Chapter 5

"Smart ass," I muttered.

She grin and crouched down near Leia. "Did you say thank you?"

Leia gave me a hug again, mumbled a "thanks" and started towards their car. Em stood up and her shirt rose a little revealing a belly chain.

A fucking belly chain. The hottest piece of jewelry a woman could wear. That just wasn't fair.

"See ya Tuesday, Alex. Thanks.'

"Yeah. Not a problem."

A fucking belly chain.

Big Mike stopped me as I walked back through reception. "Hey, you put any thought into playing with that father-daughter band?"

"What the hell, Mike. I said no. I'll write them a check."

"Coward."

"Yeah? Go fuck yourself, you Polynesian wannabe!"

I stormed off to my office. A few minutes later the phone rang.

"Yeah?"

"Italian good for lunch?"

"Sure. Get me some sort of pasta with chicken."

"You got it. You're still a coward, but you're my coward. Make it a big check."

I laughed.

**

Em POV

"...hey soul sis... soul sister..."

A sharp twang.

"Ain't that Mr. Mister on the... radio, stereo..."

Another twanging sound, followed by a whimper from Pepper, who was their literal captive audience.

"You're not very good at that yet."

"I still have to practice, Baylee! I'm learning!"

"Let me try!"

"No, it's my guitar!"

"Girls," Kelsie called from the kitchen. She made no move to stand up. "No fighting."

"But Mom..."

"Maybe I need to come over there and take the guitar away, Leia." I also didn't make a move to stand up.

It wasn't needed. The voices hushed and Leia started strumming the guitar again.

"I'll play, you sing, just not so fast, okay?"

"I was kind of hoping I had to take the guitar away for five minutes," I whispered. "Just five minutes."

Kelsie snorted and ate a handful of popcorn.

"The lessons aren't going well?"

"They're going great. Alex says she's learning really fast." I rubbed my eyes. "I guess I should just be grateful she's graduated from 'Happy Birthday'."

"You okay? You seem..."

"Just tired. I've booked a couple extra clients to offset the costs. He's giving me a deal on the lessons but she's still going to need strings and shit."

"The fun kind of clients or...?"

I snorted. "No. Although I almost outed Patricia's husband to her during their session."

"Patricia, like Hayden's mom? From the girls' class?"

"Yep."

"Oh my God, you didn't."

"What else was I supposed to do? I'm trying to set up the perfect family photo and he keeps going 'are you sure I don't know you from somewhere? You just look so familiar, you know?'"

"And you said...?"

"Well, I was nice enough to him the first couple times. Polite laugh, just have one of those faces, you know. And of course he goes, 'I feel like I'd remember your face though. I mean you have all those tattoos.' And that's usually when people figure out... you know."

Kelsie laughed, though not unkindly.

"You could just say you used to model, you know."

"The last time I tried that, the guy's wife figured out real quick what kind of 'modeling' I did."

She made a soft noise of concession and I sighed.

"It's not that I'm embarrassed, I just—"

"I get it, don't worry."

"I mean I am a little embarrassed."

"It's literally no different than the boudoir photos you do. You're just on the other side of the camera now."

"I'd say there's a pretty big difference between boudoir photos and dudes jacking off to alt-girls online."

Kelsie snorted again and threw a piece of popcorn at me.

"What?" I laughed, catching the popcorn before it hit the ground. "They're not just jacking off to photos, they're jacking off to old photos. Leia wasn't even six months when I did the last shoot."

"Okay, but you could have—wait." Kelsie frowned, staring at me. "You were still doing the photos after you had Leia?"

I could feel heat creeping up my neck. Kelsie knew pretty much everything about me, but apparently that was a surprise.

"I mean... yeah, a few. Before Jones took me on as his assistant, I was still, you know. Modeling."

She gaped. "You were doing nude photos less than six months after having a baby?"

I laughed, relieved that it wasn't judgment in her eyes but astonishment. "Yeah. My tits looked great while I was breastfeeding."

"Lucky bitch." She threw another piece of popcorn at me.

