“I had to try,” she said. With another grin and a flip of her hand, she rushed out again.
Adam rubbed the back of his neck, thinking about the years he’d known Nicole. He’d watched her go from being hopeful about falling in love to being convinced it could never happen for her. Now she’d come full circle, deeply in love and full of plans for a future with Jordan.
He was glad she was happy.
He’d like to find that kind of happiness himself again, but it wasn’t easy. He’d been engaged for a brief, wonderful time to a woman he’d met while still at UCLA and wouldn’t settle for second best.
Isabelle had charged at life with enthusiasm and laughter, unconcerned by his growing success as a model. He’d always known where he was with her—first when they were just friends, and later when they were falling in love and deciding to get married. But a brain aneurism had changed everything in the blink of an eye.
Renewed grief went through Adam at the memory. One minute Isabelle had been there, the next she was gone.
It had taken a long time to be ready for another serious relationship, and then the frequent travel and the less-than-kind scrutiny of the press had played havoc with his dating life—lots of first and second dates, few beyond that. Maybe it would be different now. He’d like to find someone confident and outgoing, who shared his interests and could be a real partner.
Not like his parents.
Adam sighed, knowing he was being unfair. His parents had a good marriage, but it had always seemed as if his mother’s needs came second, at least until her heart problems developed. As for shared interests? Hardly. Dad was interested in construction, period. Mom was a science fiction and fantasy buff. She loved to write and had wanted to earn a place among authors like Arthur C. Clarke and J.R.R. Tolkien. Instead she’d slogged away at a dull teleservice job because it was secure and helped earn money for her children’s educations.
Adam got up and moved restlessly around his office, pausing to look out the window at the trees that softened his view of the street.
He felt bad that his parents hadn’t pursued their own dreams instead of ones for their children. It wasn’t just his mother—his father’s plan to become a contractor had been deemed too great a risk to the family’s financial security, so Dermott had done construction for someone else and taken jobs as a handyman in his spare hours.
Just then Adam’s personal line rang, breaking into his musings. The caller ID displayed his sister’s number.
“Hey, Sophie.” He could hear his nephew and niece in the background, shrieking and giggling. Bobby and Lila were great, but like most kids they could be loud. “What’s up?”
“The twins had friends over this weekend and now I want to speak with someone closer to my own age.”
He grinned. “How bad was it?”
“We had a serious outbreak of video games, Star Wars battles and The Lone Ranger.”
“The Lone Ranger?”
“I made the mistake of bringing out my classic TV DVDs and the next thing I knew they were all running around with pretend six-shooters, trying to catch pretend bank robbers and cattle rustlers. Mom retreated to my bedroom along with the cat.”
Adam sat back in his chair. He was proud of his kid sister for making a tough situation work. She’d gotten pregnant at seventeen and married her boyfriend, only to have him leave before the twins were born.
Now Sophie had a brisk mail-order business selling New Mexico–themed Christmas ornaments and decorations she made herself. That way she’d avoided childcare costs for the twins—which would have outstripped any income from a minimum-wage job—and was still able to make a decent living using her artistic talents. To Adam’s frustration, she’d even insisted on repaying the checks he’d sent after her brief marriage fell apart, though they’d been a gift.
“How is Mom adjusting to them both being retired?” he asked.
“Pretty good. But I should warn you, I think the folks are planning a trip to Seattle this summer to see you.”
Gripping the phone, Adam counted to ten. “Any special reason? I was home two months ago and expect to come for Christmas as usual.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Surely they don’t think I’m going to change my mind about becoming a lawyer. They must know it isn’t in the cards.” Even when he and his friends were buying Moonlight Ventures, his father had suggested it wasn’t too late for graduate school, unable to resist trying to resurrect the remnants of his old ambition.
“I think they’re getting resigned to your new career, especially since it means you won’t be gazing back at them from magazine covers in the grocery checkout line. You know how stuffy Dad can be. Seeing you in those swimsuit editions used to really get him going.”
Adam rubbed the back of his neck. He was sorry it bothered his parents that he didn’t have the career they’d chosen for him, but he had the right to live as he saw fit. Nevertheless, maybe the agency’s success would alleviate their vague sense of failure since “our son is a businessman” must sound more respectable to them. While he didn’t crave their approval, he wanted them to be happy.
“But get this,” Sophie added, “remember when Dad cut his hand and Lila kept helping change the bandage?”
“Yeah.”
“Now he thinks she should become a doctor.”
Adam instinctively tensed. “But she’s only eight years old.” He understood where his worry came from. It had taken him long enough to shake off family expectations.
“I know.” A crash reverberated through the phone and she sighed. “Sorry, I’d better go see what happened.”
“Tell the little terrors ‘hi’ for me.”
They said goodbye and Adam started going through the seemingly bottomless stack of photographs and videos received each day at Moonlight Ventures. Few of the submissions possessed the special something they wanted as a signature aspect of the agency, but occasionally they found someone in the pile who stood out.
A couple of the pictures were interesting and he put them aside to ask Nicole’s opinion. It might have been useful to have his other partners take a look as well, but it wasn’t practical. Rachel wouldn’t be on board for several weeks, and Logan still had a few months left on his photography contracts. They didn’t have time to agree on every decision.
At length, Adam turned to the picture of the prospective client he was meeting with at 1:00 p.m. Her aunt would be there as well. Tiffany Bryant was thirteen, with an engaging smile and energy that seemed to leap out of her photograph.
Standing, he decided to go for a walk to clear his head. He had been thinking a lot about the past, probably because he’d made another big change in his life. It wasn’t that he had to work any longer—with his savings and investments he could have a life of leisure, doing whatever suited his fancy. That might be fine for some people, but he wanted to accomplish something, not just play. A talent agency had seemed the right place to use his experience and find a new way to succeed.
* * *
CASSIE BRYANT DROVE toward the Moonlight Ventures talent agency with her niece and nephew, still filled with doubts. She wasn’t convinced that a modeling career was the right thing for her niece, but it also didn’t seem fair to discourage Tiffany’s dreams.
Hopefully this agency wasn’t like the one where a friend of hers had first gone. They’d required Phoebe to take expensive modeling and acting classes conducted by the agency and then charged costly fees to create a formal portfolio. But they never called her for a job and she’d learned they made