by Nora Roberts
She’d always considered herself a meticulous craftsman. Compared to Shade, she was lackadaisical. He had a patience in his work that she admired even as it set her teeth on edge. They worked from entirely different perspectives. Bryan shot a scene and conveyed her personal viewpoint—her emotions, her feelings about the image. Shade deliberately courted ambiguity. While his photographs might spark off a dozen varied reactions, his personal view almost always remained his secret. Just as everything about him remained half shadowed.
He didn’t chat, but Bryan didn’t mind working in silence. It was nearly like working alone. His long, quiet looks could be unnerving, however. She didn’t care to be dissected as though she were in a viewfinder.
They’d met twice since their first encounter in her studio, both times to argue out their basic route and the themes for the assignment. She hadn’t found him any easier, but she had found him sharp. The project meant enough to both of them to make it possible for them to do as she’d suggested—meet somewhere in the middle.
After her initial annoyance with him had worn off, Bryan had decided they could become friends over the next months—professional friends, in any case. Then, after two days of working with him, she’d known it would never happen. Shade didn’t induce simple emotions like friendship. He’d either dazzle or infuriate. She didn’t choose to be dazzled.
Bryan had researched him thoroughly, telling herself her reason was routine. You didn’t go on the road with a man you knew virtually nothing about. Yet the more she’d found out—rather, the more she hadn’t found out—the deeper her curiosity had become.
He’d been married and divorced in his early twenties. That was it—no anecdotes, no gossip, no right and wrong. He covered his tracks well. As a photographer for International View, Shade had spent a total of five years overseas. Not in pretty Paris, London and Madrid, but in Laos, Lebanon, Cambodia. His work there had earned him a Pulitzer nomination and the Overseas Press Club Award.
His photographs were available for study and dissection, but his personal life remained obscure. He socialized rarely. What friends he had were unswervingly loyal and frustratingly closed-mouthed. If she wanted to learn more about him, Bryan would have to do it on the job.
Bryan considered the fact that they’d agreed to spend their last day in L.A. working at the beach a good sign. They’d decided on the location without any argument. Beach scenes would be an ongoing theme throughout the essay—California to Cape Cod.
At first they walked along the sand together, like friends or lovers, not touching but in step with each other. They didn’t talk, but Bryan had already learned that Shade didn’t make idle conversation unless he was in the mood.
It was barely ten, but the sun was bright and hot. Because it was a weekday morning, most of the sun-and water-seekers were the young or the old. When Bryan stopped, Shade kept walking without either of them saying a word.
It was the contrast that had caught her eye. The old woman was bundled in a wide, floppy sun hat, a long beach dress and a crocheted shawl. She sat under an umbrella and watched her granddaughter—dressed only in frilly pink panties—dig a hole in the sand beside her. Sun poured over the little girl. Shadow blanketed the old woman.
She’d need the woman to sign a release form. Invariably, asking someone if you could take her picture stiffened her up, and Bryan avoided it whenever it was possible. In this case it wasn’t, so she was patient enough to chat and wait until the woman had relaxed again.
Her name was Sadie, and so was her granddaughter’s. Before she’d clicked the shutter the first time, Bryan knew she’d title the print Two Sadies. All she had to do was get that dreamy, faraway look back in the woman’s eyes.
It took twenty minutes. Bryan forgot she was uncomfortably warm as she listened, thought and reasoned out the angles. She knew what she wanted. The old woman’s careful self-preservation, the little girl’s total lack of it, and the bond between them that came with blood and time.
Lost in reminiscence, Sadie forgot about the camera, not noticing when Bryan began to release the shutter. She wanted the poignancy—that’s what she’d seen. When she printed it, Bryan would be merciless with the lines and creases in the grandmother’s face, just as she’d highlight the flawlessness of the toddler’s skin.
Grateful, Bryan chatted a few more minutes, then noted the woman’s address with the promise of a print. She walked on, waiting for the next scene to unfold.
