Facade

guiding his arm around his shoulders.
    “I don’t care,” Nicky replied to Jonas’s explanation of what was put on the Internet. He was a lot more awake now.
    “There’s no mistaking the fact we’re having sex on a rooftop in Paris. If you zoom in you can even see the dangly and not so dangly bits. It’s going to come back and bite you in the ass, Nicky.” As soon as the words left Jonas’s mouth he wished he could take them back. The more he thought about them, the funnier they became, until he was giggling like a girl.
    Nicky at first didn’t quite get it, and then it suddenly hit him.
    “It poked me in the ass, that’s plenty!” Then he turned serious. “You suggested to Tanna you could leave so I could cover this up, right?” Jonas stopped laughing as well. “You’re not exactly out, Nicky.”
    “No,” Nicky agreed. “But I never said I was straight. People know nothing about my private life.”
    “Well, they do now.”

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    Nicky looked Jonas in the eye. “I don’t care.”
    “What if they find out what I do for a living?”
    “Are you ashamed of what you do?” Nicky asked.
    Jonas shook his head. “You know I’m not.”
    “Neither am I,” Nicky replied determinedly.
    “But it could reflect on you.”
    “It could cost you clients,” Nicky was quick to counter. “I can imagine Clay wouldn’t feel too comfortable taking you to basketball games if it was universally known that you were an ass for hire.” Jonas winced. “Don’t call it that.”
    Nicky crawled back into Jonas’s arms. “Just saying, it’s as bad for you as it is for me. All we can do is wait it out and hope it goes away. I never spoke about my private life with journalists, and I’m not about to start now.”
    “That’s what Tanna said too,” Jonas agreed.
    “I don’t want this to come between us, Jonas,” Nicky said determinedly. “I love you and this doesn’t change that. Even if they nail me to the stake for this, I won’t give you up.”
    “I’m glad to hear that. The feeling is mutual,” Jonas replied with a relieved sigh.
    “Good, that’s settled, then. So where are you taking me?”
    “How does Spain sound? My villa?” Jonas suggested.
    “God, I hope it doesn’t rain this time.”

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    Zahra
    Owens

    JONAS was quite used to the hustle and bustle and excitement of fashion shows by now. After all, he’d seen enough of them in the last two years to understand that an enormous amount of work went into getting all that glamour and glitter to come across from that narrow strip of a runway.
    Following Nicky all over the world had been a real rollercoaster, but one he wouldn’t have wanted to miss for anything.
    They’d both stuck to their initial promises. Nicky did delegate more of the work, and subsequently, Maia had blossomed from a shy mousy girl to a strong, confident woman. She was in charge of the day to day running of the atelier and used her considerable talent with fabrics to make Nicky’s designs come to life. Nicky still did the runway shows, of course, and the private clients, since it was his face and image that represented Maison Bryant, but other than that, the only time he spent long days in the atelier was when Jonas was gone, which was every few weeks or so.
    Jonas’s clients probably didn’t notice the change in his personal life. At least that’s what he told himself. He knew it wasn’t just vanity that made him look in the mirror and see that he looked relaxed and happy. He felt it too, and even spending time with the men who’d been hiring him for years seemed easier because he knew Nicky was okay with it.
    During one of his appointments with Clay, he’d managed to plant a suggestion in the surgeon’s mind. Clay had caught him Façade
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    leafing through a men’s fashion magazine and reading an article on Nicky, complete with glossy photos.
    “Now there’s a guy I’d like to do,” the plastic surgeon had told him, eyes dark with lust. “He used to be this prissy, girly kid, but these past few years he’s become a lot more masculine, laying off the make-up and showing off that delightful body of his on the catwalk. I must admit whenever I see something about him on TV or in magazines, my hands tingle to touch that soft skin of his.”
    “How do you know it’s soft?” Jonas had asked, trying to feign innocence. He hid his glee at how easy it had been.
    “I’m a plastics man, I know about skin,” Clay had answered matter-of-factly.