“What happened?” His lips set in a straight line.
“She tripped me,” Troy cried. Lydia suppressed the urge to roll her eyes.
“Okay, obviously, I didn’t trip him. His feet got tangled in my camera strap.” The man said nothing, simply continuing to stare at her. Her skin flashed hot and she itched to move under his simmering gaze.
“My legs hurt,” Troy wailed.
“He was running down the hallway,” Lydia explained.
The man slid her a disapproving look, his eyebrows creased in the center, then returned his attention to Troy. “Okay, let’s have a look so we can send you home to your mom in tip-top shape, huh?”
Troy nodded, tugging his sweatpants up past both his knees. Okay, his knees were a little red, but it wasn’t as if they were bleeding.
“Does this hurt?” The man stretched Troy’s legs out straight and bent them ninety degrees.
Troy shook his head no and wiped his nose again. A smear of dried dirt clung to his forehead and Lydia scrunched her nose. He was a cute kid… but he could use a bath. And why were kids so against tissues? How hard was it to run to the bathroom and blow your nose there? She eyed the box of tissues on the secretary’s desk.
The man stretched the second leg out and pretended to have Troy’s foot kick him in the shoulder. He fell back onto his hands. “Whoa. You’ve got quite the kick there. You trying out for soccer this year?”
Troy laughed, nodding. “Yeah. I’ve been practicing with my dad.”
“Well,” the man continued, standing and pulling Troy to his feet as well, “I think you’re gonna survive. Go on back to class.”
Troy nodded, sending one more glare to her before running off.
“Kids,” Lydia said on a dramatic exhale. Her eyes traveled over the man’s dark brown hair and down his body.
Heat buzzed between them, and she followed the urge to slide another glance at that chiseled jaw, tanned skin and sexy stubble. There was some grey hair sprinkled in the scruff of his face. He was absolutely magnetic, and though she should know better, she couldn’t help but stare. Lydia finally tore her eyes away, turning her attention to her phone.
The secretary entered again, carrying an armful of paperwork. Her cardigan was so tight it looked painted on. “Hey there, stranger,” she said to the man, giving a little wave. “Haven’t seen you around much lately.”
He pressed his lips into a smile and nodded in her direction. “Hey, Kyra. Seen Ronnie lately?” His already stiff demeanor tensed even more as he looked at the secretary.
“Just about every day.” She winked in his direction and sent Lydia one more glare before returning to her emails, acrylic nails click-clacking against the keyboard.
After a moment of tense silence, Lydia tried again. “Sorry about the boy—er Troy,” she said. “He came out of nowhere. Running like a bat out of—oh, well, you know.” She eyed the hallway, looking for any little ears that might be nearby, listening.
He cleared his throat, eyebrows raised, and blinked a couple of times over those baby-blue eyes. His eyes raked her body, assessing. Taking a deep breath, she resisted biting her fingernail—would have been a waste of a perfectly good manicure—and instead sat a little taller in her chair, stretching out the kinks in her neck.
Something had shifted over the course of the ten minutes since she met this man outside and now. He was suddenly distant and cold. Whereas outside he was helpful… playful. Sexy.
She crossed her legs, shocked by the pulsing heat between her legs. Well, hello old friend, she thought. That was certainly a long-lost feeling… lust. Desire. Maybe her hormones were finally stabilized? Not that it mattered. She was here for an assignment. Not for a wild week of passion. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, stealing another glance at him. But damn, would he be a good candidate for an assignment fling.
After another moment, he cleared his throat again. “Well, kids tend to do that. Run around, I mean.”
She nodded and turned her attention back to the camera bag, unzipping it and peeking inside. Everything looked okay. Her shoulders, which had been tensed up around her ears, relaxed. She turned her attention back to the quiet, strange man beside her. “Are you a teacher here?”
He finally eased back into the bucket seat and propped one foot on his knee. “No, not exactly. I have an auction meeting coming up, as well.”
When he didn’t offer anymore, Lydia shifted in her chair. “Oh. Are you a journalist, too?”
