Walking into the studio where the shoot was supposed to take place, my heart froze when I saw the camera equipment that had been set up. Every photographer has a certain way they like to set things up, a tendency to favor certain types of equipment. Looking at the setup, I knew, even before he walked out of the back room, that Sydney was shooting the series.
“Sydney,” I said when he came out. He looked at me and smiled, like he hadn’t torn my heart out and crushed it just a few weeks prior. “When did you get this assignment? My agent didn’t say anything.”
“Oh, it was last minute, just yesterday, in fact,” he replied, coming closer. “You know, Alix, I’ve really missed you.”
“Guess you should’ve thought of that before you had what’s-her-name on her knees,” I replied, shuddering at the way he looked at me. “Listen, I’m not going to walk out, but realize this. This is the last time you and I work together. I don’t care if it costs me some shoots, but I’m telling my agent after today that you and I are not to work together again.”
“Alix, come on. I forgive you for the way you acted at the party, you know,” Sydney said. “The least you can do is get over yourself and come back to me.”
I stared at him, unable, or perhaps just too shocked, to speak. Finally I turned and went into the wardrobe area before I hit him. I nearly threw my bag into my chair, not even noticing that Karla was already in her chair, getting ready.
“G’day luv,” she said in her thick Aussie accent. “I see you’re rarin’ to go.”
“Hey, Karla,” I replied. “Listen, no offense today, but just, I’m in like a really bad mood, okay? So while I normally appreciate the little jokes and humorous insights you make, not today, please?”
“What’s going on?” Karla asked, her accent cutting by a third. I had always suspected she played up her Aussieness to have a unique advantage. I know it helped her on her Instagram account, where she had nearly half a million followers. The girl made a lot of money off that account, too. “I thought you’d be excited to work with your boyfriend for a shoot like this.”
“Ex-boyfriend,” I replied shortly. “Didn’t the word get out?”
Karla shook her head. “I’ve been back home until this past Tuesday, doing some shoots for companies and sponsors in Sydney and Adelaide. What happened?”
“He did,” I replied simply. “I don’t really want to talk about it right now though, okay?”
“Okay,” Karla said. “But if you need some help, just tell me. I’ll be happy to try and get you to smile. Hey, did you see the shoot schedule? We’re doing the workout portion first. Hope you’ve been doing your Pilates.”
I shook my head in amusement. Karla knew that, despite the similarities in our physiques, our athletic backgrounds could not have been more different. She was a former volleyball player who still enjoyed doing sports or training daily. I, on the other hand, didn’t dare do too much. In high school I’d been into athletics, and it had cost me a few contracts since I added muscle too quickly for clients’ liking. So for me, the less physically active I was in order to keep decent muscle tone, the better. It did give me another option in modeling, however, as I grew older. In my mid-twenties, I could become more active and go into the fitness modeling scene, where having some more muscle was considered even sexier. It was appealing, honestly. I didn’t like not working my body.
“I’m just going to change,” I said instead, not being pulled into Karla’s banter. “Hey, who’s the guy we’re working with?”
“Greg,” Karla replied, “You remember him from the Body Glove campaign last year.”
I did. Greg was a nice guy, a total professional, and yeah, pretty cute. Best of all, he was everything Sydney wasn’t, so I didn’t have to worry about any of that. I pulled out my wear for the first half of the shoot, a cleavage-enhancing sports bra and running shorts that barely dropped below my butt cheeks before starting in on my hair and makeup. Despite what you may think, for most shoots models have to do their own hair and makeup. Only the superstars or the shoots for live television get makeup artists, everything else being corrected via Photoshop. Karla left and headed out into the shoot, giving me a bit of privacy to gather my composure.
I was mentally ready when she came back in, knocking on the door frame. She was in full-on Aussie mode, and I had to admit, rivals or frenemies or whatever, I liked her. “How’s ya togs, luv? No more sookin’, we want to get this done before the arvo.”
