Lisa pouts and whines a little more but Ronin is looking straight at me the whole time. His gaze gets uncomfortable and I have to look away.

I take a deep breath and when I look up again, Lisa is gone and the food is here. Ronin helps Cindy with the plates and scoots my burger over towards me, says some flirty words to the waitress who looks exhausted and ready to go home, and then winks at me as he takes a bite of his food.

Chapter Nine - RONIN

This Rook is going to be a handful, I can tell. She's got a dark look to her, a look that says she's had some trouble recently. But she's not down, that's for sure. And her defenses are on high alert. Much too high for my comfort level. I'll have to work on that. If she doesn't trust me to order her food, then she's definitely not going to trust me to take care of her during a shoot.

And even though I told Lisa Rook is definitely the girl I want for TRAGIC, we won't get far if we can't touch her. I can't touch her, I correct myself. I'm the one who'll be touching her.

She has a good appetite once she settles in and starts eating, and that's a plus. I can only eat half of my burger, too many beers tonight, but Rook scarfs hers down and makes a decent dent in her French fries as well. I smile as she leans back in the booth. "Satisfied?" She blushes a bright pink and I have to stop myself from growling with desire. This girl does something to me and I'm not quite sure what to do about it.

"I was hungry," she explains. "I didn't eat all day."

"That's not good," I say, frowning at her. This might be an issue after all. "You want some pie? Cookie makes the best pies in town."

She laughs, as if this is absurd. "No, thanks. I've had enough."

I stand and hold out my hand to her. She looks at me funny but accepts it and I pull her to her feet and put my hand behind her back to direct her to the door.

"Don't we have to pay?"

"We have a tab, Rook. When you eat here you walk to the back booth, you order whatever you want and they bill us. No questions asked."

"Oh, then you take it out of our pay or something?"

I hold the door open for her and she murmurs a thank you as she passes through. I love her manners. She's a contradiction though, dark and defensive one minute, sweet and innocent the next. I'm not sure which side I prefer to be honest, I like them both at the moment. "No, this is just what we do for the models. We like you girls to look a certain way. Make sense?"

She looks over to me as we cross the street and make our way back to the studio. "I guess."

She has no idea what I'm talking about, and I'm really too tired to explain, so I just walk next to her in silence until we get to the door. "You can use my code for now, all right? It's 37351 I'll write it down for you when we get upstairs. It works for the terrace door too, so you're not a princess anymore."

She laughs at that and I have a sudden urge to put my hands all over her body, that's how much those little noises coming from her mouth turn me on. I can't even remember the last time a girl made me feel like that. Maybe never.

"Sorry for escaping, the hunger about drove me mad."

Oh shit. I feel bad. I'm such an ass**le.

"But thanks for the burger. I really did like it."

We trudge up the four flights of stairs with just the noise of our footfalls to break the silence. Her little Converse sneakers are cute—bright red with little holes near the toes, like she's been wearing them since she was twelve and can't bear to give them up. I open the studio door and make sure it clicks closed behind us. "We've got the doors on a lock timer, so if you come in during business hours, it's always open, but after hours you need the code."

I open the terrace door for her and wait for her to walk through, then follow her out onto the terrace.

"This place is so beautiful, even in the moonlight."

I look around at it. I'm so used to living here I don't even notice the cherry trees anymore. "Yeah, Antoine spends a small fortune on gardeners every month. We shoot a lot of stuff out here though, so it's worth it I guess."

She looks longingly at the grass and flowering fruit trees. "I spent most of my life in the city and there were some pretty places, I mean every city has pretty places, right? But they never quite made up for the ugliness."

Something tells me she's not talking about Denver.

"There's a swing over there near the first tree." I take her arm and pull her along with me over to the trees. "Get on. I'll push you."

I half expect a little fight out of her, but she's a lot calmer than she was when I found her in the diner. I watched her come out of the alley, get nervous about a group of guys following her, and then overreact when another guy asked her a question. She was wound up tight when I showed up.

But now—I listen to her stifle down a laugh as she settles down on the old wooden swing—she's calm and soft.

I think I prefer her like this. I can do without the dark Rook, but this girl, the one who says thank you when I open the door for her and who giggles when I push her in the cherry tree swing—this girl is sexy. Rook has Lisa and her Sturgis outfit beat by a mile and all she's wearing is some ripped-up low-cut jeans and an oversized white t-shirt that shows zero cle**age.

Her long dark hair floats out behind her as she swings forward, and then whips against her back as she returns to me. I catch a glimpse of her bare neck every once in a while and I get the urge to kiss her there. Shit, Ronin, what's wrong with you? Models are not girlfriend material, I remind myself. They are the farthest thing from girlfriend material there is. I try not to date the models, I try not to even look at them.