Adored (LOVE LETTERS #1) - Kristen Blakely Page 0,4
didn’t give you away, sis. She doesn’t know we’re related. Besides, to some people, there’s not a whole lot of difference between modeling and prostitution. Maybe Vera’s one of those.”
“Give her more credit. She’s not like that.” Iris sighed. “I hope you didn’t give her a hard time. She was just doing me a favor, covering my volunteer shift.”
His conscience pricked him. “Do I ever give anyone a hard time?”
“You do, sometimes. You should have been nice to her, Rowan. Between her divorce and the custody dispute, she’s had a lot of the stuffing knocked out of her in the past six months. She works and works, especially on weekends, because there’s nothing else for her to do when her daughter is with her ex. I think keeping busy keeps her from being depressed, but it’s a toss-up as to whether she’ll need Valium before she runs out of caffeine.”
“And she still finds the time to preach to the fallen.”
“And maybe you’ll lose that snotty tone when you find out why.”
“Snotty? Who’s the snotty one? She took one look at me and assumed that I sold my body for money.”
“Isn’t that what you do?” Iris asked pointedly.
Rowan dragged his hand through his hair. He ground his teeth. “Apparently, you don’t see a whole lot of difference between modeling and prostitution, either. Perhaps we should have had this conversation seven years ago before I dropped out of school.”
Iris sighed. “There’s a difference, of course. I’m sorry. She’s a good friend, and I just hate being caught between friends and family.”
Rowan knew enough from his sister’s tone to change the topic. “Shall I still come over? I can grab a pizza, fried chicken, or wings on my way.”
“No, we’re fine. If you’re here, Jordan will want to play Xbox with you all night instead of going to bed early, which is what he should do. Maybe tomorrow afternoon, before your flight back to New York.”
“Sure. I’ll call you in the morning.”
“And you have a salad for dinner. Cholesterol.”
“Yes, doctor.” With a smile, Rowan hung up on his sister. He relaxed into the plush leather upholstery of his rented car and stared at the clinic entrance. All right, perhaps he had been tough on Vera, but he had not been thinking straight.
When he had stood at the door of the clinic and caught his first glimpse of her, his first thought had been “She’s lonely.” He was not sure how he had reached the conclusion. Her combination of long-lashed brown eyes and sultry, though unpainted, lips in a fine-featured face made her attractive, but in his line of work, surrounded by stunning people, raw good looks alone no longer moved him.
Perhaps it was something less tangible. Long, wavy tendrils had come loose from her ponytail to frame her face. The overall effect was one of unconscious vulnerability. It softened her appearance and gave him a glimpse of the woman behind the professional fa?ade.
Far more likely, though, it was his gut reaction to something indefinable in her eyes. He was a model, after all, and in some ways, a consummate actor. His work demanded he convey emotion and mood entirely through the line of his body, the angle of his face, the curve of his lips, and the shadows in his eyes. He knew how to assess other people in a single glance, and something about Vera whispered her aching loneliness.
He would have reacted with care, matching tenderness to her loneliness, but then she had gone off on him, and he had forgotten all his good intentions in the sheer delight of teasing her. There were few people more compelling or irresistible to Rowan than a vulnerable woman who did not know how strong she was.
The door of the clinic opened, and several patients walked out. Maria, the receptionist, locked the door behind them and flipped the sign to “Closed.” He supposed Maria and Vera had final things to do before locking up the clinic; it couldn’t be too much longer. Within ten minutes, the door opened again, and Maria and Vera walked out together. Bereft of her shapeless white lab coat, Vera showed off a curvaceous, long-legged figure. Her clothes, a teal-colored blouse and denim jeans, were more casual than classy, but they suited the clean, simple image he was building up of her.
He stepped out of his car and approached the two women. They spun around to stare at him. Maria’s mouth opened and closed like a goldfish. Vera said nothing, but