The man from the bar stood over her. He was taller than she’d estimated when he was sitting. Up close, he was clearly older, forties, maybe, with a look of command in his pale eyes. Eyes that focused solely on Thea.
“I see congratulations are in order.” His gaze zeroed in on her lips, skimmed the neckline of her low-cut red T-shirt. “What’s your name?”
“Thea,” she replied.
“Happy birthday, Thea. My name’s Derek.” Cilla’s eyes widened. He didn’t notice, nor did Thea. “You’ve got ten candles on the cake. Is that how old you are, ten?”
“Nineteen,” she responded without thinking.
“It could still work,” he murmured, almost to himself. “That skin’s perfect.” He cleared his throat. “Listen, sorry to interrupt your party but I’ve got something to talk with you about. Alone,” he added, glancing over the group clustered around the table, avidly watching them. “Come over to the bar with me.”
“Much as I’d like to talk about my perfect skin, I’ll pass, thanks.” Thea gestured to the cake. “I’m kind of busy right now.”
“Trust me, you’re not too busy for this. I think you’ll be interested in what I have to say.”
She eyed him. “If you want to hit on me, here’s as good a place as any.”
“I’m not hitting on you,” he said with a trace of impatience. “This is business, and I don’t have all night. Now, you can keep sucking down Shirley Temples with your girlfriends or you can come talk to me about what just might be your future.” He tossed a business card down on the table. “I’ll be over at the bar.”
Turning on his heel, he strode away.
Thea stared at him, watching as he slid onto a stool and gestured for a drink. On the cake before her, a lone candle still sputtered.
“What was that all about?” Trish asked, mystified.
“Ignore him,” Paige advised. “He’s selling something.”
Delaney lifted her club soda. “Nope. Pickup line, no matter what he says.”
“No,” Cilla and Kelly said simultaneously. “That’s Derek Edes,” Cilla added.
Sabrina frowned. “I know that name.”
“You should. He’s only one of the biggest fashion photographers in the business, outside of maybe Richard Avedon.”
“Avedon?” Now Thea looked as mystified as Trish. “What does he want with me?”
“Your perfect skin?” Cilla shrugged. “Don’t ask me, ask him. He’s staring at you again, by the way.”
Thea shifted.
“Don’t look,” Paige ordered. “If he wanted to talk to you badly enough to come over here, he can wait. It’s your birthday.”
Cilla reached out for the business card, tapping it thoughtfully on the tabletop. “I say wait and call him Monday.”
“Or call his room,” Kelly added. “I think I read somewhere that he always stays at the Chateau Marmont when he comes to L. A.”
Thea rose. “No. I’m going to go find out what he wants.”
Delaney snorted. “That’s not hard, sweetie. You’re gorgeous and he’s male.”
Thea shook her head. “This isn’t sex. It’s something else,” she said. “I just don’t know what.”
And so they watched as she crossed the room with a feline grace that was partly the result of fifteen years of dance training, partly innate. They watched as she sat next to him, as he rested a casual, proprietary hand on the back of her stool. They stared as her mouth dropped open in shock, as the five minutes stretched into twenty.
And they watched as she crossed the room, finally, walking as though her feet weren’t touching the ground.
“So? What’s it all about?” Delaney demanded.
“A job,” Thea said, bemused. “He wants me to come to New York and model for a new cosmetics campaign he’s shooting.”
“What did you say?”
“Remember my birthday resolution?”
“To take more chances?”
She nodded, her eyes on Derek Edes, the blonde completely forgotten. “I said yes. I leave Monday.”
1
Portland, Oregon, 2007
“YOU’RE GOING TO SEATTLE for the weekend to drink beer?”
Brady McMillan looked up from the steel keg he was washing out in the pub’s microbrewery and grinned at his older brother. “Pour beer, Michael” he corrected, resting a hand against one of the gleaming copper tanks lined up behind him. “It’s a brewers’ festival. I’ll be bonding with the masses, making a good impression for McMillans’, comparing notes with my fellow brewmasters—”
“—and drinking beer,” Michael finished.
Brady’s lips twitched as he lifted the keg to drain onto the concrete floor. Water streamed down to the grates below the funnel-shaped bottoms of the tanks. “It’s a difficult job but someone’s got to do it. I’m willing to suffer to give McMillans’ the best beer possible.” Five feet away, on the other side of the low wooden barrier, lay the warm golden oak and leather of their flagship brewpub. Here behind the barrier was Brady’s territory of malts and worts, hops and hoses.
Michael folded his arms over his barrel chest. “Some people just use message boards.”
“There’s no substitute for face-to-face contact.”
“Or mouth to glass.”
“The taste, the aroma, the mouth feel—”
“The buzz.”
“What? I can’t hear you over the noise of all the people out in the pub drinking my beer.” Brady blinked guilelessly and set the keg upright. “Good thing I go to these festivals to stay on top of the trends.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s the beer that brings them back, but it’s the atmosphere in the pubs that gets ’em here in the first place.”
“No doubt. Lucky we’re both good at our jobs, isn’t it?” Michael was burly where Brady was lanky, darkhaired where Brady was blond, and Michael thrived on the business side of things whereas for Brady it was all about the beer and the people, in roughly that order.
“I think you could start offloading some of your brewing work and pitch in on the pubs some more. Like the Odeon Theater property. We need to go over some of the numbers. The deal’s supposed to close week after next and we’ve got to talk about the closing costs
