style="font-size:15px;"> “Did I ask you for a job?” she snapped. “No. I don’t think I did! But what I am asking is for you to leave me alone. Am I speaking in tongues? Why are we having a failure to communicate?”
Jordan spun around and began to walk with purposeful strides away from Ian. She glanced over her shoulder once and was grateful that he hadn’t moved from his spot.
“Jordan,” he called after her. “Five minutes. That’s all I’m asking.” He paused, and then added, “Please.”
There was a raw sincerity in his tone that made her halt in her tracks; she slowly turned back to him. The sun was waning, but the man still had his sunglasses on. She could barely see his eyes behind the dark amber lenses.
“What do you want, GQ? Really. What do you really want from me?”
Ian took one small step forward. “Like I said the first time we met...I want to photograph you.”
“And why, might I ask, would the great Ian Sterling want to photograph me?”
Her question made him pause for a split second before he stated, “You know who I am.”
Jordan narrowed her eyes, angry that she had let it slip out inadvertently that she had looked him up on the internet. She was caught red-handed, so there was no sense denying it.
“I did a Google search. Ian Sterling...” She waved her hand in front of her body as if she was drawing a large rainbow. “Photographer to the stars. Yes. I know who you are, and the question still remains, why would someone like you want to photograph someone like me?”
Ian took another step toward her and answered her question seriously. “You have the face I’ve been looking for.”
Jordan kept her hand wrapped tightly around the small bottle of mace in her pocket while she thought about his words. She just couldn’t figure out his angle. He seemed sincere, but that didn’t mean that he was. She hadn’t spent much time researching him, but from what she had read, Ian was internationally known and highly respected.
He took another small step forward. “Listen...all I want to do is test you for my next book. I promise you—the offer’s legit.”
Before Jordan had a chance to reply, her phone rang. She slipped her hand off the mace and pulled the phone out of her pocket.
“Hey,” she said as she kept her eyes trained on Ian. “I’m just about to hop on the trolley. I’ll be there in a sec.”
She clicked off the phone and said, “Listen. I’ve gotta go.”
“What about my job offer?”
Jordan paused for a moment and then shrugged one shoulder. “I’m not a model, Mr. Sterling. You’ve got the wrong woman.”
“If you test well, I’ll pay you twenty-five thousand dollars for your time.”
Once again, Jordan stopped in her tracks. She slowly pirouetted until she was facing him again. “What did you say?”
This time, he stayed rooted in place. She could see that he was done chasing her for the moment. “You heard me. Five thousand up front. Twenty when we’re done shooting. Plus expenses.”
“Please.” Her arched brows drew together. “You can’t be serious.”
“Try me.”
Jordan tilted her head slightly to the side. “Are you willing to put that in writing?”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
She chewed on her lower lip and narrowed her eyes as she mulled over the offer. Twenty-five thousand dollars could buy a heck of a lot of canvas and paint. She’d be swimming in art supplies, not to mention that her rent would be paid for months in advance. Her money worries would be over, at least temporarily, and she could concentrate full-time on the paintings for her first gallery showing. And for what? Posing for a couple pictures? Smiling pretty for the camera? She’d be a fool to say no. And yet...
Ian interrupted her train of thought. “My car’s right over there. If you’re late, I can take you anywhere you need to go. We can talk on the way.”
Jordan shook her head at him disbelievingly. “Just because I haven’t maced you yet doesn’t mean I’m crazy enough to get into a car with a complete stranger and be taken God knows where! It still hasn’t been determined that you aren’t a very nicely dressed serial killer.”
“You yourself said that you know who I am.”
“Please.” Jordan laughed. “Just because you’re famous doesn’t mean that you’re not a total freak. In fact, being famous is a huge strike against you, in my opinion.”
“Is that a ‘no’ to my offer?”
Jordan turned and headed toward the station. “That’s an ‘I don’t know.’”
Ian waved his hand at the driver before he caught up with Jordan.
“I have to catch this trolley. I’ll think about it.” She quickened her pace as the A trolley pulled in.
Ian stayed with her and, as the doors to the vehicle opened, followed her to her seat and sat down on the bench across from her. He spread out his long legs in front of him and draped one arm over the back of his seat. Jordan would have thought he would look out of place sitting there in his dark gray pin-striped suit and his deep purple shirt, but surprisingly, he looked just as relaxed and in charge on the trolley as he did standing next to his Bentley.
“Ride the trolley often, do you?” Jordan asked drily.
“Never,” he admitted easily. He was so ridiculously handsome, so well made, that it was hard for her to stop staring at his face. She wasn’t certain she had ever met anyone quite as perfectly good-looking as Ian Sterling. Of course, he was totally not her type. She was chronically attracted to scruffy musicians and moody out-of-work artists. It was a bit of sickness, really. Lately she had been thinking that it was time to change her brand of men.
“What’s up with the sunglasses anyway? Are you going for Michael Jackson circa 1982?”
“I’m sensitive to light,” he answered smoothly. It was the truth and made it easy to explain why he wore sunglasses even on cloudy days or at dusk. Most people accepted it or just didn’t care.
“Okay.” Jordan scoffed sarcastically. “Sure.”
She saw Ian work his jaw before he reached up and pulled off his sunglasses. He narrowed his eyes against the light and looked at her. Although the vision in his left eye was fuzzy and blurred, he was able to see Jordan’s face with his right eye. Focusing on what he could see with his right while ignoring his left was a skill he had mastered early on in the diagnosis. To look at him directly, no one would suspect he was slowly losing his ability to see.
For the first time, Jordan was able to see Ian’s intense blue-gray eyes as he stared back at her. A jolt of instant recognition coursed through her system as she locked gazes with Ian. There was something so familiar about this man. She just couldn’t put her finger on it. As the trolley pulled away
