She had a slim, straight nose now. He studied the photograph, mentally comparing Natalie then to Natalie now. Of course, she had matured. Her face was that of a woman now. She still had the deep blue eyes and bow-shaped mouth. But her cheeks were more defined, with a high, regal look about them. Both her nose and her cheeks appeared to have been reconstructed.
He flipped through the yearbook. There were plenty of photographs of Natalie as she’d been in a number of social clubs and pictured in sponsor ads. As a teenager, she had been a little taller than most of the other girls, but she hadn’t been underweight or overweight. He had always thought she had a good figure.
Now she was slim with an altered face. How much work had she had done? Was she that narcissistic? He shut the yearbook and tossed it aside.
The vanity of making such a change had bothered him last night, and it bothered him still.
The ten-mile drive to Lafayette Falls, a waterfall named after the French explorer who had discovered it, took him into wooded hill country still awash in fall color, not as bright as it had been a couple of weeks earlier, but still pretty in the morning sunlight.
Brett enjoyed the winding drive through the area, which was now a state park with riding trails, camping, and hiking. On top of a bluff, the Lafayette Falls overlook had a paved parking area and a covered pavilion with picnic tables and restrooms. The only car in the parking lot was Natalie’s silver Lexus. Most people didn’t go to a waterfall first thing in the morning.
He parked the Camaro and headed down a paved pathway that led into the woods. Wildflowers sprouted along the trail leading to a wooden bridge stretched over the wide, shallow creek that fed into the falls. Falling leaves covered the earth and gave it a crisp scent. A busy woodpecker pounded on a tree trunk, and squirrels rustled through branches overhead.
The paved path stopped at an observation deck. Beyond the deck, the trail was an uneven, dirt path winding down the hillside. Warning signs were posted regarding the risks of the undeveloped trail.
The wooden observation deck, with its railings, provided a safe place to view the falls. Water dropped from the creek over a rocky ledge and cascaded twenty-five feet, spilled onto another stone ledge, and fell ten feet, then the creek continued rushing downstream into the woods. The morning sun created crystals of light in the creek.
He stopped on the deck, wondering where Natalie was. He looked at the waterfall, taking a moment to admire it while listening to the rhythmic flow of the water. He rarely made time for such things.
He glanced back at the paved trail that he’d just followed. “Natalie?” he called, his deep voice disruptive in the quiet forest.
“Hey,” she yelled back, sounding far away. “Down here.”
He turned and looked over the edge of the observation deck. Natalie stood beside the creek about thirty feet from the waterfall, dressed in jeans, hiking boots, and a safari jacket over a T-shirt. She wore a tan bush hat with the brim pulled low on her forehead and held a camera with a long lens. He decided she was something of a chameleon. Sophisticated last night. Miss Outdoors this morning.
“It’s a wonder you didn’t end up breaking your neck getting down there.”
“It wasn’t that bad. I’m accustomed to rough terrain,” she shouted back.
“Shit,” he muttered as he glanced at the trail, which wasn’t a trail at all. It was dirt, roots, and slick granite. He looked back at her. Time to man up.
“I’m on my way down.”
“No!” she yelled over the constant hum of the waterfall. “No. Stay put. I’m done here. I just have to get my stuff packed up.” She removed the telephoto lens from the camera. “The trail is dangerous. You might fall, and then I’d feel a little bit guilty.”
“A little bit?” He watched her from the deck. “More like not at all.”
She kept smiling as she loaded up a camera case and put a retractable tripod in a backpack. “You’re probably right.” She slipped on the backpack.
He frowned. “You can’t get back up this hill with all that stuff. I’m coming down.”
“No,” she reiterated. “To me, this is nothing compared to what I usually carry around. So just stay there. I don’t want to have to worry about you tumbling down the hillside. Okay?”
She slipped on a pair of gloves. “I know what I’m doing. I tied a rope from tree to tree on my way down here, so it’s just a matter of using the rope for support on the uphill climb.”
“I’ll use the rope to get down there.”
She pushed back the brim of her hat. “Fine.” That was female for I’ve already told you what to do, and if you can’t listen, fall down the hillside. Not my problem.
Past the observation deck, the trail was a straight stretch of about ten feet with a few uneven spots and roots that he stepped over carefully. Things got harder when the path started downhill. The soles of Brett’s athletic shoes provided a decent grip on the ground as he moved in a zigzag fashion. He grasped the saplings growing on the hillside for support.
A few feet away, he saw the rope Natalie had tied from tree to tree. He released the sapling and stepped over a root, only to have his foot slip on a slab of rock. “Shit!” He grabbed another sapling just in time to break his fall. He hung on to it tightly as he struggled to maintain his balance.
“Stay there,” Natalie ordered. “It’s much easier to lose your footing going downhill than it is climbing uphill.” She gripped the rope and started her hike up the hill.
When she reached him, she took a moment to rest. She removed her hat and fanned with it. Blond hair tumbled past her shoulders, and he fought the urge to comb it with his fingers. Do a little stroking. There and other places. He grinned at her.
“Come on.” She stuck the hat on again. She reached for his wrist and took the lead, tugging him up the hill alongside her.
