Between Heats (Downtown Aquatics Book 1) (5 page)

He expected her to roll over and thank her lucky stars? After
she caught him flirting with those other models? “Tell you what,” she
interrupted him. “Let me go and get changed and see what shots I need to do
first and we can talk later.”

He raked his fingers through his hair, mussing up what looked
liked his already styled 'do. "Oh. Right.
Of course.
Work first." He backed up and threw her a tentative grin. "Sure,
let's talk later."

Seeing his puzzled expression made Madison hesitate.
"Aaron…" she began then sighed. "Look, you don't have to come
and be
all nice
to me on set. It's—" She
was about to say that it was 'embarrassing' but another look at Aaron's eyes
and she softened the blow. "I don't like calling attention to myself.
People already have this low opinion that every model’s a prima donna. You
probably won’t believe me but I'm actually a bit shy."

"You? Shy?" Aaron looked incredulous. "Aside
from…" Madison's eyes widened when she thought he was going to mention
yesterday out loud, but instead he just cleared his throat. "Well, you
certainly make your opinions known."

She shook her head. "Just to you, hotshot. Believe me,
this is not a habit of mine."

"All right, as long as we're cool, I should just let you
go on to wardrobe, right?" he said, giving her a once-over that told her
that he was already picturing what she would look like in today's swimwear.

Madison rolled her eyes, pushing him away. "Go, will
you?" Despite the abruptness of her words, Aaron still smiled before
jogging back to rejoin Anna and Lakeisha, a move that summoned Madison's bad
mood back. This was going to be a long day.

Aaron had had girls throw themselves at him and even
encountered the odd proposition now and then. But he hadn’t been with a woman
who did all that and then suddenly act like she couldn’t wait to get away from
him. He shook his head. He didn’t want to even
guess
what went on inside a woman’s mind, even if she was as
intriguing as Madison Thomas.

Maybe Madison was really just shy and wanted to keep things
professional while they were here. That he could understand. When he was at a
meet, he tried not to let anything wreck his focus. It was just
him
and the water and the wall. Everything else faded into
the background.

But a photo shoot wasn’t the same as a competitive meet, at
least not for him. There were just too many distractions here. Case in point:
Anna something or other. The older blonde was pretty in a Barbie kind of way
and she certainly made it known that she was attracted to him. If she were
food, she’d be an overripe mango—luscious and fragrant but probably a
messy affair when you got right down to it. Aaron was glad he didn’t return the
attraction, because it definitely made talking and flirting with her much
easier.

“Do people recognize you more now?” she asked, leaning forward.
They were seated by a bench, waiting for the crew to fix the
underwater strobes according to the photographer’s demands
. Chatting
with Anna was a good way to pass the time.

“They did during the few weeks right after the Olympics, but
only a number of hardcore fans stop me on the street,” he confessed. “I guess I
look different with clothes on.”

Anna giggled. “I can be a good judge of that,” she said with a
coy smile. She leaned back to where her robe was and retrieved a phone. “I
think a friend and I saw you one time around USC. It was around lunchtime and
you were wearing some kind of sweatshirt.”

Aaron shrugged. “Could be,” he said politely.

“Here, take a look,” she said, as she accessed her photo album
and started scrolling back. “Tell me if this is you and I could tell my friend
I was right all along.”

He leaned closer to get a better look. Her thumb slowed down
its scrolling, and Aaron did a double-take. Was that a naked photo? He wasn’t
sure. But Anna slowed down her pace even more and this time, Aaron was certain:
she was naked in the next few photographs. And no, he wasn’t looking at some
high-concept editorial shoot. These were
badly-lit
selfies
before a mirror. At least he thought it was Anna;
it was hard to tell when
half the screen was taken up by her
two huge breasts
.

“Oh!” Anna exclaimed, nearly dropping her phone if Aaron hadn’t
been quick enough to catch it.

“Here you go,” he said, trying hard not to look at the screen
as he handed it to her.

