Love Out of Focus

by Rebecca Connolly

  Mal was more content off by herself, doing her own thing, stewing in her thoughts.

  Hunter owned the place. How had she not known that? That was a detail she should have been privy to, particularly when she was also doing shoots of the resort for the resort. And he’d said he was normal? The man was swimming in money!

  Not only was he ridiculously out of her league, but he was also her employer! She had been getting ideas about a guy who she probably couldn’t even sneeze in front of unless he’d gotten a background check on her. There was only a week until all this craziness was done. A weeklong fling with a normal guy wasn’t crazy to imagine.

  But this was not just crazy. This was certifiably insane. Her embarrassment was boundless.

  She’d endured Designer Day earlier that morning without complaint, even suffering two fittings that Caroline had insisted on. The other girls had no idea why the photographer was being included in reaping the rewards of Jenna’s generosity and connections with top designers, but as they’d all said they wouldn’t be caught dead in the things Mal had tried on, it wasn’t a major concern.

  Caroline assured her that they felt that way because they couldn’t pull them off. Honestly, Mal couldn’t have said what the outfits had actually looked like. They might have gone into her closet, but she wouldn’t recognize them.

  She’d gotten the pictures she needed there, assured Alexis that her nose looked fine, and agreed to only shoot Bethany from the left for the time being. Evidently, a blemish had sprouted, and she didn’t want anyone to know.

  Jenna, Caroline, and Grace were playing with the kids now, along with Tom’s sisters, who were possibly the nicest women on the planet, but the other girls were holed up in the house getting facials and manicures or something, which made no sense, as they would all be getting their nails done the day before the wedding anyway. But Mal was glad to be away from them. She actually liked her cousins, and Grace had potential to be on the good list as well. She was the least snobbish of the group and certainly the nicest toward Jenna.

  She honestly couldn’t remember which girl was Bethany and which was Brittany, they were so eerily alike, but as she hadn’t had to address either directly, that hadn’t mattered yet. Sophie, on the other hand, hated Mal with gusto, though Mal hadn’t quite figured out why. After she’d announced Hunter’s owning of the resort, she’d also informed Mal that Hunter was off-limits, that his ex was trying to get back with him, and that if Mal didn’t back off, Sophie would cause her some serious problems.

  Exactly what problems those would be hadn’t been made clear.

  Mal didn’t believe Sophie cared about Hunter’s ex as much as she wanted to fill the vacancy herself, but that didn’t need to be announced.

  The men were golfing today, and she was grateful for that. She needed time to think, and any more time spent around Hunter would cloud her head. Or she might end up snapping at him. She’d just get fired and possibly blacklisted from high-end gigs, but it would at least make her feel better.

  “Hey.”

  She froze, groaned, and adjusted her camera to take more pictures. She would love to ignore him, but common sense told her she couldn’t. “Hey,” she replied stiffly.

  Hunter came over and stood next to her, but she was more focused on the three kids dueling by the monkey bars. They waved at her, smiling broadly, and then continued their sword fighting. Maybe they’d come over and sword fight around Hunter’s kneecaps.

  “The girl’s the best one in that group,” he said in an offhand way.

  It was true, she was, but the fact that he identified that was grating to Mal. “Addie,” she informed him.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Her name is Addie,” she said. “She’s the daughter of Tom’s sister Karen, and her twin is Aimee, who currently owns the record for highest swing jump.”

  Hunter chuckled, which was annoying. And lovely. “And who are the kids on the monkey bars?”

  Mal gripped her camera so hard she was afraid she’d break the lens off, but she adjusted it and focused on the monkey bars in question. “Trevor and Harrison. They belong to Courtney. And the little one is Olive. She’s a guest of the resort.”

  “Did her mom sign a waiver?”

  “Of course her mom signed the waiver,” she snapped. “So did the other five moms sitting at the picnic table.” She exhaled slowly, trying to force her temper back. “Shouldn’t you be golfing?”

  “I hate golf. Boring game made for rich people. Actually, I’m just terrible and impatient. I’d prefer being here.”