“Where did you learn to climb like this?”
“Nepal.”
“You’ve been to Nepal? Like in India?” That surprised him.
“I’ve been all over.” She released his hand once the observation deck was in sight and strode ahead of him. On the deck, she shed her backpack, hat, coat, and camera case. She pulled a bottle of water out of the pouch on the backpack and stood next to the deck railing, sipping water as she panted.
Brett took a seat on the bench. He stretched out his legs and said nothing as he noticed the faraway look on her face. Just like in school. He had never been one for dreamy stuff. Not even with the soothing rush of water, the scent of the fall season, and the song of birds surrounding him.
While she seemed to be somewhere far away, he berated himself. There were a million other places he could be instead of out in the woods with Natalie Layton, of all people. What did he have in common with her? Yeah, he liked how her loose hair hung in tousled waves over her shoulders and her ribbed T-shirt clung to her well-shaped breasts. If she had been any other woman, he would have been standing beside her at the railing, warming her up.
As it was, he was still tethered to his objectives. Sex with Natalie didn’t figure into those objectives. She was like that trail to the waterfall. Treacherous. She had a powerful family, and he did not want to piss those people off.
A fling with Natalie wasn’t worth it, and he couldn’t imagine having a relationship with her. Once you got beyond attraction, what was left? He knew what he liked in a woman. He’d had a couple of serious relationships in the past. Both women were his equals. Physicians. Women who were strong, brilliant, and successful.
She turned to look at him. Back from wherever she’d been. “Why are you here?”
Hell if I know. He braced his hands on his knees as he held her gaze. Whoever had done the work on her face had been a master plastic surgeon. Brett figured the surgeon had used some three-dimensional software to map out her features because the dimensions were perfect.
You would think she had been born with that face. Her nose went unnoticed when you looked at her. The surgeon had made sure of that. W
hat you did see were her best features. Her blue eyes with their high-arched brows and bow-shaped mouth.
“What is it?” She sounded unsettled by his intent stare.
“Why did you do it?” The question that had been eating at him came shooting out of his mouth. He needed to know. That’s what he was doing there.
“Do what?”
“Your face.” His gaze remained focused on her. “Why did you have work done on your face? I don’t get it.”
Chapter 6
Natalie fidgeted with the water bottle. She didn’t know if she could answer. One of the toughest parts of her recovery had been losing the face that was part of her identity. “Most people don’t say anything. They pretend not to notice.”
“I guess I’m not most people.”
She listened to the rush of the water cascading over the rocky ledge. Shafts of mid-morning sun poured through openings in the trees. She looked at the light. You have to reconnect with life. Find the light. She turned back to Brett. “I had no choice in it. I came out of a coma with this face.”
He looked as if she had slapped him. “A coma?” He shifted on the bench and looked away as if he regretted bringing up the subject. “Listen, it’s okay.”
“No, you asked, so I’ll tell you.” She walked over to the bench and sat beside him. “I was staying at a hotel in Kabul. A suicide bomber blew it up, and I was hit in the face. Shrapnel is the word they use on my medical records.”
He leaned back with a shocked frown on his face.
“My mouth was full of blood, and the pain was excruciating. I know what it’s like to die. I felt the end coming, but I never saw the fabled white light,” she said. “The pain stopped and I don’t remember anything after that. Sometime later, I woke up in a hospital bed in Paris.
“That was more than two years ago. I was luckier than a lot of people that day, including the man who saved my life. He didn’t make it out alive.”
Brett gave her a speechless stare, and she supposed the story had sounded unlikely to someone who had known her years ago when she had been a silly teenage girl waving from atop a parade float.
“The Natalie you knew is gone. She’s been gone a long time.”
He shook his head. “I don’t believe that,” he said as if he didn’t want to believe it.
Maybe Brett wanted to hang onto his memories of things as they had been instead of acknowledging how time exacted change on everything. There was nothing wrong with being nostalgic. She was sentimental about Aidan and her memories of him.
“I found the secret to weight loss.” She smiled, trying to lighten the moment. “No solid food for months. When I was told I could have something to eat, you know what I begged for? A hot fudge cake. And the doctor told me that it’d make me sick. But I kept pleading until he said yes.
“I was so excited, and they brought the tray in.” She laughed, recalling her reaction when they took the top off the plate. “It was the tiniest hot fudge cake I’d ever seen. I was so disappointed, but I gobbled down all three bites of it. Best thing ever. And a couple of months later, they brought me a regular size one. I was like, hot damn!”
He managed to smile. “So how are you now?”
“I’m good. I was in a private rehab facility for a long time. Beautiful place south of Paris. Physically, I’ve recovered, and I don’t have any residual PTSD either,” she said. “But nothing is the same now and I’m coming to terms with that. This is my first trip back to Lafayette Falls since I left years ago. My therapist thought coming home would be a good thing for me.”
“I’m glad you came home.” He sounded honest in that.
“Me too.” She touched her nose. “I’m getting used to looking in the mirror and seeing a different face. It’s not that I’m complaining. I had an excellent team of surgeons, and I’m grateful to them.”
