Jack sat, glowering at all three of them. “Apparently I am outnumbered.”
“Outnumbered, outclassed, outwitted and outmaneuvered.” Bonnie rested her elbows on the table and her head on laced fingers. “Now, Melissa. First of all, let us reassure you about Jack.”
“Yes. We must.” Angela put a paper plate of divine-looking muffins on the table. “He might look and act like a complete creep—”
“Hey.”
“—but he’s a total sweetheart.”
“And a very talented photographer,” Bonnie added.
“I promise you are completely safe with him.” Angela sat down and beamed at Jack.
“Absolutely.” Bonnie nodded vigorously. She and Angela exchanged glances. Their confidence slipped. “Well … pretty safe.”
“Yeah …” Angela bit her lip. “I’d say more or less safe.”
“If you have people around.”
“Hired to protect you.”
“Who are armed.”
Jack brought his hand down on the table, enough to make the muffins jump. His lips twitched. “Stop. Now. You are not helping.”
“Of course we’re helping.” Angela turned to Bonnie in concern. “Aren’t we?”
“Well …” Bonnie looked troubled. “Now that I think about it, we might not be. Melissa?”
“You are both helping. A lot.” Melissa nodded her most gracious thanks. “It was pretty frightening seeing those pictures, but now, hearing from both of you that Jack is probably a sociopath … well, I feel a lot better.”
Angela and Bonnie burst out laughing. Jack put his head in his hands and groaned. Melissa gave in and cracked up with the women, and for a few seconds, felt a sweet glow of belonging. Which was silly, since she didn’t.
“All righty, then.” Angela got up and pushed in her chair, smiling fondly at Jack. “Our work is done.”
“We’re outta here.” Bonnie grabbed a blueberry muffin and kissed the top of Jack’s head. “You’ll do fine, Jack. Just be yourself. Or maybe … hmm. No, actually, if I were you I’d be someone else. Anyone, really.”
“Yeah, thanks a hell of a lot. Both of you.”
The women walked off giggling, Bonnie to her shop, Angela into the bakery kitchen, leaving silence and intimacy behind them.
Melissa clasped her hand around her mug so she wouldn’t show her nervousness. “They are hilarious.”
“Uh-huh.” Jack didn’t bother hiding his amusement. “And they knew exactly what they were doing.”
“Trying to reassure me?”
“Did it work?”
Melissa shrugged. “Yes. I guess. Some.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Melissa.”
She moved uneasily. Something about Jack’s deep voice saying her name was way more intimate than it should be, and she felt her guard go up again.
“How long have you known them?” Stupid question, but she needed words to break the tension.
“Five of us bought the building together. All graduates of UW Seattle, a few years ago. We get along, which is good, because launching businesses is not a job for sissies.” He leaned back in the chair. “What do you do?”
Melissa jerked back to the conversation, having been calculating his age. Twenty-six? With his smooth confidence, she would have put him a few years older. “I’m a human-resources specialist at the corporate headquarters of Au Bon Repas, the kitchen-supply store. We do business all over the world.”
“Oh, yeah, Angela’s always drooling over your catalogs. You like what you do?”
“It’s a good place to work, supportive and with a proactive corporate culture. Happy employees make our department’s job easier. And I have a great boss.” For some reason, though the phrases tumbled out in the usual way, they sounded stilted and overblown.
“Nice.” He stretched his long legs to one side, hands folded across his tight abdomen. Her job recitation must have hit him as funny because he was smiling. Or maybe he was just thinking about how gorgeous he must look. She wished she could be totally immune. “What do you do for fun?”
Urgh. Melissa hated that question. It sounded vaguely suggestive, as if guys were hoping she’d say, I like to get drunk, rip off my clothes and give blow jobs to strangers. Wanna go?
“I’m pretty busy. I take a lot of classes. Dance and exercise and crafts classes, plus some courses at the university. I think if you’re not learning, improving and trying new things, you might as well be six feet under.” Melissa snapped her mouth shut. Again, she sounded robotic and puffed-up.
He leaned across the table toward her. Melissa held herself still, though her protective instinct told her to pull back. This close she could see the slight stubble around his jaw, the faint lines in his lips. She could tell herself he was an obvious player, bad news, not her type, anything she could think of, but the facts were simple: he was gorgeous and her body wanted to check his out. “I have something new you can try, Melissa.”
Oh, lord. It took two attempts before she found her voice, and even then she only managed a tinge of cynicism. “Oh, really.”
Jack folded his hands on the table, teasing charmer gone, an intensity in his gaze that sounded a loud you-could-be-in-trouble-here alarm. Usually it took Melissa time to overcome her reserve with men. Half an hour after meeting this guy she wanted to grab him and find out what his skin felt like. His hair. His mouth—
Melissa, honey, get yourself under control. Her boss, Barbara, would know what to say to calm her down. Melissa could practically hear her voice. You shouldn’t need a man to feel good about yourself. You shouldn’t need a man at all.
Exactly. Melissa hadn’t needed one since she’d started the process of finding herself, soon after graduation, and she didn’t need one now.
“I saw you for the first time in April, practicing your poses after class. Immediately I knew I had to photograph you.”
“Why?”
“One, because you’re beautiful.” He spoke with a low, slightly husky voice, a bedroom voice, except that his expression was distant, as if he were imagining her as part of his art, which effectively negated any feeling of seduction. Perversely, that made his words even more seductive, and Melissa finally lost the fight with her blush machine. “But also, because your body looks like it’s part of nature when you’re posing. You have an inner light, an incredible serenity, as if nothing could rattle you.”
Spell broken. Melissa barely managed to stifle a snort. Serenity? Oh, my God. If they heard him say that, her doctor and everyone she knew would never stop laughing. “Jack, I don’t think you quite have—”
“I was right.” He blinked and resumed his focus on her. “My camera loves you. I captured everything about you that had already captured me.”
“And you were planning to take more shots of me.”
“Then you disappeared, but yes.” He raised an eyebrow. “Here comes my sales pitch, you ready?”
Melissa glanced at her watch, buying time to think. Sales pitch. She’d been thrown by meeting Jack and seeing those pictures. She was still struggling with her attraction to him. Whatever he was going to ask from her now, she was not going to be able to