Melanie closed her notebook and set it on the coffee table. She needed to switch gears for both of their sakes. “Let’s discuss wardrobe. For most of these photo shoots, I’d like you to appear polished, but still casual. We’ll do a suit for the business publications, but for the lifestyle magazines, I’m thinking dark jeans and a dress shirt. No tie. I’d love to see you in a lavender shirt. It will bring out your eyes, and women react well to a man who isn’t afraid to wear a softer color.”
“You have got to be kidding. I wear blue, gray and black. I wouldn’t know lavender if it walked up to me and started talking.”
“I’m not asking you to pick the color out of a box of crayons. I’m asking you to wear it.”
“No lavender. No way.”
Melanie pressed her lips together. There were only so many battles she could win. “We’ll do blue. A light blue. Nothing too dark. You’ll have to wear makeup too, especially for the TV appearances, but you don’t need to do anything other than sit there and let them take care of it. It’s painless.”
“How’d you learn all of this, anyway?”
“Public relations? I studied it in college.”
“No. The things about lavender and women liking softer colors.”
“Let’s just say I grew up in a family that cared a lot about appearances.” That may have been underselling it a bit, but she wasn’t eager to open up this particular can of worms.
“Oh, yeah? Like what?”
She dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “Trust me, it’s boring.”
“Look, I need a mental health break after the mock interview and the quote from the paper. Just tell me.”
She didn’t want to dismiss him, mostly because she hated it when he did the same to her. Maybe the highlights, or lowlights as she referred to them, would be okay. “Both of my parents were big on appearances, although my mother passed away when I was little, so I don’t remember being lectured about it by her.” The way Melanie missed her mom wasn’t what she imagined to be normal. She’d been so young when she lost her, that it was more like losing a ghost than a real person. “I definitely remember it from my dad.”
Adam frowned. “Like what?”
Melanie shrugged, looking down into her lap. She’d told herself many times that she shouldn’t allow these memories to make her feel small, but they did. “He’d order me to put on a dress, or try harder with my hair, be more like my sisters. I’m the youngest of four girls and I was a little bookish growing up. They were all into beauty pageants. My mother had won tons of pageants as a girl, but she was stunning. I knew I’d never live up to that.”
“Why? You’re pretty enough.”
She blushed. It was silly, but she enjoyed hearing Adam say she was pretty, or at least pretty enough. “There’s more to it than that. You have to walk up on stage and smile perfectly and wave your hand a certain way and follow a million rules that somebody, somewhere, decided were the ways a girl should present herself. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be that plastic girl.”
He rubbed the stubble along his jaw. “And yet you chose a profession that involves an awful lot of smoke and mirrors.”
She’d never really thought of it that way. “But I can make my own rules when I need to, make my own way. It’s creative and strategic. I love that part of my job. It’s never dull.”
“Did you participate in any beauty pageants, or did you rebel from the beginning?”
A wave of embarrassment hit her, quite a different type of blush from the one she got when Adam had said nice things. “I did one pageant. I actually won it, but that was enough for me.”
“Little Miss Virginia? You’re from Virginia, right?”
“Yes. Rural Virginia. The mountains. And I can’t tell you what my title was or I’ll have to kill you. It’s far too humiliating.”
“Well, now you have to tell me. No one gets past me without sharing at least one humiliating story.”
She shook her head. “Nope. Sorry. We’re discussing business. Let’s get back to your wardrobe.”
“Come on. We already had to talk about me and the girl who can’t keep track of her own undies. And one could argue that this is business. These are your qualifications for being my wardrobe consultant.”
“It’s dumb.”
“What if I say I’ll wear a lavender shirt? One time.” He held up a single finger for emphasis.
She really did want him to wear lavender. It would make for some great pictures. “Okay. Fine. I was crowned Little Miss Buttermilk. I was five.”