She felt a flicker of irritation.
His choice of clothing was obviously a deliberate attempt to sabotage the relaxed atmosphere she had been trying to create. And it didn’t help either that he seemed determined to prove she was a scurrilous, manipulative hustler. Not only did he seem to be constantly there, policing her every move, he treated any attempt she made to engage him or his parents in conversation as some kind of an inquisition.
Aside from that he ignored her completely, immersing himself in his work so that she couldn’t actually imagine him without his laptop.
Glancing furtively over to where he sat—one hand hovering over the keyboard, the other tracking a line of numbers on a paper printout—not for the first time she wondered how Luis 2.0 could be the same man who had stripped her naked and taken possession of her feverish body.
A memory of the earlier version of the man sitting opposite her dropped into her head—his mouth rough and urgent against hers, his eyes darkening as he lowered her onto the bed—and suddenly her mind went blank.
All she could think was how perfect it had felt…how perfect it had been.
When he’d banged into her in the club she had been blown away, knocked off her feet—not just literally but metaphorically. The attraction between them had been instant, inescapable.
She gritted her teeth. And now he was inescapable again, unfortunately…
Feeling completely exposed, she glanced back down at the camera, steadying herself. Then, staring at the photos, she felt her pulse start to accelerate. The composition and light were fine, but—
They said the camera never lied, and if that was true in this case her job had just got about a million times harder.
Agusto looked tense. Everything from the set of his shoulders to the tightness around his mouth suggested that he was not enjoying the photo shoot at all. But it was his wife’s expression that made a knot form in Cristina’s stomach.
Sofia was looking not at the camera but through it, her eyes focused on some distant point, as though she was searching for something that wasn’t visible. She looked sad—hollowed out, almost.
Keeping her head bent over the camera, Cristina forced herself to click through the images on the screen, all the while making encouraging noises.
It wasn’t just the sadness in the older woman’s eyes that had caught her off guard, it was her own unintended intrusion into it.
Head spinning, she took a breath. She felt grubby, tainted. Just as she had when
she’d caught that actress, with her philandering husband of three weeks, in a restaurant. Even now she could remember the thrill of it. She had thought being a paparazza was like being some kind of avenger. A truth-chasing, justice-seeker on a bike, with a camera as her weapon of choice.
But watching that actress, who’d been younger than she herself was now, go into meltdown had made her feel physically sick. It could have made her a lot of money. It wasn’t every day that an Alister stripped down to her underwear in public. But instead it had been the reason she had quit chasing celebrities.
‘Is there a problem?’
At the sound of the cool, clipped voice, she felt her fingers curl instinctively around the camera. Given his low opinion of her, Luis Osorio was the last person she wanted to talk to when she was feeling like a paparazza with his mother. But then he was pretty much the last person she wanted to talk to, or see, in any situation.
Although judging by the way her skin now felt as if it was on fire, it appeared that her body might have missed that particular memo.
Gritting her teeth, she trained an expression of what she hoped looked like serenity onto her face, and looked up at him.
At first, when she’d found him talking with his parents in the ornate sitting room the Osorios had chosen as a backdrop for the photos, she had assumed he would leave once she began to work. However, it had become clear almost immediately that he was keeping his promise to her. That not only was he going to watch her every move, but he was going to do so with an expression of utter contempt on his handsome face.
‘Not at all,’ she lied. ‘It’s all just part of the process.’
‘Really? So all this playing with the light settings and changing lenses actually leads somewhere? That’s good to know,’ he said softly. ‘To us amateurs it just looks like you don’t know what you’re doing.’
He held her gaze, and she felt her stomach tighten like a fist.
‘By “amateurs” he means his mother and I,’ Agusto said drily. ‘Luis has a great interest in photography. He has a quite a collection now.’
It was true. She had seen them around the fortress. His photographs ranged from Bauhaus Expressionism to nineteen-thirties social documentary, and were of a calibre normally not seen outside of galleries and museums.
Cristina kept her expression neutral. ‘I know. I’ve noticed them.’ She had admired them too, although no amount of waterboarding would have persuaded her to say so.
Turning, Sofia smiled fondly at her son. ‘And he’s met quite a number of the photographers personally—haven’t you, mi cariño?’
Watching her son’s face stiffen at the endearment, Cristina stifled a smile. But her amusement faded rapidly as Luis said slowly, ‘I’m sure Ms Shephard doesn’t want to hear about that now, Mamá. She is an artist at work, and we wouldn’t want to interrupt her muse.’