Gibson's Girl

But at the time, with his demand ringing in her ears and the memory of his sister Gina telling her that Gibson might ask her to stand in for a model while he sets lights and things, well, she’d misunderstood! That was all.

Heck of a misunderstanding.

A tiny giggle escaped her.

It wasn’t much of a giggle. The misery of it, the disgrace and embarrassment of it were still too new and raw. But if she was honest, there was a funny side to it.

What on earth would Dave say?

Of course, he’d never know because Chloe was never, ever going to tell him! Dave Shelton, her fiancé, had enough misgivings about this summer job she had taken in the “big bad city.” He still couldn’t understand why she needed to go to New York at all.

“New York? You want to go to New York? What do you want to go out there and get corrupted for?” he’d asked more than once.

“It’s a wonderful city. A fascinating city. There’s so much to see and do. I just want to experience it. I’m not going to get corrupted,” Chloe had assured him.

And she wasn’t! But even so, he didn’t need to hear how she’d paraded around naked in front of her employer!

No one was ever going to hear about that!

Unless—and here she gulped—unless Gibson Walker told them.

He wouldn’t! Would he?

That thought zapped her with another flush, even hotter than the first. Oh, please, no! He couldn’t!

“Kissing, ladies. Purse those lips,” she heard him say.

She put her hands over her face, remembering how she’d looked straight at him and pursed hers. Merciful heavens! She truly might die.

And then, at last, he said, “Okay, that’s it. Thanks a lot. I think we got some great stuff.”

At once she heard the models begin chattering, the redheaded latecomer with the sexy accent—her replacement!—louder than all the rest. It was all “Gibzon thiz” and “Gibzon that.” And Gibson answered, gruff but perfectly matter-of-fact, as if he worked with beautiful naked women every day of the week.

For all Chloe knew, he did!

There was the sound of shuffling bare feet as the models came toward the dressing cubicles and doors opened. Someone rapped on her door.

“I’m...n-not ready,” Chloe managed.

She would never be ready. If she could, she would stay in here the rest of her life.

Her fingers were trembling less. So she finished buttoning up her dress—closing it clear to the neck. Then she ran her palms down her sides, cinched the belt, and drew in a deep and—she hoped—steadying breath.

She tried to look sensible, demure, competent. She did look sensible, demure, competent—if you discounted the disarray of her wavy blonde hair and the hectic blush on her cheeks.

Yet scant moments before she had been anything but!

Beyond the door she could hear the other girls getting dressed. They laughed and chattered. The doors to the dressing rooms banged open.

“Bye, Gib!”

“See you soon!”

“Love you, Gib.”

With a chorus of cheery goodbyes, they departed—until there remained only silence.

And Gibson Walker.

It was, Chloe knew, the moment of truth.

Some would say, Chloe was sure, that cavorting naked around a room was a moment of truth of sorts.

Perhaps it had been. After all, could whatever came next possibly be worse? As far as she could see, she had two options. She could sneak out, never show her face here again, and take the next plane back to Iowa, admitting defeat before she even got started. Or she could face the man on the other side of the door, swear that she would be a good assistant, and buckle down and live up to her word for the rest of the summer.

Put like that, there wasn’t any choice.

Chloe wanted this summer. She needed this summer. She had turned her own and Dave’s lives upside down for this summer. It was on the order of a spiritual journey, she’d told him.

He hadn’t understood. She supposed she couldn’t really expect him to. But if she really believed what she’d told him, she couldn’t go home.

Not now. Not yet.

Chloe took a deep breath, crossed her fingers, and opened the door.

“I’ve got you a plane reservation,” he told her briskly the minute the door opened. “You leave at six, get into Chicago at nine. There’s an hour layover. You’ll get the last flight to Dubuque and be there by 11:15. You can call someone to pick you up.”

He gave her one quick glance—and not only to see if she was wearing clothes and if her breasts still jiggled. Though he couldn’t help noticing that she was and they weren’t. Then he made himself concentrate on the pile of junk that had been accumulating on his desk for the past twelve years.

It seemed suddenly imperative that he sort through it.

