Some Gave All by Nancy Holder Read Free Book Online Page B

lives.
    “I’ll catch you later,” Vincent said to her stiff, angry back. She raised a hand to show that she’d heard.
    “Great to meet you, Vince,” Wilson said. “Let’s do sushi soon.”
    “Sounds like a plan.” Vincent ground his teeth and saw himself out.

CHAPTER FOUR
    G REENWICH V ILLAGE , 5 P.M.
    I nside the apartment she shared with Cat and, occasionally, Vincent, Heather Chandler thrust her weight onto one hip, took a step, and pushed out her other hip. Then she sipped her Sauvignon Blanc.
    On the floor, a dozen tiny pieces of green fabric fluttered like autumn leaves. There were scraps everywhere, and a half-finished moss-colored handkerchief skirt she had ultimately decided was way too Halloween Gypsy lay on the sofa. A bottle of red wine was open and breathing, but Heather had decreed that they could only drink white while working on her pieces. Also, they could only eat white Cheddar cheese and white crackers. The crackers were kind of crumbling everywhere but she’d get out the vacuum in a sec.
    “See? Like that,” she said to her audience as she took another sip. She was getting a little sloshed. “You’re walking the fashion runway. Not guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.”
    “Sweet darlin’, that is
exactly
how I am walkin’.” Walker Chastain, who worked as a photographer at the Silverado Academy of Design,
also
holding a glass of wine and munching on nummy cheese and crumbly crackers, demonstrated his walk. Tall and lanky, he took one precise step forward, and then another. He was no fashion model, but he
was
fluid sex appeal. Plus he was a strawberry-blond edging into ginger, so very tasty. He even had nubs of red hair on his toes. Hazel eyes with gold flecks, a dusting of macho facial hair. And the most adorable freckles.
    He was swathed with chartreuse raw silk, the bodice featuring an off-center, plunging neckline and slashed dolman sleeves inset with sand-colored muslin, then captured in a bamboo bustier. Heather had dyed the bamboo strips in green tea. The skirt—a second one, of chartreuse—she wasn’t sure of yet. She had pinned it up to Walker’s shins—her model, Bai Mei, was about an inch shorter than he was—but she hadn’t yet discovered the
design
of her design, as Rudi, her silks teacher, would say.
    Walker was the only person who had seen her creation thus far. She was entering it in the New Looks competition and it was going to be a winner. She already knew it because a bamboo corset? That was a whole new level of look. The prize was a photo spread and a “Designer to Watch!” write-up in
Couture Bleu
magazine. Cat and Tess had been working a case at the magazine when Cat had found Vincent. So it was very cool that Heather had a chance of being discovered there herself.
    “My lack of walk is because I don’t have any hips. Or chi-chis.” He cupped his chest with his hands. He had great pecs. Beneath all the silk, his body was ripped. He had an actual six-pack, an attribute far less common in New York than back in Miami, where people walked around half-naked so you had to work at it. In Miami, a formal affair meant you wore something
over
your bathing suit. And flip-flops instead of going barefoot.
    “Walker, fashion models don’t have hips or chi-chis. And no one says chi-chis. They are boobs. I mean, breasts.” She poured him a little more wine in the hope of loosening him up. Maybe she was expecting too much. Walker was so talented it was hard not to imagine that he was good at everything. She had met him when he’d come to shoot her class’s models in their silk pajama pieces. The pictures he’d taken of Bai Mei were fantastic.
    After that, it had been a matter of trading business cards—she was still working part-time as an events coordinator and her boss had been looking for a good photographer—and about a week after the New Looks competition had been announced, he’d texted her to meet for coffee. He loved Il Cantuccio, the Chandler