Gibson's Girl

“I won’t be responsible for you!” About the Author Books by Anne McAllister Title Page Dedication CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN Copyright

“I won’t be responsible for you!”

Chloe looked at him, startled. “Of course not!”

“I won’t fight your battles for you or protect your innocence or mollycoddle you in any way!”

“I never asked—”

Gib’s finger stabbed the air, making his point. “I just want it clear. If you stay, you’re on your own!”

Chloe stood her ground. She even looked mutinous. He thought she might bite his finger.

“Yes, certainly!” she agreed. As he turned away, she asked almost belligerently, “Is there anything else?”

He whirled back. “Yes! You’ll damned well keep your clothes on!”

ANNE McALLISTER was born in California. She spent long lazy summers daydreaming on local beaches and studying surfers, swimmers and volleyball players in an effort to find the perfect hero. She finally did—not on the beach, but in a university library where she was working. She, her husband and their four children have since moved to the Midwest. She taught, copyedited, capped deodorant bottles and ghostwrote sermons before turning to her first love, writing romance fiction.

RITA award-winning author Anne McAllister

writes fast, funny and emotional romances.

You’ll be hooked till the very last page!

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Gibson’s Girl

Anne McAllister

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Samantha Bell and Tessa Shapcott

—wise and supportive editors both—

Gib and Chloe (and I) thank you

CHAPTER ONE

THERE were six naked women in Gibson Walker’s line of sight. They were slender, lissome women with long legs, smooth thighs, and pert breasts.

And all he could think was, Why in hell weren’t there seven?

He glanced at his watch, tapped his foot, ground his teeth.

“Where is she?” he muttered for the fiftieth time in the past half hour.

How was he supposed to shoot the photos for the brand-new fragrance Seven! if he only had six naked women?

“Can’t we start?” one of the naked women whined.

“I’m cold,” bleated another, hugging herself.

“I’m hot!” purred a third, batting her lashes at Gibson in an all too obvious attempt to make him hot, too.

But any temperature elevation in his body, Gibson knew, would have more to do with the heat of his growing irritability than with any woman’s seductive wiggle. To make that fact clear he glared at her. She immediately edged behind a light reflector to avoid his gaze.

“Gibson, my nose is shiny,” one of them complained now, studying herself in the mirror, tipping her head this way and that and making rabbit faces.

They won’t be looking at your nose, sweetheart, Gibson wanted to tell her. But he knew better. This was Art—in the eyes of marketing, at least. So all he did was say to the makeup girl, “Judi, powder her nose.”

Judi powdered the girl’s nose. She powdered someone else’s cheeks. Sierra, the hair stylist, fiddled for the thousandth time with everybody’s hair.

Gibson tapped his toes, drummed his fingers, yelled at Edith, the studio manager, to find out who the hell she was, this missing female.

Whose fault she was, he meant.

Given a choice Gib always picked his own models—ones he knew, ones he trusted to be reliable, professional, on time.

But he hadn’t picked any of these. The client had.

“We want a little of everything,” the ad rep had told him on the phone. “All beautiful, of course,” he’d added hastily, “but not all...you know, standard brand.”

Gibson had snorted at the time, but he knew what the rep meant.

Seven!, according to the ad-babble he’d been given, was supposed to appeal to Every-woman. Therefore Every-woman—albeit beautiful—was supposed to be in the ad. In other words, not cookie-cutter dark-haired, expressionless models with chiseled cheekbones and pouty lips.

“We’ll look through the head sheets and pick them,” the rep had promised. “Some tall, some short. Curly hair. Straight. A variety of ethnic types.” Like it was somehow bold and daring. “And we’ll send them over.”

Fine with him. Gibson didn’t care who was sent—as long as they could tell the time.

One of them obviously couldn’t.

He drummed his fingers on the desktop. He paced. He fumed. The girls fumed, too. They fluttered. The fluttering grew. Agitation was next. Then, who knew?

Gibson, who counted on setting a mood for a shoot, could feel the mood of this one turning grim.

And then, all of a sudden, he heard Edith say, “Yes, yes. He’s waiting for you. Go on right through. Go in.”

