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  “It’s a fairy tale,” Aubrey laughed. “Look, glad you like Cyrus. Cyrus was a doll.”

  “Did you happen to get some time alone with Cyr—”

  “No!” Aubrey said a bit too forcefully. She covered with a soft laugh. “No playtime for me. Just work. I have to run or I’ll be late for today’s offering of tan, buff, studly calendar boys. I’ll send you my choices of today’s pics later tonight. I might even grab myself a bottle of wine again.”

  “Just don’t drink the whole thing,” Gail teased.

  “Don’t worry. That was a one-time faux pas. I’ll be in touch, Gail.” Then she hung up and tried to get dressed without thinking about Mike Sykes. She dressed quickly, sipped her atrocious coffee and packed her camera bag.

  “No wallowing,” she told herself in the bathroom mirror. “Onward and upward, Aubrey. You have to go make pretty men prettier on a breathtaking Florida beach. You have it rough.” She shook her head at herself. “Oh and by the way…you’re nuts.”

  But she already knew that, didn’t she? Aubrey grabbed her bags and was out the door.

  Same lobby, different day. She caught the concierge raise an eyebrow from behind her small desk. The woman even sat forward, planted her chin on her folded hands and watched Aubrey scan the lobby patrons. She was watching to see which men were Aubrey’s for the day. For some reason this cracked Aubrey up.

  She found her list for the day and read off the names “Matt Getty, Peter Meyer, Cruz Reyes and Derek Caper. Where are my men?”

  Each one stood when she read their names out. Each one was more gorgeous than the next.

  “Getty, you’re my Mr. May. You can stay where you are.”

  He was a blond boy with gray eyes and broad shoulders. His sherbet-colored shirt showed off the tan of his skin and the white highlights in his surfer-boy haircut. She smiled at him and that was all the encouragement he needed to grin at her.

  “Peter, you’re my Mr. June. You can stand next to May.”

  Peter was her only ginger. His hair was that dark-russet color that only true redheads could achieve. She’d never seen a dye job that could mimic that color. Even from where she stood, Aubrey could see the blond highlights in his hair. It would look stunning under the blazing Key West sun. His eyes were true green and he sported a close-clipped beard. She wasn’t much for facial hair, but on Mr. June it worked.

  He shook hands with Getty and tossed her a good-natured salute. His biceps flexed nicely when he did it and she caught the edge of a tattoo. Something Celtic. Very nice, Aubrey thought.

  Cruz Reyes had lush brown hair, caramel skin, eyes so dark they were nearly black and when he grinned, a single dimple. “Oh Cruz, that dimple is going to make you very beloved among our readers,” she laughed. She pointed her pen to the line and said, “Get over there with your comrades, Mr. July.”

  He did as ordered, shaking hands with the other two. Aubrey realized she was craving actual good coffee. She promised herself once she herded today’s group of studs into her almost-soccer-mom van she’d get some.

  “Which leaves us with Derek. Derek, come on down. You’re the next man in our studly calendar.”

  They all laughed at her joke and she felt for the first time since leaving home that maybe she could block out the pain from her stung emotions and kicked-around heart. Maybe she was putting too much weight on the attraction and feeling she was experiencing for a man she just met.

  She studied Derek and thought maybe she just needed a fling.

  He was very much her type. Tall, at least six-foot-six, leanly muscled but oh yes, muscles. He had a sleeve of tattoos on his left arm and she could make out everything from a mermaid to an angel. His eyes were tropical-water blue, his sand-colored hair hitting at jaw length. And his jaw was perfect. A mole by the left edge of his lower lip completed the heart-stopping image.

  “You’re my Mr. August. Now flex for me,” she joked.

  He surprised her by blushing a hot red but doing it anyway. When he flexed she could see he was more heavily muscled than she’d thought.

  “My, it’s hot in here,” Aubrey said, laughing.

  “Yes. Yes, it is.” The concierge giggled and gave Aubrey a grin when she turned around. “Thanks for making my morning.” Then her phone lit up and she answered in a completely calm and professional manner despite the high color in her cheeks.