His jaw twitched and that blue gaze turned icy once more. “You’re a reporter?” He gave a horse like snort, shaking his head. “Well, that just figures.” His eyes stayed on her and his stony smirk twisted into something more malevolent.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. It means absolutely nothing. And to answer your earlier question, no, I am not a reporter.”
“Neither am I. I’m a Photojournalist,” she corrected.
He allowed his grunt to illustrate his opinion of her job. “Like there’s a difference?”
She distracted herself with her leather portfolio, avoiding his glare. Ignoring the heat flushing her face. But she could feel it. And she could feel his eyes steeled onto her. After what felt like an eternity, she just couldn’t stand it anymore. Did he have nothing better to do with his time other than stare at her? From beside her, he gave a bitter chuckle and shook his head with a sigh. “Okay,” she finally said, tapping her fingers impatiently. “What’s so amusing?”
“You’re just—well, you’re just so obviously not from Maple Grove.”
She exhaled through barely open lips. “How astute of you, considering we met at the only hotel in town.” She swallowed, the heat of his gaze making her sweat through her layered clothing. Hooking a finger into her silky neckline, she tugged at the lapel. “God, it’s hot in here.” Stupid hormone therapy.
That lopsided smile grew even wider. His eyes drifted to her breasts, then quickly snapped back to her eyes. She snuck a quick glance to where his gaze had fallen and found her tight nipples pert and pointing right at him.
“It’s January in New Hampshire. It’s anything but hot,” he stated, clearly amused.
Warmth rose up her chest and over her neck. She pushed her embarrassment aside, refusing to cover herself and slink back into the chair like an awkward adolescent. She was a grown woman. She had breasts… and you know what? They tended to react to climate. When a man’s nipples got hard, did he cross his arms and hide his body? She rolled her eyes.
“Well, it feels warm in here to me.”
His smirk twitched a fraction more toward his eyes and he nodded.
Other than a raised eyebrow, she didn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction. “Look, I think we got off on the wrong foot. Let’s start over—” She stopped talking mid-sentence… her gaze slipping to where his pants tightened around the groin. Was that…? Did she see that right? She cleared her throat and threw her attention back to the map ahead of her.
Oh, God. He was just as turned on as she was. The room became suddenly sweltering and her nipples pebbled even more beneath her blouse—tight, hard and sensitive. What the hell was happening to her? This pulsing, aching desire had been absent for months. Why, oh why did it have to surface now? On a job. The silk of her shirt brushing against her skin caused just enough friction to send goose bumps in a wave down her arm.
“You want to start over?” he said, his low rumble adding more prickles to her skin.
“That would be wonderful.”
“Start over from when I came inside? Or from when we first met?” A bemused grin slid across his chiseled features. She flushed and finally met his gaze.
“You mean… from when we met outside?” she asked, eyebrows creasing in the center. He didn’t answer, but his chest rose and fell with each heavy breath while her own stalled in her chest. Did he remember her? Was it possible that she impacted him as much as he had her?
“Would you remember if we had?”
That smirk of his stayed right in place as his eyes wandered over her face. It was the kind of look that torpedoed her thoughts directly to rumpled sheets and morning afters.
“I usually require, at the minimum, a drink before I let a man look at me that way.” Lydia’s mouth curved into a lush smirk.
“Just one? What a cheap date you must be.”
Her smile stilted into something brittle. It wasn’t what he said exactly, but how he said it. The implication that she hopped from bed to bed. Ha. If only he knew how wrong that was. “Spoken like a true small-town guy. Are you always this insulting to visitors?”
“Only the ones who are after something.” He leaned back in that masculine way guys do when they’re feeling smug.