Shade had his first subject as well, but he didn’t chat. The man lay facedown on a faded beach towel. He was red, flabby and anonymous. A businessman taking the morning off, a salesman from Iowa—it didn’t matter. Unlike Bryan, he wasn’t looking for personality, but for the sameness of those who grilled their bodies under the sun. There was a plastic bottle of tanning lotion stuck in the sand beside him and a pair of rubber beach thongs.
Shade chose two angles and shot six times without exchanging a word with the snoring sunbather. Satisfied, he scanned the beach. Three yards away, Bryan was casually stripping out of her shorts and shirt. The sleek red maillot rose tantalizing high at the thighs. Her profile was to him as she stepped out of her shorts. It was sharp, well defined, like something sculpted with a meticulous hand.
Shade didn’t hesitate. He focused her in his viewfinder, set the aperture, adjusted the angle no more than a fraction and waited. At the moment when she reached down for the hem of her T-shirt, he began to shoot.
She was so easy, so unaffected. He’d forgotten anyone could be so totally unselfconscious in a world where self-absorption had become a religion. Her body was one long lean line, with more and more exposed as she drew the shirt over her head. For a moment, she tilted her face up to the sun, inviting the heat. Something crawled into his stomach and began to twist, slowly.
Desire. He recognized it. He didn’t care for it.
It was, he could tell himself, what was known in the trade as a decisive moment. The photographer thinks, then shoots, while watching the unfolding scene. When the visual and the emotional elements come together—as they had in this case, with a punch—there was success. There were no replays here, no reshooting. Decisive moment meant exactly that, all or nothing. If he’d been shaken for a instant, it only proved he’d been successful in capturing that easy, lazy sexuality.
Years before, he’d trained himself not to become overly emotional about his subjects. They could eat you alive. Bryan Mitchell might not look as though she’d take a bite out of a man, but Shade didn’t take chances. He turned away from her and forgot her. Almost.
It was more than four hours later before their paths crossed again. Bryan sat in the sun near a concession stand, eating a hot dog buried under mounds of mustard and relish. On one side of her she’d set her camera bag, on the other a can of soda. Her narrow red sunglasses shot his reflection back at him.
“How’d it go?” she asked with her mouth full.
“All right. Is there a hot dog under that?”
“Mmm.” She swallowed and gestured toward the stand. “Terrific.”
“I’ll pass.” Reaching down, Shade picked up her warming soda and took a long pull. It was orange and sweet. “How the hell do you drink this stuff?”
“I need a lot of sugar. I got some shots I’m pretty pleased with.” She held out a hand for the can. “I want to make prints before we leave tomorrow.”
“As long as you’re ready at seven.”
Bryan wrinkled her nose as she finished off her hot dog. She’d rather work until 7:00 A.M. than get up that early. One of the first things they’d have to iron out on the road was the difference in their biological schedules. She understood the beauty and power of a sunrise shot. She just happened to prefer the mystery and color of sunset.
“I’ll be ready.” Rising, she brushed sand off her bottom, then pulled her T-shirt over her suit. Shade could’ve told her she was more modest without it. The way the hem skimmed along her thighs and drew the eyes to them was nearly criminal. “As long as you
drive the first shift,” she continued. “By ten I’ll be functional.”
He didn’t know why he did it. Shade was a man who analyzed each movement, every texture, shape, color. He cut everything into patterns, then reassembled them. That was his way. Impulse wasn’t. Yet he reached out and curled his fingers around her braid without thinking of the act or the consequences. He just wanted to touch.
She was surprised, he could see. But she didn’t pull away. Nor did she give him that small half smile women used when a man couldn’t resist touching what attracted him.
Her hair was soft; his eyes had told him that, but now his fingers confirmed it. Still, it was frustrating not to feel it loose and free, not to be able to let it play between his fingers.
