Out of all the men in that club, she’d had to go and sleep with him.
The sun was high in the sky now, but despite its heat a familiar damp clamminess was creeping over her skin. She felt numb. It would be easy to say it was just bad luck. That she was the victim of some massive cosmic conspiracy. That she had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But what would be the point?
She knew what had really happened. When he’d collided with her in the club it hadn’t rendered her helpless or incapable of thought. The truth was that even before she’d felt the lean, hard muscles of his chest, or the power in his arms as he’d stopped her falling, she had wanted him.
Having sex with him had been her choice.
And his choice too.
She could feel the blood trembling beneath her skin.
Only he’d already distanced himself from that part of the equation. Distanced himself from her too. Just as her father had done.
Her father—
She felt a sting of pain in her chest. Why did everything always begin and end with her father? A man who thought so little of her that he had found it easy—effortless, really—to walk away. Nor had he felt any need to keep in touch. No letter telling her that he cared, no phone call to explain or justify his actions. Not so much as a backward glance. But then why would he look back? she thought dully. He already had a whole other life mapped out—another future—and it was easier to delete her and her mother, to rewrite history. Just as Luis had.
She shivered.
And that wasn’t all they had in common.
Just like with her father, she had now given him the power to jeopardise her future.
Thinking back to what it had been like after her father had left, she took a breath, trying to steady the panic lurching in her stomach.
His desertion had, of course, devastated her thirteen-year-old self, but it had impacted on the future Cristina too. Angry and hurt, and with the cause of her anger and pain absent, she had turned on those who remained.
She had messed up her education, lost her friends, and lashed out at the one person who had consistently and unfailingly loved her—her mother.
It had taken years to get her life back on track, and this photo shoot was her chance finally to be a part of something. Only now, just like always, she had managed to mess it up.
Her body stilled. It was awkward enough that she’d had sex with Luis—she couldn’t even imagine what Grace would say if she found out—but there was also the matter of Luis wanting her gone.
Her insides tightened. Surely that wouldn’t be up to him?
She bit her lip. Except that, like any normal parents, Agusto and Sofia were clearly devoted to their son. If he came up with a convincing enough excuse to end her contract it was inconceivable that they would take her side against him.
She felt her heart thud against her ribs. So the real question, then, was how far would he go to make good on his threat?
*
‘That’s great, Señor Osorio. If you could maybe lean in a little towards your wife. That’s wonderful. Perhaps just a little bit closer. Wonderful.’
Cristina swallowed. At some point in the future she would look back to this day and see it as some sort of baptism of fire. A rite of passage that she might refer to in her memoirs. Right now, though, she just wanted it to be over.
She had probably taken hundreds, if not thousands of photographs over the last two years, but today nothing was working.
In theory it didn’t matter. Today’s shots were supposed to be ‘fun’. Really they were just about making Agusto and Sofia feel comfortable around her, but instead they were making her question her ability to do the job.
She shivered on the inside. Maybe Grace’s faith in her had been a little premature. Or, worse, could Luis’s scathing remark about her experience actually be true?
Hating the way he had already managed to undermine her, she tried unsuccessfully to block his words from her head.
Only it was hard to do when the man himself was lounging negligently on a sofa to her left.
The sun was already high in a sky the colour of forget-me-nots, and both she and the Osorios were dressed for the heat—short sleeves, cool, pale fabrics. Luis, though, cut a sombre figure. Wearing a beautifully cut dark grey suit that made his eyes look almost black, a pale blue shirt and dark blue knitted tie, he looked as though he was about to preside over a full board meeting rather than sitting in on an informal photo shoot.