Say the Word Read Online Free Page B

up for a photo shoot, cordoned off with large shades to block out any unwanted natural light. Numerous spotlights, tripods, reflective umbrellas, softboxes, and strobes surrounded the photographer, whose back was to me as he snapped photo after photo of next month’s cover girl, Cara Stein.
    A slender brunet te whose plastic surgeries had ensured that she was abnormally well endowed, Cara was posing in a mock kitchen set, nude except for a flimsy red apron. Covered artfully in flour, she gripped a rolling pin suggestively in one hand and a cake-battered spoon in the other. As she slowly licked it clean, her seductive gaze trained on the camera, I averted my eyes so as not to gag and headed for the other side of the room.
    There were three long rolling racks of garments for the models – apparently they occasionally wore more than baking ingredients – along with a hair and makeup station, where several beauty technicians hovered among their vast array of brushes and powders. Two models wearing silk bathrobes sat at the vanities, pecking feverishly at the screens of their cellphones. No doubt keeping their Twitter and Instagram followers interested with minute-by-minute updates about their like, totally, like, glamorous lives, while waiting for a turn in front of the camera. In the back corner, I finally spotted what I’d been searching for: a long, empty buffet table upon which I promptly dumped the heavy Gemelli’s bags.
    Flexing my hands, I winced as pins and needles shot through my fingertips. I was tempted to slip off my heels and rub feeling back into my arches – feet were not designed to walk ten blocks in stilettos, it’s a scientific fact – but I refrained. I was about to touch people’s food, after all.
    When feeling had fully returned to my hands, I reached into the bags and unloaded the boxed salads and sandwiches. I heard Cara’s whiney voice distantly responding to some of the photographer’s directions, and tried to tune her out – she might be gorgeous, but she sounded like a feral cat caught in a rainstorm whenever she opened that million-dollar set of collagen treated lips. The studio was surprisingly quiet, the atmosphere saturated only by the hushed whispers of the makeup artists and the faint yet familiar refrains of classical music drifting through the overhead speakers.
    Vitali’s Chaconne , if I wasn’t mistaken – one of my favorite classical pieces. I’d heard it for the first time on a rainy afternoon eight years ago, and in the many years since I hadn’t been able to listen to it — or any other classical music, for that matter — because it was irrevocably tied to too many painful memories. And yet, as I began to arrange the containers on the tabletop, I found that no matter how much time had passed, I still knew each mournful note by heart. The violin was mesmerizing, heart-wrenching as it climbed effortlessly through the scales. As I listened to its defiantly beautiful strains, I had to fight the urge to weep.
    Jesus, Lux, it’s just a song. Let it go, already.
    I quelled the gathering mist in my eyes and let the music wash over me. I couldn’t help but think that it was a strange soundtrack choice for such a sexy photo shoot, but I was just a lowly columnist – the artistic process wasn’t something I had any right to question.
    I’d just lifted the last salad from the bag when I heard something far more upsetting than the tinny speaker music. Something that caused the container to slip from my fingertips and thud against the floor in an explosion of lettuce and croutons. 
    Or, to be more specific, someone .
    Someone whose voice I hadn’t heard for seven years – whose voice I’d never expected to hear again. That same someone who’d first played Vitali for me all those years ago.
    Sebastian Covington.

Chapter Four
 
 
Then
     
    It was a bitter January afternoon – the kind where the wind whips icy rain into your face and the crisp air bites against your exposed