The door opened. Slowly. Warily.

As well it might, Gibson thought.

“About time,” he barked at the young woman who appeared in the doorway. “You were supposed to be here at one.”

She blinked round eyes so deep and dark a blue they were almost violet. Gib shook his head. The idiots in marketing strike again. They knew he was shooting in black-and-white. The eyes were wasted.

“M-my plane was late.”

“Plane?” They’d flown her in? Was she some hotshot West Coast model he’d never seen before? The latest L.A. superstar?

Gib’s brows drew down, and he studied her more closely, trying to see whatever it was they’d seen in her. He was the one, after all, who was supposed to be a connoisseur of women.

It was what he did—photograph women. Beautiful women. It was what he was famous for—the photographs—and the ability to recognize beauty and capture it so others could see it, too.

He looked closely now.

Miss Blue-Violet looked like a caricature of the 1950s version of “the all-American girl.” She was in her mid-twenties age-wise, he’d guess. Older than the average “flavor of the month” they usually came up with. She wasn’t especially tall, either. Average, he’d have said. Not average when it came to curves, though. He’d seen roads through Nebraska with more curves than the typical model. This one looked more like a real woman than that from what he guessed was camouflaged under her shirtwaist dress.

Who the hell wore a shirtwaist dress on a job like this? Who the hell wore a shirtwaist dress in New York City in this day and age? With her wavy blonde hair and full lips, she looked, for all the world, like a sort of discreet, demure, buttoned-down Marilyn Monroe.

And there was a contradiction in terms for you, he thought wryly.

Maybe that was what they saw in her—the potential to burst out, to become something more. Sprinkle on a little Seven! and a woman could turn from the seven virtues to the seven sins.

Not a bad idea. A speculative smile touched Gibson’s mouth. He could work with that.

“What’s your name?” he asked her.

“Chloe,” she said with a flutter of lashes designed to indicate bafflement, as if she thought he should have known.

Gibson’s brows lifted. Was she going to be one of those arrogant ones, then? One of those models who’d done two or three jobs, maybe got a cover somewhere, and expected that she was now a household word? Gib had no use for prima donnas, even if their planes were late.

“Well, Chloe,” he drawled, “you’re here now, so take off your clothes and let’s get this show on the road.”

The blue-violet eyes seemed almost to bug out of her head. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. She only gaped at him. Her cheeks actually seemed to be turning red.

“What’s the matter?” Gibson said, entirely unsympathetic. “Didn’t the nice people tell you what you’d have to do if you came here today?”

“They didn’t say...they didn’t say...that” Chloe gulped. She looked around wildly, blinking as her gaze went from one naked woman to the next.

Generally models who’d been around a while were entirely unselfconscious, wandering around without a stitch on. Every one had seen so many naked people that they were too blasé to care. But now, under Chloe’s stricken gaze, Gib could feel their self-consciousness rising. Next thing you knew they’d be grabbing for their robes.

Gib ground his teeth. Then he pasted a smile on his face. “Well, I guess you can leave,” he said in saccharine tones. He leveled a challenging gaze at her. “I guess you can just get back on that plane and fly home again.” He paused a beat. “Or you can do what you were hired for.”

Dead silence. She seemed almost to stop breathing. Then she made a quick gasp. Her tongue touched her upper lip. Gib could read indecision on her face. He almost thought he could read fleeting panic there, too.

Hell’s bells, what had possessed them to hire this one?

And then, with one last desperate gulp, she nodded. “Wh-where do I...ch-change?”

“I’ll show you.” Sierra, the purple-haired stylist, smiled encouragingly at her and beckoned to her with long, be-ringed fingers. “This way.”

With one last gulp and a sidelong glance in his direction, Chloe skittered after Sierra toward the row of changing rooms on the other side of the studio.

Gib could have sworn he heard her teeth chattering as she passed.

In the last twelve years, Gibson had photographed a lot of women.

His camera liked them. It traced their lines, their curves, their pouts, their smiles. It turned them into art. It made Gibson one of the most sought-after photographers in the business. From a professional standpoint he was pleased.

