On the bedroom set Margot and Charl

On the bedroom set Margot and Charlie quickly fell into a routine that was part dance, part drama, with Charlie as choreographer and director cajoling poses and expressions from Margot as he circled her with his Nikon.
“Prop your elbows on the bed and lean back. Look at me, babe, and give me a smile to dream on. Yeah, that’s it. Beautiful. Okay, now let your head fall back a tiny bit,” he instructed as he approached with the surefootedness of a hunter stalking his prey, the camera’s motor whirring smoothly.
Time was suspended as Margot struck pose after pose and ran through a gamut of expressions while Charlie sought the perfect angle, the perfect moment, in his camera’s lens. She held still for close-ups. She shifted and twisted in and out of the countless provocative, come-hither attitudes that Charlie and she dreamed up, abandoning the sultry persona only when Charlie called for wardrobe changes or adjustments to her makeup and hair.
She was on her third wardrobe change, dressed in a gold lace affair that played peekaboo with her body. Her hair was down now, brushed so that it lay like a burnished fan across the dusky-pink satin-covered pillow. Charlie was standing above her, his jeaned legs straddling her, his camera pointed down as she rested her fingers over the shadowy hollow above her clavicle.
“Hold that pose. Think about your lover, babe. Imagine his hands, his touch. Let me see that in your eyes. Damn, yes, that’s it, just like that. You’re breathtaking, babe. Gorgeous. Now—” Whatever Charlie intended to say next was lost as a pealing note pierced the studio. “What the hell! “Whose goddamn phone is that?”
Only one thing set Charlie off: being interrupted in the middle of a pose. He had a standing ban on cell phones during a shoot that even the company executives knew better than to flout. The ringing continued as everyone guiltily looked about or patted their pockets.
Then Erin spoke. “It must be Margot’s, Charlie. It’s coming from her bag.”
The nightmarish memory of the last time she’d received a call in the middle of work still fresh in her mind, Margot jackknifed into a sitting position. Her heart in her throat, she rushed to her bag and grabbed the phone.
“Hello?”
“Margot, love, it’s me.”
Damien’s clipped accent had her laughing with giddy, breathless relief. “Damien, you just scared several years off my life! I’m still at Charlie’s. We’re about halfway through the shoot,” she said, in case he thought they’d worked extra fast and were already wrapping up. “I can’t talk right now.”
“I just had to tell you about this absolutely fascinating creature who’s camped out in my office. The waif is rather scared but extremely defiant. She’s got good bones and a mouth that’s positively X-rated. I’m referring to the shape of her lips, of course. She hasn’t uttered more than two words since walking in here. With looks like hers, though, she may not need words to communicate.”
“Damien, what’s going on?” she asked, her voice sharp with worry. “Did Bruno sprinkle something in your power shake this morning? Why in heavens are you calling me about some model hopeful?” She glanced up, horrified to find the others—Charlie, Sara, and the crew—openly staring, hanging on her every word.
“There’s the rub, love. To my eternal embarrassment, it’s not me she wants to see. It’s you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, love. Oh, did I forget to mention that this intriguing little urchin has the most enormous green eyes?”
Still in her makeup and the last of the outfits Charlie and Sara had selected for the shoot, Margot paced the length of the studio, her phone pressed to her ear, her formerly elegantly coiffed hair now a wild tangle from raking her fingers through it in frustration.
“Mr. Selby, how can Maiden Academy be so inflexible in this matter? Wouldn’t placing Jade on probation be a far more appropriate punishment?”
“Unfortunately, this is one rule our disciplinary committee is adamant about enforcing. The school handbook explicitly states that any student who leaves campus without permission will face immediate expulsion. This rule is also in the code of conduct that every student is required to sign. Students’ safety and security are taken very seriously here, Ms. Radcliffe. Were the disciplinary committee to back down and let it be known that we allowed one student to flagrantly defy what we have repeatedly stressed as one of the most important school rules, this would send the worst possible message to the rest of the student body.”
“But Mr. Selby, there are extenuating circumstances. Jade’s distraught over her parents’ death. She wouldn’t have run away otherwise—”
“Let me remind you, Ms. Radcliffe, of your sister’s recent travels. By her own admission she walked two and a half miles into town, then boarded a commuter rail into Boston, where she bought a train ticket to New York City. Once there, she rode the subway from Penn Station to Twenty-third Street and walked the rest of the way to your agent’s address. At any point along her rash journey Jade might have been kidnapped, raped, even killed.”
