At Your Most Beautiful by Harper Bliss (best free ereader .TXT) 📗

enough, but…” Quinn put some distance between them. “I don’t have any great or unrealistic expectations of this, Maya. I’ll be out of your life soon enough. But I believe in seizing the moment and this doesn’t necessarily have to end right now. I’ll be around a few more weeks. Maybe we can have some more fun together.”

“We can’t.” Maya was somewhat flattered by Quinn’s desire to do what they’d done last night all over again. “Not when Bill and Brooke are back. That doesn’t work for me. It’s already such a mind fuck.”

“They won’t know. They will never know.”

“Quinn, I’m serious.” Maya looked at her intently. “Promise me you will never tell anyone about last night.”

“Not anyone? Ever? That seems a bit extreme.” Quinn arched up her eyebrows. “It sounds as if you want to erase what happened.”

Maya shook her head. “I don’t want to erase it, but I also don’t want anyone to know about it. This is a small town and news travels fast. I have a son. I have a business here. I can’t be the woman in her forties who slept with the neighbors’ twenty-something daughter. Can you understand that?”

“Of course, but… no one in this town will ever find out.”

“Promise me, Quinn. No one. Ever. This will be our secret for eternity.”

“I promise I won’t tell a soul. Ever.” Quinn retreated farther.

Deep down, Maya knew it would perhaps be a promise neither one of them could keep because life was long and who knew what the future might bring? But, for now, having Quinn’s reassurance that she would keep quiet about them did assuage her fears—not that she was expecting Quinn to run home and tell her parents.

“I appreciate that.” Maya looked at Quinn, who suddenly seemed a lot less like the brazen woman who had asked for a swim in Maya’s pool. The fact that she was still fully naked made her appear more vulnerable than sexy now that the boundaries between them were redrawn with actual words.

“I was already making plans to throw pebbles at your window after dark.” At least Quinn managed a smile.

Maya couldn’t help herself. She shuffled closer to Quinn and threw an arm around her. “Listen to me, Quinn. We had an amazing time together and we’ll always have that memory.” She kissed her lightly on the cheek. “You are going to have an amazing life because you are a wonderful woman, I know that much. You are a true delight to be around and you made me feel things, well… I think you know how you made me feel.” She held her a little closer. “But this has to end now.” Maya needed to emotionally disentangle herself from their night together and the feelings it had stirred in her as soon as possible, but that was not information she wanted to share with Quinn. “Thank you for understanding that.”

Quinn wrapped her arms around Maya and pulled her close. “You’re one hell of a cougar, Maya,” she whispered in her ear.

They exchanged one final, almost chaste kiss, before Quinn freed herself from Maya’s embrace and exited her house—and Maya’s life.

Chapter 10Ten Years Later

Acton Academy was one of Quinn’s best-paying clients, so she treated herself to a taxi to the Upper East Side instead of lugging her equipment around on the subway. In the back of the cab, she checked her Instagram account. A satisfying number of likes awaited her on the latest Photoshop creation she had posted online earlier that morning. One of those likes, she couldn’t help but notice, was from Morgan.

Quinn exhaled audibly. Why did Morgan insist on liking every single thing she posted? It was a rhetorical question because Quinn knew the answer. For some absurd reason that Quinn would forever fail to understand, Morgan didn’t want to leave her husband for Quinn, but she did want to remain this unbearable version of online friends.

As usual when faced with a social media like from Morgan, which was basically all she’d been able to offer Quinn, even when they’d still been together, Quinn’s finger hovered over the ‘block’ button. Also as usual, she couldn’t bring herself to tap it. Instead, she put her phone away and gauged the traffic ahead. She should make it on time which, for Acton, meant with at least fifteen minutes to spare.

Quinn didn’t like to keep the people from Acton Academy waiting. They not only paid handsomely for the time she spent taking the actual pictures—a portrait of a new teacher today—but also for the hours she spent turning the picture into a magical work of art on the computer. The hallways of their building, financed mostly by the well-to-do parents of their students, were lined with Quinn’s work and it was always such a treat to go back and have a triumphant stroll through her very own art.

Quinn was not the type to overly prepare for a photo shoot. She had always been more of a woman of action than research. Besides, no amount of research could ever fully prepare her for the kind of person she would find in front of the camera. People acted in all sorts of bizarre ways when a lens was aimed at them. Quinn’s trick to make them feel at ease was to show them some before-and-after shots of previous projects. Because she had worked hard on her skills and could therefore present her subjects with some spectacular pictures, this approach usually worked like a charm. It was a way to relieve the pressure on the person whose picture was being taken, and not many people ever minded that, especially when living in the madness of New York City.

Quinn paid the driver, got her gear out of the trunk, and waltzed into Acton Academy as if she owned it. Appreciation for her work had that effect on her. She also believed that walking into a shoot with not-to-be-ignored confidence enhanced the chances of it being a smoother ride. She was the photographer