Personally he couldn’t have cared less.

He didn’t care about the women either. Gibson didn’t get involved with the women he photographed.

He’d been there, done that. And he’d learned his lesson.

As far as he was concerned, they were nothing more than light and shadow, curve and angle, rise and fall.

It was the geometry of the lens and the body he concentrated on. Nothing personal. They might as well have been old tires or autumn leaves, these naked women. They were objects. They were interchangeable, all of them. Had been for years.

Until Chloe came out of the dressing room that afternoon.

Chloe wasn’t just a curve or an angle, a light or a shadow. She was a person. Live. Breathing.

Trembling.

It drove him nuts.

“Okay. Let’s go,” he said, barely sparing her a glance, when she finally crept out of the changing room and slipped in behind the other models. “In a circle now. I need silhouettes. Arms over your heads. Reaching...that’s right... reaching.”

And seven women’s arms went over their heads. Seven women reached, stretched.

Six moved smoothly, their gestures flowing, their bodies curving.

The seventh trembled.

Gib lowered the camera. “Chloe,” he said. “Straighten up.”

She gave him a quick desperate glance. She nodded. She ran her tongue over her lips. She straightened up.

“Reach,” he commanded.

Chloe reached. Her hair bounced.

Her breasts did, too.

And Gib’s mouth went dry. His palms went damp. His body got hard. Like he was some damn teenager, for heaven’s sake!

He’d seen breasts before. Hundreds. Thousands. He’d probably seen more women’s breasts in the last twelve years than most men did in a lifetime.

But most of the breasts he’d seen didn’t—he ran his tongue over his lips—well, they didn’t...bounce.

The other thousands of breasts Gib had seen had been firm, perky, plastic almost. And there had never been very much of them. Not even a handful.

Chloe was rather more... voluptuous.

The shirtwaist gone, she was Marilyn unbound.

Gib shut his eyes and shoved the thought away. But the moment he opened them, his gaze, and the thought, immediately snapped back right to her.

“Reach,” he barked at her. And when she reached—and jiggled—he bit out, “I didn’t say lunge, sweetheart! I said, reach. Like you’re reaching for your lover.”

Her whole body blushed.

Gibson lowered the camera. He blinked. He shifted position, disbelieving, wanting to see her more clearly. He’d never seen a full body blush. He was amazed. Intrigued. Enchanted.

Well, no. Not enchanted. That was stretching things too far.

Gibson Walker was not enchanted by women. He hadn’t been enchanted by any woman since...

He squelched that thought.

“Stop shaking,” he commanded her. “Or I’ll have six lovely ladies and a blur.”

“S-sorry.” But she still shook. She didn’t stop.

Gib shook his head, then picked up the camera again. He shot. He moved. He directed.

“Swim,” he told them. “Languid, easy movements overhead. Like you’re going through water.”

They swam. Easy overhand strokes. They went up on tiptoe. They floated.

Chloe jiggled.

Gib ground his teeth.

He looked away, focused on another of the women. They moved and Chloe hove into view once more. He cleared his throat and tried to find a rhythm. “Let’s see those lips. Purse those lips. Kisses. I want kisses.”

And damned if Chloe didn’t look straight at him, face aflame, body blushing, lips pursed!

Gib blew out a harsh exclamation of air. “Not me, sweetheart!” he said in a slightly strangled tone. “I want profiles. Kiss your lover. You do have a lover, don’t you?”

Whoa. The flush was back—with a vengeance. Too bad the ad wasn’t going to be in color. That was some rosy glow.

Gib let out a pent-up breath. He wiped suddenly damp palms on the sides of his jeans, then ran his tongue over his lips. Focus, damn it, he told himself.

He was focusing. That was the problem.

Don’t focus on her!

He tried not to. He moved, he crouched. He willed himself to ignore the growing insistence in his body. He pointed the camera at all seven women. Unerringly it found Chloe.

He tried to remember all the ways he wanted them to move. His mind was a blank. Well, no, not really a blank. There were very definite curves on his mind. A very definite body.

A very sexy body.