“I’m so sorry you had to see that, Aaron,” Anna started
babbling. “I thought I had deleted them from my phone—”

“It’s cool. Really,” he assured her. He grinned now, unable to
reign his amusement in for a second longer. Maybe if he had met Anna first,
he’d be making plans with her instead of a certain redhead.

Oh, wait. He
did
meet
Anna first. And it still didn’t do anything for him.

“We’re ready for you now!” the photographer called out, and
Anna tossed the phone beside her robe, all embarrassment gone.

“I was born ready,” she tittered, with a sideways glance at
Aaron. She headed to the pool, her hips moving to a silent salsa beat. Aaron
looked up at the bleachers to see if Madison was around and not finding her
there, he followed the blonde into the pool.

She deliberately stayed away from him, but it was easier
than she thought. They only had two set-ups together: one with just the two of
them, poised as if to dive into the pool, and another one with the rest of the
group—and Madison and Aaron were both on opposite ends of the frame. The
rest of her shoots were with the second photography unit, while Aaron did the
underwater pool shots. They had another group shot scheduled towards later that
afternoon, which was why Madison had to stay until the end of the day.

As she sat on the bleachers watching the scenes unfold, Madison
was fuming. She didn't see much of what was happening underwater except for
what was being transferred onto the photographer's laptop, but whenever Aaron
and Anna would emerge, she would be laughing and clinging to him. She watched
as Anna, who had been contorting her body effortlessly underwater, suddenly
surfaced with her hands around Aaron's neck. Aaron held her back. Madison
wanted to gag. Part of her wanted to head to the dressing room but a perverse
sense of curiosity took over and made her remain where she was.

“Pretty annoying, isn't he?” a new voice asked. Madison turned
to see a girl around her age sitting there. Her hair was jet-black with blue
lowlights and she wore an army jacket over a dress with a Peter Pan collar. She
surveyed the scene, looking bored. Madison was surprised to find someone who
wasn't enamored by Aaron Harding and his boy-next door charm.

“You mean Aar— Harding?” Madison clarified.

The girl nodded. “What do you think?”

Madison frowned. Though she was mad at him, she wasn't about to
talk smack about him to a perfect stranger. “Well, he can be one-track minded
and he likes messing with my head but I wouldn't really call him annoying.
Sometimes I suspect he's actually just a bit shy.”

“You seem to know him well,” the girl pointed out.

Was she some kind of reporter? “Oh, no, not really,” Madison
denied. “We just met yesterday.”

“
Aaah
. You were the one he was
talking about,” the other girl said.

“The one he was talking about? Huh?” She glanced back at the
pool, where Aaron had just dived down for another frame. “You mean Aaron?” What
did this girl know about him? And why would Aaron go around talking about her?

“Yeah, my idiot brother has a big mouth.” The girl laughed.
“But at least he's got pretty good taste in girls. I'm Zoe, by the way.”

Madison's jaw dropped open. She didn't know whether to be
flattered or dismayed that Aaron had been talking about her. She wanted to ask
what he had said but no words seemed to form on her lips. “Ma-Madison Thomas,”
she finally introduced.

“So good to meet you,” Zoe said, shaking her hand. “I have a
feeling we'll be very good friends.” She rifled through her bag. “Mints?
Sugar-free gum?”

Zoe was a gold mine of information about Aaron. His sister,
Madison soon found, was willing to spill everything about him. Madison made
sure to take mental notes. It made her feel better whenever she would glance at
the laptop screen and see Aaron and
Lakeisha's
legs
twined underwater or catch his hands just inches away from Anna's abundant
charms. They even had lunch together. But her new friend didn't stay for long,
so by the end of the day, any elation that Madison had felt had now rapidly
devolved to pure venom.

Even Elliott’s arrival to check on her on the way to see
another model shoot wasn’t enough to bring her out of her funk. “By the way,
Sean Torrance called,”
Elliott
said, after they had
run out of gossip. “Asked how you were doing with Stroke. Red, tell me this was
a random call. I thought you were done with that guy!”

“What do you want me to say, Elliott?” Madison responded
defensively, crossing her arms over her chest. “It’s not personal.”