  “Now, children, mama needs caffeine. We’re all going to go to my horribly ugly van and someone is going to tell me how to get here.” She thrust the location paper out and someone took it. She wasn’t sure who because she was already walking. “But first tell me how to get to the nearest coffee joint. Java’s on me.”

  “Can I get a green tea?” Derek asked, stone-cold serious.

  “Oh honey,” she patted his substantial arm. “You can have whatever you want, pretty.”

  * * * * *

  As the day’s shoot ended, she put them all together, grouped them close in front of an old sun-bleached piece of driftwood.

  “Have at it,” she said. “This is just for fun, so do whatever. We’re nearly done and I think it’s just barely lunchtime.”

  Derek looked at his watch. “Just.”

  “Once I get a few candids,” Aubrey said, circling them slowly, “I’ll take you all back to the hotel and set you free. The day is yours.”

  Something swept across Derek’s gaze but through her camera lens she only registered it as a change of expression.

  This idea of hers she’d yet to explain to Gail, but she figured she would tonight. She only had two more days of shooting and she thought her idea was pretty nifty.

  When it was time to go, she loaded her crew into the van and headed back to home base. “You know I have to admit, I’ll miss working with you all. You were a fun bunch.”

  “It’s because you have a redhead,” said Peter.

  They all laughed. Derek was conspicuously quiet.

  At the hotel, she gave them all a hug. Told them she’d let the office know how it went and then said, “Check’s in the mail, guys. And I personally promise that’s the truth.” She laughed. “You guys did great.”

  Derek lingered back when the others ran off. Aubrey was digging for her room key when she realized he was still standing there. “What’s up, Derek?”

  “I was wondering…” He shuffled his feet and she saw the long, lean muscles in his thigh bunch above his knee. Her eyes skimmed the tattoo sleeve again. She made out a playing card and what looked like an old tree up near his shoulder. Every time she looked at it, she found something new. It was like one of those hidden-picture books. “If you’d…”

  Aubrey’s stomach grumbled as she waited. She realized coffee was the only breakfast she’d managed. But then she saw the tell of a man about to ask a woman out and her stomach went from hungry to plummeting.

  “Derek, I—”

  “If you’d go out with me!” he finished in a rush. “I know you’re only here another day or two but I’d really like it if I could take you out.”

  “I can’t,” she sighed. “I’m just getting…” She scratched her head. How best to describe this thing with Mike? In her back pocket, her phone vibrated. Aubrey ignored it. “Extricated from something sticky,” she finished. “Complicated.”

  He grinned at her, showing off that perfect jaw. “That doesn’t mean you can’t go out for a drink.”

  “Plus you’re a young pup,” she teased. “I’d feel like a dirty old woman.”

  “I’m twenty-four. You?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “Oh the horror.” He’d taken a step closer and when he reached out—she thought to touch her—her skin tingled. Instead he handed her a piece of folded-up paper. “My number. If you change your mind. I already have yours.”

  He leaned in fast, before she could backpedal or react and kissed her cheek. “Think about it.”

  Then he was gone and her damn phone was buzzing yet again.

  Aubrey exhaled, grabbed her bag and heade
d for her room. She wanted a hot shower, some food and maybe a long walk on the cool sand of the beach when the sun set. She had all day to make that happen.

  She took the steps to get some exercise. You’d think running about on the beach in the sun would be more strenuous, but the men had been so good in front of the camera that lobbing them verbal cues was usually enough to get the shot she wanted. All the way up the steps, she fingered the edge of the paper that had Derek’s cell number on it. She felt a bizarre mixture of excitement and guilt.

  “You owe Michael Sykes nothing at all. If you go out with this guy it’s all right. You don’t need to feel guilty.”

  A man coming down the steps gave her a nervous look, as if she’d pull out a ballpoint pen and shiv him in the stairwell. She let out a little nervous burble of laughter that probably didn’t help him relax any.

