“Hi, Gib!”
“Hi. handsome!”
Gib flashed them standard smiles, then turned a scowl on Chloe again. “Go,” he said. “Didn’t you agree to do whatever I asked you to do?” he reminded her silkily.
She colored slightly. She sighed. She went.
Gib turned back to load film in the camera. Sierra started to work on the blonde model’s hair. Beyond the door he could hear Edith telling Chloe about how she arranged the scheduling.
“Let me make some notes,” Chloe said.
Gib nodded, satisfied. If she had to be here, helping Edith was the best place for her. She could have her time in the city, and she wouldn’t be underfoot.
Now, if Misty would just show up.
He needed her to set up the lights and the reflectors so they could get started as soon as Sierra finished with the models’ hair. He would need her to move things later, changing the lighting while he shot.
He read over the notes the agency had sent. He made some of his own. He started setting things up himself, annoyed.
Edith stuck her head in. “Misty called. She can’t come in today. Something about her planets not being properly aligned.”
Gib stared.
Edith shrugged, a small smile playing around the corner of her mouth. “Apparently she’s sensitive to that sort of thing.”
Gib gave her a steely-eyed glare.
“Shame about that,” Edith said, still smiling. “You could probably use some help.”
Gib could see Chloe sitting at Edith’s desk, talking on the phone to someone, taking notes studiously, her lower lip caught between her teeth. Gib looked at her, then at Edith.
Edith looked at Gib, then at Chloe, then back at Gib.
Damn it, was she going to make him beg?
“I could send Chloe in to help when she’s finished on the phone,” Edith ventured after a moment.
“Do that,” Gib growled.
Chloe came in five minutes later. “What can I do?” she said eagerly.
“Set these up.” Gib pointed to the reflectors. He indicated where. Chloe went to work.
Gib was used to Misty and her predecessors—girls who needed to be directed and prodded every step of the way. Chloe didn’t. Once he told her what to do, she did it. And the next time he needed it done, she did it without his having to say a word. She seemed almost to anticipate his directions. And she didn’t say a word, either. Just worked.
He was amazed.
Chloe took it all in her stride.
And when they’d finished and the models had left, only then did she look at him and beam. “That was fun!”
Misty had never called it fun.
“Yeah,” Gib said gruffly. “Here.” He thrust the camera at her. “Can you load this?”
Solemnly, almost reverentially in fact, Chloe took it from him. While he watched, she loaded film into the camera. “That’s another of your jobs,” he told her.
Just as she was handing it back, Sierra came in. “I called my sister. She’d like Chloe to come over this evening at seven.”
“We’ll be there,” Gib said.
Both Chloe and Sierra looked at him, then blinked.
He scowled. “Gina would want me to make sure it’s the right place for her,” he said. “Don’t stare at me like that. She’s my sister. She doesn’t ask for much!”
“Right.” Sierra nodded wisely.
Chloe gave him a bright, entirely unnecessary smile. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” Gib said. “Let’s get to work.”
Naturally Chloe thought Mariah’s apartment was wonderful.
A day in Chloe’s company had shown Gibson the truth of everything he’d feared: she thought the city was wonderful. Period.
“It’s just so...so...alive,” she’d said on the way uptown in the taxi. “Look!” She’d pointed at a man in top hat and tails, playing a grand piano on a street corner. “Wherever you look, you never know what you’ll find!”
“That’s not necessarily good,” Gib had said gruffly.
But Chloe hadn’t stopped enthusing. She enthused about the neighborhood in which Mariah lived. It was on the Upper West Side, not too many blocks above and just a little west of Gib’s own apartment on Central Park West. Not a bad neighborhood at all, he conceded. But not exactly Iowa.
Still, he reserved judgement, going only so far as to say, “I’m the one who’s deciding if it’s all right or not If it’s not, you’re not staying,” just as they were alighting from the taxi.
“What?” Chloe looked astonished.
He took her suitcases and pointed her toward the brownstone whose address Sierra had given them. “You heard me.”
Sierra’s sister, Mariah, was normal. Attractive even, in a slender, long-haired, model-like way. Her hair was brown hair, not purple. Her fingernails were red, not black. And other than tiny studs in her ears, she had no visible body piercings.
Not that Sierra had any, either. But Gib suspected she had leanings in that direction.
Mariah ushered them in and up the stairs. “I’m on the second floor. A floor-through. Everything has been pretty much gutted since I bought it this spring. The building was a wreck when I bought my place. Plaster crumbling. Wallpaper peeling. Ceilings sagging. But it’s down to the bare bones now, and the plasterers are supposed to be starting later this week.”
The apartment faced south. It was, as Mariah claimed, almost cavern-like. She had no furniture in the living room besides a television and VCR and a futon with a brightly colored Indian coverlet and lots of pillows. The kitchen was equally spartan. Appliances, a bar stool and a butcher block stacked with a small assortment of pots and pans and dishes.
“The stove is gas,” Mariah said. “It works. The water runs. Hot and cold. The refrigerator is hooked up. There’s a light overhead.” She gestured at the shop light hanging from the ceiling fixture. “Once they’ve plastered in here, the cabinet maker will begin working. Then they’re going to bring in the counter tops. They might have to shut things off briefly, but for the most part, you shouldn’t have any problems.”
Chloe took it all in wordlessly. Gib had a hundred questions.
Were these workers licensed? Bonded? Responsible? Did they have criminal records?
“Next