He didn’t understand her. Yet. She made her living recording the elite, the glamorous, the ostentatious, yet she seemed to have no pretensions. Her only jewelry was a thin gold chain that fell to her breasts. On the end was a tiny ankh. Again, she wore no makeup, but her scent was there to tantalize. She could, with a few basic female touches, have turned herself into something breathtaking, but she seemed to ignore the possibilities and rely on simplicity. That in itself was stunning.
Hours before, Bryan had decided she didn’t want to be dazzled. Shade was deciding at that moment that he didn’t care to be stunned. Without a word, he let her braid fall back to her shoulder.
“Do you want me to take you back to your apartment or your studio?”
So that was it? He’d managed to tie her up in knots in a matter of seconds, and now he only wanted to know where to dump her off. “The studio.” Bryan reached down and picked up her camera bag. Her throat was dry, but she tossed the half-full can of soda into the trash. She wasn’t certain she could swallow. Before they’d reached Shade’s car, she was certain she’d explode if she didn’t say something.
“Do you enjoy that cool, remote image you’ve perfected, Shade?”
He didn’t look at her, but he nearly smiled. “It’s comfortable.”
“Except for the people who get within five feet of you.” Damned if she wouldn’t get a rise out of him. “Maybe you take your own press too seriously,” she suggested. “Shade Colby, as mysterious and intriguing as his name, as dangerous and as compelling as his photographs.”
This time he did smile, surprising her. Abruptly he looked like someone she’d want to link hands with, laugh with. “Where in hell did you read that?”
“Celebrity,” she muttered. “April, five years ago. They did an article on the photo sales in New York. One of your prints sold for seventy-five hundred at Sotheby’s.”
“Did it?” His gaze slid over her profile. “You’ve a better memory than I.”
Stopping, she turned to face him. “Damn it, I bought it. It’s a moody, depressing, fascinating street scene that I wouldn’t have given ten cents for if I’d met you first. And if I wasn’t so hooked on it, I’d pitch it out the minute I get home. As it is, I’ll probably have to turn it to face the wall for six months until I forget that the artist behind it is a jerk.”
Shade watched her soberly, then nodded. “You make quite a speech once you’re rolling.”
With one short, rude word, Bryan turned and started toward the car again. As she reached the passenger side and yanked open the door, Shade stopped her. “Since we’re essentially going to be living together for the next three months, you might want to get the rest of it out now.”
Though she tried to speak casually, it came out between her teeth. “The rest of what?”
“Whatever griping you have to do.”
She took a deep breath first. She hated to be angry. Invariably it exhausted her. Resigned to it, Bryan curled her hands around the top of the door and leaned toward him. “I don’t like you. I’d say it’s just that simple, but I can’t think of anyone else I don’t like.”
“No one?”
“No one.”
For some reason, he believed her. He nodded, then dropped his hands over hers on top of the door. “I’d rather not be lumped in a group in any case. Why should we have to like each other?”
“It’d make the assignment easier.”
He considered this while holding her hands beneath his. The tops of hers were soft, the palms of his hard. He liked the contrast, perhaps too much. “You like things easy?”
He made it sound like an insult, and she straightened. Her eyes were on a level with his mouth, and she shifted slightly. “Yes. Complications are just that. They get in the way and muck things up. I’d rather shovel them aside and deal with what’s important.”
“We’ve had a major complication before we started.”
She might’ve concentrated on keeping her eyes on his, but that didn’t prevent her from feeling the light, firm pressure of his hands. It didn’t prevent her from understanding his meaning. Since it was something they’d meticulously avoided mentioning from the beginning, Bryan lunged at it, straight on.
“You’re a man and I’m a woman.”
He couldn’t help but enjoy the way she snarled it at him. “Exactly. We can say we’re both photographers and that’s a sexless term.” He gave her the barest hint of a smile. “It’s also bullshit.”
“That may be,” she said evenly. “But I intend to handle it, because the assignment comes first. It helps a great deal that I don’t like you.”
“Liking doesn’t have anything to do with chemistry.”
