no. Not enchanted. That was stretching things too far.
Gibson Walker was not enchanted by women. He hadn’t been enchanted by any woman since...
He squelched that thought.
“Stop shaking,” he commanded her. “Or I’ll have six lovely ladies and a blur.”
“S-sorry.” But she still shook. She didn’t stop.
Gib shook his head, then picked up the camera again. He shot. He moved. He directed.
“Swim,” he told them. “Languid, easy movements overhead. Like you’re going through water.”
They swam. Easy overhand strokes. They went up on tiptoe. They floated.
Chloe jiggled.
Gib ground his teeth.
He looked away, focused on another of the women. They moved and Chloe hove into view once more. He cleared his throat and tried to find a rhythm. “Let’s see those lips. Purse those lips. Kisses. I want kisses.”
And damned if Chloe didn’t look straight at him, face aflame, body blushing, lips pursed!
Gib blew out a harsh exclamation of air. “Not me, sweetheart!” he said in a slightly strangled tone. “I want profiles. Kiss your lover. You do have a lover, don’t you?”
Whoa. The flush was back—with a vengeance. Too bad the ad wasn’t going to be in color. That was some rosy glow.
Gib let out a pent-up breath. He wiped suddenly damp palms on the sides of his jeans, then ran his tongue over his lips. Focus, damn it, he told himself.
He was focusing. That was the problem.
Don’t focus on her!
He tried not to. He moved, he crouched. He willed himself to ignore the growing insistence in his body. He pointed the camera at all seven women. Unerringly it found Chloe.
He tried to remember all the ways he wanted them to move. His mind was a blank. Well, no, not really a blank. There were very definite curves on his mind. A very definite body.
A very sexy body.
A real body. Unlike the other six, Chloe seemed to respond to his direction with more than her muscles. She was unguarded, open. He said, “Lover,” and she blushed. He said, “Kiss,” and he saw longing on her face.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s it. Like that. More. Give me more, sweetheart.”
They all looked at him.
“Er, sweethearts,” he corrected. He smiled at them all. He looked at Chloe.
She trembled. She blushed. Her breasts jiggled.
Then he heard a commotion in the outer office. A “You can’t go in there!” followed by “Of course I can. I’m late!”
And the door burst open and Tasha, a top flight model he’d worked with lots of times, burst into the room.
“Ah, Gibson, I am zo zorry! Zee taxi! Zhe break down! Zee driver! He say I can’t leave without pay! I say, No pay! You don’t go where I mus’ go! No pay! Then he grab me! An’ I scream! I say, he kidnapping me! He say, I cheating him! Oh!” She shook a yard of flaming red hair. “Zhose police! Zhey never listen! You zhink zhey would listen to be-you-tif-ful girl, yes? No! Zhey listen to dumbest taxi driver!”
And while she delivered this entire monologue, Tasha was busily flinging off her clothes. First the skimpy halter top, then the minuscule bra. One foot came up and a sandal slipped off. The other followed. She unzipped her mini-skirt and wiggled it past mini-hips over mini-thighs down ski slope legs.
“I tell you, zhese police, zhey know from nozhing!” To punctuate her declaration, she peeled off her underpants and flung them in the air. Then she lifted her arms and beamed at Gibson.
“We begin now, yes? I am ready!”
In the silence that followed, Gibson was conscious of shutting his mouth.
He was conscious of looking from Tasha, standing bare and beautiful in the middle of the room, full-frontal fantastic and not jiggling at all, to the rest of the naked women who surrounded her.
His gaze moved slowly. From body to body to body. From face to face to face. They looked at him, then at each other. Their eyes seemed to be doing the same thing his were.
Counting.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.
His eyes went to Chloe. Trembling. Jiggling. Blushing. Seven.
And Tasha made...
Eight.
Eight?
“Wait a minute,” Gibson said. “There’s something wrong here. If Tasha’s supposed to be here—”
“Of courze I’m zupposed to be here!”
But Gibson went right on. “Then somebody else is not.”
And as one, they all turned to look at Chloe.
She slapped her arms across her breasts and ducked behind the table. Her face—her whole body—was as red as Tasha’s hair. If he’d thought she was blushing before, it was nothing compared to this.
“You’re not a model.” Gibson’s eyes narrowed. He glared at her accusingly.
“A model? Of course not!”
It was the last thing he expected her to say. If she wasn’t supposed to be here, he figured she was at least trying to horn in, to make a name for herself, take advantage where she could. It had happened before.
He scowled now, unprepared for such a prompt denial. If she wasn’t a model, what the hell was she doing here and why had she taken her clothes off?
“Who are you?”
“I told you.” She sounded almost desperate now. “I’m Chloe. Chloe Madsen. Your sister sent me—”
“My sister? Gina sent you?”
Her head bobbed. Behind her hands, he noticed, her breasts bobbed, too. Gib shut his eyes.
When he opened them it was to see her grab one of the robes that had been casually tossed across the table, and drag it on. Then she folded her arms across her chest. “Yes,” she said. “Gina sent me. To work for you. For the summer. To be your assistant.”
“Assistant.” Gib dropped the word like a lead balloon.
“Yes,” Chloe said firmly. “She said you’d agreed. Didn’t you?”
Oh, God. Gib gritted his teeth.
“Probably,” he said through them.
“Just...probably?” Chloe looked doubtful.
Oh, all right. “I suppose I must have,” he muttered.
But only because he agreed to whatever Gina asked him to do. He owed Gina. Their parents had died when Gib was thirteen and Gina was twenty. She’d practically raised him, had given up college to come back and make a home for the two of them. Later she’d seen that he was able to go to university. She’d supported and believed in him his whole life.
He could never say no to the few things she asked.
But sometimes, when he really would have liked to, he let her know from the tone of his voice that he really didn’t want to do it. She’d never pushed it on him.
Until now.
Fury rising—though whether he was mad at Gina or Chloe or himself he couldn’t have said—he yelled at Chloe now. “If you’re supposed to be my assistant, what were you doing taking off your damn clothes?”
“You told me to!”
It was that easy? Gib