I gave Karla a smile, which she returned with a nod. “Good on ya, that’s what I was hopin’ for. All right now, boom boom, shake the room time.”
As the shoot went on, my temporary confidence started to take hammer blows. It seemed no matter what pose I was taking, or how I was trying to do things, Sydney was critical, having me hold poses or change positions on a constant basis. I could tell Greg and Karla were both getting annoyed, to the point I heard Karla mutter under her breath at one point, “Fookin’ wanker today, isn’t he?”
Regardless of whether Sydney was being overly critical or not, his words kept hammering at my self-confidence. Despite being a model, I’ve been accused of actually being really shy, which I’m not totally sure is true. I mean, I know I don’t like partying it up out in public, but just because I prefer to be at home instead of doing shots in a club and tearing up the dance floor, that doesn’t mean I’m shy, does it? But whether I’m shy or not, being constantly criticized by my ex-boyfriend, who was a silver-tongued devil and already knew all my mental buttons, just broke me down. I almost walked off set twice as he had me so upset.
Still, I had to admit the words created magic. When I was pissed off, especially in some of the workout scenes, it made me look fiery, aroused even. With the way Sydney had arranged me in relation to Greg, it looked like I was ready to tear his shorts off. When the last photo was taken of the bedroom scenes, I was exhausted and shaky, but ready for some comfort, even if it was from my mother or Derek.
Instead, when I came out of the dressing room in my casual shorts and Stanford t-shirt that Kade had given me for Christmas a few years prior, I found Sydney still there, putting away his equipment. “Alix, a moment, please.”
I wasn’t ready to talk to him. “No way, Sydney. If you have anything to say, you can go through my agent. And after the way you talked to me today . . . go to hell.”
I started to walk away, when suddenly he grabbed me from behind, twisting and pushing me up against the wall. “No, you don’t get to just walk away from me like that,” he seethed into my ear, pressing up against me. “Not unless you want our little private project to find the light of day.”
I was scared, shocked, and not thinking clearly. “What the he—” I started, before realizing what he was talking about.
He could see it in my eyes, too. “Yes, those photos. You didn’t think I’d just deleted them when you got pissed off at me, did you?”
Nearly a year prior, about two months after Sydney and I started dating, he had approached me about doing some private photos, supposedly just for him. Like I said, Sydney is the master of pushing the line between sexy and raunchy in some of his shoots, and he was also a master of verbal manipulation. Add to that at the time I thought I was in love with him, and by the end of it, not only was I naked in a lot of photographs, something I’ve never done professionally, but also some of them included more. He’d introduced sex toys, and even a couple of me with his cock in my mouth before it was all said and done.
Now I was scared. “You wouldn’t,” I whispered, even as I tried to push away from him. “Back off, Syd, before I scream.”
“So what?” he taunted me. “I get women screaming on my sets all the time, usually because my cock is buried all the way inside them. Oh, you thought the girl at the party was the first? You really are a naive little slut, weren’t you? Alix, I rarely go to a good shoot without emptying my balls into at least one of the models there. So welcome to the real world.”
“What do you want?” I whispered, nearly
in tears. I was trying so hard to hold them back to not give him the satisfaction. The threat, the further admission of betrayal, all of it was too damn much. “What more do you want, you asshole?”
“Actually, that’s not too bad an idea,” he said contemplatively. “I talked you into a lot of stuff, and you went along with all of it, except I never did get to try taking your ass cherry. As tight as it must be, I’d love to tear it up at least once. Then again, I’ve got plenty of ass to satisfy me, that’s for sure. So here’s the deal. You give me fifty thousand dollars, or else I post it all on the internet. I can think of at least a dozen porn sites that would love to have that video of you on there, especially as I have a signed release from you for all of the photos I took.”
“I never signed a release for those,” I whimpered, thinking of what those photos and videos would do to my career, and what it would do to my family, as dysfunctional as it was. “I never signed that.”
