-out.

“You know, I think I completely understand where you’re coming from.” Jimmy gave her one last kiss before straightening up and winking at Gabriel. “Goddamn, he’s fucking hot,” he breathed. Sabrina watched Gabriel’s pants slip lower on his hips, revealing a strip of skin between his shirt and the top button as the other man moved around the perimeter of the room toward them. Sabrina felt Jimmy’s hands twitch against her waist and she knew he was staring at Gabriel, too.