A real body. Unlike the other six, Chloe seemed to respond to his direction with more than her muscles. She was unguarded, open. He said, “Lover,” and she blushed. He said, “Kiss,” and he saw longing on her face.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s it. Like that. More. Give me more, sweetheart.”

They all looked at him.

“Er, sweethearts,” he corrected. He smiled at them all. He looked at Chloe.

She trembled. She blushed. Her breasts jiggled.

Then he heard a commotion in the outer office. A “You can’t go in there!” followed by “Of course I can. I’m late!”

And the door burst open and Tasha, a top flight model he’d worked with lots of times, burst into the room.

“Ah, Gibson, I am zo zorry! Zee taxi! Zhe break down! Zee driver! He say I can’t leave without pay! I say, No pay! You don’t go where I mus’ go! No pay! Then he grab me! An’ I scream! I say, he kidnapping me! He say, I cheating him! Oh!” She shook a yard of flaming red hair. “Zhose police! Zhey never listen! You zhink zhey would listen to be-you-tif-ful girl, yes? No! Zhey listen to dumbest taxi driver!”

And while she delivered this entire monologue, Tasha was busily flinging off her clothes. First the skimpy halter top, then the minuscule bra. One foot came up and a sandal slipped off. The other followed. She unzipped her mini-skirt and wiggled it past mini-hips over mini-thighs down ski slope legs.

“I tell you, zhese police, zhey know from nozhing!” To punctuate her declaration, she peeled off her underpants and flung them in the air. Then she lifted her arms and beamed at Gibson.

“We begin now, yes? I am ready!”

In the silence that followed, Gibson was conscious of shutting his mouth.

He was conscious of looking from Tasha, standing bare and beautiful in the middle of the room, full-frontal fantastic and not jiggling at all, to the rest of the naked women who surrounded her.

His gaze moved slowly. From body to body to body. From face to face to face. They looked at him, then at each other. Their eyes seemed to be doing the same thing his were.

Counting.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

His eyes went to Chloe. Trembling. Jiggling. Blushing. Seven.

And Tasha made...

Eight.

Eight?

“Wait a minute,” Gibson said. “There’s something wrong here. If Tasha’s supposed to be here—”

“Of courze I’m zupposed to be here!”

But Gibson went right on. “Then somebody else is not.”

And as one, they all turned to look at Chloe.

She slapped her arms across her breasts and ducked behind the table. Her face—her whole body—was as red as Tasha’s hair. If he’d thought she was blushing before, it was nothing compared to this.

“You’re not a model.” Gibson’s eyes narrowed. He glared at her accusingly.

“A model? Of course not!”

It was the last thing he expected her to say. If she wasn’t supposed to be here, he figured she was at least trying to horn in, to make a name for herself, take advantage where she could. It had happened before.

He scowled now, unprepared for such a prompt denial. If she wasn’t a model, what the hell was she doing here and why had she taken her clothes off?

“Who are you?”

“I told you.” She sounded almost desperate now. “I’m Chloe. Chloe Madsen. Your sister sent me—”

“My sister? Gina sent you?”

Her head bobbed. Behind her hands, he noticed, her breasts bobbed, too. Gib shut his eyes.

When he opened them it was to see her grab one of the robes that had been casually tossed across the table, and drag it on. Then she folded her arms across her chest. “Yes,” she said. “Gina sent me. To work for you. For the summer. To be your assistant.”

“Assistant.” Gib dropped the word like a lead balloon.

“Yes,” Chloe said firmly. “She said you’d agreed. Didn’t you?”

Oh, God. Gib gritted his teeth.

“Probably,” he said through them.

“Just...probably?” Chloe looked doubtful.

Oh, all right. “I suppose I must have,” he muttered.

But only because he agreed to whatever Gina asked him to do. He owed Gina. Their parents had died when Gib was thirteen and Gina was twenty. She’d practically raised him, had given up college to come back and make a home for the two of them. Later she’d seen that he was able to go to university. She’d supported and believed in him his whole life.

He could never say no to the few things she asked.

But sometimes, when he really would have liked to, he let her know from the tone of his voice that he really didn’t want to do it. She’d never pushed it on him.

