Captured By You: A One Night of Passion Novella

by BETH KERY

  “What’s good?” Chance asked, peering at the blackboard menu behind the counter.

  “Everything. My sister is the best cook in the county.”

  Chance did a double take. “You’re Sherona’s brother?”

  “Derek Legion,” the kid said unsmilingly.

  Chance hid a grin. Derek had seemed perfectly friendly until he’d mentioned wanting to see his sister. Well, it didn’t particularly surprise him that the little brother of a woman as beautiful as Sherona might be a little protective.

  He stuck out his hand. “Chance Hathoway. I’m here at Rill Pierce’s request to do some photographs for the Food for Body and Soul brochure,” he explained as he shared a quick handshake with Derek. He’d known Rill since they’d met at UCLA during their undergraduate years, both of them students in the visual arts department, and both of them expats—Rill from Ireland and Chance from Australia. Rill had gone on to become a renowned movie director, and Chance had made his career in photography, but they’d remained friends over the years. When Rill had recently mentioned to him the charitable work he did for Food for Body and Soul, a cooperative farm that provided nutritious, healthy food for poverty-stricken and needy families in the Midwest and Appalachian region, Chance had been interested. It’d sounded like a worthy enough cause for him to take a quick vacation at Rill’s house and help in any way he could. It’d been Rill who’d suggested how his expertise might best help out the organization.

  “So that’s why you want to talk to Sherona? Because of Body and Soul?” Derek asked.

  Chance nodded. “I understand she’s in charge of public relations for the organization. I wanted to get her ideas on where I should photograph and when.”

  “Well, she should be back any minute,” Derek said, seeming partially mollified by his explanation. But Chance hadn’t been entirely untruthful. Rill had told him Sherona was the person he should contact in regard to the brochure. He’d been chomping at the bit to meet her, however, ever since he knew the identity of the glistening goddess he’d blessedly glimpsed. The fact that his contact at Body and Soul and the woman at the lake were one and the same made Chance feel like Lady Luck herself had just dealt him a dream poker hand.

  Chance had shared with Rill—in a highly edited form—his experience of seeing a beautiful woman swimming in Orchard Lake two days ago. They’d been sitting together on the front porch of Rill and Katie Pierce’s large house, enjoying the slow, cautious crawl of evening into the forest. Rill had asked him a few pointed questions about the female’s appearance.

  “That was Sherona Legion, the woman I told you to talk to about the photos,” Rill had said in an unequivocal tone as he sat back in the Adirondack chair and took a sip of his iced tea.

  “How can you be so sure it was Sherona Legion?” Chance had asked, amused.

  Rill had given him a droll glance. “You think there are a lot of women who live in these parts who match the description you just gave me?”

  Chance had taken a swig of his beer and stared thoughtfully at the lavender blue evening sky. “There aren’t a handful of women on the planet that could match what I saw out at Orchard Lake yesterday.”

  Rill’s eyebrows had gone up at that. “That’s quite a compliment coming from a globe-trotting photographer who can expertly testify about the identities of the most beautiful women on the planet.”

  Chance had rolled his eyes at that and glanced toward the front door. They were expecting Katie to join them at any minute. “Don’t say things like that in front of your wife. She’ll think I’m a worthless root and never let me visit you again.”

  “Katie can make up her own mind as to your character without my input. She won’t hold the fact that you’re the heir to the Hathoway fortune or your popularity with the ladies against you unless you give her cause to,” Rill had said with a smirk. He had grown a little more serious when he registered Chance’s scowl. Chance liked Katie, considering her a brilliant light to Rill’s dark, quirky brilliance. He didn’t want her to hate him.

  “Katie can see through a stereotype if anyone can. She’s done her own struggle against being stereotyped as the blond Hollywood rich girl. Besides, she knows a few things about the truth behind the image from her brother,” Rill had said, referring to Katie’s celebrity sibling, Everett Hughes.

  “And from being the wife of a famous director, I assume,” Chance had said dryly.

  Rill had just shrugged at that.

