“Did he grow up in Ireland?” She smiled at the image. Like his father, he was good-looking.
“We lived in New York and London when he was small. I moved to Ireland two years after he left for college. He’s an all-around American kid. I never really was. I always felt different, maybe because my parents weren’t born in the States. All they ever talked about was moving back. So eventually, I did.”
“And Ireland feels like home?” she asked as their eyes met.
“Now it does. I reclaimed my family’s ancestral house. Restoring it will take me the next hundred years. The place was falling apart when I got it, and parts of it still are. It’s an enormous old Palladian home built by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce in the early 1700s. Unfortunately, my parents died long before I got it back, and Michael thought I was nuts to take it on.” There was a photograph of it on the mantelpiece, and he handed it to Hope. It was a gigantic classic house, with a large stone staircase in front, and rounded side wings with columns. In the photograph Finn was in front of the house, astride an elegant black horse. He looked very much the lord of the manor.
“It’s an amazing house,” Hope said with admiration. “It must be quite a project to restore.”
“It has been, but it’s a labor of love. It will be my legacy to Michael one day. I should have it in decent shape by then, providing I live for at least another hundred years to do it.” He laughed as he said it, and Hope handed back the photograph. Now she was sorry she hadn’t shot him there. In comparison to the remarkable Palladian palace, his London mews house suddenly seemed ridiculously small, but all his publisher wanted was a head shot, and for that the cozy room they were sitting in was good enough.
“I’d better get my assistant started,” Hope said, standing up. “It’ll take us a while to set up. Do you have any preference about location?” she asked, glancing around again. She had liked the way he looked when he was sitting on the couch, relaxing and talking about his Dublin house. And she wanted to shoot him at his desk as well, and maybe a couple of shots standing next to the bookcase. It was always hard to predict where the magic would happen, until they connected as she worked. He seemed like an easy subject; everything about him was open and relaxed. And as she looked into his eyes, she could sense that he was the kind of man you could trust, and rely on. There was a feeling of warmth and humor about him, as though he had a good understanding of people’s quirks and the vagaries of life. And there was a hint of laughter in his eyes. He was sexy too, but in a distinguished, aristocratic way. There was nothing sleazy about him, even though her agent had warned her that he was something of a womanizer. Seeing him, that was easy to understand. He was enormously appealing, seemed very caring, and was a gorgeous hunk of man. And she suspected that if he turned the charm on at full volume, he’d be hard to resist. She was glad she wasn’t in that position, and was only working with him. He had been very complimentary about her work. She could tell from questions he had asked her, and things he referred to, that he had Googled her. He seemed to know the entire list of museums she’d been shown in, some of which even she didn’t remember most of the time. He was very well informed.
Hope went back downstairs and helped Fiona sort out the equipment. She told her what she wanted, and then went upstairs to show her where to set up the lights she’d be using. She wanted to photograph him first on the couch, and then at his desk. As she watched Fiona set up, Finn disappeared upstairs to his bedroom, and he reappeared an hour later when Hope let him know that they were ready. She sent the maid up to tell him, and he came back downstairs in a soft blue cashmere sweater the same color as his eyes. It was a good look on him, and his trim form looked sexy and masculine in the sweater. She could see that he had just shaved, and his hair was loose but freshly brushed.
“All set?” She smiled at him, picking up her Mamiya. She told him where to sit on the couch, Fiona gave them a light reading as the lights flashed beneath the umbrella, and Hope set down the Mamiya and took a quick Polaroid to show him the pose and the setting. He said it looked great to him. A minute later, Hope started shooting, alternating between the Mamiya, the Leica, and the Hasselblad for classic portrait shots. She took mostly color, and a few rolls of black and white. That was always her preference for a more interesting look, but his publisher had been specific about wanting color and Finn said he preferred it too. He said that it felt more real to his readers and made it easier for them to connect with him, than in an arty black and white shot on the back of the book.
“You’re the boss,” Hope said, smiling, as she looked into the camera again and he laughed.