She gave him an easy smile because her pulse was beginning to pound. “Is that a polite word for lust?”
She wasn’t one to dance around an issue once she’d opened it up. Fair enough, he decided. “Whatever you call it, it goes right back to your complication. We’d better take a good look at it, then shove it aside.”
When his fingers tightened on hers, she dropped her gaze to them. She understood his meaning, but not his reason.
“Wondering what it would be like’s going to distract both of us,” Shade continued. She looked up again, wary. He could feel her pulse throb where his fingers brushed her wrist, yet she’d made no move to pull back. If she had… There was no use speculating; it was better to move ahead. “We’ll find out. Then we’ll file it, forget it and get on with our job.”
It sounded logical. Bryan had a basic distrust of anything that sounded quite so logical. Still, he’d been right on target when he’d said that wondering would be distracting. She’d been wondering for days. His mouth seemed to be the softest thing about him, yet even that looked hard, firm and unyielding. How would it feel? How would it taste?
She let her gaze wander back to it, and the lips curved. She wasn’t certain if it was amusement or sarcasm, but it made up her mind.
“All right.” How intimate could a kiss be when a car door separated them?
They leaned toward each other slowly, as if each waited for the other to draw back at the last moment. Their lips met lightly, passionlessly. It could’ve ended then, with each of them shrugging the other off in disinterest. It was the basic definition of a kiss. Two pairs of lips meeting. Nothing more.
Neither one would be able to say who changed it, whether it was calculated or accidental. They were both curious people, and curiosity might have been the factor. Or it might have been inevitable. The texture of the kiss changed so slowly that it wasn’t possible to stop it until it was too late for regrets.
Lips opened, invited, accepted. Their fingers clung. His head tilted, and hers, so that the kiss deepened. Bryan found herself pressing against the hard, unyielding door, searching for more, demanding it, as her teeth nipped at his bottom lip. She’d been right. His mouth was the softest thing about him. Impossibly soft, unreasonably luxurious as it heated on hers.
She wasn’t used to wild swings of mood. She’d never experienced anything like it. It wasn’t possible to lie back and enjoy. Wasn’t that what kisses were for? Up to now, she’d believed so. This one demanded all her strength, all her energy. Even as it went on, she knew when it ended she’d be drained. Wonderfully
, totally drained. While she reveled in the excitement, she could anticipate the glory of the aftermath.
He should’ve known. Damn it, he should’ve known she wasn’t as easy and uncomplicated as she looked. Hadn’t he looked at her and ached? Tasting her wasn’t going to alleviate any of it, only heighten it. She could undermine his control, and control was essential to his art, his life, his sanity. He’d developed and perfected it over years of sweat, fear and expectations. Shade had learned that the same calculated control he used in the darkroom, the same careful logic he used to set up a shot, could be applied to a woman successfully. Painlessly. One taste of Bryan and he realized just how tenuous control could be.
To prove to himself, perhaps to her, that he could deal with it, he allowed the kiss to deepen, grow darker, moister. Danger hovered, and perhaps he courted it.
He might lose himself in the kiss, but when it was over, it would be over, and nothing would be changed.
She tasted hot, sweet, strong. She made him burn. He had to hold back, or the burn would leave a scar. He had enough of them. Life wasn’t as lovely as a first kiss on a hot afternoon. He knew better than most.
Shade drew away, satisfying himself that his control was still in place. Perhaps his pulse wasn’t steady, his mind not perfectly clear, but he had control.
Bryan was reeling. If he’d asked her a question, any question, she’d have had no answer. Bracing herself against the car door, she waited for her equilibrium to return. She’d known the kiss would drain her. Even now, she could feel her energy flag.
He saw the look in her eyes, the soft look any man would have to struggle to resist. Shade turned away from it. “I’ll drop you at the studio.”
As he walked around the car to his side, Bryan dropped down on the seat. File it and forget it, she thought. Fat chance.
