Hard As Stone Read online

  My boss gave her usual harrumph ending to our conversation and then the call ended without even the hint of a polite goodbye. And thus was my life. I loved my job, but I hated my boss. With a passion. Like the kind of hate you have when someone kills your entire family.

  Well, not exactly that kind of hate. My hate for Julia was more like the kind of feeling you experience when you have to spend any amount of time around someone who is the most miserable and nasty person you’ve ever met. You know the feeling. Your stomach cramps up and makes you want to double over. Your chest tightens, and you want to tell them to go fuck themselves. With a red hot poker in the ass.

  Yeah, that’s what my boss made me feel.

  I knew I had to pay my dues, though. This wasn’t my first job out of school, and I understood full well how lucky I was to be the assistant to the editor of Belle magazine. This was one of the first rungs on my ladder to success, so I had to suffer through Julia and her constant mood swings for better things in the future.

  Actually, her mood stayed the same with me all the time. Completely and utterly nasty. I might like it if her mood swung to something else sometimes.

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “The lower rungs are tough, Summer, but you’re tougher. You can handle this.”

  In all honesty, the toughest part of the job was dealing with my boss. My responsibilities this morning involved making sure all the models got to where they needed to be on time and the photographer got all the pictures he would need. It wasn’t exactly rocket science, and for a girl who’d graduated summa cum laude from Bryn Mawr, it wouldn’t be hard at all.

  I mean, how difficult could it ever be to corral a bunch of giant stick figures onto the beach? All I’d need was a single sandwich and I could probably lead them like the Pied Piper halfway around the world.

  Chuckling to myself over my skinny model joke, I headed down to the staging area to begin gathering up the models. Today’s shoot had five scheduled, which wasn’t many at all. I hadn’t checked the name of the photographer, but rarely did they present any problems. In fact, the only issues I’d ever had on any of these assignments was the rare model-boyfriend relationship blowup. Those tended to be a nightmare, so I hoped we’d have none of that today. The last thing I wanted to deal with was some weepy model with her nose running all over her face or some despondent boyfriend who just found out he’d been replaced and his girlfriend just got around to telling him after he traveled halfway around the world to see her.

  I stepped out of the hotel into the morning heat and saw three of the five models. So far, I was batting six hundred. Not bad.

  Waving at the leggiest brunette I’d ever seen, I yelled over, “Emma, can you come over here?”

  Naturally, she was named Emma. Trendy, ugly, older name perfect for one of the most beautiful women in the world. Only women who had been named by mothers channeling their hippy sides had names like mine.

  Summer. I’d loved my name when I was a child. It was only when I got to school that I realized that nobody else was named after a season. I guess it could have been worse. That girl named Apple in my second-grade class had a long haul to look forward to with her name. Not trendy, old, or lyrical, it sounded stupid and offered no good nicknames. Who wanted to be called App?

  Emma trotted over to where I stood and flashed me a perfect smile as she looked down at me and all my five foot six stature. She towered over me at nearly six foot, so I had to crane my neck to look up at her.

  “Did you see Sarah and Ashley before you came down? We need to start on time. Have you seen the photographer yet?” I asked as the woman stared down at me with a vacant look in her eyes.

  “I don’t think so. Let me ask Maddie.”

  Before I could get her to clarify exactly what that answer referred to—the models or the photographer—she turned around and yelled, “Did you see Sarah or Ash this morning, Maddie? Summer’s looking for them.”

  Maddie simply shook her head, making her blond hair swing around her shoulders. So much for her helping.

  Emma turned back to face me and shrugged. “She hasn’t seen them, either.”

  “What about the photographer?”

  Suddenly, the vacant look in Emma’s eyes disappeared, replaced by a sparkle I knew couldn’t have anything to do with me since she was now looking over my head at something behind me. I turned around and saw a man as he strode through the hotel door. Tall, he wore a white button-down shirt and tan pants and looked like he belonged at a model shoot himself.

  Just not one I had to manage.

  “I think you have the wrong location. I saw a shoot a little further down the beach,” I said as he paused to give Emma the once-over.

  The man stopped gazing at her like she held the answer to some mystery he’d long pondered and smiled at me in a way that made me feel like I was melting. “I’m the photographer, but thanks for the compliment.”

  The photographer?

  The idea that this guy had been blessed far too many times in life instantly ran through my head. Gorgeous looks and body, talent enough to snag an assignment with Belle magazine, and he got to work with models all the time?

  He was probably the cockiest son of a bitch going, too. Ugh. Just what I needed. Was it so much to ask that this shoot go smoothly so Julia didn’t tear me a new one afterward?

  “Ready to make some magic, girls?” he said as he walked away without even giving me a chance to introduce myself.

  Emma giggled and started to follow him out onto the beach, but I stopped her and asked, “Who is this guy? What’s his name?”

  She looked at me like I’d grown another head. “That’s Ethan Stone. He’s done some of the biggest shoots in the business this year. Shouldn’t you know that?”

  As the words Fuck you, Emma rushed through my mind, she turned on her heel and hurried over to where this Ethan Stone stood on the sand. Yes, I knew the name and what he’d accomplished this year, but I’d never seen a picture of him, so no, I didn’t know that was him.

