A Model Hero

by Sara Daniel

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Model Hero

  Copyright © 2014 by Sara Daniel

  ISBN: 978-1-61333-594-9

  Cover art by Mina Carter

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC

  Look for us online at:

  www.decadentpublishing.com

  The Calendar Men Stories

  Outback Dirty

  February Lover

  Seducing Helena

  Frontier Inferno

  Shockwave

  The Other Brother

  The Letter

  Burning Love

  A Model Hero

  Falling for Her Navy Seal

  Thankful for You

  Snow Angels

  Also by Sara Daniel

  More Than a Fantasy

  One Night with the Bride

  Captivating the CEO

  One Night with the Bridesmaid

  One Night with the Groom

  Once Upon a Marriage

  A Model Hero

  The Calendar Men Series

  Mr. September

  By

  Sara Daniel

  ~Dedication~

  For Alex, my heart hero.

  Chapter One

  “Your career is salvageable, Mother, if you follow my business plan. By this time next year, The Zola Modeling Agency will be out of the red.” Gretchen Meyers made the statement with more conviction than she felt. Silence had greeted her barrage of letters, e-mails, and calls to Kyle Ramsey, the agency’s top model and, since the mass exodus, only client.

  “Have you heard from Kyle yet?” The other woman lifted her head from Gretchen’s couch where she’d made a near-permanent indent over the past eight months.

  “I’m making sure I hear from him today.” With thirty days left on his contact, she could no longer wait for him to acknowledge her.

  “Today?” She looked Gretchen up and down, the flash of hope in her eyes shifting to disapproval. “Darling, you must change into something black if you’re going to meet with him. Those camel pants are not doing your thighs any favors.”

  Gretchen gritted her teeth. She would never be a size two, but Mother hadn’t given up trying to mold her into one or, at least, create the illusion of an acceptable figure. “When I want a favor from my thighs, I’ll wear black.”

  She appeared not to have heard, as her distasteful expression deepened. “And your blouse. If the sales clerk told you that hideous shade of green is turquoise, the designer must have been colorblind.”

  “The color is aqua, and I like it.” She marched across her open floor plan apartment and gathered the files spread over the kitchen table. Studying the financial projections on the laptop screen once more, she highlighted the single column where the agency would make enough commission for her mother to afford her own apartment. Gretchen would convince Kyle Ramsey to return to the modeling world. Failure was not an option she could continue to live with.

  “Haven’t you learned anything from these years around me? Your only hope is to wear all black, accented with a pop of color at your neck. People will look at your face, giving you a chance to show off the lovely eyes you inherited from me. What a shame you didn’t inherit more of my traits.”

  Gretchen snapped the laptop closed and slid it in her bag. Not trusting herself to speak, she flipped the calendar on the wall to reflect the new month. Out with her houseguest’s stifling summer presence and in with the crisp, refreshing air of fall. September was the perfect time to reclaim her life. “Why don’t you come to my office today? I’ll set you up in the conference room, and you can call some of the people on the list of potential clients I researched for you.”

  “There’s no point. They won’t take my calls.” She sagged back on the couch.

  “Plenty of prospective male models are searching for an agent like you.”

  “An agent who will sleep with them?” She covered her face and sobbed.

  “An agent with industry connections,” Gretchen retorted, refusing to show the least bit of sympathy for the scandal created by the lack of boundaries between her business and personal life. “First point on your new business plan is you will not sleep with any clients, especially nineteen-year-old kids.”

  She lowered her hands. “But they’re so cute. And horny. They look at me like I’m brilliant and hot. How can I resist?”

  “Try,” Gretchen muttered. Those cute, horny kids were far too young for Gretchen herself to consider dating.

  “You’d understand how difficult it is to restrain yourself if you had a figure that attracted men like mine does.”

  Gretchen resisted the urge to strangle her mother. “My business sense is going to serve both of us much better than good looks ever will.” She yanked her purse strap over her shoulder and gripped her briefcase. No matter what she did, her physical appearance would never win her mother’s approval. She played the roles of good daughter, savvy business advisor, and long-suffering therapist to compensate.

  But she had to get the woman out of her apartment so she could do those things without losing her sanity. She needed space to be herself without constant disapproving commentary. To accomplish that, Kyle Ramsey needed to do something he’d never done in the entire decade she’d known him—acknowledge her existence.

  ***

  Kyle Ramsey set the front page of the morning paper aside and turned to the style section. The doorbell rang, and he glanced at the clock, not expecting the grocery delivery until later. He folded his reading glasses and tucked them in a drawer before he walked to the front door and pulled it open.

  The full-figured woman on the other side wore camel pants and an aqua silk shirt with a thick, woven gold chain necklace, not the usual beige embroidered delivery uniform. “Hello, Kyle.”