She puffed a breath out of the corner of her mouth, and her side-swept bangs flipped out of her face. “You sure know how to charm the pants off a lady, don’t you?” Another kid, a little girl, came in and talked to the secretary about a doctor’s note. Her eyes were red and she sniffled with the rattling of congested sinuses. Poor girl, Lydia thought. She remembered those days in school when she had no choice but to drag her sick butt to school. Without a mom to take her to the doctor or stay home with her, she was usually better off in the nurse’s office than home alone at that age. Leaning into her purse, Lydia grabbed her hand sanitizer and squirted some into her palms. She looked up just in time to catch him glaring at her once more. She held the bottle out to him. “Want some?”
He shook his head. “Tell me something, Lydia… it’s a question I’m pretty sure I know the answer to already—but, do you have any children?”
She chewed the inside of her cheek—an old habit that only surfaced when she was upset. She hated this question. As soon as any woman reached a certain age, she was expected to be a mother. “I travel too much.”
“Do you even like children? Because you were looking at Troy as if he was some sort of virus.”
No one had ever asked her this outright. Probably because it was rude. Not that this guy cared in the least bit. She twisted her fingers in her lap, spinning her ring. She hadn’t really been around children much to know whether or not she liked them. Her knowledge about kids came from complaints from her high school friends and diaper commercials. That was about it. “Everyone likes children,” she paused, then added as an afterthought, “and puppies.”
His mouth dropped slightly, then he threw his head back and laughed. Two dimples formed on either side of his oh-so-kissable mouth, and Lydia instinctively ran her tongue along her top lip.
“You don’t like puppies either, do you?” He scratched at his stubble with calloused fingertips. “So, what are you doing here covering a children’s local charity auction if you don’t even like kids?”
“I don’t choose my stories. My editor does.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better”—his chiseled chest puffed out, the muscles clenching beneath his soft-looking T-shirt—“I used to not like kids that much either.” His full lips turned up into another lopsided smile.
“I find that hard to believe. You handled Troy like a pro.”
“Practice. I grew up with four younger siblings. I loved them, of course. I just didn’t always like them.”
“Ms. Ryder, Mr. Tucker will see you now.” Kyra stood in front of them, her eyelids lowered over two brown eyes. Lydia stood, gathering her things while the secretary hovered over her. “He’s ready for you too, Mr. Tripp.”
Tripp. She knew she was meeting one of the members of the Tripp family today. Now. The charity coordinator, Mattie Tripp. She just hadn’t thought it would be this guy—the first guy in months she’d felt any sort of spark with. She wished she could have had a moment in private to thump her head into the wall without anyone noticing. A pulsing headache throbbed behind her eyes. She immediately straightened her spine. How was he related to Noah Blue? Brother? Cousin?
The door to the principal’s office swung open and an older gentleman with white hair, wearing a brown suit stood before her. “Ms. Ryder. It’s a delight to meet you. I’ve been chatting with your editor lately. She seems lovely.”
“Yes, Mara’s something else, isn’t she?”
“Come in, come in.” Mr. Tucker gestured to the both of them. “Mr. Tripp, nice to see you, as always.”
The two men shook hands in a rugged way, like they were about to chop some wood together. “Nice to see you as well, Mike,” Mr. Tripp said.
After another moment of pleasantries, they all found seats. Lydia opened her photography portfolio, flipping through the first few pages. Most of her clippings were from her early days, trying to make her mark in the journalism world directly after undergrad. The pages in the portfolio ranged from an Alexander McQueen opening to the refugees of Darfur. Of course, now that she was a staff member at the City Star, most of her stories consisted of gotcha moments and ‘who’s sleeping with who in Hollywood’.
The men glanced through her work, eyes widening each time they turned the page, and Lydia peeked over their shoulder to see which images resonated with them. If only her current employer would let her utilize her talents. But in this economy, she should be thrilled to even have a secure income. A steady job with good health benefits that cover most of her medical bills and a 401k… it was more than most photographers ever got in their lifetime.
Finally, the principal and Mr. Tripp made eye contact, then turned their attention back to her, foreheads crinkled. “Ms. Ryder—I hope you don’t take this to be rude… but why exactly did the City Star choose to follow this story? It’s not exactly the standard for your magazine.”
