Lovegame(9)

There is a difference, I tell myself fiercely as I study myself. I am not her. I will never be her, no matter what it felt like four months ago.

In the background I’m aware of Marc cursing softly, of him snapping picture after picture. I don’t turn around, instead continuing to give him my back so that he gets both me and my reflection in each shot.

“Turn around,” he breathes after he’s taken at least three dozen pictures.

Reluctantly, I do as he requests, then follow his impatient gesture for me to move away from the mirror. I step forward and then the camera starts again, clicking away to get the shot from this angle as well.

At that moment, Ian moves and I make the mistake of glancing his way. Our gazes lock and heat slams through me at the look he’s giving me, has my eyes widening and my lips parting on a gasp as I struggle to draw air into lungs that have abruptly forgotten how to work.

“Fuck,” Marc breathes from where he’s narrowing in on my face. “That’s it. That’s the money shot.”

I drag my eyes away from Ian, but it’s too late. For the first time in a very, very long time, I feel vulnerable. And I hate every second of it.





Chapter 3


She’s beautiful.

I keep trying to get beyond that thought because it’s shallow and because it’s become very obvious very quickly that there’s a lot more to Veronica Romero than what she looks like. And still I can’t help thinking it as I stand here, watching her chat with a couple members of the crew now that the photo shoot is complete.

She’s taken off the other half of her makeup, but left her hair up in its fancy style and the result is more compelling than I ever would have imagined. With nothing to distract from the raw honesty of her features—no makeup, no artfully tousled hair, no glitzy jewelry—she looks sexier than I have ever seen her. And more vulnerable.

One of the crew members, the stylist’s assistant, I think, must crack a joke because she bursts out laughing. She has a good laugh—loud, generous, infectious—and I find myself turned on by the sound of her in that moment. And the look of her, so open, so natural, so—

“Veronica.” Marc calls her name and she turns toward him, eyes sparkling and mouth still stretched in a wide, openhearted grin.

At least until he snaps a series of pictures of her.

She keeps the smile in place, but the honesty of it dwindles to nothing. As does the sparkle.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t regret the loss even as I wonder at what caused it. When she laughs like that, she looks gorgeous and joyous and sexy as f*ck—why wouldn’t she want a photographer as talented as Marc to capture that look? Why wouldn’t she expect him to want to capture it when every man in the room, myself included, is spellbound by it? Spellbound by her?

Who is the real Veronica Romero, I ask myself for what feels like the thousandth time in the last twenty-four hours. I want to find her, want to tunnel through the layers of polish and what I’m beginning to think of as deliberate deception, want to brush away at the years of self-protection she’s built around herself until—like an archeologist on a desert dig—I excavate the real woman underneath.

I tell myself it’s because it’s my job to find that woman, to pull her out and examine her and write about her. But the truth is, I don’t actually give a shit about this Vanity Fair article and I never have. Accepting the assignment was just the means for me to get close to her, to see what she knows about William Vargas.

And while that’s still true, it’s very quickly becoming more than that. Though I only met her yesterday, every instinct I have is screaming that there’s a story here. And while I don’t know if it’s connected to Vargas or not, I know that I want to unravel it.

I don’t know why it matters so much, but it does.

As the Vanity Fair crew works on cleaning up and clearing out, I make my way over to Marc. I met him when he photographed me for Entertainment Weekly about a year ago and we hit it off. We’ve been friends ever since, so I don’t feel like too much of a creep when I ask, “Hey, can I get copies of those last shots?”

“Yeah, of course. The magazine gets copies of all the photos that I’m happy with. I’m sure a few of those will be in the bunch.”

“I don’t mean for the article.” I ignore how f*cked up that sounds and just plow ahead. “I mean, for me.”

“Oh right.” He grins, shoots me a look. “It’s like that then, huh? Not turning into one of those weirdos you write about, are you, and building a shrine to her in your bedroom?”

It’s a crude joke, but I know he doesn’t mean anything by it. He’s just being Marc. But still, the implication makes me more than a little queasy. “I’m not the shrine type,” I tell him in an attempt to play it off. “But seriously, I’m trying to get inside her head, trying to figure out who she really is. It’s hard to do that when she keeps so much of what she’s thinking and feeling hidden.”

“I hear that,” he says with a heartfelt shake of his head. “I f*cking pride myself on being able to reveal the real person with my photos. Digging deep is kind of my thing. But Veronica…she’s always been hard, man. This is the fourth time I’ve shot her and I don’t think I’m any closer to understanding her now than I was ten years ago when I did her first cover for Vogue.”