  “I’ll have the daily special and a glass of iced tea,” Chance told Derek presently. Derek nodded and glanced sideways when the grouchy-seeming older man stood.

  “You done eating, Errol?” the gray-haired man asked the thin man.

  Errol nodded.

  “Come on. I’ll drive you home, then,” the older man said with gentle gruffness, surprising Chance a little. The two men had sat at separate booths. Chance wouldn’t have guessed they were acquaintances. The thin man wearing the cap set down his fork with an obedient gesture that reminded him of a child.

  “That’s for both of us,” the older man said as he set some money on the counter.

  “Thanks, Monty. Don’t forget the bread Sherona set out for you, Errol,” Derek said, waving at a paper bag sitting on the counter. Errol scooped it up as he passed, the gesture looking familiar.

  “Have a good one,” Monty said.

  “See you later, Monty, Errol,” Derek said as he checked his watch and opened the refrigerator door.

  The man called Errol trailed after Monty through the front door. Chance realized belatedly that all three of the other occupants of the diner knew one another as intimately as extended family. Sherona Legion’s diner appeared to be the tiny town’s communal kitchen and dining room.

  He looked around eagerly when he heard a sound behind the counter. Sherona walked through a swinging door tying a white half apron around her hips.

  “Okay, I’m back. You can go. Mike is waiting for you in the front of the Trading Company,” she said breathlessly to her brother. She gave her apron strings a final tug and glanced up, seeing Chance sitting there. She froze.

  “Hello,” Chance called.

  If she wore any makeup, Chance couldn’t see it. She didn’t need it. Her lips, for instance, which had fallen open in shock upon seeing him, were a lovely, natural dark pink. She certainly didn’t need any artifice to make them any fuller.

  Or sexier.

  Belatedly, Chance realized Derek was glancing uneasily between his sister and Chance as she gaped at him.

  “I don’t really have to go for a while,” Derek said stiffly.

  Sherona blinked and straightened, yanking her gaze off Chance.

  “What do you mean? Mike is waiting for you, and you’ve been looking forward to this fishing trip since you got home from college.”

  Thits time, Sherona noticed the uneasy glance Derek gave Chance.

  “I’ll be totally fine,” Chance thought he heard her say under her breath. She looked at Chance. “Has he taken your order yet?” she asked, her tone not necessarily cool, but definitely businesslike.

  “I ordered the special and an iced tea,” Chance replied.

  She nodded once and began to move around briskly behind the counter. Derek hesitated, but seemed to take some reassurance from his sister’s unconcerned attitude about Chance. He removed his apron and walked around the counter.

  “I guess I’ll be going then,” Derek said.

  Sherona set down a pan on the stove and walked over to him. They both leaned across the counter, and she gave him a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek.

  “Call me if you need anything. And have a great time. You deserve it, with a report card like you got—and for your freshman year, no less,” she said with quiet pride.

  Derek gave a small smile and loped toward the front door. He gave Chance a guarded half wave and walked out.

  He and Sherona were alone in the diner.

  He thought it would be the right thing to do to approach her and say
he was sorry for what had happened the other day by Orchard Lake. He walked to the counter and sat on a stool. She showed no sign of having any interest in an apology, or with having anything to do with him, for that matter.

  He watched her with increasing fascination as she prepared his meal. Her outfit was kind of . . . well, frumpy, to be honest: a loose pair of jeans, black Converse tennis shoes and a shapeless white shirt. Not that Chance cared. She could be wearing Chanel and the only thing he’d see was her glorious naked form glistening with water. Did she dress like that to hide the fact that she possessed the body of a Venus? The disguise might have worked for some men, but it didn’t for him. She could wear a tent and he’d find her sexy as hell.

  She moved like she was doing a perfectly choreographed dance routine—open the refrigerator, grab a pan with one hand and a platter with the other, close door with a small kick, set down the pan on the stove, flip on the gas, slide the platter into the oven, open the refrigerator again, grab the pitcher of tea, scoop some ice into a glass . . .