When she didn’t reply, he glanced up again, careful to keep his eyes firmly on her face. Unfortunately that was where her lips were. Damn.

She was looking at him with a worried, woebegone expression on her face.

“I’ll pay for it,” he said impatiently, because he was willing to bet she was worrying about the cost.

“It’s...it’s not that. It’s...I can’t go home.”

“What?” Gib’s brows snapped down. “What do you mean, you can’t go home? Of course you can go home!”

But Chloe Madsen just shook her head adamantly. “No. I can’t. Not until August 15th, anyway.”

“They banished you from Iowa until August 15th?”

Granted, he hadn’t been back to Iowa once in the past dozen years, but it didn’t seem likely they’d instituted quota laws that would prevent people from returning.

“I said I would be back August 15th,” she said as if that were explanation enough.

It wasn’t. “So? They got a phone? Call them and tell them you’ll be back sooner. Call them now and tell them you’ll be back tonight.”

But she only shook her head. “I can’t.”

Gib felt a muscle in his jaw twitch. “Why the hell not?”

Chloe Madsen twisted her fingers. Her gaze flicked just a second in his direction. The blue-violet eyes blinked rapidly.

“Stop that!” Gib snapped.

Her eyes went wide. “Stop what?” She looked baffled.

“Crying. Don’t you dare cry.”

Her chin lifted. “I never cry.”

Gibson snorted a reply. He wasn’t going to argue about it.

“I don’t,” Chloe said firmly, taking his snort in exactly the vein in which it was intended. “Not about jobs, anyway,” she qualified after a moment. She hesitated, then took a deep breath. It made her breasts lift—and settle.

Gib shut his eyes. He turned away, headed for the door, opened it and stood waiting for her to go.

Edith, his office manager, was still sitting at her desk. She looked up now with interest. Gib hoped her being there would encourage Chloe not to continue the discussion.

“I know I made a fool of myself this afternoon,” Chloe said, her voice soft but firm. So much for his hopes. “But when we were talking about the job, Gina and I, I told her I was willing to do whatever an assistant did. And, well, one of the things she said they did was to stand in for models. I...wasn’t thinking. I should have realized you weren’t just setting up and running through. But I thought it was...expected of me. And then when you told me if I didn’t want to do it, to get back on the plane and go home...well, I couldn’t do that, either!”

“Why not?”

She looked at him as if he were crazy. “Because I couldn’t! Not after I’d made such a fuss and—” She stopped, clamped her lips together, didn’t say another word.

“Fuss?” Gib encouraged helpfully. What sort of fuss?

But she didn’t respond. Eventually she said, “Look, it was an honest mistake. I feel like an idiot. I must have looked like an idiot.”

No, she had looked...memorable. He didn’t figure he would forget Chloe Madsen swimming naked around his office as long as he lived. He also didn’t figure she wanted to hear that.

She bit her lip. “I really want to do this. Be your assistant, I mean. Please, don’t hold what I...what I did...against me.” She looked at him beseechingly.

“I don’t hold it against you,” he said roughly. “But you still can’t stay.”

“But you told Gina—”

“No,” he corrected her, “Gina told me. Gina is always telling me what I need to do, and I just sort of let it go in one ear and out the other. I go uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh at appropriate intervals.”

“Well, you obviously should have gone ‘huh-uh’ at one of them,” Chloe said just a little tartly. It was the first bit of spirit he’d seen from her since she’d come out of the dressing room.

“I never thought she’d actually send you!”

“Well, she did. She assured me that you’d agreed. She said you would let me work for you for two months. It’s not a big deal.”

“It’s a big deal!”

She looked astonished. “Why?”

The innocence of her query stopped him dead. “Because... because...” Because he didn’t want an assistant like her—an innocent from Iowa, for heaven’s sake! New York was a rough place, a hard place. A person needed to be sophisticated to survive. Chloe would get eaten in a matter of minutes.

“It wouldn’t work,” was all he said.

“You don’t think I can do it! You think I’m incompetent.” Her eyes accused him.

Gib scowled. “I do not! I’m sure you’re very competent—”

“I am.”

“—and I’m sure you’d make a fine assistant—”

“I would.”

“—but I don’t want an assistant!”

