Brothers of Paradise Series

One can hope, at least.

Penny clears her throat and continues to read from the itinerary. “Paris. Rome. Singapore. Bali. Sydney-Ivy, you’re going to Australia!”

I look up from my careful roll stacking. “I know. Can you believe it?”

“No! You have to take pictures of everything.”

“That’s sort of my job.” But I grin at her as I say it. “I’ll buy you stuff, too. Treats from every destination.”

“God, that sounds so glamorous. But you know what my favorite thing is?”

I smile. “That you get to live through me?”

“Well, yes, but what else?”

“What?”

“It says you’ll be shooting with foreign models, too. In Rome.” Her eyes grow to two round saucers. “You know what that means. Some hot, Italian model will be feeding you pasta and wine in a cute little ristorante.”

“I doubt it’ll be like that.” And then, because I can’t keep up my big sister facade anymore, I squeal with her. “But I know. Imagine if it is! Rome! I can’t believe I’m getting to go to all these places. Penny, what am I going to do with myself!”

She grabs my hands and swings me around. Hard to do, in my tiny Manhattan apartment, but it works. “You have to get with some of them. With one of them, at least. This is the chance of a lifetime!”

I laugh at her. “That would be beyond unprofessional.”

“Unprofessional? You’re leaving the country the next day! Besides, you never tell me about guys.”

My laughter turns a tad strained, and I pop her on the nose. “Not everything is fit for your ears.” And, most importantly, I had no stories to tell. None at all, and over the years, that had become embarrassing in and of itself.

Penny rolls her eyes. “Right. As if I don’t tell you every embarrassing story about Jason? Pfft.” She sinks back down on my couch, fishing out a pair of beautiful shoes from the do-not-touch suitcase sent by my agency.

“Dolce & Gabbana heels,” she sighs. “Ivy, why don’t I have your life?”

“Because you’re infinitely smarter than me.”

She stretches out on the couch and closes her eyes, so I resume packing. What do you need to visit seven different countries? I’ll be in agency clothes most of the time, but for the rest… Gah. I had never even left the country before.

“I’m going to enjoy staying here while you’re gone,” she muses. “Jason will come up one weekend, too. He’s promised to take me out to Broadway.”

“Good.” I reach for my sneakers and stuff them in a plastic bag for traveling. “What did Dad say?”

“Oh, you know. That I should be careful in the big city. That I shouldn’t get any ideas about following Ivy’s career path. The usual.”

Penny’s voice is cheery, so I try to match that. Dad has never been pleased about my choice to model. I grab the pile of physical therapy textbooks I’ve sorted out. Three should be enough to occupy me on the long flights, although they weigh the same as a toddler.

“You’re really bringing those?” Penny asks. “Ivy, you’ll be in the most beautiful, exotic places, with hot foreign models. You can’t seriously be trying to study at the same time.”

“I have to. There’s an exam a few weeks after I get back,” I say, fitting book after book into my tightly packed suitcase. “But don’t worry. I plan on enjoying every single moment as well. I’ve already started writing a list-” Penny groans, but I barrel on, “with all the things I can’t miss in every destination. Eat a croissant in France, go to the Colosseum in Rome. Take a picture with the Trevi Fountain.”

“Thank God you put that on a list!” Penny says dramatically. “You might have forgotten!”

“Exactly,” I say. “Plus, I was imagining myself doing all of these things as I wrote the list. Visualization, you know.”

“You have to add being kissed in Paris.”

“What?”

“It’s the city of love, Ivy!”

I laugh, shaking my head at her. “Who would I even kiss?”

“A mysterious Frenchman?” Penny asks. “And didn’t you meet the photographer a few days back? How was he?”

I close my suitcase with a loud, plastic snap.

“Ouch. That bad? He’s not some old creep, is he?”

“He’s not. He’s just someone I don’t like.”

“You like everyone,” Penny says. “What’s his name? Let me Google.”

“He’s not that famous,” I say. “I don’t even know why he was chosen. Had no idea he was a photographer until a few days ago.”This material belongs to NôvelDrama.Org.

“That sounds sketchy.”

“Yes, but it doesn’t surprise me. He has the kind of arrogance, you know? Photographers nearly always do.” Too much, actually. More than their fair share. I frown to myself as I see Rhys in front of me, dark curls, sardonic smile, hard glint in his eyes. Traveling with a cynic who found me air-headed.

Awesome.

“So why do you dislike him, then?” Penny flops over on her stomach and stares longingly at the Dolce & Gabbana heels, now placed on the floor in front of her.

“It’s like I dislike him because he dislikes me. From the first time I saw him, it’s like I’ve rubbed him the wrong way. Like my very presence offends him. He thinks models are vain, by the way.” I pause, looking out the window. The summer heat has just begun hitting New York, a tropical assault. “I know exactly how the men he’s friends with think. They never have to work for anything, you know? They’ll spend five hundred dollars on a bottle of champagne and laugh it off with a self-deprecating joke about how they’re stimulating the economy. Doing their part. And he dislikes models on principle.”

“Mhm,” Penny says. “Sounds like you’ve thought about this a lot.”

“I haven’t, really.”

“And is he attractive?”

“Conventionally speaking, yes, I suppose.” Though the word conventional could never really be attached to Rhys Marchand. I suspect he would buck under the word, indignant and angry at ever being called something so basic. The thought makes me smile.

“Right,” Penny says, “you’re in trouble. He’s attractive and he’s a challenge for you.”

I put down my handbag. “I’m not in trouble.”

“Of course you are. Tell me, when was the last time a guy was ever truly a challenge for you?” My little sister grins like a cat who’s just eaten a particularly juicy canary. “When they didn’t just barrage you with demands for your phone number? When they outright challenged you?”

I frown at her. “Toothpaste. I’ve forgotten to pack toothpaste.”