  It went on. She moved with efficiency, but also extreme grace, the props of her pans and dishes and cutlery precisely where she wanted them to be when she reached out a hand. By the time she set a steaming plate of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn bread and fresh steamed green beans in front of him, sliding a napkin and silverware down next to it, Chance realized he hadn’t spoken yet. Just like he had been down by the lake, he was completely mesmerized by her.

  “Thanks,” he said, appreciatively inhaling the divine aromas wafting off the plate.

  She stood regarding him, her former methodical whirlwind of action coming to an abrupt halt. She wore her long hair in a low ponytail. Now that it was dry, he realized it was an auburn color that nearly matched the russet color of her eyes. Despite her calm, unreadable expression, he saw her pulse throbbing rapidly at her throat.

  “What do you plan to do with those photos?”

  He blinked. Her voice sounded low and smoky, but there was a definite trace of steely anger in it.

  “I don’t plan on doing anything with them.”

  Her nostrils flared slightly and her brown eyes sparked.

  “Then why did you take them?” she demanded, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. His gaze flickered downward before he gave her a glance that was both apologetic and droll.

  “Why do you think?” he quietly returned her challenge. He sighed when he saw her stiffen. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. It was wrong of me to take them. Truth is, I couldn’t seem to stop myself. You’re very beautiful.”

  They stared off in the silence.

  He picked up his fork and sank it into the tender meat. He groaned in gustatory bliss a second later as he chewed. Did her lush lips tremble slightly in amusement? He set down his fork and stuck out his hand, hoping to take advantage of the temporary break in her irritation. She reluctantly put her soft, warm hand in his for a quick shake.

  “I’m Chance Hathoway. I’m mates with Rill Pierce. I volunteered to do the photography for the Food for Body and Soul brochure. I understand I’m supposed to see you about the details.”

  “I think you’ve seen enough of me.”

  He laughed, his mashed potato and gravy–filled fork pausing halfway to his mouth. Her eyes flashed in annoyance, but he couldn’t seem to help his mirth. Her response had caught him off guard. “I haven’t seen near as much as I’d like,” he replied honestly before he wolfed down his potatoes. His eyes went wide in appreciation. “Your little brother was right,” he said after he’d swallowed. “You are an ace cook.”

  Her defensive posture told him loud and clear he wasn’t going to charm her into forgetting his infraction.

  “Look,” he said, setting down his fork. He didn’t want to make this offer, but he knew it was the right thing to do. “My computer is in my car. How about if I bring in the photos after I finish eating and you can be shot of ’em yourself?”

  “You mean delete them?” she asked, obviously confused by his word usage.

  “Yeah. If that’d be what makes you happy.”

  She lowered her arms and walked over to the sink, picking up a rag. “It would have made me happy to have my privacy respected in the first place,” she said, starting to clean the counters briskly. “But since I wasn’t granted that the other day, your offer will have to suffice. How do I know I can trust you not to have made a dozen copies of those photos?”

  “I’m a professional photographer. I’d never release any photos including a person without their signed permission. If I ever did, said person would have the right to take me to court,” he said, taking a bite of corn bread and butter that melted in his mouth. “Blimey, this is bloody good.”

  She rinsed off the rag and folded it neatly. “All right. I spoke to Katie Pierce about you yesterday, and she seems to find you fairly trustworthy. I guess I’ll just have to take her word for it.”

  “Fairly trustworthy?” Chance frowned, pausing in the ravishment of his meal. He hadn’t tasted food this good in a long time. Sherona’s slow smile nearly made him forget his flash of disappointment at being judged only fairly trustworthy by Rill’s wife, Katie. He’d been trying to make a good impression on his hostess in Vulture’s Canyon.

  “As trustworthy as a man with unlimited wealth, talent and cockiness can be,” she said.

  “Katie said that?” he asked incredulously.

  “No. I listened to her describe you in much rosier terms and came to that conclusion on my own,” Sherona said bluntly. She walked toward the swinging door behind the counter. “I have to unload some boxes in the storage room. Just yell when you finish eating and get your computer.”