  Her voice jolted him out of the delivery assumption. He hadn’t seen Gretchen Meyers in years, yet he’d only needed a moment to recognize the woman who’d always been on the periphery of modeling life.

  “Glad to see you’re alive,” she said with a bright smile.

  His heart thudded at the possibility his well-guarded secret had gotten out. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That you’ve avoided answering so many of my messages a person could be forgiven for thinking you’d died or forgotten all common courtesy.”

  Relief flooded him. Gretchen hadn’t discovered the real reason he’d left the business. She’d been the one person who never tiptoed around him or fallen at his feet. Although he’d changed, she hadn’t.

  “May I come in?”

  He stepped aside, even though he should have denied her. Her previous e-mails, texts, voice mails, and certified letters all spelled out what was sure to be the purpose of the visit, and he had no intention of agreeing. But her persistence intrigued him.

  After initial concern, disgust over his agent’s behavior, and
a multitude of rumors about his health, potential addictions, and mental stability, everyone had accepted his disappearance from the modeling world with a shrug. Pretty faces and hot bodies were easily replaceable. His had been no different. Too bad Gretchen hadn’t gotten the memo.

  “Nice place,” she said, looking around.

  “You’ve never been here before?” He tried to see the hardwood floors and stone fireplace from her perspective. Far too big for a one person, the house bordered on ostentatious, but appearances had meant everything at the time he’d made the purchase.

  She turned to face him, a single eyebrow raised. “I wouldn’t expect you to remember the legions of women you’ve brought here for the night, but I do expect you to remember you wouldn’t have given me the time of day, let alone slept with me.”

  Had he been that shallow and self-centered? Yes. He cringed. “I meant, you never came here with your mother? I remember you used to take notes and handle paperwork during negotiations.”

  “Any negotiating you two did here didn’t need me to document it.” Her shoes clipped across the foyer as she moved away from the doorway.

  “I never slept with your mother.” The thought had never crossed his mind. He snapped the door shut, appalled at the innuendo. “Good Lord, she was my agent and old enough to be my parent.”

  “She is still your agent,” Gretchen emphasized. “And best not to mention the age thing. She’s been known to use it as a challenge to prove how young and attractive she still is.”

  Rumors of Zola sleeping with her clients had swirled for as long as he’d worked with her. In fact, he’d come face-to-face with the truth of those juicy allegations just as he’d ducked out of the public eye. But he’d had no interest in her advances. He’d preferred women his own age or younger whose physical perfection matched his own. Well, karma had given him what he deserved on that score. “I’ll be sure not to encourage her. Do you want to sit down?”

  “Love to,” Gretchen said.

  Shoot, he shouldn’t encourage the daughter either. He curbed the impulse to act the role of solicitous host and offer her a cup of coffee. Instead, he waved her into the living room, taking the opportunity to admire the sway of her hips in her well-fitted pants. Real bodies with imperfections interested him much more these days. “Camel’s a great color on you.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him. “Actually, black is the only color that flatters my shape.”

  “Bullshit. You look hot.”

  She tripped over a footstool.

  Kyle grasped her waist, hauling her flush against his frame in an effort to keep her from falling over.

  “Sorry. Thanks for catching me. Guess I should watch where I’m going,” she babbled, twisting out of his arms.

  He let her go, his hands tingling with the imprint of her sexy curves. Most women would have used the stumble as an excuse to flirt and press their breasts against his chest. But Gretchen had always kept her distance.

  She seated herself across the room, reinforcing the reminder she hadn’t changed. She took deep breaths and pushed her brown, shoulder-length hair out of her face. The gesture made one section twist at the top of her head, sticking up in a loop and softening the professional image he’d viewed her through before today.

  He settled onto the sofa, his body aching to be closer, wishing for an excuse to touch her again. He didn’t want to discuss what she’d come to talk about, but he liked seeing her try to regain her composure and knowing he caused the discomfort. “Tell me about yourself, Gretchen. What do you do besides track down your mother’s long-lost clients?”

  “I run a financial consulting company, where I specialize in helping troubled businesses become financially solvent again.”

  Which she probably had been doing for longer than a year. He’d never noticed she had a life of her own. “So what do you do? Crunch numbers on a calculator all day?”

  “Along with telling companies where to cut expenses and which products and services they need to focus on to improve their income.”

  He must be one of those “products.”

  “So you’re consulting for your mother’s agency?”

  “Well, this job is a bit more personal,” Gretchen admitted, leaning forward.

