by Tracy Ewens
Meg pulled her legs into her chest and listened because she found she wanted to meet his brothers, wanted more of his story.
“So, your brothers don’t have a stylist?”
West laughed, which made him seem younger. “No. They’re… different. I mean the four of us are similar when I’m home, but their life is built on something tangible. I guess that’s the right word. They get dirty. They make something. Do you drink beer?”
“I’m not a big drinker, but that’s probably because I’ve been away for so long. I like water, especially clean water, but if Amy keeps rewriting my TED talk speech, I might consider drinking.”
“You have a TED talk?”
Meg nodded. “October.”
“Finally, something worthy of your time. And you’ve gotten the polish without losing yourself. You’ll be incredible and away from all of this flash and bullshit.”
“So, your brothers are the real deal and you’re all about the bullshit?”
West considered for a minute, as if he’d never noticed the framework he put around his life. “I think that’s about right.”
“Oh, wow. Spoken like a true youngest child. I should know.”
“Big shoes to fill.”
“Tell me about it.”
West grinned. “Said the woman who’s been on the cover of National Geographic twice.”
“Nothing but another magazine in my family.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Yes. They are supportive, but of course, they give me the guilt trip that I’m never home. Nothing is ever—”
“Good enough?” West said.
Meg nodded. “Something like that. Look at us, our own little youngest-in-the-family support group.”
“And we have pizza. Not bad for our first meeting. So, if I ran to get out from behind my brothers, what are you running from?”
“Who says I’m running?”
“Well, not anymore, but why did you run?”
Meg pulled her legs closer. “If I tell you, do I get a question?”
“Sure.”
“I was sick of being left behind. I made a decision that I would be the one walking away as soon as I was old enough,” she said, surprised how coherent her thoughts had become.
“Good plan.”
“Not exactly. I forgot to look back and I missed some things I shouldn’t have missed.”
“Is that why you’re visiting now?”
Meg nodded. Visiting. She’d leave it at that for now. “My turn. Are you happy?”
“Sure,” he said almost before she finished the question with the enthusiasm of someone used to saying the right answer.
She waited, hoping there was more.
West took a deep breath. “My life is different. Happy and sad don’t factor in.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Is there any more pizza?”
“West.”
“No. I am not always happy, or in general happy. That’s such a huge thing. I’m lucky and I have money. I can pay my bills and help my brothers in that way, but does making action movies and surrounding myself with people who are constantly taking from me make me happy? No.”
Meg wasn’t sure what she expected his answer to be, but it wasn’t that.
“Do you get to do this a lot?” She tapped the pizza box.
“No. But I’m not sad either. I’m neutral. How’s that? And I don’t eat pizza. The camera does not like pizza.”
“I beg to differ.” Meg unfolded herself from the chair and grabbed one of her cameras off the dining room table.
West tried not to flinch as if she was holding a dangerous animal. There was no reason not to trust her. Hell, she’d probably have to ask him where to sell the images of him anyway.
It was a screwed-up response, he knew, but it was difficult to find normal when almost every girl he’d dated in high school and college had shared at least one story with a magazine and every other trash news cycle, a random stranger claimed to have partied with him or given him a blow job.
Things were more manageable in San Francisco, but it was bizarre being so hyperaware of oneself. Probably screwed up, but West had no intention of seeking help like so many other successful actors. He wasn’t going to be a juice-drinking, life-coached-to-death whiner. His father and brothers would ban him from hunting altogether if they had any inkling he’d gone soft.
He didn’t need professional help, but he had decided a while ago to acknowledge his world was unusual. Awareness allowed him to look things in the face and protect himself, especially if they were scary as hell.
He was aware, even on her couch. But if Meg Jeffries and her camera weren’t safe, if she could fool him into trusting her only to turn around and burn him, then his faith in humanity would be completely lost. He wasn’t the best judge of character, but no way Meg was like the rest of them. His expression must have relayed panic because when their eyes met, she was a little snarky.
“West, this is a camera. Did you want to pet it?”
“Look at you being funny.”
“I’ll have you know I am an endless source of entertainment for my family.”
“I have no doubt. What are you doing?”
“I want to take some pictures of you. Actually, parts of you, if you don’t mind.”
“Yeah? I would have never guessed you were into kink. You disguise it well behind the poncho.”
“Shut up or I will go put that poncho on.”
“You kept it?” He chuckled.
“I love my poncho and I am not into kink. You can keep those parts covered, thank you. Over by the window.”
“Bossy. Do you talk to your animals this way?”
Meg shook her head and twirled a finger in a gesture for him to face the other way. West obeyed. He was curious.
“Look, you’re beautiful,” she said, turning the camera view screen toward him to reveal a close-up image of the back of his neck.
It was a part of him he never saw, and the fact that she chose something abstract was not lost on him. She was attempting to show him a side of himself the paparazzi were incapable of exploiting.