He wasn’t entirely wrong. Though the Star did a certain amount of human-interest stories, most had a celebrity angle. And with this charity auction being connected to the very woman whose funeral Noah Blue had missed? The City Star didn’t want to miss what could be another great Noah Blue scandal. Only Lydia had different plans. If she could show Noah as a supporting family member at this auction? Well, maybe she could right the wrongs of her past article. Even if only in her own conscience. “You’d be surprised at the variety of stories the Star covers.” It was the politically correct answer she had rehearsed numerous times. “Besides, the City Star prides itself on reaching out to its surrounding communities.” This part was true—except she conveniently left out where they usually then capitalized on and exploited those same small communities as a way to sell more issues. “And with Maple Grove’s ties to the artist in residency program here, the Star thought—”
“You thought that some of the more well-known residency graduates might come, too?” Mr. Tripp finished for her.
She nodded, then added, “We also heard that there was some celebrity interest in the auction. Noah Blue Tripp for one. Isn’t this in memory—”
“Noah won’t be coming,” Mr. Tripp interrupted. “He never comes to these things. Probably because of reporters like you.” His eyebrows arched and he leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. The silence weighed heavily in the air.
Mr. Tucker cleared his throat. “There has been celebrity interest, but I’m afraid he’s right. Noah Blue won’t likely be joining us. However, the Maple Grove Artist Residency did contribute greatly to the auction. And we’ve had some other celebrity interest, as well. But, Ms. Ryder… it just seems as though you might be a little… over-qualified to cover this.”
Lydia swallowed a bitter laugh. “I love my job. I love experiencing new things, and I guarantee you that the photographs I take here of the charity auction will be just as compelling and artful as those I take in Darfur. I don’t slack off simply because a story isn’t as epic by some people’s definitions.”
Mr. Tucker cleared his throat and stood up. “I suppose that’s good enough for me. Shall we get started, then?”
Lydia breathed a sigh of relief. “So, Mr. Tripp—I was hoping you would have some sort of itinerary for me. Something to tell me what the events over the next six days will look like. I’m interested in knowing about the event,
why it was started, why it means so much to you, as well as how the children got involved…” She looked up from her notes and his blue eyes crinkled in amusement. Mr. Tucker chuckled from where he stood beside her. “What’s so funny?”
The principal leaned on the edge of his desk. “Mr. Tripp is not the charity coordinator. Miss Tripp is.” Mr. Tucker pressed a button on his desk. “Kyra, could you please bring Miss Tripp into the office for the meeting.”
She looked over at Mr. Tripp, still sitting there, leaning casually onto his muscular thighs with an annoying smile stamped on his face. “You’re not Matt Tripp?”
His head tilted to the left. “Nope. Cameron Tripp. Cam for short.”
Lydia twitched a nod. “Mrs. Tripp will be along soon then?” The past fifteen minutes had been a colossal waste of her time. She’d just have to go over all of this once more when Mrs. Tripp arrived.
Cam’s gaze traveled down to her foot which was tapping impatiently. She forced herself to sit still. Crossing his arms and stretching back, Cam continued. “Miss Tripp. Not Mrs. And Maddie—not Matt.” His face hardened at the mention of his—sister? Cousin? Mother? Oh, God, please don’t be a mama’s boy, Lydia thought with an inward groan.
There was a knock at the door. “Come in,” Mr. Tucker called out cheerfully. The door creaked open and a child walked in—a little girl in a purple tunic, green tights and a flower headband pulling her dark hair away from her face. “Well, hello, Miss Tripp.”
“Hello, Mr. Tucker.” She smiled shyly and gave a small wave to Cam. “Hi, Dad.”
‡
Chapter Three
Cam scooped his little girl into a hug, nuzzling her close against him. He always held on a moment longer than she wanted him to, just so he could breathe her in. She smelled like the mango shampoo he had recently bought her, and it felt like only yesterday that he had been giving her baths himself.
Capturing You (Maple Grove Romance Book 1) Page 3
