Every Single Secret(9)
They spent an inordinate amount of time on me, I thought, sniffing over my pale skin, which they predicted would blow out the shots, and my long, lank blonde hair that “just lies there.” One of them kept pulling off my glasses and saying my eyes were pretty. But I couldn’t see a damn thing, so I put them back on.
After the group shot, the woman in charge told us they’d take the individual pictures in rapid-fire, fifteen-minute windows. Everybody scattered to check their phones. Lenny and I were last on the list, so I settled in to wait at the craft-services table and try not to count every last Cool Ranch Dorito.
The photographer, an elfin woman with a fuzz of snow-white hair and tight black leather pants, went to work, positioning the first subject, a stunning female lawyer from the state’s attorney general’s office. The attorney struck poses like a Vogue model, and I felt fear begin to gnaw in my gut. There was no way I was going to be able to pull off that level of confidence. No way I could even fake it.
To distract myself, I assessed the offerings at the craft table. Heaps of fresh fruit, chips, crackers, popcorn, and cookies, all gourmet, tumbled over the table in reassuring mounds. Grateful for the low lights, I busied myself assembling a plate. Feeling calmer, I nibbled on the food while Lenny worked her way around the room.
I had started in on an oatmeal-raisin cookie when I realized the cavernous studio, which had previously been buzzing with conversation, had suddenly hushed around me. In unison, everyone seemed to have angled themselves toward the black-paper backdrop, where a guy I hadn’t seen until now, tall and broad-shouldered, stood in the pool of light created by hot tungsten bulbs and silver umbrellas. He was gorgeous, but that wasn’t all. There was something more interesting about him. He was . . .
Like me, I thought—surprised, yet somehow not. He is like me.
It was a bizarre, out-of-the-blue thought, as the guy in the lights was an arresting sight, beautiful and brooding—clearly nothing like me. At best, I was average, maybe a little above, and that was on a cute-hair day. He was also at ease in front of the camera, self-contained and mysterious, which was surely not going to be the case with me.
Regardless, there was something about him, something that struck me in a very particular but indefinable way. I couldn’t look away from him. A tiny burst of electricity zipped through me—a charge that sizzled under my skin all the way down to my toes. How had I not noticed him earlier? Where had I been? This guy was not the sort of person you missed. Pale skin, sharply angled cheekbones and jaw, with shaggy, slightly-too-long coal hair and wide-set deep-brown eyes.
“Heath Beck.” It was Lenny, at my five o’clock, whispering in my ear. “Real-estate wunderkind. Works with the Holland Company. He negotiated the sale of that entire area between Foster and Spring.”
She went on. About how the Holland Company was at the forefront of the revitalization of some of these neglected pockets of Midtown and the Westside, about how she’d heard that he personally had bought a derelict warehouse in Cabbagetown that he was going to develop into high-end loft apartments. I could barely process what she was saying. Heath Beck’s silhouette, lit like an angel, turned her voice to a mosquito’s buzz.
“It’s ridiculous, really,” she concluded, reaching for a can of Diet Coke.
“What is?”
“He’s supposedly dating someone, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen them together.”
I whipped around to face her. “Who is he dating?”
“That publicist, Annalise Beard, the one who works for the Hawks. She’s gorgeous. But, like I said, never around. Let me tell you, if I was dating that? One hundred percent never let it out of my sight.” She laughed at her own joke, then looked at me and narrowed her eyes. “Oh, no. Really? Seriously? Are you kidding me?”
I turned back to look at him again.
“So the woman who won’t give any man the time of day finally succumbs,” she marveled. And my friend was right. I had officially succumbed.
Later, when Lenny had gone off to work the room some more, Heath Beck appeared on the other side of the craft table. He was wearing a fitted blue dress shirt, a black tie, and a pair of criminally well-tailored black pants. I lowered my plate of snacks and tried to swallow the remnant of a cheese straw.
Up close he was even taller than I’d realized. Nice smelling and muscular. I tried not to stare directly at him. Or into his eyes, which were warm and brown and so intense that it felt like they were literally piercing my skin. I coughed. The cheese straw wouldn’t go down.
He took a swig of water. “Fair warning? That is one hell of a hellish experience.”
I laughed, clearing my throat as unobtrusively as I could. It sounded like a donkey bray. “You looked great. Totally aced it all the way.” I flushed furiously. I sounded like a teenage girl. I sounded like I liked him.
“I’m Heath.” He looked at me for what seemed like a long time. So long that I felt my entire body grow warm. “What was your name again?” He asked it quietly, purposefully, like he’d been practicing the question in his head before he walked over.
“Daphne,” I said. “Daphne Amos.”
“Your company is the Silver Sisters, right?”
“Daphne!”
It was Lenny, calling me from across the studio. We were up. I scuttled toward the nimbus of lights, aware that Heath was still standing back at the craft table and was probably—no, definitely—noticing the weird plate of snacks (four cheese straws, four grapes, four sea-salt-and-dark-chocolate-covered almonds) that I’d just set down on a stack of four cocktail napkins.