  The unspoken implication of his words was more irritating than his sweeping assessment that the game was for rich people—as if he wasn’t one of them. She snapped one more picture of Olive, then lowered her camera to finally look at him. He looked impossibly attractive, somehow expensive, in jeans and a white henley shirt. Then there was the Rolex on his wrist, a class ring on one finger, and Ray-Bans hooked on the open collar. A rich man trying to seem normal.

  “So you own this place,” she said without any fanfare.

  He stiffened, and his brow furrowed. “Who told you that?”

  “Sophie. Why, is it some big secret?”

  He sighed and put his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, I own the place, big deal. My dad inherited it, and we split ownership. I recently bought out his shares, so he could retire. What of it?” His tone was defensive.

  “Nothing,” she said with a careless shrug. “That seems like something you would tell people.”

  “Not me,” he replied, shaking his head. “I didn’t make this or have anything to do with it. I just make sure it stays this way—calming and beautiful and natural. It’s supposed to be a haven, a refuge, a place to get away from everything. And you think I should take credit for it?”

  She rolled her eyes and raised her camera again. “I think you should be honest about it.”

  “I was never dishonest.”

  Semantics? He was going to play it that way? Of all the … She snapped two pictures and walked a bit away, snapping a few more. Sure enough, he followed.

  “You could have told me,” she muttered.

  “Would it have made a difference?” he asked, sounding genuinely interested.

  Yeah, it made a huge difference. She swallowed and shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “So why tell you?” She could hear him smiling, which only irritated her more.

  She sighed, snapped three shots, then lowered her camera and turned to him. “I deserve to know who I am dealing with.”

  The wind caught his hair and disheveled it enough to make him seem almost human. “The same guy I was before,” he insisted, his smile crooked now.

  “I don’t even know who that is,” she snapped. “Here I thought you were normal. You even offered to give me more normal! You’ve got more money than Sri Lanka, and you think you can pretend to be one of the regular guys? You’re filthy stinking rich, Hunter. You are one of the gang here.”

  He frowned and raised a finger. “Don’t go middle-class snob on me, Mal. I have money, and I can’t apologize for it. I won’t. Was I born to it? Yeah, but I’ve also worked hard for it. I earned my way to where I am. This place is all I keep of my family’s inheritance. Everything else I’ve earned on my own, and people respect me for it. I’m not some rich boy who runs to Daddy when he wants nice things. Nobody handed me scholarships for my blue blood, and I bought my first car on my own with money I earned from jobs, not from handouts. You want something in life, you work for it, however you can, with whatever you’ve got, end of story. You know who taught me that? My filthy-stinking-rich parents.”

  She stared at him for a long moment. In a matter of moments, he had blasted her perceptions of him into smithereens. Her face was on fire, and she felt small.

  Okay, now her embarrassment knew no bounds.

  She cleared her throat and called Dan over. He jogged to her, surprisingly professional despite his usual backward hat and black V-neck. She handed him her camera and
bag and told him to take over. He did so immediately, then she walked in the opposite direction.

  “Where are you going?” Hunter asked, surprised.

  “I’ve got to find a ladder,” she said simply.

  “What for?”

  She picked at a leaf on her striped Gap T-shirt and sniffed. “I seem to have gotten myself into a majorly deep hole, and I’d like to get out of it now.”

  Hunter laughed once and grabbed her arm. “Hey, hey, come on, I’m sorry.”

  Mal turned to him, floored by his apology. “You’re sorry? I called you a liar and held a grudge that you had more money than an entire country, and you’re apologizing? Stop digging me a deeper hole. I’m the idiot here, not you.”

  He smiled, his eyes crinkling at the edges. “I never said I was an idiot, but thanks.”

  Mal folded her arms and sighed. “Look, why don’t you just go back to the party guests, and I’ll be the family photographer, and we can pretend this never happened.”

  “What if I’m glad it happened?” he said, his smile fading, but his eyes still warm.

  Mal stopped in the motion of scratching her ear. “Excuse me?”