“No? I have evidence otherwise. A signed photo release for a set of bedroom photos and videos, dated a day before our video was shot. You remember, don’t you? The artsy set that I sold later at the gallery down in Beverly Hills? That made me a pretty penny, by the way.”
My skin went pale as I did remember. In fact, that was how Sydney had talked me into the second, more sexual shoot, claiming at first he wanted more photos from the first set before talking me into so much more. “You bastard.”
“That’s what they keep telling me,” he said with a grin. “You’ve got a week, Alix. Fifty thousand, cash. You can bring it by my apartment, you remember where it is. Or else the first person I send the photos to is your stepfather. I’m sure the man who’s angling for Humanitarian of the Year would love to see his lovely stepdaughter with my cock in her mouth. Hell, if he doesn’t have a heart attack, he may just start jacking off over them.”
I couldn’t hold it back any longer. I spat in his face. Syd jerked his head back before smiling, wiping the mess off his cheek. “For that, the price is sixty thousand,” he said before backhanded slapping me. My head rocked to the side and bounced off the wall, and my control totally broke, tears falling down my face in shame. “A week, Alix. Now get the fuck outta here before my price goes up even more.”
I fled the studio, running to my car and firing it up, for the first time in a long time cursing that I’d just bought a new BMW less than a month prior. It was just a sign of my predicament. You see, while modeling paid me good money, I lived in California, which meant that even a low six-figure salary can disappear like morning fog in the sun. I wasn’t in the category of the Victoria’s Secret Angels yet, but I was making more than most doctors, and in the past year had cleared about a quarter million dollars after taxes. Knowing that my modeling career wouldn’t last forever, I had taken most of it and sunk it into investment vehicles, including real estate and long term Treasury bills. So while I could get between five and twenty thousand dollars for an appearance, I lived a much humbler lifestyle. It was only after the UFC contract had come in, with its one-time huge bump of fifty thousand dollars, that I’d traded in my old Honda for the BMW.
This meant that, after my agency took their cut, and I got the money for this most recent photo shoot, I’d have just over eight thousand dollars in the bank. Nowhere near enough to pay Sydney, who I knew would only demand more. Hell, he had even put in an implied threat to demand to fuck me in the future. But what was I supposed to do?
Chapter 4
Kade
I love driving my Lexus. Certainly, it’s not the most sporty car on the road, and there are quite a few of my contemporaries who drop twice the money I do to get Mercedes roadsters, Porsches and other high-end sports cars.
But why? My Lexus LS has more than enough horsepower to do anything I want to do on the road, and I don’t plan on taking the thing onto a track. Best of all, I could cruise all day in my LS and still feel pretty fresh at sunset. Also, it was a bit deceptive in that while it looked like a big four-door sedan, it handled well, and best of all I could get all the way to Los Angeles on only two tanks of gas.
I took my time, leaving Portland and skipping Interstate 5 to cut over to the coastline. I’ve always loved the ocean, and got to spend hours cruising down US Highway 101 all the way to northern California, where it joined up with the famous Pacific Coast Highway and continued south. I kept to the 101 until San Francisco, where I stopped for the night before continuing on in the morning using just the PCH. By Friday breakfast time, I was on the outskirts of Los Angeles, and had to fight my way through standard LA traffic to Orange County. My dad’s new house was in Laguna Beach, and while I didn’t get there often, he still kept a bedroom just for me. With six bedrooms in the house, it wasn’t like he was hurting for the space, and it did give me a sense of comfort, even if some of it was a bit dated now. I mean, the room still had a poster of Roy Jones, Jr. on the wall, along with one of Tom Brady. At least Brady was still winning games, but it certainly gave the room a teenage guy feel.
“Hey, is anyone home?” I yelled when I walked in the front door. “I know you both can’t be at work, it’s your anniversary weekend!”