  The last time he’d seen Zola, he’d gone to tell her he was retiring from the industry. Unfortunately, his appointment was after the new guy, Donatello, whose girlfriend had arrived at the same time to pick him up. Donatello and Zola’s hot-and-heavy discussions had run over schedule, as well as spilled from the office into the reception area. Donatello, his pants around his ankles, had run past Kyle and after the girl, swearing he’d only done it so Zola would schedule him on modeling jobs. Miss Brokenhearted had immediately tweeted the other models’ girlfriends, demanding to know if their men had to sleep with Zola to get jobs, too, and soon industry uproar had erupted. “Your mother seems to enjoy making her business personal.”

  Gretchen flushed, but she didn’t flinch. “She’s fortunate to have a client such as yourself with a healthy respect for professional boundaries. Going forward, she has also agreed to institute such boundaries. Despite being out of the loop for a year, your name continues to top company wish lists. Naturally, you are a critical part of the Zola rebuilding plan.”

  “Not interested.” The fact that he hadn’t spoken to anyone in the business in the past year should have been enough clue. The scandal had provided a perfect cover to walk away and let everyone assume he’d been burned by Zola’s blackened reputation, even after she’d been cleared of sexual blackmail.

  “I’m sorry my mother’s behavior drove you away, but if you truly had no interest in the industry, you would have asked to be released from your contract.”

  The psychoanalysis, while entertaining, had no basis in fact. He never met with Zola to explain his need to take a break, and then the surgery and recovery consumed him. He’d forgotten he still had an agent until Gretchen started contacting him. “Fine. She’s fired.”

  Her emerald eyes narrowed. Even better, her chest rose and fell beneath her shirt, giving away her agitation. “The solution isn’t so simple. If you choose to terminate the relationship, which must be done in writing, you have to wait for the nonrenewal period.”

  “When does that come up?”

  “Thirty days.”

  Not a problem. He could wait a month.

  “Which means any modeling jobs you take on in September will continue to go through the Zola Agency.”

  “A nonissue, since I’m not pursuing any prospects.”

  “But if the right opportunity came along, you would change your mind,” she said. “You must be bored to death sitting alone in this beautiful house.”

  Bored, no. Restless, yes. His social life had become limited to flirting with the nurses who only knew him in the context of a patient. He’d lost touch with his colleagues and friends from the past, unable to stomach conversations about tiny blemishes and the extra work of camouflaging and airbrushing them. He refused to discuss his new flaw and the impossibility of ignoring its existence. “If I am, then I need to find a new career. I’m twenty-eight years old. I’m washed up.”

  “For a female, maybe. You’re a man. You have some lucrative years you can cash in on.”

  “I don’t need the money.” He wasn’t bragging. His career had been very good to him. He’d had a team of people helping him manage his career until he’d quietly parted ways and secured them positions with other top models.

  “Do you have a retirement plan to keep you in this level of comfort for the next sixty years or more? You’re handsome enough now that people will pay for your image. Don’t expect to bank on your beautiful face when you’re wrinkled with a big gut but no savings.”

  As a consultant for Zola’s agency and as someone who’d made her career in finance, she could make a darn good guess at how much money he’d made. He’d stopped bothering with an accountant, except at tax time, which left him in the uncomfortable position
of suspecting she had a better handle on how long his savings would last than he did. “Modeling’s not my only talent. I’m not just another pretty face.”

  Gretchen raised a brow. “What else can you do?”

  Make you breathe fast with desire, make your muscles contract around me, make you scream my name as you orgasm. He didn’t know if he could, but he sure as hell wanted to. He tamped down his arousal and concentrated on a practical answer.

  “Act,” he said, keeping the response short, so she wouldn’t hear the need in his voice. The small parts from his past had been limited to shirtless roles. He hadn’t been just a pretty face; he’d also been a sexy chest. Okay, so it was no long a viable option either.

  “If you want to jumpstart that career, take the highest-profile modeling jobs you can get. DeAngelo Vurberuchi is starting an underwear line. He’s shooting next week right here in New York. All you have to do is roll out of bed. They’ll have a limousine at your door to take you into the city.”

  Eighteen months ago Kyle would have jumped at the chance to work for the famous Italian designer. The advertising for the new line guaranteed Vurberuchi’s chosen man would turn into a sex god of epic proportions.

  But the job was out of the question. Even if Kyle accepted, DeAngelo wouldn’t want him. His reputation for bringing a perfect body that didn’t need trick lighting or anything beyond the usual airbrushing had been destroyed. If he couldn’t be the real deal, he wouldn’t fake it and pretend he had anything worthy of a second glance.

  He rose to his feet. “No. I’ll send Zola an official termination letter, effective as soon as the nonrenewal period comes up. You and I have no need for further contact unless you’d like to join me for dinner on Saturday night.”

  Beginning to stand, Gretchen paused, her knuckles turning white on the armrests. “Dinner with you?”