  Just because you talk to yourself in an empty stairwell people think you’re cray-cray…

  Another burble of laughter and she was pushing through the door to her floor and making her way down the hallway with the crazy jungle carpeting. She just needed a hot shower and to think. That was all. Any moment now it would all seem so clear.

  She dropped her bag, booted up her laptop, hooked her camera to it and let the pictures begin to download. Only once they were on her computer and a flash drive would she feel like the day’s work was done and successful. While she waited, she found a bottle of water in her luggage and flicked the TV on.

  Aubrey stripped out of her sandy clothes in the bathroom but put her travel robe on until she could shower. Her travel robe had seen better days. Bradlee called it her gypsy robe. It was shin-length, soft, stained in places, but it was impossible to tell due to the fact that the robe was made of bits and scraps of a bunch of colorful fabrics. She’d bought it at a craft fair when she was twenty and it had traveled with her to more locations than she could count.

  She smoothed her fingers down the wild colors and patterns and smiled. When the room phone rang, she jumped. Water cascaded down the front of her. Aubrey growled, shook her head. “At least it won’t stain.”

  She hurried to the phone because clearly it had to be an emergency. She hadn’t given the number to anyone. Must be the management.

  “Hello?”

  “Mike is pining for you.”

  “What? Bradlee…what?” she stammered.

  “You heard me. While you’re out there taking seminude photos of buff beach-bunny dudes, he’s pining.”

  “How did you get this number?”

  “Good lord,” Bradlee said. “It’s not rocket science, dear. You texted me your info and when you didn’t answer your phone I called the hotel, gave your name, said who I was and asked to be connected.”

  “Oh.”

  “My goodness. Look who’s entirely dependent on their cell phone and technology,” Bradlee laughed.

  “Why do you say he’s pining, sister dear?” Aubrey asked, finalizing the download and pulling the connector cord from the computer. All downloaded and safe.

  “Because I stopped by the house to get Bruce’s bag of bones. We were out and money’s tight because Timothy’s check—”

  “It’s fine. My God. You’re doing me the favor,” Aubrey said.

  “Anyhoo, your well-muscled, kind-mannered neighbor was mowing your lawn and had been in your garden pruning and cleaning. Shirtless, no less. We’re having a weird warm week of Indian summer.”

  She pictured Mike shirtless in the sun and her face grew hot. The rest of her body followed suit. Picturing him shirtless made it easy to picture him naked. Which made it easy to picture him over her, pinning her wrists, sliding deep inside her and—

  “Um, hey with the sexy noises!”

  “What?” But Aubrey felt herself glowing with an embarrassed blush.

  “You. Made. Sexy sounds. Stop it.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Though he was quite sexy, I must say. My husband needs to get home soon,” Bradlee said.

  “This is all fascinating, Bradlee, but why in the world are we on the phone discussing Mike? Shirtless or otherwise?”

  “Well, we got to talking. He asked about you. Then he tried not to look like he was waiting to hear about your every move with bated breath. Why is it bated breath by the way? Is it b-a-i-t-e-d? Or is it b-a—”

  “Bradlee!”

  “Sorry. Anyway, we got to talking and we both realized that you’ve never given him your cell phone number. Or any other info. Aubrey, shame on you, how can you have hot monkey sex with a man and not give him your digits?”

  Aubrey groaned. “What is your ever-lovin point, Bradlee?”

  “I gave it to him.”

  For some reason, this information made her heart do that weird floppy-fish thing in her chest.

  “Okay. That’s fine.”

  “Your voice just went up,” Bradlee said.

  “No it did not.” Aubrey was concentrating hard on not giving herself away. Her heart had gone from flip-flopping to racing.

  “Yes it did. Anyway, he also said Chuck is doing much better and that his mother was taking him to Connecticut to visit family.” Bradlee laughed but said no more.

  “And that’s funny?” Aubrey sat on the edge of the bed and stroked the hem of her robe. It was her self-soothing gesture, she realized that. It was obvious how the hem along certain parts of her robe were soft and threadbare.

  “No. What’s funny is he reminded me of you to a degree. He was all kinetic. Hence all the bare-chested yard work. He was trying to keep busy. Chuck in the hospital had been stressful. Chuck well and gone was somehow harder to deal with.”