“Kade!” I heard from the back, and I got to see Layla come out. Tall like her daughter, Layla was forty-eight, ten years younger than Dad. I’d worried about that at first until I saw how they were together and knew that Layla truly loved my father. She was very beautiful for her age and had proven herself a wonderful match for Dad. “I didn’t expect you for another couple of hours. Derek’s actually not home yet.”
“Where’d he go?” I asked, curious as we exchanged hugs. “I’d have expected him to be hanging out here, bugging you in the kitchen or something like he does every time he spends time at home.”
Layla laughed musically, and I was again struck by how much she looked like her daughter. Except for her hair being light brown instead of ash blonde, she looked like you had taken Alix and just aged her a bit. “Your father, as you know, is off on another one of his crusades. He got a call from the members of the local Lions; he’s organizing a charity auction for them, and they just had to get some information from him before the weekend. Derek was going to say no until I reminded him that if he just hung around the house all day, he’d drive me up a wall. So off he went, although I’m sure he’ll be disappointed he wasn’t back before you got here. So how was your drive?”
“Quite nice, the Pacific’s the same as ever,” I replied as the two of us caught up. I wished I had more time to talk with Layla. She was, in a lot of ways, the woman I’d have wished I could have grown up with as a mother. As it was, with my life in Portland and her life in Laguna, we didn’t get together nearly as often as I’d have liked.
I was just telling Layla about my newest investment, a six-unit apartment building in Corvallis, near Oregon State University, when the front door rattled, and I heard my father come in. “Layla? Kade?”
Regardless of the fact that I was now twenty-six years old, I hugged him like I did back in the days when it was just the two of us, squeezing until he groaned and slapped me on my back. “Okay, okay, let go, you’re going to break a rib!”
“Just remember, you can’t spell torture without tort,” I teased, an old lawyer’s joke that got him to smile. “How’re you doing, Dad?”
“It’s good to see you, Kade,” he replied happily. My Dad was shorter than me, at just over five foot ten compared to my six two. I got a lot of my height from my mother, who, like Layla, was tall. I guess Dad had a thing for tall women. “I’m not going to ask you about your drive; I’m sure Lay’s been twisting your ear for as long as you’ve been here. But it’s good to see you.”
Our family reunion continued, with Dad telling me about his community projects he had going on while Layla filled me in on what Alix was up to. Despite the bad feelings Alix had for her mother, Layla was immensely proud of her daughter. I was just looking over some of the recent photo spreads Alix had done when the front door opened again before slamming shut.
&n
bsp; “I guess that’s Alix,” Layla said, smiling in hope. It hurt me to see what Alix’s rejection did to her mother, the glimmer in her eyes twisting a knife deep in my guts. Instead of saying what I felt, I smiled and nodded, following Layla and Dad back out into the foyer of the house.
What I saw when we got there caused me to stop in my tracks. A huge, red welt was rising up on Alix’s face around her left eye, already starting to darken into one hell of a shiner. She was trying to hide it under a hat, but even at the angle I was standing on the second floor, I could see it creeping down her cheek.
“Alix, what happened?” Layla said, approaching her daughter and trying to embrace her, a very natural reaction for any mother.
Alix pushed off, shaking her head. “It’s nothing, Mom, just an accident that happened on set today.”
“That accident looks like something more along the lines of John Cena than Sean John,” I said as I came up to her. “Seriously, Alix, what happened?”
“It’s nothing,” Alix said, putting on a smile that as soon as I saw it, perked my instincts. I’m a good lawyer, and better than my dad when it comes to negotiations. The reason is that I can read faces and voices at an almost unconscious level and in an instant judge if someone is telling me the truth.
Alix was telling us total bullshit. She was good at it though, probably a side effect of her modeling instincts, and I think both Layla and Dad bought it. I could hear it in her voice, bright warning lights blinking in my head as she talked. “I was doing a shoot for Men’s Health, and as I was walking out I turned to say something to the photographer and walked right into a spotlight. They’d just shut it down and I was a bit dazzled, that’s all.”
Dirty Little Secrets: A Stepbrother Romance Page 3