She took more shots of him, but the click of the camera was slow, rhythmic. He was either losing his mind, or there was something incredibly sexy about her eyes combing over him. West turned and she took a few shots of his face. At this point, he didn’t care.
One hand wrapped around her lens, Meg was the one who was beautiful. Still not in the glossy magazine sense of the word, but in an honest and natural light way. God, he’d never met anyone like her.
“Do you miss it?” he asked, needing to take the attention off himself.
“I do, but I’m working on finding new things to shoot. I went back to the stairs you showed me and took some shots at sunrise. I’ll e-mail you one.”
“Thanks. There’s plenty of adventure in this city.” He moved toward her and she turned her back to him to set her camera down.
“Do you date a lot, West?”
He laughed and when she didn’t, he tried to think of the right answer.
“No. I don’t date a lot,” he said. “Do you?”
“No, but I’m not you.” Her back was still to him, and West wondered if that made it easier to push away what had been building from the minute she invited him for pizza.
“True.” He took a step closer, wanting to move the hair off her neck. Put his lips to her skin.
“You should date Amy. She recently broke up with her boyfriend and she’s your type.”
He barely heard her now through the thrumming in his ears. “What exactly is my type?” He took another step.
“Oh, you know, polished and photo ready.”
Inches from her now, Meg finally turned from the dining room table where she’d been stalling with her camera bag.
“That could not be further from the truth.”
Their eyes held and he didn’t need to tell her she made his heart race or that he wanted to know how she looke
d first thing in the morning. None of that needed to be said—it was all right there between them.
“Do you want to watch another movie?” She tried to move past him, but West reached out and touched her arm.
He shook his head and even though his mind was spinning with a million reasons why he needed to leave, for the first time, something he wanted was well within reach. Running a hand up her shoulder, her body stilled and he stopped.
She was no longer with him. He wasn’t sure where she had gone, but it was clear he wasn’t going to kiss her tonight. He’d misread.
He moved back. “I should get going.”
Meg closed her eyes for a split second and without a word grabbed his coat.
“Your gallery show is next week, so I’ll see you there. Thanks for some normal time, best friend,” he said.
She smiled and he started to breathe again. Damn, he thought she was going to drop, and not in a good way.
“You’re welcome. See you next week,” she said.
“Right. Goodnight, Meg.”
West was out in the cool night air before he realized he’d been rejected. It wasn’t often he went in for the kiss and the woman on the receiving end shut him down with no more than silence. In fact, it never happened these days.
Rejection was something he knew well. He was practically drowning in it the first year he moved to LA, but it typically came from strangers behind clipboards and tiny lights. This rejection was different and personal on a level that had him searching for an even breath as he climbed into the familiar backseat of Vince’s car.
West had thought they were on the same page, but something happened. She probably didn’t let people get close to her or she wasn’t around long enough to commit. Or she’s not into you, man.
With any other woman, it would only take one cold shoulder for West to move on. He didn’t ask twice. But Meg was unlike any woman he’d ever known and the idea that what he felt coursing between them was going to culminate in a polite goodnight and a pat on the back stung more than it should. Then again, he’d never wanted anyone like he wanted her.
Chapter Thirteen
Meg was losing perspective. She’d spent the last three days in a fog of “what if.” On a purely physical level, she had wanted to kiss him, but right when she felt his warm breath—somehow still enticing after eating pizza—whisper across her lips, she panicked. The entire day had been a shift in what she knew to be true.
She was working with a celebrity, Westin Drake, in a combined effort to promote Next Generation. That was what his agent had said so professionally in the meeting. Meg was getting paid more than she was ever paid for a real assignment.
Real. There it was, she thought, standing in the back of the Plimpton Gallery as the doors opened and people began filing past her photographs poised on easels and washed with gorgeous light. What was real?
She had asked herself that exact question moments before West leaned in to kiss her. If he was playing a game, if the show was all he knew, Meg wanted out before the kiss. She never worked with artificial light. While many photographers applauded the benefits of artificial light, Meg preferred things in their natural state.
All of this started when he helped her onstage and kissed her on the cheek. That was an absurd way to form a connection, but then she’d gotten to know him, right? Is that what they were doing, getting to know each other? Or was the whole “get the misfit polished up, show her around town, and then move in for the kiss” all part of the picture? That’s what she’d been asking him at the community garden before she acquiesced and climbed into the back of another car. Then she’d invited him into her apartment and still didn’t have an answer, or did she? Was the move to kiss her an answer?
Christ, she was minutes away from her first show and trapped in a mental vertigo as all the pieces jumbled in her head.
Taking a sip of wine from the chilled glass in her hands, Meg was certain she’d never had a problem telling real from fiction before. She didn’t swoon after a romantic movie like Anna, and on occasion, Sage.
She understood that the only way to get a polar bear to look as regal as the one in her cover shot was to lie on her stomach and shoot the picture from below. They naturally held their heads low—that was the reality she had distorted a bit to convey their power. She explained that to people during discussions. It was the truth.
