Taken the Spaniard's Virgin

Three weeks later, her agent called her into his office. He was practically vibrating with anger as he tossed a set of photos onto the desk in front of her.

“What the bloody hell is this, Amber?”

She looked down at the pictures and tried to understand what had him so angry. Her smile was there. She’d posed exactly as the photographer had asked her to. She looked back at her agent with a question in her eyes.

“You look like a flippin’ skeleton.”

“You told me to lose weight for the commercial.”

“That was ten, maybe fifteen pounds…hell, honey, I can’t tell how much weight you’ve lost, ago. You want to tell me why you’re trying to kill yourself slowly?”

“I’m not.”

“Then, explain this.” He waved with anger at the pictures.

She shrugged. “Is the client mad?”

“Mad? I don’t know. They refused to use the pictures and got another model for the gig. You tell me.”

“Oh. Maybe we should concentrate on commercials then.”

“You aren’t a flippin’ actress, Amber Taylor. You’re a model and you’re going to be a dead model if you don’t start eating.”

She didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t going to die. That was silly. So, she’d lost some weight. “I’ll try to gain a few pounds back.”

“Good.”

But she couldn’t make herself eat. She couldn’t make herself feel. She understood how her father could have turned off all emotion. It was the only way to control the pain. She hoped that if she had a child, she would not abandon it, but she didn’t. Her baby was dead and she could not stand to feel anymore.

She thought of her sister and how the other woman had kept loving in spite of a lifetime of rejection. How odd that Amber would turn out more like their father despite being raised by a loving mom than Ellie who had been raised in a dearth of emotion.

A week later, she walked into the house to find her sister, her mom, her dad and Sandor Christofides ensconced in the living room waiting for her.

Her sister gasped when she saw Amber. Her dad said a truly ugly word and Amber’s mom started to cry. “Baby, I don’t know what’s happening, but you’ve got to let us help.”

“Is this about Miguel?” Ellie asked, proving that the instincts of a twin went beyond being raised in the same home or even aware of one another’s existence.

Suddenly it all hit her…the loss of love before it had been fully realized, the loss of her baby, so precious and unknown to her, the loss of trust in life as she knew it. Everything inside Amber coalesced into a kind of hurt that sent her crumpling to the floor, a keening wail filling the air around her. Some distant part of her mind said she should go to whoever was hurting so much they were making that noise, but she was too wounded to move.

The next two months weren’t easy. She had to force herself to eat with the same regimented dedication she had once forced herself not to eat for the sake of her career. The days were difficult to get through, the nights longer so much so.

She had stopped dreaming.

Miguel called again. She didn’t bother to say anything this time. She simply hung up.

She still didn’t feel, but her skeletal thinness was slowly going away and she did her level best to project a smiling countenance when she was with her family. It was on the day that her agent called her with the first job in weeks that she realized she didn’t want to be a model any longer.

She finally understood that it had always been more than her body when she had nothing more to give to the camera. She went to work for her father and moved into his mansion, which seemed to make those around her happier. And that was all that mattered anymore.

Miguel felt like hell.

He’d spent twenty hours of the last forty-eight traveling and hadn’t slept in longer than that. The last six months had been the most dismal of his life. The project was going fine, but he missed Amber like an amputated limb. And she wanted nothing to do with him.

He’d made a monumental mistake breaking up with her over the phone…or rather breaking up with her at all. He’d been worried about being fair to her, about his own ability to remain faithful when they saw each other rarely. Well, the last concern had been put to rest with no further doubts.

For the first time in his adult life, he’d been completely celibate for six months. And not because of lack of opportunity. There were many beautiful, sophisticated, sexually available women in Prague. However, none of them had sea-blue eyes he could drown in, or the endearing habit of biting a perfectly formed lower lip, or the fascination with history that his preciousquerida had exhibited.