Somebody to Love

by Ann Christopher

  So that was great.

  Second? She’d made good use of her time this afternoon, packing up most of the rest of her apartment. Once the movers arrived tomorrow morning and headed to Journey’s End with all her worldly possessions, she could officially close the Manhattan chapter of her life. And while she’d certainly miss some of her favorite restaurants, like this romantic little Upper West Side French bistro with its white tablecloths and flickering candles, she would not miss the city’s exhausting pace. Like Sean said earlier, good riddance.

  And that brought her to the main reason for today’s uncontrollable excitement:

  Sean Baldwin.

  Aka the most intriguing man she’d met in years.

  She grinned down at the tablecloth, then shook her head at the grinning. But what could she do? It had been so long since she’d connected with a new man with which she had so much in common. So long since someone looked at her as though she were the center of the universe and made her skin tingle in the process. So long since she’d felt this young, hopeful and alive.

  She glanced around at the door, but no sign of Sean yet. Which gave her time to remember a few salient facts. He might ghost her, for example. He might show up, then later prove himself to be a jerk. And, most importantly, even if he showed up and wasn’t a jerk, she was not inviting him back to her apartment. Even if it was right around the corner.

  The thing was —

  Her phone buzzed. She snatched it up, terrified it was Sean bailing on her. But no. It was her agent.

  “Hey, Sheila,” she said, praying that a booking had come through already. With the way she felt right now? The sky was the limit today. “Did something turn up?”

  “Listen, doll.” Sheila’s funereal tone suggested that a speeding meteorite threatened the entire planet with mass extinction. “I don’t want to string you along. I spent all afternoon making calls and it’s not good. I don’t think I can get you the kinds of bookings you’re expecting.”

  Dread trickled down Amber’s spine like ice from a melting glacier.

  “What do you mean?”

  Harsh sigh from Sheila. “I mean that your weight keeps coming up. You need to either lose some to get back down to sample size or gain some to get up to plus size. Otherwise? There’s not much I can do for you.”

  Amber took a moment to process this dire assessment, stunned.

  It was true that she’d gained weight in the last couple of years. It was also true that she’d lost all but ten pounds of it. In the world of modeling, as in the worlds of, say, prizefighting and horse racing, ten pounds was a lot. Jockeys didn’t ride thoroughbreds in the Kentucky Derby if they weighed much more than 115 pounds, and Amber damn sure wouldn’t find herself walking anyone’s runway if her fat ass couldn’t zip into the clothes.

  But still.

  Amber was thirty years old. She was 5’10” tall. Weighed 124 pounds. Wore a size four or six. And was, as far as her agent and number one advocate was concerned, unemployable as a model.

  “That’s bullshit,” she said without thinking.

  “I know, doll. But that’s where we are. What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know. Give me a minute,” Amber said, taking a healthy sip of her rosé when the server dropped it off for her. “My head is spinning.”

  So…What were her options here?

  Option 1: lose that final ten pounds and get back in the game.

  In theory, it shouldn’t be that hard. In reality? She probably didn’t have the stomach for it. She’d already given up drinking (except on rare occasions like tonight), sugar, carbs, meat, pork and most dairy as well as added multiple Pilates and running sessions each week. Unless she also planned to add a daily marathon and give up water and air, it wasn’t looking good for her.

  So that was a negative on Option 1.

  Option 2: eat her way up to plus-sized modeling.

  This option had some merit. She wasn’t going to lie. As someone who’d denied herself most of the culinary treats that made life worth living, she’d have no problem putting her heart into this one. She could eat all the cupcakes and macarons she made without giving them away to other people. She could eat cheese and nuts again when she went to cocktail parties. She could drink all the mezcal and rosé she wanted.

  The idea made her heart sing.

  On the other hand, she’d worked a good chunk of her ass off getting back down to her fighting weight. And she wasn’t sure how much weight she’d need to gain to get up to a size twelve, minimum, but that wasn’t something she felt comfortable doing to her body.

  Option 3: pull a John Mayer and wait for the world to change. It could happen, right? Curvy models were turning up all the time now in TV ads and catalogs. Maybe if she doubled or tripled up on her casting calls, she’d find her sweet spot with advertisers willing to take a chance with her.

  A workable option, but the idea made her stomach churn.

  As someone who’d hated every second of every casting call she’d ever attended, the idea held as much allure as a peanut butter and squid sandwich on rye. She’d had enough of being judged by her appearance and then passed over for someone else. She’d had enough of being told that her eyes were too close together or too far apart. Or that her nose was too pointy or too perky, or her shoulders too square or her neck too long.

  As a complete human being, she was sick and tired of being judged on physical attributes over which she had zero control. And for what? It wasn’t like she enjoyed modeling. It wasn’t like she’d ever broken out and landed a Victoria’s Secret runway or a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. She did pretty well, but pretty well in a city as expensive as Manhattan wasn’t all that great. Soon she’d be in Journey’s End, where the cost of living was cheaper, but still. She doubted the change in geography would do her much good. It wasn’t like she had some game-changing casting call, contract or endorsement on her horizon.