Meg couldn’t tell what West was distorting for effect and what was real the moment he wasn’t joking around and seemed to want more than a best friend. It scared her the way her body reacted and that her heart all but climbed into his eyes without question. She’d had three days of distance since the pizza and several conversations with herself, most of them ending with—Oh come on, who cares what’s real, take that man.
“Meg,” a voice that used to be as familiar as her own cut through the cocktail chatter. The stem of her wineglass slid along her fingers and when the ball of the glass hit her palm, she barely kept it from dropping to the floor. Her heart racing from the near crash, Meg turned and crashed instead into her very real past.
Now that she was no longer on assignment, she was certain she’d never see David Cupo again. He looked good, for David. Her body no longer responded to him as a lover, and what was left was an almost painful awkward she already wanted to escape.
Briefly turning toward the crowd to compose herself, Meg caught West approaching from the opposite end of the room.
The perfect storm.
She tried to smile.
“David,” she said, turning as West joined them. David, Meg’s ex-partner and ex-lover, held his own, even standing next to West, which was no easy feat. His hair was shorter, which usually meant he’d recently returned from assignment, but she didn’t know him or his schedule anymore. Didn’t want to.
He surveyed West in that way he assessed everything and then his expression became distracted, anger-tinged. Meg took another sip of wine, knowing it wouldn’t help. No wonder she was having trouble sorting things out. Everything already felt like one of those mirror rooms at a carnival, and now the universe had added David. Was this karma for something she couldn’t remember?
“I heard you were dating an actor.” He extended his hand to West.
If Meg could have crawled under the expensive Oriental rug they were standing on, she would have seized the opportunity.
West shook it. They hadn’t even had a chance to say hello and there he was standing up as the imaginary boyfriend. Meg was sure Hannah and Amy were high-fiving one another over espresso.
“I’ve seen your movies. I’m David Cupo.”
“Good to meet you too. Are you a photographer?”
His laugh was barely there and touched with the pain of someone forgotten. Meg tried to meet his eyes, hoping to smooth the edges with the good parts of their time together, but it was too late. He finished his whiskey in one gulp and nodded. “Yeah, you could say that.”
“David was my mentor. He’s a big deal.”
“Sure. I think this might be the third or fourth time I’ve put my foot in my mouth since I walked in. Sorry about that,” West said.
Meg wanted to smile as she switched from wine to water.
“This must be a lot for someone from Hollywood to take in. Meg, are you showing him around our world?”
West’s brow furrowed with confusion, and then Meg saw the moment he realized he was dealing with more than a snotty photographer. West had an expressive face. It was how he made his living. Meg wondered if casting agents ever saw his range, but she was pulled from her thoughts when he answered.
“It’s not that complicated. Gorgeous photography. A worthy cause. Meg has even been helping with some public appearances for Next Generation. Fairly simple, even for us Hollywood types. How long were the two of you together?”
“We ‘worked’ in the Arctic on and off for a year,” he said, the sarcasm evident in the aggressive air quotes around the word—worked.
“Nice.”
“It
was. Clearly she’s talked about me a lot since.” If David had a mustache, he’d be twirling it right now, Meg thought.
“Not exactly cool to talk about exes.” West mocked a flinch, and Meg felt like the woman tied to the train tracks in those black-and-white silent films.
“Wow. He’s pretty and witty, Meg. Well done, you.” David summoned the circulating wait staff and ordered another whiskey.
She looked at West, who seemed perfectly fine with the tension. He wasn’t taking shots, merely defending himself and allowing David’s annoyance. West was downright relaxed. At first Meg marveled at how he managed it but was quickly reminded of his body sprawled on her couch. Without a word and out of sight as the crowds grew around her images, West set his hand at the small of her back. It wasn’t a gesture of possession or meant to piss anyone off. He was holding her steady.
Meg had to wonder: why hadn’t she kissed Westin Drake?
David’s last comment washed right over him. If this prick thought calling him pretty was more than a glancing blow, he needed to spend some time in LA. West kept his hand at Meg’s back and took in the room. He was in awe of her work and prepared to let any remark go, but the guy ordered another drink and moved in for his next shot. Meg beat him to it.
“Why are you here, David?”
West put both hands in his pockets and stepped out of the way to watch round two. Meg didn’t appear to need his help. West found that impressive, sexy even, but he wondered if being so self-contained left much room in her life for anyone else.
“I wanted to see your work. The ones from Canada are decent additions. Every career has an arc and from the looks of your exhibit, you peaked in the Arctic.”
Yeah, this guy’s a real prince.
Meg didn’t flinch, her tough skin in place even without the poncho.
“Besides, we’re a tight community. I wanted to contribute to the cause.”
She spun toward West, presumably to leave, when a woman far along in her pregnancy joined David.
West had a feeling this might be the blow that would hurt.
“And, I wanted to introduce you to my wife.”
