Tragic (Rook and Ronin 1)

Clare.

Ronin's voice rises with hers and they stand toe to toe, yelling right up in each other's face. She pushes Ronin and he spins her around and drags her out into the studio, where her French threats echo off the tall ceilings.

"Fucking Clare," a naked blonde girl huffs out next to me.

"I know," another naked girl, this time a redhead, says with disgust. "I don't care who that bitch is, I'm glad Ronin canned her ass. She thinks she can break the rules, do whatever she wants, and still have a job?" The blonde girl snorts at this. "No," Red answers herself emphatically. "She's under his thumb just like we are. Right, Rook?" She smiles over at me.

"Whose thumb?"

"Ronin's, of course. Unless, you two have some deal going." She narrows her eyes at me.

"What deal?"

"Well, I find it interesting that you got the garden apartment and don't have to be at work on time. Why is that? Ronin keeping you or something?"

"What does that even mean?"

They laugh and go back to their clothes and it's only then that I notice every girl in the dressing room is staring at me. "What?" I ask them.

They turn back to their business but I'm left there feeling stupid so I just turn on my heel and go find Elise in the salon.

Thankfully things in the salon seem a little more amicable. I don't generally care if the girls I work around are friends with me or not—typically when I have a job I'm there to work, not socialize. But that blonde girl asked if Ronin was keeping me. And Elise said something very similar the other night when we had dinner with her and Antoine. She said, You're not any different from the other models, just because Ronin wants to keep you.

What the f**k does that mean?

I'm not sure but the alarms are going off in my head again. I could let it slip by as a cute way to say he likes me, but now this girl said it too. Not to mention the whole I belong to Ronin thing they have going on down at the diner.

"Over here, Rook." Elise points to the shampoo chair and I ease back, ready to relax for a moment, even if it is in a shampoo chair and I just woke up an hour and a half ago.

It takes several hours for them to make me up, not so much because what they're doing to me is complicated, but because there are so many girls here today they have to keep trading us off like an assembly line. One does toes, one does hands, one does hair, one does make-up.

It's total insanity.

But I kinda like it. Everything goes fast, people are talking fast, walking fast, the girls come and then they go. The photographers are busy calling out directions, the camera shutters are clicking wildly.

It's all very exciting.

Everything I imagined a big important photography studio would be. Before I came here and found out it wasn't, of course. But today it's all business. After Ronin gets rid of that Clare chick, no one has time to think about anything but doing their job. Finally, when it's well past lunch, Elise pronounces me ready and ushers me off to the dressing room to get dressed, then tells me to meet them all out on the terrace.

I head into the dressing room, which is eerily quiet compared to the chaos I just came from, and find my clothes on the rack. Ronin is nowhere to be found and for a minute I miss him being there for me. He's not been around all day. The girls gossiped about him all morning though, talking about Clare.

I'm getting the impression she was an ex-girlfriend.

It bugs me that I feel jealous over that, but I really haven't had time to think about it much.

I lift the bag of clothes off the rack, expecting it to weigh—something—but it's like air. Like that bag contains almost nothing. I walk over to the armless couches that span the middle of the room and open it up.

It's a men's dress shirt. White.

And a pair of little boxer shorts that were definitely not made for a man.

It takes me two seconds to put the new clothes on. I button the shirt all the way up, then feel a little stupid and unbutton three of them.

Even though the shirt drops down to my mid-thigh, is long-sleeved, and goes up to my neck—I feel exposed. I exhale a long breath and force myself to walk out into the studio. Ronin is the first face I see because he's standing in the doorway as I turn the corner that hides the dressing room from onlookers.

He smiles and all the tension just evaporates.

"You're so f**king sexy."

I actually blush at that.

He takes my hand and leads me over to the terrace, then opens the door and waves me through like a gentleman.

There are about a dozen people outside and the afternoon sun is shining down on the terrace. It's shedding a lovely pink light and I can only assume that Antoine is in love with how it drapes over everything, washing out the drab harshness of the city and making it all soft.

Once I'm noticed everyone snaps to attention and then lights are on and those black umbrella things they use for diffusing it come out, and people are all busy. Ronin leads me over to a nook in the side of the building. There's a flowering cherry tree in a massive pot in the middle of the nook and the branches reach out and soft pink petals brush my cheek as I follow him under the canopy. "This is where we're shooting today, OK?"

All the camera shutters start clicking and I look over at the photographers.

Ronin directs my gaze back to him with a light touch on my chin. "I'm right here, Gidge. Forget about them, understand? You're not posing for them, you are reacting to me today. OK?"