  And now she needed to double down on the whole excruciating rat race to change her fate? Continue living an austere existence that contained about a fourth of the sensory pleasures that everyone else got to enjoy?

  Well, news flash. She wasn’t doing that. No way was she subjecting herself to more of this career’s mind-twisting bullshit.

  That left only Option 4:

  “Fuck modeling,” she told Sheila.

  “What?”

  Yeah, Amber had surprised herself with that one. Even though she felt a sudden soaring euphoria, she hesitated and told herself to slow down before she torpedoed a perfectly decent career. She had some savings from back when the good times had rolled a little harder, true, and she did have a few more shoots already booked, but the one thing she didn’t have was a money tree growing out back.

  Money and jobs didn’t grow on trees and she had adult responsibilities.

  Think, girl, she told herself firmly. It’s not too late to take it back.

  But for once in her life, she didn’t want to think. She didn’t want to be a right-thing-doing good girl. She wanted to be free. Free to eat, drink and enjoy herself. For once.

  “That’s it for me, Sheila,” she said without regret. “I’m done modeling.”

  “You can’t just give up your entire career,” Sheila said, her voice pitching higher. “Take a few days to think—”

  “I don’t need to.” Honest to God, Amber felt her soul swell in that one unexpected moment when she decided to stick with her impulsive decision. She had no idea what she planned to do now. Only that she’d get it figured out when the time came. “And I’m leaving the agency. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I don’t want to keep you from your hungry clients. And that’s not me. Not anymore. Actually, I was never very hungry for modeling, was I?”

  “Amber,” Sheila said, aghast. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “I don’t know. But this is the right thing for me to do.”

  Amber had to wonder when in her life she’d ever felt this confident about anything. Certainly
not when she’d turned to modeling in the first place. Or when she’d spent so much time with her ex-boyfriend Edward, hoping he’d propose one day if she stuck around long enough. Certainly not when she up and decided to move back to Journey’s End, their mutual hometown and the place where Edward still lived, in the hopes of speeding up their eventual engagement.

  “My life is taking me in a different direction,” she added.

  “Amber, you’re going to regret this tomorrow,” Sheila said, sounding apoplectic now.

  Regrets?

  Amber knew about regrets, boy, didn’t she? She regretted not working harder in school and sinking so much of her adult life into a man who’d never loved her the way she deserved to be loved and a career that made her feel bad about herself. She regretted not getting in the driver’s seat of her life and steering in the direction that she wanted to go. Wherever that was. Most of all, she regretted not putting herself and her needs first.

  “No regrets.” No sooner were the words out of her mouth when Sean strode around the corner and into view outside the window. She felt a wild swoop of relief and then a wilder swoop of anticipation. His appearance at that moment felt auspicious and full of promise, insane as that seemed. “I’m done with regrets. Gotta go.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll call you next week,” Amber said, hanging up in her eagerness to see what Sean would do.

  He hurried inside to the hostess stand and checked his watch before scanning the room, his keen interest in all the surrounding faces a perfect representation of Amber’s rising excitement. The hostess gave him an appreciative once-over as she greeted him. He spared her a quick glance before resuming his search of the tables.

  Then he saw Amber sitting at her booth. A joyous smile exploded across his face before he seemed to catch himself showing too much emotion and rein it in.

  But Amber had seen all she needed to see and the damage had already been done.

  They liked each other, she and Sean. They liked each other a lot.

  She stood. He crossed the room, his smile slowly fading, unwinding his scarf and pulling off his knit cap to reveal his black hair with a bit of a wave to it as he went.

  “Hey,” he said when he arrived. “You came.”

  “So did you,” she said, blushing furiously.

  “My showing up was never in doubt.”

  “Neither was mine.”

  Sean went very still as they watched each other, his rising color concentrating in two bright patches above his sharp cheekbones. He took her in from head to toe, his avid gaze touching on her hair, which was now sans woolly hat, her eyes, her mouth and her plush black cashmere sweater that scooped low in the front.

  She also did her share of staring, to be honest. Hard not to notice the sparkle in those long-lashed, heavy-browed brown eyes of his, or his skin of purest milk chocolate, or the lush curve of his lips. Despite his harsh bone structure, he had an air of openness that made her think that maybe what you saw was what you got with him.

  “I’m thinking of calling you Sweetness again,” he said, his voice mellow and husky over Frank Sinatra’s dulcet tones in the background. “Maybe giving you another hug and kiss. How would that go?”

  She nodded gravely.

  “Hard to say. Why don’t you try something different this time?”

  He eased closer and brought his scent of leather and something spicy with him, his attention dropping to her mouth again.

  “Like what?” he murmured.

  “Maybe kissing me on the lips.”

  He didn’t smile, but a sudden intensity warmed his expression and lit his eyes.

  “If you think that’s best,” he said, already reaching for her.