“No, you’re the artist.” He seemed completely at ease in front of the camera, moving his head and changing his expression by fractions, as though he had done this a thousand times before, which Hope knew he had. The photograph they were taking was for his eleventh book, and so far, all of them for the past twenty years had been best sellers. At forty-six, he was an institution in American literature, just as she was in her field. It would have been hard to decide which of them was more famous or more respected. They were an even match in their reputations and skills in separate fields.
They shot for an hour, as she praised him for good moves and the right turn of his head, and she was almost sure she had gotten the winning shot in the first half hour, but she knew better than to stop there. She had Fiona move the light setup to his desk, and suggested he take a half-hour break, and maybe put a white shirt on, but leave it open at the neck. He asked if she’d like to stop for lunch then, but Hope said that if he didn’t mind, she’d prefer to continue working. She didn’t want to break the mood, or to get slow and lazy after lunch. She found that it was usually better to stay on it once she and her subject were working well together. A long lunch or a glass of wine could break the spell for either or both of them, and she didn’t want that to happen. She was delighted with what they were getting. As a portrait subject, Finn O’Neill was a dream and he was fun to talk to. The time was speeding by.
Half an hour later, he was back in his living room, in the white shirt Hope had asked for, and sat down at his handsome partner’s desk. Hope moved the computer away because it looked so incongruous in that setting. He was a delightful subject, fooling around, telling jokes and stories about well-known artists, writers, his house in Ireland, and the outrageous stunts he had pulled on book tours in his youth. At one point he had tears in his eyes when he talked about his son and bringing him up on his own, without a mother after her death. There were so many magical moments while she talked to him that Hope knew she would have a multitude of great shots to choose from, each one better than the last.
And then finally, after a few shots of him leaning against an antique ladder in front of the bookcase, they were through. And just as she said it, he exploded in laughter with a look of joy and release, and she stole one more shot of him, which could just turn out to be the best one. Sometimes that happened. And he gave her a warm hug as she handed her Leica to Fiona, who took it reverently from her hands and set it on a table with the others. She unplugged the lights and began to break down the equipment and put it away, as Finn led Hope downstairs to the kitchen.
“You work too hard! I’m starving!” he complained as he opened the refrigerator and turned to her. “Can I make you some pasta or a salad? I’m about to keel over from starvation. No wonder you’re so small, you must never eat.”
“Usually not when I’m working,” she admitted. “I get too involved in what I’m doing to think about it, and it’s so much fun doing the shoot.” She smiled shyly and he laughed.
“Most of the time I feel that way about working on a book, although at times I hate it too. Particularly rewrites. I have a nasty editor, and we have a love-hate relationship, but he’s good for the books. It’s a necessary evil. You don’t have that with what you do,” he said enviously.
“I have to edit myself, but I have clients to deal with who commission the work, like your publisher, and museum curators, who can be pretty tough, though it’s different than doing rewrites must be for you. I’ve always wanted to write,” she confessed. “I can barely write a postcard-for me it’s all visual. I see the world through a lens, I see into people’s souls that way.”
“I know, that’s what I love about your work, and why I asked the publisher to get you to do the photo for the book jacket.” He laughed then as he expertly made an omelette for them both, moving like a tornado in the tiny kitchen. He had already made the salad while they talked. “I hope my soul doesn’t wind up looking too black in the shots you took,” he said, pretending to look worried, as she looked at him intently.
“Why would it? I didn’t see any signs of a black soul, or a dark spirit. Is there something I missed?”
“Maybe a little friendly hereditary craziness, but it’s harmless. From what I’ve read about my Irish relatives, some of them were fairly nuts. But not dangerously so, mostly eccentric.” He smiled at her as he said it.
“There’s no harm in that,” Hope said benignly, as he put their omelettes on separate plates. “Everyone has a little craziness in them somewhere. I spent some time in India after my husband and I split up, trying to figure things out. I guess you could say that was crazy too,” she said, as they sat down at the beautiful mahogany table in his cozy dark green dining room. There were paintings of hunting scenes on the walls, and one of birds by a famous