“You need one,” Edith said.

Both Gibson and Chloe snapped around to stare at the older woman sitting behind the reception desk. She gave Chloe a little nod and Gibson a benign smile.

“You need one,” she repeated.

“I have...what’s her name...?” He could never remember their names. They didn’t last long enough for him to bother to learn them. “Frosty?”

“Misty,” Edith said patiently. “And she’s about as reliable as her name.”

“Right. Misty.” He tried to make her sound tough and competent. She was neither. Misty was the latest in a long line of what Gibson called his “girls.” The young women who schlepped and carried, set up lights and reflectors, ran errands, loaded film and lugged power packs.

“Girls.” Edith sniffed every time he used the term. “That is totally politically incorrect.”

“So sue me,” Gibson muttered.

They were lucky he even recognized them as members of the species. Misty and her forerunners—he was sure there had once been one called Frosty—came in all shapes and colors and sizes. They also invariably came with nose rings, spiked hair, black leggings and very little brain. They had the half-life of a loaf of bread. And were as memorable.

Gibson figured he’d remember Chloe for a good long while.

“We’re going to need someone reliable,” Edith reminded him, “because I’m going to Georgia’s next week.”

Gibson scowled. He didn’t want to think about that. He relied on Edith for everything unconnected with the actual shooting of photos. She ran the studio, kept the ad reps at bay, dealt with the agencies, the caterer, the legion of bike messengers who rang the buzzer in the middle of his work. She was the person who kept him sane. He’d been appalled when she’d asked for a month off.

“A month?” She hadn’t taken more than a week at a time in the last ten years.

“A month,” she’d said firmly. “At least. I’ll need it to help Georgia with the babies.”

After fifteen years of a childless marriage, Edith’s daughter, Georgia, had picked this summer to be inconsiderate enough to have triplets!

“Three?” Gibson had been aghast when Edith had told him. “What’s the matter with just one?”

But apparently the quantity hadn’t been up for discussion.

“We’ll take all we can get,” Edith had said cheerfully. She was over the moon about going to North Carolina and helping out with her first grandchildren. In fact she could hardly wait.

Gibson hadn’t been able to say no. He knew she would have simply quit if he had. So he’d said, all right. But once he’d agreed, he’d shoved the thought right out of his mind.

“Get someone to take your place,” he’d finally told her yesterday when she’d asked if he had someone in mind.

“I think Chloe will do fine,” Edith said now.

“What?” Gibson practically shouted.

But Edith just smiled her I’m-going-to-be-a-grandmother-and-all-is-right-with-the-world smile. “She looks sane and sensible and responsible. And if your sister trusts her...”

“My sister—”

“Is a good judge of character,” Edith said firmly. “If he doesn’t want you as his assistant, you can take over for me all right?” she said to Chloe. Then she looked at Gibson “Do you want her?”

A damned unfortunate choice of words.

Gibson felt his tongue tangling with his teeth. No, dam it, he didn’t want her! Not in his studio every day. Not ever in his reception room. And not just because his body had had an inconvenient reaction to her, either.

But he knew he was stuck. Gina proposed, Edith dis posed. And he, heaven help him, was caught in the under tow.

But he wanted one thing understood. He turned on Chloe “I won’t be responsible for you!”

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

He poked a finger under her nose and waggled it. “ won’t fight your battles for you or protect your innocence or mollycoddle you in any way!”

“I never asked—”

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

She stood her ground, drat her. She even looked muti nous. 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 you clothes on!”

CHAPTER TWO

OF COURSE Gib had to find her a place to stay. Gina reminded him that he’d told her he would.

“I did what?” he yelped.

She had called late that evening just to “check on things”—to see how “darling Chloe” was, and to find out where he’d arranged for her to stay.

“You said you’d find her a sublet,” Gina told him.

He was sure he had done no such thing. “I said I’d find her a sublet? I said that? In those words?”

“Well, if you’re going to sound like a lawyer about it,” Gina said huffily, “I suppose those weren’t your precise words. When we discussed it, I asked if you could find her a place to stay, a sublet or something, and you said sure, you guessed.”

