Hidden Talents

the photographer? Who was he working for?”
    “Oh, I see what you mean,” Serenity said. “His name is Ambrose Asterley. And he wasn't working for anyone, unfortunately. His career has been in the doldrums for years. At one time he was considered very good, though.”
    “Is that right?”
    Serenity apparently missed the sarcasm. “Oh, yes. He actually worked in L.A. Hollywood, you know. That was years ago, however. I'm told he was on the way to the top. But poor Ambrose has a drinking problem. It's ruined his life.”
    She had posed naked for a cheap, washed-up drunk of a photographer. Caleb's hand closed into a fist. The pictures had no doubt been barely good enough for the raunchiest of the skin magazines. “I see.”
    “Ambrose has been doing a little better since he moved to Witt's End a few years ago,” Serenity assured him earnestly. “He's made a couple of small sales, but he hasn't been able to get his career back on track. I felt sorry for him.”
    “That's why you posed for him? Because you felt sorry for him?”
    “Yes. And because, whatever else one can say about Ambrose, there's no denying that he's very gifted artist.”
    “Damn it to hell.” Caleb stared down at Fourth Avenue, which lay twenty floors below his office window. Everything and everyone down there on the street seemed to be a long way off, just as most things did in his life these days. He preferred it this way. It made things simpler. At least it had until recently.
    His carefully controlled emotional distance had initially been as a means of protecting himself from the silent accusation he had seen in the eyes of his grandparents and everyone else in the family. But lately it seemed to him that the detached, clinically remote feeling he had relied on for years was unaccountably growing stronger.
    There were times recently when he felt as if he were starting to dematerialize. Ordinary life went on as usual around him, but he was only going through the motions, pretending he was part of what was happening, but knowing that in reality he was not really a participant, just an observer. Nothing touched him, and he was not sure that he could touch anything in turn.
    It was as if he were becoming a ghost.
    But Serenity Makepeace had reached out and grabbed him in some manner that Caleb was helpless to explain.
    Emotions, strong, exciting, dangerous emotions, had begun to reemerge deep within him the day she walked into his office. The first thing he had felt was raw, energizing desire. It made him feel alive as nothing else had in ages.
    Now he was experiencing rage.
    He should have known that Serenity was too good to be true.
    “Those photos must be very interesting, Ms. Makepeace,” Caleb said. He thought of the old photos and newspaper clippings that were locked away in the little jewelry box that had belonged to his mother. Damning photos. The stuff of blackmail.
    The jewelry box, a gaudy case encrusted with large, fake gems, was the only thing he had inherited from Crystal Brooke. Roland Ventress had given it to him on his eighteenth birthday along with yet another solemn warning not to make the same mistakes his father had made.
    Caleb had opened the jewelry case only once. It had remained closed and hidden away ever since.
    “Ambrose may have a drinking problem, but he's a talented photographer,” Serenity said with what would have been touching loyalty under other circumstances. “The shots he took of me would be considered art by most people.”
    “Nude photos of you just sort of lying around? Give me a break. We're not talking about art, we're talking about the kind of shots that get published in cheap men's magazines.”
    “That's not true.” She was clearly shocked by his uncompromising attitude. “The pictures were never published at all, but if they had been, I assure you it wouldn't have been in a tacky men's magazine. Ambrose's work is much too good for that kind of format. He deserves to be hung in the best galleries.”
    “He deserves to be hung, all right,” Caleb muttered. “Look, you can drop the artistic outrage. I know exactly what kind of pictures Ambrose Asterley takes.”
    “You do?” She brightened. “Don't tell me you've actually seen his work?”
    “Let's just say I'm familiar with the style. It's obvious that he has a talent for producing the kind of photos that can be used for blackmail.”
    “But these pictures aren't like that,” she protested. “I'm trying to explain.”
    “I