  “You mean you are going to delete all the photos yourself?”

  “You better believe I am,” she told him with a cool sideways glance before she pushed through the swinging door.

  Chance grinned and took another voracious bite of meatloaf. In the privacy of Rill and Katie’s guesthouse he’d examined those photos more times than he’d ever admit to. He knew firsthand they packed a gargantuan punch. Sherona was going to have to look at each photograph before she deleted it, and he was going to be right there next to her while it happened.

  He was looking forward to this.

  Chapter Two

  Sherona started when she heard Chance call her name and nearly dropped the can of tomatoes she was placing on the pantry shelf. Her nerves had been jumping ever since she’d glanced across the counter and seen him sitting in that booth, all long, lean, careless male virility. A man like Chance Hathoway didn’t come through a town like Vulture’s Canyon save once in a lifetime, and he was bound to cause havoc in at least one female heart during that ephemeral visit.

  For some reason, fate had seen fit to make her heart the one at risk, Sherona thought wryly as she nervously smoothed her skirt and rushed into her office, glancing at herself in the cracked mirror on her office wall. Or maybe not her heart, but certainly her body. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d experienced her femininity and sexuality as acutely as she had the other day on the edge of that lake with Chance’s camera trained directly on her. Knowing that he’d witnessed the sudden, sharp awareness of herself as a beautiful, desirable woman made her vulnerable to him.

  Or maybe what made her vulnerable was that his observance of her was what had caused her potent arousal.

  She knew who he was, of course. She hadn’t out there at Orchard Lake, but she’d recognized his name when Katie mentioned their houseguest yesterday while she’d been visiting the diner, and Sherona had put two and two together. Her brother, Derek, had bought Sherona one of Chance Hathoway’s books last Christmas when she’d taken up landscape photography as a hobby. Hathoway was one of the best-known nature photographers in the world. His photos had appeared in museums, art galleries, magazines, books and newspapers across the globe. He’d won multiple prizes for his work—actually, a surprising number for a man so young. The fact that he was also the heir to the Hathowa
y retail fortune and a gorgeous Aussie with a bad-boy, adventure-here-I-come smile only added to his mystique.

  This was the man with whom Sherona Legion—diner owner, cook, waitress and lifetime resident of the skeleton of a forgotten town, Vulture’s Canyon—was about to go and view naked photos with.

  Nude photos of herself.

  As she walked out of her office, her gaze flickered across the U.S. lotto jackpot ticket she’d bought the other day. She’d tacked it up on the bulletin board, along with the ten other ones she’d wasted her money on over the past decade. Stupid ritual, she knew, but it hadn’t stopped her from buying one chance a year for the past ten years at an escape from Vulture’s Canyon; one wispy, ephemeral shot at finally springing her life out of permanent stall-mode.

  Sometimes you had to take a chance if you ever wanted to truly live.

  She applied the no-nonsense, unflappable expression she’d acquired after years of being a cook and waitress in a quirky community of artists and nonconformists and pushed through the swinging doors.

  He sat on his stool, his glass of ice water, his laptop and an opened package of mints sitting before him on the counter. She noticed his dinner plate was missing. Her gaze flicked to the sink, and she saw that he’d rinsed it off.

  “Make yourself at home,” she said with amused sarcasm.

  “I was just trying to clean up after myself,” he said, attempting an innocent look and completely failing. It was a little hard for a rugged, six-foot-and-so-many-inches, shaggy-haired, whiskered male who had seen it all in every location across the globe to come off as angelic. Her wry glance told him so.

  “Don’t open those photos out here!” she said, suddenly realizing that his fingers were tapping across the keyboard and his monitor faced the entrance to the diner. Just what she needed, for her customers to see her stark naked. Anger flickered through her once again at his infringement on her privacy.

  “Come on,” she said, waving for him to follow. She didn’t look around until she’d reached her tiny, cramped office in the back room and sat at her desk.