  And I didn’t need Emma the stick figure to point that fact out.

  Sarah and Ashley came through the door behind me full of giggles and smiles and ran out to join the other models and Ethan. At least I didn’t need to be model wrangler this morning.

  “Okay, we’ve got the models, the photographer, the stylist, and me, your host for this lovely get-together. Models, please follow me to get changed into your outfits. We don’t have all day, so let’s get this going!”

  By the time the shoot had finished, I was questioning whether I really wanted to keep this job. Maybe it would be better if Julia fired me. At least then I could find a position that didn’t involve so many models. Between getting them to the shoot and then making sure they did exactly as the photographer wanted, it felt more like directing recess at a daycare than managing a photo shoot.

  Then again, the job did give me the chance to travel the world. That was a good thing. It was just what I had to do in those exotic places that I wasn’t sure I liked anymore.

  I made my obligatory call to my boss as I gathered up the last of the wardrobe changes and the sun began to dip below the horizon. At least I had good news to give her.

  “Julia, the shoot went off without a hitch. The models looked gorgeous, and the pictures are going to be incredible. I just know it.”

  “Wonderful! Now tell me the truth. Did you have any problems at all? I want to know if you did, Summer.”

  She always asked that, and when I first began as her assistant, I used to tell her the truth. Now I was a lot smarter. Julia didn’t need to know about the breakdown Ashley had that shut down the shoot for half an hour when she stubbed her toe on a shell and fell face first into the sand. She also didn’t need to know that I was pretty sure Ethan Stone saw his job as his own buffet of potential women to have sex with, even if he did seem to have some talent at taking pictures.

  Nope. She didn’t need to know about any of the minor issues I handled all day. All J
ulia needed to know about today’s shoot was that it had been a success. What it took to get it to that place could be kept behind the curtain like a magician’s secrets.

  “Nothing out of the ordinary that I couldn’t handle. Trust me. You’re going to love what we did here today. I can’t wait to hear how you don’t know which shot to use for the cover. It was that good.”

  “Excellent! Well, I want you on a plane and back here first thing Monday morning. We’ve got a lot of work to get done so that issue looks as good as you think it can.”

  I didn’t protest her order to be back in New York not even forty-eight hours from that moment, even though just the thought of another twelve-hour flight made me groan. Since it was eight o’clock Sydney time, that meant I’d have exactly…

  My brain was too tired to figure that out. All I knew was I’d have less than a day to relax before I had to go back to work.

  The lower rungs are tough, Summer, but you’re tougher. You can handle this.

  Chapter Three

  Ethan

  The hotel bar sat practically empty, even though it wasn’t yet midnight. I’d worked far too fucking hard on the shoot that day to not enjoy myself, but at the moment, the only people who joined me were a middle-aged couple at the end of the bar who couldn’t keep their hands off one another.

  I gave the guy a wink as if to say, “Good for you, man,” and told the bartender to get them both a drink on me. Although I wasn’t enjoying myself, that didn’t mean I didn’t like seeing other people having a good time.

  My conversation with my mother from earlier that morning settled back into my brain, and I sadly realized I likely wouldn’t be having many more good times if I didn’t find some way to fool my family into thinking I’d settled down. Twenty-five and they wanted me to act like I was twice that age. Christ.

  Normally, I’d be taking advantage of the perks of my job and enjoying the company of one of the models by this point in the night. I would have given Emma a few extra smiles during the shoot, told her a few jokes afterward that would loosen her up, and invited her up to my suite. She would have said yes, we would have had a few drinks, and by now, I’d be balls deep in her and thinking there wasn’t a fucking soul on this planet who had a better life than me. That’s what I should have been doing instead of stewing over a beer that tasted like a wallaby’s ass.

  So instead of enjoying life as any man in his mid-twenties deserved to, I sat there mulling over my options. It didn’t take me long to figure out I didn’t have many. I had two, to be precise. I could actually settle down with a woman and get married, which even thinking about made me feel like someone had their hands around my neck strangling me, or I could pretend to be settling down. Getting married was out of the fucking question, so that left option number two.

  Pretending for my family so they could stop pestering me and go back to doing whatever they did when they weren’t bothering me about giving up living.

  All I had to do was find someone who could look the part of a nice girl for long enough to fool my family. She’d have a good time in the process courtesy of yours truly, and then when we parted ways, my parents and sisters would feel bad that I was all heartbroken and let me live my life.

  The plan was foolproof. Now all I had to do was find the perfect girl. Since I’d be sleeping with her, even for a short time, she had to have something to attract me. More importantly, she had to appear to be nice.

  Nice. Even the sound of the word in my head made me cringe.

  I think I resented my father over this settling-down-with-a-nice-girl thing the most. From all the stories I’d ever heard, my mother was the quintessential nice girl when she was young, so she could be expected to think I should find someone just like her. My sisters had the same excuse, although I had a sneaking suspicion that Tressa was anything but nice when she wasn’t around all of us.