Until now.

Fury rising—though whether he was mad at Gina or Chloe or himself he couldn’t have said—he yelled at Chloe now. “If you’re supposed to be my assistant, what were you doing taking off your damn clothes?”

“You told me to!”

It was that easy? Gib stared, stupefied. “You mean if I just walked up to you on the street and said, ‘Take off your clothes, Chloe Madsen,’ you’d do it?”

“Of course not!” Her face, he noted with some satisfaction, now turned an even deeper shade of red. “But,” she added after a moment, “when Gina told me I could come she stressed that I had to what you told me, that I was obligated to do whatever was required.” A pause. “Jobwise.”

Their gazes met. Clashed.

But she didn’t look away. Gib had to give her credit. Chloe Madsen was a tryer—and she didn’t back down.

She was breathing so hard he could see her breasts heaving slightly behind the soft terry fabric. He had a memory flash of what they’d looked like bare.

As blonde as she was, Chloe Madsen didn’t have a blonde’s fair skin. Her breasts had been a warm honey color, the peaks a dusky rose. Now she was wrapped in the equivalent of a terry bath sheet. He preferred her naked.

He suspected he wouldn’t get to see her naked again.

Just as well, he thought, still very aware of how the sight of her had affected him.

Definitely just as well.

“Why you use zat girl?” Tasha’s eyes flicked from Gibson to Chloe and back accusingly. “You cannot use zat girl! I am ze Zeven! girl!” She slapped hands on hips and glared at him.

“Tasha...” Gib began to placate her.

She took his face between her hands and planted a kiss on his mouth. “You ztart over, yes? You forgive Tazha for being late, yes?”

“Yes,” Gib said automatically, stepping out of her reach. His gaze flicked back to Chloe who hadn’t moved an inch. She was still looking at him—and he was looking back at her, not making any move to shoot.

“Gibzon,” Tasha said impatiently.

He jerked his gaze toward her. “Huh?”

She tapped her bare foot. “We zhoot now?”

“Uh, yeah. We zhoo-shoot now.” At last Gibson managed to tear his eyes away from Chloe Madsen. “We shoot.” He turned back to the camera. “All right, let’s start again,” he said to the other women. “We’ll take it easy. You know what to do.”

They started to move in the circle again, Tasha sliding into the formation easily, not jiggling, Gib was happy to note.

“What about me?” Chloe asked. “What should I do now?”

Gibson looked at her once more. His mind saw everything the white terry robe covered. His body tightened.

Fortunately so did his resolve.

“Go home.”

Go home?

Go home?

She would never dare to show her face in Collierville, Iowa again!

Not after baring everything else in New York City! Chloe huddled in the tiny dressing room and listened to Gibson Walker’s gruff seductive baritone encouraging the models to reach and stretch and swim. Just the way he had encouraged Chloe to reach and stretch and swim.

Oh, God. She pressed her palms to her cheeks—the ones on her face!—and tried to stop them glowing. Fat chance.

Her whole body was glowing. Burning. From the inside out. If this was what hot flashes were like, she had no desire to hit menopause. Ever.

Not that she would.

She would surely die of embarrassment first.

She pulled on her underwear, then yanked her dress over her head, all the while breathing as if she’d just run a marathon. She could barely get the dress buttoned, her hands were shaking so badly. She stuffed her feet into her sandals, and thought she would never get the straps fastened. She didn’t even try to refresh her gnawed-off lipstick. She was sure, if she did, she would look as if a demented three-year-old had colored all over her mouth.

So finally she was finished. Dressed. Armored.

And absolutely unable to leave the dressing room.

There was no way she was walking back out into that studio. No way on earth she was going to face the world—or Gibson Walker—again.

She was mortified.

And he’d been furious.

What did he have to be furious about?

She was the one who had taken off her clothes! He’d merely asked her to.

What had she been thinking?

Well, she hadn’t, really. That much was obvious. If she had, she’d have realized that a photographer of Gibson Walker’s stature had no interest at all in photographing a silly bumbling twit from Iowa, for goodness’ sakes!