Margot shuddered, the blood in her veins turning to ice as she imagined what indeed could have happened to Jade. Needing reassurance, her gaze flew to the other side of the studio. Her truant sister was sitting on a leather-and-chrome stool by Palin’s workstation. Damien, bless his heart, had gone to the trouble of escorting her to Charlie’s personally. She looked fine—thank God—sipping a can of Diet Coke that someone must have brought her. With the shoot ongoing, Margot had not been able to do more than order her to call Selby so the school would know she was safe.
Perhaps feeling the weight of her stare, Jade lowered her soda and thrust out her chin in mulish teenage defiance.
Right then, seized by competing impulses, Margot honestly didn’t know which she wanted to do more: storm across the loft and throttle Jade for her recklessness or hug her tightly in weak-kneed relief that she was unharmed.
She could do neither because Selby was still talking in her ear.
“We accept students to Maiden with the expectation that they are mature enough to understand our rules and respect them. Jade’s recent behavior falls far short of this standard. I’ll make the necessary arrangements for her belongings to be packed.”
“Mr. Selby, please—”
Ignoring her interruption, he continued. “The most convenient thing is for you to telephone FedEx and instruct them to pick up the boxes at Edwards Hall. If you should have any problems, please call my secretary. Good-bye, Ms. Radcliffe.” There was a click and the telephone line went dead.
Slowly Margot lowered her cell, Selby’s words echoing in her ears. “If you should have any problems…” It seemed like problems were all she did have. Now, topping a list that included wowing a major cosmetics company so that it wouldn’t renege on a multimillion-dollar contract, Margot’s principal means to paying off her father’s debts and keeping Rosewood in the family, she had to figure out what to do with a runaway half-sister who’d just been given the boot from her fancy school. It wasn’t lost on her that Jade must have known full well that getting kicked out of Maiden was the perfect means to force Margot into enrolling her at Warburg High.
She crossed the studio to where Erin was watching Keisha and Charlie scroll through images of her on Charlie’s desktop Mac, aware that Jade had jumped off her stool to trail after her.
Charlie looked up from the screen. “Hey, babe. The pics look real good. I think Sara and the people at Dior are going to be pleased.”
“That’s a relief. Hey, Charlie?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks again for being so cool about… well, everything.”
“Ahh,” he said with a shrug. “As my crazy aunt Lulu liked to say, ‘Shit happens, Charlie boy.’ Let’s show Margot the ones that have made the cut, Keisha.”
Seated beside Charlie, Keisha clicked the mouse so that forty-odd photos appeared on the screen aligned in long rows, like on a proof sheet.
“You should use that one for the ad,” Jade said.
Margot glanced at the picture Jade had pointed to and her cheeks warmed.
She remembered that shot.
Charlie had told her to think of her lover. Immediately she’d imagined Travis pleasuring her with his touch, setting her on fire with his kisses. Lord, was that really her, with those dreamy eyes and softly parted lips? She looked beautiful. She looked like a woman in love.
Charlie was studying the image intently. “Your kid sister’s sharp. She picked out the best of the lot.”
“Yes, Jade’s clever. Terrifyingly so,” Margot agreed, thinking of how flawlessly she’d executed her own expulsion from boarding school. “I’ll go change now. Sorry to have kept you waiting, Erin.”
“It’s no problem. I’ll come and help you with that zipper. It’s a killer. Oh, and Damien asked you to call him and let him know how things worked out.”
“How did it work out, babe?” Charlie asked, swiveling in his chair.
“As Damien would put it, bloody disastrously,” she muttered.
“Aren’t you even going to tell me what Selby said?”
She turned to her little sister and fought back the urge to scream, Do you have any idea how stupid, how incredibly dangerous, that stunt was? But what good would it do? Jade was a teen; she considered herself immortal. “That’s Mr. Selby to you. And from the satisfied look on your face, you know perfectly well that you are no longer a student at Maiden Academy. Congratulations, Jade. You’ve gotten your wish. I hope you enjoy Warburg High.