Stuffing the pictures back into a large portfolio and roughly taking Rana by the arm, Susan had marched out of the office. In the elevator, she marked that agent’s name off her long list. “Don’t worry, Rana. Everyone in New York can’t be that blindly stupid. Please stand up straight. And next time will you please try smiling a little more?”
“I’m slouching because I’m weak with hunger, Mother. I had one slice of melba toast and a half a grapefruit for breakfast. We’ve walked miles. My feet hurt. Can’t we stop somewhere, sit down, and eat?”
“Just a few more interviews,” Susan said absently as she scanned the remaining names on her list.
“But I’m tired.”
Susan ushered Rana Out of the elevator when it reached the lobby floor. “You truly are selfish and self-centered, Rana. I got you out of that unfortunate marriage. I sold my home to get the money to bring you to New York. I’m sacrificing my own life for your career. And this is the thanks I get. All you do is whine.”
Rana didn’t say what she was thinking, that the modeling career had been her mother’s idea, not her own, that it had been Susan’s desire to sell their house in Des Moines and move to New York, and that the marriage had been unfortunate because of Susan’s constant meddling.
“Our next appointment is in fifteen minutes. If you stop dawdling, we’ll be there five minutes early. That’ll give you time to repair your makeup. Please remember to smile. You never know when a smile or a sexy glance will pay off. One of these agents is bound to see your potential.”
The agent who finally did was Morey Fletcher. His office wasn’t at a prestigious address. He was overweight, gruff, disheveled, balding. His name was far down on Susan’s list. But he looked past the mother and saw the nineteen- year-old girl hovering in the background. His stomach did somersaults, and it wasn’t because of the corned-beef sandwich he had had sent up from the deli downstairs. If a jaded professional like himself could be moved by that face and those eyes, he reasoned that John Q. Public would be too.
“Sit down, Miss Ramsey.” He offered a chair to the girl first. Surprised, she collapsed in it and immediately slipped off her shoes. He smiled, and she smiled back.
Within two days a contract had been drawn up, repeatedly examined by Susan, and eventually signed. That was the beginning.
Just thinking about the months that followed made Rana weary. Her shoulders slumped. Her head dropped forward and her hair swung down to hide the classic cheekbones again.
She pulled on a ragged T-shirt to sleep in and padded to the window. If she listened closely she could hear the incessant waves of the Gulf of Mexico rolling toward the shore a few blocks away. Cicadas and crickets made their shrill racket in the thick branches of the trees. The novelty of these sounds still intrigued her. They were so different from the city sounds that had filtered up to the thirty- second-story window of her Upper East Side apartment. She much preferred this quaintly furnished bedroom to the stark modernity of her professionally decorated apartment in New York. The peacefulness of it was something she would always treasure.
Except that tonight, she wasn’t so peaceful.
She discovered her restlessness as soon as she slipped between the sheets. Her mind kept returning to the man who now lived across the hall from her. He so fit the stereotype of the macho man that he was laughable. Strange, though, she mused, she didn’t feel like laughing.
She was relieved on one account-he hadn’t recognized her. Of course his reading material probably ran more toward Sports Illustrated than it did to Vogue. Miss Ramsey hardly looked like the model in the cosmetics commercials on television. And no one would expect the elusive Rana to turn up in a boardinghouse in Galveston, Texas.
He had his nerve, kissing her hand that way. He’d done it out of sheer spite. How was she going to stand living under the same roof with a man who had such an inflated ego?
She would ignore him, she decided.
But she was already listening for his tread on the stairs and wondering what he was doing. Aggravated with herself, she punched her pillow and erased Trent Gamblin from her thoughts. But as she drifted to sleep, she was thinking about his smile and how attractively it rearranged his entire face.
And on the back of her hand lingered the burning sensation left by his lips.
Two
She almost stepped on him when she pulled open the door to her apartment late the next morning. He was stretched out on the floor of the hallway doing push-ups.
“Oh!” She flattened her hand against her leaping heart.
He bounced up. “Good morning.”
Her first impulse was to scurry back into the safety of her apartment and slam the door, shielding herself from the temptation to feast her eyes on his nakedness.
For all practical purposes he was naked. Only a pair of brief nylon running shorts stood between him and indecency. They, however, tested the perimeters of what could be considered decent. The elastic waistband rode well below his waist… well below his navel, in fact. Soaked with perspiration, the trunks clung to his skin as though they had been plastered to his body.
As to the size and shape of… everything… he now had no secrets from her. He was ample and perfect.
Rana felt her throat closing after the hasty glance downward her eyes took, despite her instructions for them to stay well above his waist.
“Good morning,” she said with a wheeze. She told herself to look anywhere but at him.
His running shoes and a damp, limp pair of athletic socks had been piled in the doorway of his apartment. Through the open door, she could see that the room was a mess. Clothing as yet unpacked spilled out of suitcases. Boxes were stacked on top of each other.
“You’ve been exercising?” she asked for lack of anything else to say.
“Yeah, running on the beach. It was great.”
He was sweaty. Quarts of liquid must have poured out of that impressive masculine body. Droplets of perspiration beaded on his skin and collected strands of dark, curly chest hair into sodden clumps. It trickled through a silky strip of ebony hair that halved his midriff and arrowed down toward his navel. He raised his forearm to wipe the moisture off his brow. Looking into the shadowy hollow of his armpit was like committing an intimate act with him. Rana averted her eyes guiltily.
“Is your… Does your shoulder… I mean, are pushups good for your shoulder?” Her own palms were perspiring. She tried as unobtrusively as possible to blot them against her baggy gray gabardine pants.
“They don’t hurt it. Different muscles.”
“I see.”
“You do?”
“Well, I mean, push-ups are for arms and… and chest, aren’t they?”
“Yeah,” he said. “The pecs. Do you ever work out?”
“Not my… my… uh, pecs.” His mouth fashioned a wide grin. “I jog sometimes,” she rushed to say.
“Why don’t you jog with me tomorrow?”
“I don’t think so,” she said, edging around him. “Well, ‘bye.”
“Pardon me for using the hallway, but I didn’t have room in my apartment. I haven’t unpacked yet.”
“I was on my way down to the kitchen. Excuse me.” When she was beside him, he said, “Miss Ramsey?”
“Hm?” Politely, albeit unwisely, she turned to face him. They were now close enough for her to catch the tangy, salty, sea-scented fragrance he had carried in from the beach. It wasn’t at all unpleasant.
“Do you know how push-ups should really be done?”
“I’ve never… no, I don’t.”