  It was just her luck, Aubrey realized, that he’d be there alone with nothing tugging at his time while she was here doing a shoot. She was so relieved for him that Chuck was doing well she wanted to call him. If her sister had the number. But then she thought better of it. Because it felt like an excuse maybe and she didn’t want to seem needy or clingy or…

  “Desperate,” she sighed.

  “Pardon?”

  “Nothing. Look! I have to run. I’m going to take a shower, scrounge up some dinner and send my pics from today in. Thanks for taking Batman. He loves Laura so I’m sure he’s having the time of his short, furry life.”

  “Do you want his number?” Bradlee said, not falling for her sister’s diversion tactics.

  “I…um…okay, sure,” Aubrey said.

  She wrote it down on the hotel pad by the phone. That task done, she set the receiver back in the cradle with slightly shaking hands and forced her feet to carry her to the bathroom for that well-deserved shower.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Day three dawned. Aubrey yawned, stumbled into the lobby and groped in her bag for her folded-up list. The Key West trip was beginning to feel like that movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. Same day over and over. The only difference was the men who would stand up when she called their names.

  The lobby was more crowded than usual. A large group was checking in. She glanced toward the concierge desk and the blonde woman was there, as usual, smiling. She gave Aubrey a finger wave that made her laugh despite her still being sleep-stunned.

  Aubrey’d spent hours before bed forcing herself not to contact Mike. When she wasn’t considering calling him, she was staring at her phone willing it to jingle and for it to be him. Then she tossed and turned all night, having dreams ranging from the searing sex they’d had to him chopping down her entire garden because she wouldn’t call him to him chasing her with the weed whacker. That had been the doozy that had gotten her up at five a.m.

  Now she blinked to clear her bleary eyes and called out the first name. “Willie Caldwell?”

  He stood, looking slightly bored. But on a second glance, Aubrey thought it was more nerves he was trying to mask as boredom. He was very tall with the slim muscled build of a swimmer. That V gave swimmers away every time. A tattoo of a crow on his left pec gave him a bad-boy vibe even though his shy, darting blue eyes revealed h
im to be anything but.

  Aubrey smiled at him and he smiled back. Ah, there was that smile. A real heartbreaker. His hair was the dark golden brown of wet sand. “First shoot, Willie?”

  His eyebrows went up and he gave a quick nod. “Am I that obvious?”

  “Only to an old fogey like me.” She’d bet he was barely nineteen. “Come stand by me. You’re my Mr. September.”

  Now that her calendar had entered the fall months, she felt a resounding ache in her chest over her Mr. December. Back in Baltimore, working on her yard, restless, shirtless and alone…

  She pushed her mind back to her list. “Trevor McGee,” she called. She resisted saying it with an Irish brogue. Which made her laugh. Which gave Trevor, who was clearly the resident bad boy, a reason to raise a sun-bleached eyebrow and say, “What’s funny, teach?”

  Oh great. A teacher analogy. She’d never heard that before. She’d even had one guy sing Van Halen’s Hot for Teacher to her during a shoot.

  “Nothing at all. You’re my Mr. October. Try to look spooky.” She was joking, of course, but he pulled a face that was very Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

  “Not so much!” she laughed.

  He was shorter than the others, stockier too. He seemed to have muscles on his muscles and tattoos on his tattoos. The overall effect was bad boy who was good in bed. Close-cropped black hair. Yes, true black. And bright-blue eyes. A goatee that was so perfectly manicured she wondered if someone came over to help him with it. The overall effect was the devil himself on the beach.

  She liked it.

  “Come get in line now, McGee. Don’t give me a hard time today. I haven’t had enough caffeine.”

  When she said “hard time” she had a flashback to big, rough, workingman hands closing around her wrists, holding them pressed to sofa cushions as Mike plunged into her.

  A rush of moisture flooded her panties and Aubrey chewed her lip so as to not give herself away.

  She cleared her throat. “Next up is Floyd Brown.”