“I never thought—” But he couldn’t tell her that he had come to count on her not following through. He owed her. A lot. And she rarely actually asked for anything.

Just this. Just...

Chloe.

“Nothing yet.”

“Nothing?” Gina sounded horrified.

“Yet, I said,” Gib muttered, beleaguered. “I’ll find something.”

“You won’t be sorry,” Gina said, all traces of huffiness gone at once. “I’m sure it will work out really well for both of you. Chloe was so eager to come. And she’s such a hard worker, Gib. There is nothing you could ask that Chloe wouldn’t do to help out.”

“You don’t say,” Gib replied drily, biting on the inside of his cheek to keep from telling Gina exactly what Chloe had already done.

She would be shocked. Hell, when he thought about it—about who she was—he was shocked. But he wasn’t going to mention it. Chloe Madsen, naked, was a memory he had no intention of sharing with anyone.

“She’s quite a good photographer in her own right,” Gina went on. “Oh, not in your class, dear. But she shoots wonderful photos for the Gazette.”

The Collierville Gazette was the local weekly newspaper. Gina was the business manager of the paper, so that was clearly where she and Chloe had connected. The photos Gib remembered in the Gazette’s pages were of local Pork Queens, fiftieth wedding anniversary celebrants, high-school football players who scored winning touchdowns and, for variety, artful “scenic” shots of acres and acres of corn and soybeans.

“And this inspired her to want to come to New York?”

“Not exactly.” Gina paused. “It had something to do with a nun, I think.”

“A nun!”

“For a story she wrote. Chloe, I mean. It sparked off something in her. She’s been a little restless, trying to figure out what she should do...”

Dance naked? Gib thought, smiling.

“She taught kindergarten for three years before she came to work on the paper.”

“Kindergarten?” He’d seen a kindergarten teacher naked !

Worse, at the memory, Gib could feel a stirring in his body even now. At least her being a kindergarten teacher explained the prim shirtwaist dress.

“She was wonderful with the children. She loved it, but she was a little restless there, too. She thought maybe it wasn’t what she ought to do forever, so she came to the paper last year.”

“And she still isn’t satisfied?” Gib asked.

“Well, I don’t know that she isn’t satisfied. But she’s lived in Iowa all her life. She wants to see what’s beyond the horizon.”

The more fool she, Gib thought.

“She won’t be able to cope with this,” he told Gina bluntly. “She’s too naive. Too innocent.”

“Well, she’ll have you and—”

“She damned well won’t have me! I’m not Mary Poppins, you know!”

“Of course not,” Gina said quickly. “I don’t expect that. Not...really. I was just hoping you’d be sort of...aware of her.”

Oh, he was that.

“She’s very eager to learn whatever you can teach her—”

Oh, cripes, don’t say that!

“—and you always seem to need a new assistant...”

Had she been talking to Edith?

“She’s exactly the sort of girl I wish you’d—” Abruptly, Gina stopped.

There was a long silence. A pregnant silence. A silence Gib was determined not to fill. One which he hoped Gina wouldn’t fill, either. He knew what she’d say if she did.

The girl I wish you’d marry.

It was no secret that Gina wanted him to get married and come back to Iowa. That was what she’d always hoped for, ever since he’d taken a summer internship with noted celebrity photographer Camilo Volante a dozen years ago.

At the time Gina had wondered why he would do something like that. “Celebrity doesn’t interest you,” she’d said.

And Gib had replied, “But people do.” It was people he wanted to photograph. Working for Camilo Volante had seemed like a terrific opportunity to learn from one of the world’s foremost photographers of famous people. Then he could take it from there, using what he’d learned, photographing whoever he wanted.

That had been the plan, at least.

He’d expected then that he would go back to Iowa.

But life had a way of changing those plans. And the summer job had turned into an autumn one. And after that, well, things had changed. Irrevocably.

And Gib had never come back.

Now Gina appreciated that he was a success as a fast-lane, high-style photographer of beautiful women. But she still never hesitated to ask what had happened to his dream of shooting photos of people from all walks of life. And she also never hesitated to say how much nicer she thought it would be if he would find a lovely young woman, marry her, come back to Iowa and take photos of farmers—and Pork Queens.

