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“Shall I send the picture tonight or tomorrow?”

“As soon as it’s ready,” Liam answered, possibly a little too quickly, too animated.

Victoria showed no signs of minding. “As soon as it’sready?” she asked. “These were taken years ago, so they're all ‘ready.’”

“Well, I wanted to talk about that, actually,” Liam said, fingers moving anxiously in his lap. “For the second five-point picture, I was hoping to do something a little different.”

“Oh?” She still maintained her usual unreadable composure. “How?”

Those piercing blue eyes of hers seemed to bore into him, even if the fine eyebrows above them hadn’t knitted together into a frown. He wondered if she’d ever had a student with enough gumption to stand before her, suffering beneath that icy gaze, and request some extra credit—and if so, had it worked out for them?

Well, he was asking forfarmore than a chance to bump his grade up a little. Maybe there’d be a day where he could even try his luck at extra credit. It’d be months or years out, though. Right now, he needed to keep his courage a little longer. He needed to believe she’d say yes.

Liam realized he’d undoubtedly become far more optimistic than he’d once been. He doubted most people would dare to hope for the things he was hoping for.

“I was thinking that you could replicate the first picture,” he said, spying no change in her expression as he spoke. “A comparison between then and now.”

He still didn’t know if the original picturewasfrom then. But he was more than willing to pretend that it was. He’d happily act as though he was oblivious to the likelihood that Victoria had recently pulled off her top and bra, laid on her bed, covered a narrow part of her amazing breasts with one forearm, and snapped a picture for him. He could happily pretend if it meant he had a better chance of getting this second picture.

“That’s all you want?” Victoria asked, tilting her head ever so slightly. A first sign of emotion, curiosity, maybe slightly veering toward confusion. Compared to some of the others that his request might have caused, he’d take it.

No, idiot!Liam’s mind shouted.It’s more than that!

It was. Itwas!Victoria hadn’t so much as balked at his request for acurrentpicture of her topless. In his mind, that sealed his suspicion about the previous picture, but he didn’t spend his time marveling at what that might mean. He stayed on track, chugging along like a determined steam engine with a schedule to keep.

“Maybe with your arm slightly lower this time?” he asked, clutching his hands beneath the table. How pronounced must the veins in his neck be right now? He felt as tense as iron.

Victoria examined him wordlessly, and he took that with a spoonful of optimism, too. It wasn’t an immediate no. Which meant she was thinking about it. Which meant he had a chance.

“By how much?” she eventually asked.

As he assumed Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez always did, Liam swung for the fences. “Four or five inches?”

“No.”

“Three or four?”

Victoria didn’t deign to respond.

“Just one or two?” he asked. That was Negotiating 101, right? Ask for more than you knew you could get, then what youdidwant would seem more reasonable when you asked for it.

Victoria’s silence began to erode his hopes as surely as time, wind, and waves eroded an ocean cliff. He did his best to mimic that cliff, staying unchanging as stone for as long as possible. He hoped she didn’t see how disappointed he’d be if she shook her head, even if that was ridiculous. At worst, he’d getanotherscandalously arousing image of Victoria’s stunning body. He waspretty much at the bottom of a list of people who were allowed to feel miserable.

“I’ll see how the picture turns out,” Victoria said.

“Okay,” Liam said, unable to resist beaming at her. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”

“Yes, I can tell,” Victoria said, one corner of her mouth rising slightly. “Keep practicing hard. Next week, I intend to claim another day you’ll have to help me in my garden.”

“Next week, I’m planning to get another picture of you,” he fired back, overwhelmingly happy. “Right before I get to see the real thing in Fiji.”

Victoria allowed her eyebrows to rise. “Is that how things are going to go?”

“Well, yeah,” he said, not realizing how his previous statement could be taken. Not just that he’d see her on Fiji’s beautiful beaches, wearing those promised bikinis, but that he meant to see her as she’d looked in her most recent picture—and the one she would be working on making for him later tonight. “That’s the main reason we’re going to Fiji.”

“It is, is it?” Victoria asked, amusement subtle but present in her voice. “I suspect this week will be tough on you, then. The final week before a long-awaited trip always seems to stretch into an eternity.”

“It’s the same for you?” he asked. “You’ve wanted to go to Fiji far longer than I have.”

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