“You know exactly why it’s fucked up,” he told her. “You could
be seeing so many other guys. Didn’t Mr. Olympics drive you home yesterday?”

Madison shook her head. “We’re just getting to know each other.”

“Just a distraction in between calls from Sean Torrance?”

“You make it sound as if I have nothing better to do than to
sit around and wait for Sean to call,” she snapped.

Elliott raised a knowing eyebrow but was the first to back
down. “Whatever. It’s your life.”

Still, Elliott’s words sobered her up. She was all business
when the final shoot came. The other girls greeted her warmly as she approached
but she tried to keep her poker face on.

“Hey,” he greeted her as she found her marker beside him. Everyone
else seemed to fade in the background when she was around him. Tunnel senses
and it made her hot. So hot that it was getting hard to follow her all-work,
no-play policy.

“Hey yourself,” she replied.

He leaned closer so his lips were directly against her ear.
“You look gorgeous in white. I might need another hand later,” he murmured.

His compliment wormed itself through her walls, making her
smile just a little. “We're working, hotshot,” she reminded him out of the
corner of her mouth.

“Okay, Aaron, put your arms around Madison now,” the
photographer said. She stiffened when Aaron's arms first encircled her waist.
She could smell the chlorine on his skin. She wanted to melt against him, feel
her back flush against him.

“This is good,” he murmured.

“
Mmm
-hmm,” she agreed absently. There
was something about him that made her feel safe. But she snapped herself back
into the zone before her mind could go off wandering again.

The last few frames felt like torture for Madison, whenever she
heard the other girls flirting with Aaron in between takes. Whenever she
glanced at him, he’d give her an amused smirk like he had a secret he was about
to tell her, but he kept right on flirting back. At least he wasn’t treating
her like a social pariah, but she had to admit that she was the teensiest bit
jealous at all the attention he was giving the other models.

When the last frame was over, the crew broke out in
appreciative applause and started thanking each other. She glanced at Aaron who
was bending down to give Lakeisha a hug. She waited a bit, but she was pulling
him off to one side. Madison shrugged and just thanked the photographer and the
clients before slipping out of the room. But Aaron didn’t even seem to notice
that she had gone.
So that was that,
she thought. Funny how she thought there’d be something more.
Expected
something more.

Maybe it was time to take matters into
her
own
hands again.

When the shoot finally ended, Aaron just wanted to go home.
What bummed him out was that he didn’t know where Madison had gone after. It
took him a while before he could extricate himself from Anna and Lakeisha, then
he had to thank Eliza and the rest of the marketing team. When he realized that
Madison wasn’t there, he wanted to curse. He didn’t even have her number. So he
just took a perfunctory shower and then headed for the building garage.

To his surprise, he found Madison standing by his car when he
thought she had left. She was dressed in a loose gray shirt and tight jeans.
Her red hair was neatly tied back into a ponytail and she was carrying a large
bag. “What are you doing there?” he asked.

“I just came to see which of the girls you're taking to
dinner,” she said haughtily. “Elliott and I made a bet.”

Aaron opened the back door and placed his bag in the backseat. “Why
would I take either of them out? I'm not interested in them.”

“Oh, you say that after a whole day of pawing at them?” Madison
demanded.

“I was just doing what the photographer instructed. Besides,
Anna is dangerous. Did you know she keeps naked pictures of herself on her
phone?” he asked.

“Naked pictures?” she spluttered. “How did you know?”

“She was showing me something on her phone and she accidentally
scrolled through some—”

“Seriously? That was her ploy?” Madison shook her head in
amusement. “And you walked right into it!”

Aaron opened the door to the driver's seat, but instead of
getting in, he leaned with both elbows against the car frame and looked at her.
“Of course, your ploy yesterday was much better.”

That rattled her because she narrowed her eyes at him. “That
was
for
you
too,
hotshot, in case you forgot. Or maybe you did, because it was me one day, Anna
the next… Too bad this is a two-day shoot or you’ll probably be after Lakeisha
tomorrow.”