Or maybe, just this once, she did hesitate.

“I’m not interested,” Gib said firmly, in case she thought she had subliminally made her point.

“Interested? Oh, you mean... in Chloe?” Gina laughed lightly. “Of course not. And Chloe’s not interested in you, either. She’s only there for a break, Gib. Anyway she’s engaged. She’s getting married in September.”

Married? Chloe?

Gib felt oddly breathless, as if someone had punched him. It was the most unexpected feeling he’d ever had. It puzzled him. Why should he care?

He didn’t care.

It was just that all of a sudden his mind offered him a reprise of a very naked, very rosy, very jiggly Chloe Madsen—and she didn’t look like anyone’s fiancée!

“Who’s the idiot letting her run around loose?” he demanded.

“If you’re asking who she’s engaged to, it’s Dave Shelton. He’s a very nice young man. You remember Ernie and Lavonne Shelton? They farm north of town. Dave is their son.”

Gib vaguely remembered the name. “There was a Kathy Shelton,” he said, “in my class.”

“Dave’s older sister. She got married and moved to Dubuque. Then about three years ago, she divorced and came home with her kids. Until a couple of months ago, she was living in a mobile home on the farm where Dave and Chloe had been going to live. She’s the reason they didn’t get married three years ago.”

“They’ve been engaged for three years?”

“Not three,” Gina said. “Eight, I think.”

“Eight!”

“I’m talking out of turn,” Gina said quickly. “I don’t know all the particulars, so I shouldn’t be gossiping.”

Gib was willing to bet Gina knew almost every particular. In a town the size of Collierville, everyone knew everyone else’s particulars.

But Gina just said, “I’ll let you go now, darling. Just keep me posted. And if you want to know more about Chloe and Dave, I’m sure Chloe will be happy to tell you. Just ask her.”

The hell he would.

Chloe supposed she ought to be feeling guilty.

She knew Gibson Walker did not want her working for him. If he could have turned her out onto the street and slammed the door on her back, she thought he would have.

Sensing how he felt, she knew she ought to say, Fine, I’ll leave.

But she didn’t.

She’d made such a deal out of leaving home—of needing this two months away, just to say she’d been out in the big wide world once—that she couldn’t just give up and go back home and tell Dave she’d changed her mind.

He would want to know why.

And Chloe, being Chloe and incapable of dissembling, would have had to tell him-about the mix-up, about the naked photo shoot, about what a fool she’d made of herself.

And there was no way she was going to do that.

So she was staying. And she only felt the tiniest bit guilty. There was no room for guilt in a soul so full of embarrassment.

Now, hours later, high up in the hotel room where Gibson had unceremoniously stashed her, she pressed her face to the glass and saw, not the Empire State Building out her window, but her own silly self prancing around in the buff—and she still wanted to die.

But not yet, she admitted.

First she wanted her two months in New York.

The phone rang.

She picked it up. “Hi,” she said, knowing it had to be Dave. She’d called him as soon as she’d come upstairs, forgetting the time difference and that he would be out doing the milking for at least another hour. She’d left him a message with a number to call her back.

“Hi yourself. Are you fulfilled yet?”

She almost smiled. “Not quite yet. How are you?”

He was fine. Of course he would be. She’d only seen him sixteen hours ago. But he told her anyway. He told her about his day, about the weather, about the cows, about the meal he’d just had with his parents at their house.

“Mom invited me for supper. I think they wanted to see if I’d show up alone, if you were really gone,” he told her. “They can’t believe you’re really doing this.”

Most people couldn’t.

The twelve hundred and forty-two people who called Collierville, Iowa home were not given to eagerness when it came to spending a summer in New York City. Everyone she’d told thought she was out of her mind.

Chloe had given up trying to explain—except to Dave.

She needed Dave to understand. She’d thought he would. She and Dave had grown up together. They’d played as children. They’d gone steady in high school. They were serious about each other when everyone else was still playing the field.

Chloe had always assumed she and Dave were destined for each other. Certainly there was nothing about Dave she didn’t know.

And nothing he didn’t know about her—except that she’d danced naked this afternoon!