“I know. I’ll take it off before it’s time to shoot.”
“You’re wearing your keys on your head?” Emma asked him, stepping forward as the handler deemed her fully painted. “You look really silly.”
She was walking like Frankenstein, wet arms out in front of her, knees locked, her face shiny and very, very green. Some of the paint had strayed into her hair so that she looked like she’d been caught in an angry game of paintball and lost. Her nipples could have passed for a couple of undersize Brussels sprouts given their color, and she had scratched her nose, so the flesh peeked through the paint. Just for the record, he wasn’t the only one looking silly.
“If you call me a silly goose I’m going to make fun of you. Just a warning,” Kyle said.
She stuck her tongue out at him, a pink moist thrust through her green lips. It shouldn’t have been sexy, yet somehow it was. He couldn’t help but imagine that tongue on various parts of his body, sliding along, flickering over his flesh to torture him.
Kyle shifted uncomfortably. He needed to get away from her before the story here became him pushing her against the nearest wall and entwining his green body with hers in some sort of alien porno.
Fortunately, he was saved from potentially enormous embarrassment by a man speaking into a microphone. “All participants, you need to start moving into the warehouse where volunteers will show you to your spots.”
So they started shuffling forward, dozens of people in shades of green ranging from moss to emerald, and others in variations of brown. Emma hesitated. Kyle leaned forward and murmured to her, wanting to reassure and relax her. “Has anyone ever told you that you look good in green?”
Emma snorted. “No. It’s not on my color wheel.”
“Maybe they never saw you in head-to-toe green. Because it’s working on you right now.”
“Uh-huh.”
When she was directed to a spot against the wall of the warehouse with a cracked window above her head, Kyle said, “Work it, girl. Make love to the camera.”
Her lips twitched, like she was actually considering laughing. He took it as a good sign.
“Hat off!” A burly woman with a do-rag on her head and a clipboard in her hand snarled at him.
Kyle stripped off his hat, dumped his keys into it and thrust it behind his back as he moved into position beside Emma. He let the hat drop to the ground, his keys making a reassuring clinking sound. They had a way out of this place, that’s all he cared about. After the shoot he planned to interview some participants, but for the most part, he had all the necessary facts from the press release the artist’s team had released to the Journal. An opinion column was his favorite kind.
“How are you doing?” he asked Emma.
Her hip was bumping into his. “I don’t feel like art. I feel like a big naked emerald idiot. Do you even see the photographer?”
“No.” All he saw was a bunch of green butt cheeks as the people in front of them were instructed to lie on the floor on their stomachs. “I’m glad we get to stand. This building is probably radioactive. I don’t want my junk touching the ground even wearing briefs.” He shifted uncomfortably at the thought. “I would like kids one day.”
What had once been a thriving steel mill was now a crumbling warehouse with broken windows, the concrete beneath their feet reduced to a siltlike dust. Now that he thought about it, he wasn’t crazy about being barefoot. There was no way in hell he would lie down on the floor and breathe that rubble in.
“I thought they made steel here before it closed. How dangerous could that be?”
Kyle pointed to the sign hanging at an awkward angle. “That dangerous.”
It said Days Without An Accident: 3.
“Oh. Well, all the machinery is gone. And they said the shoot wouldn’t run that long.”
Great. Now she was reassuring him. He was supposed to be the man here, easing her nervousness about her nudity. Instead she was snaking her hand over and slipping it into his and squeezing. Wait. Nothing wrong with that.
Kyle squeezed back.
“I’m sure your virility is intact,” she told him.
There was no doubt about that. Kyle let his thigh brush hers, and their shoulders bumped. He glanced over at her. “Promise?”
She gave a short laugh before snapping her lips shut. “Yes.”
“You didn’t even look.” He was playing in dangerous territory here, but he was a gambling man. He would bet she wasn’t going to slap him in the middle of the photo shoot.
Emma turned to him, her tongue moistening her lips nervously. “Kyle...what are you doing?”
“Flirting with you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re attractive. Which I’ve always known, but today has given me a whole new appreciation for that fact.”
“You are not attracted to me.”
“Um, my Jolly Green Giant says otherwise.” He didn’t mean to brag, but anyone looking below his waist would see his erection. There was no disguising it, boxer briefs or not.
“Your...” Her eyes dropped. And widened. “Oh. Oh.”
He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Emma speechless before. It was satisfying, to say the least.
She was still staring at his jock.
All the attention had it jumping a little. Which made her jerk away like she’d been stung by a bee.
Kyle smiled. He loved his job.
3
EMMA KNEW SHE was staring at the tent Kyle’s penis was making. Jolly Green Giant, indeed.
She was holding his hand. And she had the overwhelming urge to tangle her body up with his on a big bed. Neither of those things made sense.
She also knew she was naked except for a tiny pair of underwear, so she couldn’t explain her odd reaction to him other than the obvious—she was trained to equate nudity with sexy times. That was the only explanation for why her nipples were suddenly as hard as the steel that had once been shipped in and out of this warehouse. Why her insides were molten and her fingers itched to reach out and give his erection a hard squeeze to see his reaction.
It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Kyle himself.
Which she knew was a total lie. She’d been attracted to him since the day she’d met him two years ago, when he had been led around the office by Claire and introduced to the drooling staff. Even the men liked him—they saw Kyle as a man’s man, a golf buddy.
But none of them were standing here covered in body paint, bare leg squashed against his, staring at his erection.
“Emma.” His voice was tight, pained.
She dragged her eyes off his briefs and forced them upward. “Yes?” she asked breathlessly.
“Do you think—”
But whatever he’d been about to say was drowned out by the sound of the man with the megaphone, yelling for their attention.
“Okay, I need everyone to stand still in the positions you’ve been given. Ladies along the back wall, I need your arms up to form the letter “I” in front of your chest, got it?”
“That’s you,” Kyle murmured.
Emma moved her arms automatically,