Page 15 of Picture Perfect

I could hear the curiosity in his voice, and I was sure that was why he agreed to meet with me so soon. The very next afternoon, I was in his office just as another couple left his studio. Based on the look of their faces, they hadn’t been getting as hot and bothered as I and my photo partner had.

I shook my head as I walked into Greg’s office, willing myself to forget about the guy who got away. I had bigger problems to attend to.

“What can I do for you, Ivy?” He sat in the rolling chair close to the door, offering me one of two uncomfortable stationary chairs on the other side. His desk was piled with ridiculous amounts of paperwork and file folders, a flat desktop calendar partially uncovered on the side closest to him.

What a photographer would need with paperwork, I hadn’t a clue.

“You know I’m a grad student, right?”

Although he didn’t shrug, I could sense that blasé attitude in his voice. “You might have told me at one time. What about it?”

I swallowed. This shouldn’t be hard, should it? After all, I was only going to ask him to pull down dozens of photos that he said were hot sellers. But surely Greg would understand—and if he was worried about the money he’d lose, I could offer to pose in less compromising positions—underwear on—for free. I held onto that thought as I moved forward. “Well, I’m getting ready to move from the student role to one of professor, and seeing my nude body on the cover of a book the other day got me to thinking.” Greg raised his eyebrows but said nothing. “The shots I did with you early on…you know, the Christmas ones last year and the ones in the party dress—and even the ones in the bustier—those were photos that I wouldn’t mind anyone seeing of me, even the ones where I was holding the riding crop.”

Greg’s eyelids had lowered halfway by the time he said, “Half of those cut your face off. Is that why you’re comfortable with them?”

I was going to tell him no without giving it any thought at all, but instead I pondered it. While that might have been part of my subconscious reasoning, I knew rationally that I didn’t object to them anyway. They were still tasteful while provocative. They didn’t scream sex; they merely suggested it. In the back of my mind, I knew I’d be comfortable defending those photos. “No.”

“So is it just the topless ones?”

I’d come in Greg’s studio wanting to ask him to pull all of the pictures from every single photo shoot I’d done with Shane, but thinking it over, I knew that wouldn’t be fair to Greg—or Shane, even—and most of those were all right. The ones we’d taken on the sidewalk were standard romance fare and even the ones in my underwear weren’t bad. So, when push came to shove, “Yes. Yeah, I think so. The rest…the rest, I think, are defensible.”

Greg’s face changed to that of thoughtful artist. I’d seen this look on his face many a time before. His brows tightened over scrutinizing brown eyes as he considered my words. He cupped his chin, rubbing the whiskers with his index finger and thumb as if contemplating life’s mysteries. Finally, he leaned forward on his desk and his piercing eyes almost pained me, and maybe that was because I’d known what to expect. “Ivy…I appreciate your predicament. I do. I can’t even imagine what must be going through your mind, especially when you would even consider coming to me, a professional, and asking me to disregard our contract.”

His voice was cold, emotionless, and I wondered how I could even begin to appeal to him—but I had to try. “Greg, I get that. I’ve never asked for anything like this before. It’s just—this is my future we’re talking about.”

More ice. “Mine, too, Ivy. This is my livelihood.”

Okay, so emotions were worth shit with him. I needed to appeal to him another way. “You talk about honoring contracts. Part of a contract is the intent behind it. When I signed it, it was under the belief that I would be participating in a normal session, like all the ones I’d done with you before. You know as well as I do that asking me to take off my bra was out of the ordinary.”

I saw a twinkle in his eye then but had no idea what that meant. With a cocked eyebrow, he said, “For you, perhaps. I ask other models to do it all the time. Some say yes. I don’t know till I ask.” I had no argument for that. My mind was racing, looking for another avenue when he said, “You seemed to be more than accommodating at that time.”

That little sentence brought all that old shame flooding to the surface. Had Greg seen how aroused I’d been feeling during that session? And how could I argue logically when my emotions were threatening to overtake me?

I had to appeal to his sense of decency. It was all I had left. “It was the heat of the moment, Greg. We all do thoughtless things sometimes when we don’t have a few quiet moments to ponder.” I took a deep breath. “I’ve been going to school for my entire adult life, and it has all been leading up to this big moment of employment. I don’t want all my work to be in vain. Modeling has been a great way to pay the bills, but my passion is for teaching…and if someone in charge of hiring me saw those pictures, I might be done before I’ve even started.”

Greg blinked and, for a second, I thought he was going to acquiesce. Why I allowed my heart to grab onto that little ray of hope, I’ll never know. “Ivy, don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to ruin your life. I don’t want to ruin your chances of getting your dream job…but you have to understand that I’m running a business. A profitable one. And one of the ways I make the most money is by giving my customers what they want. The custom shoots? Yes, I make money on those, but my bread and butter actually comes from the uncommissioned photos—the ones I create during the spur of the moment when I have just the right models and things go perfectly. But it’s not just the models—it’s my eye for lighting, for setting the mood, for the effects I perform upon the photographs after the models are long gone. It’s getting the right angles and pulling out of the models the right expressions. And when I get it right, I’m rewarded. People buy those pictures when I nail all those things.

“So where do you fit into all that? Well…much as I’d like to say it’s all me, it’s not. Like I said, it’s also a matter of the right pieces falling into the right places. You’re a beautiful woman, Ivy. But a good many of my customers are buying for the male in the pictures, not the female, and my buyers have fallen in love with Shane. You and Shane together? A winning combination.”

How could I argue with that?

“Here’s the thing, Ivy. My business has been steadily growing over the last two years, one dollar, one photo, one customer at a time. But when I posted the photos of you and Shane? My business fucking exploded. It grew by leaps and bounds, and I’m getting more hits on my website in a day than I used to get in a week last year. The photos of you and Shane? I’ve sold a couple of exclusive ones, but most of them are nonexclusive, and you know what that means. I continue to make money off those photographs, over and over and over. I’d be an idiot to yank them now.”

My heart felt like it had dropped to the floor—but one more appeal. “I get that. But what about just the topless ones?”

Greg pursed his lips, furrowing his brow once more, giving me the impression that he was genuinely considering my question. It turned out he was doing calculations in his head. “Tell you what. One hundred thousand dollars.”

My brain was fuzzy—and worn out. “What?”

“One hundred thousand dollars. If you want to pay me that much, I’ll take down any and all of the photos you want.”

One hundred thousand? He knew that would be impossible—or close to it. I didn’t have that kind of money. If I had, I wouldn’t have been modeling for him in the first place. I had no response and didn’t know how long I’d been sitting there wordless.

He pulled me out of my stupor. “I’m anticipating the lifetime of those photos and how much I expect to make over time. I think that’s a fair price.” I blinked, still struggling to speak. “But you don’t have it, do you?”

I found my voice. “You know I don’t.”

“Then I guess I’ll leave them up…unless you have another proposal.”

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