  If possible, his eyes turned bluer and warmer. “What if I enjoyed it?” he asked in a low voice. “What if I’ve already started planning tomorrow’s sunrise shoot and would rather listen to you ramble nonsense for hours than spend a minute listening to one of the hens try for legitimate conversation? I like you, Mallory. And I won’t apologize for that either.”

  Mal counted four heartbeats before her lungs decided to work. “Freaking A, you’re intense,” she eventually managed. “Give a girl a few seconds to breathe here.”

  One side of his mouth curved back into a smile. “One Mississippi, two Mississippi …”

  “Shut up.”

  He all out grinned, which was a sight to behold. “So where to?”

  Mal shook her head. “No clue. I just gave away my camera, and knowing Dan, it’ll be hours before he’ll give it up.”

  “Back to the Hen House?” he teased.

  She snorted and shook her head. “Please. I thought I was going to die today.”

  He winced. “That bad?”

  Mal gave him a look. “Have you ever had to endure designer clothing with socialite snobs?”

  He laughed, but his grimace remained. “That sounds terrible.”

  “It’s worse than you think,” she assured him. “And there is nothing to eat. I had to have a salad for lunch—without toppings and without dressing. It was like eating leaves straight from the tree.”

  He took her arm again and steered her toward the lodge. “I can fix that.”

  “It’s like three o’clock!” she protested, going along with him anyway. “Dinner is in a few hours.”

  He hummed, amused. “I think you’ll be hungry by then.”

  “Come on, Hunter. It’s not that bad. I was kidding.” She laughed. “I was in a food coma so bad after last night that I could barely eat anything for breakfast. I felt like a whale.”

  He stopped and gave her a very thorough look over, his lips in a tight line. “Nope, can’t see anything whalelike. Stop arguing. Let’s go.”

  She grinned, wanting to burst out laughing. “That was the most perfect excuse to check me out I have ever seen. Bravo.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t need an excuse, but why waste a perfectly good opportunity? Okay, tell me: what food is in that house? We stocked it before everyone came based on requests, but if you’re starving away, I can put in an order.”

  “Taryn already offered to sneak me Nutella and Froot Loops,” Mal assured him as they entered the lodge. “I’ll be fine, I promise.”

  Hunter gave her a hard look. “Woman cannot live on Nutella and Froot Loops alone.”

  “You underestimate my creativity,” she quipped, taking the seat he pulled out.

  He sat down across from her and leaned over the table, both hands in fists on the white tablecloth. “No. I don’t. How hungry are you?”

  She swallowed the urge to say “famished” and said only, “I could eat.”

  His perfect lips moved into a perfect little smile. “Yeah, I got that. Why do I have the feeling you always ‘could eat’?” He pushed away from the table. “Fine, Mallory Hudson, I’m forced to scrounge for you.”

  “Oh, come on,” she protested, starting to get up. “I can scrounge for myself.”

  “Sit!” he ordered, pointing a finger at her chair. “I will not have the guests making a mess in the kitchens. Besides, I’m only getting ice cream.”

  She perked up even as she laughed. “Ice cream? That’s supposed to tide me over?”

  “You object to ice cream?”

  She sat back and grinned. “Not at all. Bring it on.”

  He matched her smile and nodded, then disappeared behind the kitchen doors.

  Mal sat at the table, grinning, and wondered what in the world had come over this guy. This rich, powerful, gorgeous guy was going to sit in this lodge with her and eat ice cream just because … he liked her? She wasn’t going to complain, but what was the endgame here?

  “Oh, calm down, Mal,” she muttered to herself, still smiling. “It’s ice cream, not a proposal. Shut up and eat with the pretty man.”

  And that’s what she did.

  After dinner she headed for the small cabin that Taryn and Dan as well as the drivers were staying in. She wanted to check out the pictures from the day before they started editing, and she really wanted to avoid the Hen House as long as possible. She was supposed to go over to her aunt and uncle’s house later to catch up, and waiting with her assistants would be better than waiting with the hens. Besides, she needed some pictures to show Hunter for his consideration and to get a better idea of what he was looking for from her.