"Anyway, Patricia's husband just wouldn't let it go. So finally I was like, 'let's do some mother and son shots' and got him to come over to the camera to 'look' at one."

"I see where this is going."

"All I asked was if he really wanted his wife to know where he knew me from."

"And he said..."

"Nothing, and gave me an extra fifty as a tip."

Kelsie burst out laughing, as did I.

Prior to having Leia, I'd been the definition of a hot mess. Young, dumb, on my own for the first time... one thing had led to another and I'd ended up—for lack of a better term—modeling. In the two short, yet very long, years I'd done so, I'd developed a bit of a cult following. I'm not sure that there's any other kind of following when it comes to what was politely referred to as "alternative pin-up girls," not that it mattered. The point was that even years later, I was still being recognized as a "model."

Then Leia came along. Well, more accurately, one of Leia's potential fathers came, and it was a long time before I realized my body wasn't just filling out, I was pregnant. By the time I figured it out, there were a handful of different guys it could have been, and I only knew how to find a couple of them.

When she came out looking just like me, it was very clearly neither of the two men I'd tracked down. They were kind enough to take paternity tests anyway, but she was as white as snow and they were both African-American. No one was surprised when neither of them shared even a questionable amount of DNA with her.

So, Leia didn't have a father.

Jones was a photographer I worked with before getting knocked up. We worked together on a number of shoots and made a great team. He took me in after I had Leia and started training me to work as his assistant, rather than in front of the camera. It was from him that I discovered how much I truly loved photography. He taught me everything I knew, gave me a set of his old equipment, and told me to get my own business started before I got sucked back into a life he knew I didn't want.

I owed Jones everything. I would have married him, but his husband would have probably had a problem with that.

I was no longer in front of the camera; I was behind it. Graduation photos, family portraits, maternity shoots, and newborn pictures kept me steady, but my favorites were the boudoir shoots. I'd made quite a name for myself when it came to taking sensual, dramatically lit photos that reeked of sexuality and empowerment.

Well, my alternate ego had made a name for herself. "Passion by Fire" and "Portraits by Em" were two different companies, for all intents and purposes, though I had a few clients who knew me under both names. It was more to keep Leia in the dark, just for a few more years. I couldn't bring myself to explain Mommy's past just yet.

Kelsie and I had polished off the bowl of popcorn and Leia and Baylee had just about nailed "Hey Soul Sister" when someone knocked on the front door.

"Who's that?" Kelsie asked, as if I'd know.

"Well, if it's not you, then I have no idea."

I was halfway to the door when the knocking became a pounding.

"Please open up, Em."

Jimmy's voice was desperate in a way I hadn't heard before. The first thought that crossed my mind was that he'd gotten someone pregnant. The second was that he'd pissed off the wrong person and someone was after him. The third was that if he had dragged his drama to my front door and put my daughter in harm's way, I'd kill him myself.

When I flung the door open, I was ready to lose my mind at him yet again. When I saw his face, I was speechless.

Jimmy had been crying.

"I need to talk to you."

"Hey girls!" Kelsie shouted from the hallway. "We're gonna go play outside for a bit."

"That's perfect!" squealed Leia. "We can give you a concert in the backyard."

"I cannot think of a single reason for you to not do that," Kelsie said unenthusiastically.

She managed to usher Leia, Baylee, and Pepper outside without them seeing Jimmy, who had collapsed on the couch in my living room after I quietly shut the door.

"Do you want a beer?" I asked uncertainly.

Jimmy shook his head.

That was a surprise, too.

"What, uh, do you want to talk about?"

"I'm fucked."

"Generally or for a specific reason?"

"Both." He pulled his phone from his pocket and chucked it onto the coffee table. "Read that."

The screen was on an article posted in Guitar Player, which I inferred was some kind of music magazine. The title big, bold, and shady as all fuck.

Wasting Away Again in Margaritaville

Jimmy was being an asshole. Jimmy was drinking too much, partying too much, and being downright insufferable. He was egotistical, overwhelmingly cocky, and unbearably rude. He was on a fast path to self-destruction. He was a danger to himself, a bad influence on my daughter, and a completely unbearable excuse for a human being.