  And Diana? Well, she’d been a nice girl and what the hell had that gotten her? Nothing good.

  But my father hadn’t met my mother until he was nearly thirty, and there was no way in hell I was buying the story that he’d only been with nice girls all his life until he met the perfect one and married her. My sisters might have bought that story hook, line, and sinker, but I saw through that bullshit. He’d been left all that money and had private jets and expensive cars and he’d chosen to spend his time with librarians and nuns-in-training?

  No way. Not buying it.

  And yet, there he was singing the praises of this nice-girl nonsense with the rest of the Stone family choir almost as loudly as my mother. If I didn’t have to busy myself with finding this mythical nice girl everyone thought I should be with, I’d hire a private detective to dig up dirt on Tristan Stone so I could finally know for sure my hunch about his life before my mother was right.

  Then again, that would only hurt her if she found out, and as big a dick as I could be, she was my mother and I loved her. Even if she had the most asinine ideas about my personal life.

  I took another drink of the shitty Australian beer I’d chosen and grimaced as it slid down my throat. No good-looking woman to get lost in and no decent alcohol in front of me.

  This night was turning out to be nothing but shit.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone sit down at the other end of the bar, where the middle-aged love birds had been before they headed up to their room. Maybe this night was looking up.

  I turned on my stool and realized the person who’d come in was the girl from the photo shoot today. Not one of the models. Just the girl from the magazine. She wasn’t bad-looking, though. She had nice hair. Brown and long, it reminded me of how my mother used to wear hers when I was little.

  She ordered a drink and sighed heavily, like it had been a long day for her, too. She had handled the models pretty expertly, and except for that meltdown by the one who face-planted into the sand halfway through the afternoon, things had gone pretty smoothly. I had to give her that. Some shoots would have gone off the rails with one of five models bawling her eyes out, but this girl had taken control of the situation and I barely had to deal with it.

  As I watched her take the first sip of what looked like some vodka drink, I thought about talking to her. Hell, it would be better than just sitting here alone. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember her name. Sunshine? Sunset?

  Damnit. It was something having to do with nature, wasn’t it?

  “You okay down there? You look like you’re having trouble,” she said with a chuckle.

  I waved off her concern and shrugged. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just a long day. Thought I’d stop in for a drink, but whatever the hell this is I’m drinking, it’s not doing it for me.”

  She smiled sweetly and pointed to behind the bar. “They have other stuff. I’m sure they’ll be happy to give you something else.”

  “Yeah. I should just do that. I don’t think this beer and I are good for one another.”

  I waited for her to say something back, but she didn’t and I still couldn’t remember her damn name, so I stopped talking and took another sip of my disgusting beer. As it rolled over my taste buds, threatening to make me sick, a thought came to me.

  This girl could work for my plan. She had the nice thing down pat. If only I could remember her name.

  I ran through every damn nature name I could think of, sure it was something like that. Damnit! Why couldn’t she have a model name like Emily or Alexis?

  Then it came to me. Summer! That was it!

  Fighting the urge to blurt out her name, I stood up and moved down the bar to take the seat next to her. She looked at me like she couldn’t figure out why, but no matter. I had her name. That’s all I needed.

  “What are you drinking?” I asked as I waved the bartender over toward us.

  Confused, she looked at her glass and then back at me. “Moscow mule.”

  “She’ll have another Moscow mule and I’ll have a Jameson and ginger.”

  The bartender nodded and headed off to
make our drinks while I thought of something to say. My usual style likely wouldn’t work so well with a nice girl. I tended to work on the principle that I’d gotten the go-ahead already so any conversation was simply a social lubricant to get the woman into bed. What I said didn’t really matter, and it usually showed in crass double entendres heavy with sexual connotations.

  I had the feeling none of that would help me with Summer, so I had to think quick. What did nice girls like? Jesus. I hadn’t been with a nice girl since high school, and she wasn’t nice for long after I got to her in the library after school one Friday afternoon.

  Maybe the weather. Yeah, why not? Everybody had something to say about the weather.

  “We were lucky to have a good day for the shoot today.”

  Literally the most boring thing to ever come out of my mouth.

  Summer narrowed her eyes to a squint and gave me a pained smile as the bartender set fresh drinks down in front of us. “Yeah, I guess. This time of year this area usually has pretty nice weather. I could probably give you chapter and verse on it since the magazine researched it extensively in preparation for the shoot.”

  Oh, God. Please don’t.

  Damn, I needed to change the subject to something interesting before she started giving me details on the fucking weather.

  “Yeah. So, you coordinate all the model shoots for Belle? That’s a pretty big job, I’d think, right? The magazine’s taken off in the past couple years.”

  Christ, this was like pulling teeth. Ladies and gentleman of the jury, this is why I never go after nice girls. Who the hell wants to talk about this boring shit when we could be getting down to business upstairs in my hotel suite?

  Summer didn’t seem bored at all, though. She took a sip of her drink and then nodded. “I’m the assistant to the editor, so I get to do all sorts of jobs. One day I’m on location making sure a photo shoot goes smoothly, and the next day I’m setting up meetings for my boss in and around the city.”