  Her hand came up to cup the hard plane of his cheek. His arm wound around her waist. No hesitation on either side. And it felt like the most natural thing in the world to tip her head, let her heavy lids close and wait for the gentle but insistent brush of his lips. Once. Twice. Sweetly lingering, with a gathering hum of masculine approval rumbling in his chest. His arm tightened around her, just for an instant, tensing with his leashed desire and hinting at his strength. Then he turned her loose and it was over, punctuated only by a final kiss on the cheek as he whispered in her ear.

  “I thought about you. All day.”

  He pulled back and watched her with eyes blazing with heat and desire, as eager to hear her response as she was to give it:

  “I thought about you.”

  A beat passed. Maybe two. She registered the warmth and smoothness of his skin as she stroked his face again because she couldn’t help it. The tenderness of his mouth. The intensity of his focus. The vehemence of her reaction to him, from the tingling in her lips and the raspiness of her breath all the way down to the spiraling ache between her thighs. The fact that the two of them were on a runaway locomotive tonight and she had no desire to hop off or even slow it down.

  “What time are you taking the train home tonight?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said, those stunning brown eyes of his taking up her entire field of vision. His expression? Open. Honest. Helplessly vulnerable. “I thought I’d see where the night took us.”

  She nodded, gratified by this news.

  “Good.”

  Chapter Four

  They got settled at their table. Sean ordered a gin and tonic.

  “I could get used to that greeting,” he told her, his color high and his voice throaty.

  She tried to shoot him a severe look, but it was hard to get that cat back into the bag and harder still to get her thundering pulse back under control.

  “Don’t get complacent.”

  “Wouldn’t dare. So how did your meeting go?”

  “Yeah. About that.” She scrunched up her face and rubbed her forehead as the enormity of what she’d just done began to sink in. “I seem to have quit being a model.”

  “What?”

  “Right before you came in. My agent called to tell me I’m too fat for the shoots I used to do and too thin to be a plus-sized model. So I decided not to be a model,” she concluded, toasting him and taking a healthy sip of her wine.

  “Did you just say you’re too fat to be a model?” he said, looking stunned. “With a body like that? What kind of sick world are we living in?”

  “One where designers like their models to be as thin as clothes hangers.”

  He snorted.

  “If it’s any consolation, I wouldn’t change a damn thing about you. At all.”

  Her belly did that flittering thing it was so fond of doing in his presence. “Wonderful. Are you hiring?”

  “Sorry. I can’t even get my own self employed.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around,” she said darkly.

  “So what’s your plan now?” He smiled up at the server as she delivered his drink, engendering a starry-eyed near swoon from the woman.

  “No freaking idea. I just hope I figure it out before I run through my savings.” She flashed him a winning smile. “You’re not in the market for a sugar baby, are you?”

  “For you? In that black dress you put on for me?” Low whistle. “I’ll scrape together some funding.”

  “This old thing?” She ran a hand down the sleeve of her knit dress. “I always dress for dinner. And this is one of the few things still left my apartment. It was either this or a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie.”

  “That works for me.” The smoldering heat in his appreciative gaze threatened to melt the dress off of her body. “You shouldn’t have been so hard on the peacock this morning. He was wearing Tom Ford and a Rolex. He could’ve set you up in style.”

  “You know Tom Ford?” she asked, her mind catapulting back to all the times Edward had given her a blank look when she mentioned one of her favorite designers.

  He looked offended. “Who doesn’t?”

  Edward, she wanted to say, but decided not to contaminate her lovely date with the mention of her ex’s name.

 
“Lots of folks. And if I hooked up with the peacock, I’d have to listen to him talk about himself all day every day, wouldn’t I?”

  “Probably,” he said as they laughed together for a delicious minute. “So you’re no longer a model. Thereby dashing all my hopes of finding a sugar mama. I’ve been misled.”

  She shrugged and raised a brow before sipping her rosé.

  “Now’s your moment to get an emergency phone call and bail on me.”

  He looked incredulous. “After that kiss? Not a chance. So how do you feel about your sudden career change?”

  “Honestly? I feel amazing. Like my life was on the wrong track and I made a necessary correction.”

  “For real?”

  “For real. Maybe that mezcal shot I had before you got here was a mistake, but I feel like I did the right thing. My agent warned me that I would regret it tomorrow, but I don’t think so. I’m tired of regretting other stuff.”

  He cocked his head. “Like what?”

  “All the calorie counting, exercising and general obsessing about a career that made me feel anxious and dinged my self-esteem every single day.” She hesitated, but the mezcal had evidently loosened her tongue quite a bit. “And I got out of a long-term relationship a few months ago. I regret sticking around so long and waiting for that to work out.”

  “Long-term relationship? The one you mentioned earlier?” Sean gave it a valiant effort as he sipped his drink, but his unconcerned expression needed some work. “Where’s that stand, by the way?”

  “Going in on the personal questions, are you?”

  “Yeah, I surprised myself on that one,” he said with a rueful smile at himself. “And you didn’t answer my question.”

  “It’s over. As I just said.”

  “And how do you feel about that?”

  The true answer was that she felt devastated, worthless and invisible, but she wasn’t about to go there on her first date with this intriguing new man. She might well be a romantic loser, but Sean didn’t know that.