  She smiled before she could stop herself. Ice cream with Hunter had been fun and surprisingly comfortable. They talked about her work, her teenage years in Iowa, and, oddly enough, his Harley. He was very proud of it and absolutely appalled that she had never been on one. A scooter in Paris did not count, according to him, and he’d spelled out why.

  Mal’s history with guys was pitiful, verging on laughable, considering her age and fairish looks. But she was picky, and she was busy—not that busy, but she claimed to be—and besides, there wasn’t a line at her door. At best, she was friendly. At worst, she was the definition of awkward.

  But something about Hunter made it easy to talk with him and to like him. She refused to consider anything serious. He was a nice guy who said nice things, and if he made her time here more bearable, that would be great.

  The fact that he set her insides on fire was completely beside the point.

  Taryn and Dan took a minute to show her their cabin, which was rustic and way more Mal’s style than the fancy, mansionesque Hen House. But then they went to the office designated for their work, and she saw that they had already been at work. The barbecue pictures were on one screen, and the ones from Kids’ Day on another, and so far, things looked good.

  She pulled out her laptop and started loading the pictures from the morning shoot when she heard a throat clearing pointedly. She turned in her chair and looked at Taryn, who was turned to face her, a pencil behind her ear.

  “Mallory,” Taryn said in an uncharacteristically sober voice. “Would you care to explain this?” She was pointing at a picture on her screen from Kids’ Day, but it wasn’t of any of the kids. It was adults.

  Mal frowned. “I didn’t take that.”

  Dan laughed, and Taryn shook her head as if Mal had missed a critical point. “Yes, I know that,” Taryn said. “I did. Would you like to explain what is going on here?”

  Mal looked closer and saw that it was a picture of her and Hunter on the beach. Taryn clicked a few more times, and Mal saw at least seven pictures, each one closer and more personal.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, panic beginning to rise within her. “Are you stalking me, Taryn?”

  Tar
yn snorted. “I was trying to get a picture of Hunter because—well, look at the man. He’s like that cake that says ‘Eat Me’ in Alice in Wonderland.” She broke off to glare at Dan, who was laughing hysterically, then she looked back at Mal. “So I thought I’d snap a shot of him for my drool board at home, except I couldn’t get a shot of him alone because he was too close to you and looking at you like you were Christmas. What’s going on?”

  Mal fought the urge to scream. It was one thing for Hunter to pay attention to her; it was another for people to notice. That was when things got out of hand.

  “He helped me with the sunrise shoot this morning,” she said. “And didn’t tell me he owns the place. That is us fighting about it and then him explaining. That’s it.”

  “He owns the place?” Dan repeated. “Oh man, I didn’t know I could hate someone so much.”

  “Bless whatever people created this man.” Taryn sighed, clasping her hands in a prayer. “They should be sainted.”

  “He is not staring at me like any particular holiday,” Mal corrected, her voice wavering with anger. “He’s listening to my side. He’s intense like that.”

  “I like intense,” Taryn said, looking back at the picture.

  Mal returned to her seat. “Have at him, then.”

  “Nah, he’s in your bucket, babe,” Taryn replied. “I’ll take another fish.”

  “He’s not—” Mal tried.

  “Give it a rest, huh?” Dan interrupted gently, giving her a look. “Taryn’s giving you a hard time. Just fire her and be done with it.”

  Taryn protested vocally, and just like that, the topic was safer. They started joking about pictures and angles and volleyed ideas back and forth.

  Mal exhaled slowly and turned back to her computer, relieved to have the familiar sound of their bickering as her soundtrack. Anything to get away from that topic. She didn’t want to be gossip fodder on this trip, and no pretty face with intense eyes was going to change that.

  As she clicked through the pictures Hunter had taken that morning, she found a few of her, laughing in the sunlight and taking pictures herself. They were actually pretty good, but how had she missed him taking them? And why was he taking pictures of her?