“They did great work,” Brett assured her. “You have a beautiful face.”
Her ego latched onto that remark. “Thank you.”
He pulled her hand from her nose. “It’s just as pretty as your old face. In fact, I think the new face is prettier.”
“Watch it. That might go to my head.” She tried to keep the dynamic between them frivolous, but she was basking in his compliments.
“Why were you in Afghanistan?”
She retrieved her backpack and returned to the bench where he sat. “I’m a photographer. Professional, by the way.” She grinned at him. “Slacker actually got a degree. Photojournalism.”
He gave his head a nod. “Good for you.”
At that moment, she wished so badly that she had won the Pulitzer. Would that not have totally blown him away?
She withdrew her computer tablet from her backpack. With a few taps, she opened the McKinley Media website. She went to the page on the site that featured her picture, taken five years ago, as well as her background as a photojournalist.
“See.” She handed him the tablet. “That’s my bio, and if you tap gallery, you’ll see some of the photographs I’ve taken, but I have to warn you. You may find some of them disturbing.”
He took the tablet from her, and within seconds, he was sitting up straight as he read about the Natalie Layton Spencer he had never known existed. “You live in London?”
“Yes. I went to the UK the summer we graduated from high school and fell in love with the country and with Aidan Spencer. So I stayed, got married, and went to college in Scotland.”
“You married right out of high school?”
“I did, and I would do the same thing again.”
He glanced over her credentials, which listed her as a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art. Her awards in feature photography were listed, and the bio stated that her electrifying photographs had been featured on news magazine covers worldwide and she had been the contributing photographer in three books. She found his expression of amazement entertaining.
“Not bad, huh?”
“You must have won every photography award there is.”
“I haven’t won the Pulitzer.”
He shrugged. “That’s not to say you won’t win it someday.”
“True.” His confidence was contagious. “You may not want to look at the pictures in the gallery. Some of them are graphic.”
“I’m a doctor,” he retorted, as if he was accustomed to blood, guts, and gore.
To an extent, she was certain he was, but had he ever seen the horror of the war and its aftermath? She looked away as he tapped the gallery tab, choosing to focus on a couple of squirrels. They raced up a tree trunk and hopped from branch to branch. She heard Brett mutter “Jesus” under his breath.
The gallery contained photographs she had taken in trouble spots across the globe. Some were quiet images of everyday life in places where desperate people just hoped to survive another day. Then there were the raw photographs. From war to natural disasters, the lens of her camera had captured the brutality and tragedy of it all.
A dead family lay amid a home leveled by an earthquake. Rescue workers pulled a lifeless skier from the depths of an avalanche. There were photographs of rotting corpses lying along the roadside, stripped of their clothes; soldiers dismembered by IEDs; sniper victims; a homeless Iraqi mother trying to shield her baby during a storm; and a playground that had become a graveyard for five Syrian children when a bomb hit their school. The gallery went on for pages. It represented the years she had worked for McKinley Media before the bombing.
“Wow.” Brett let out a long breath. For a moment, words seemed to fail him. “How did you get started doing this?”
“My husband’s death,” she answered. “Before, I was hoping to work as a staff photographer for a historical home and garden magazine. I had done some freelance work, like most photographers. Weddings, graduations, family reunions. Happy occasions.”
She rubbed her knees as she talked. “All of that came to an end when Aidan was murdered. Late one night, I took my camera and went out, looking to document the dark side of human
life. I turned my camera from the light. I suppose I grieved through my work.
“The next thing I knew, I had a job as a photojournalist for McKinley Media, and I was on my way to Beirut. That was ten years ago. Since then, I’ve practically lived out of a suitcase, following the action, the bloodshed, and taking the kind of photographs that most people don’t want to see.”
“Are you going back?”
“I don’t know.” That was as honest as she could be. “I’m just taking it one day at a time right now. Like today.” She smiled as she looked toward the waterfall. “I’ve always loved Lafayette Falls. My mother used to bring me here for picnics, and this is the first time I’ve taken any landscape photographs in ages. Especially of something beautiful and special to me.
“I got here early enough to capture the warm light. That’s usually a short period of time right after sunrise when the sunlight is softer and has a warmer reflection because the light has to travel farther through Earth’s atmosphere. I tried some artistic shots, so I’m eager to see them.”
He looked at the photograph of her and a couple of journalists in combat gear. “I would have never in my lifetime have thought of you running around in combat gear with a camera. I’m totally amazed.”
“I knew you would be.” She laughed as she took the tablet from him.
He reached inside his jacket for his phone. “The hospital should have called me by now,” he thought aloud. He looked at his phone and swore. “I don’t have any signal.”
“Really? The tablet is getting a signal.”
Brett was on his feet. “It’s the carrier. Their service sucks,” he fumed. “Dropped calls. Dead spots. I’m going to change networks.”
“Come on.” Natalie stuck the tablet and her hat in the backpack. She slipped on her canvas jacket. “Maybe you can get a signal in the parking lot. If not, you can use my phone.”
While Brett paced around the parking lot, holding his phone up in the air, she put her camera case and backpack in her car. Then she trotted over to Brett’s sporty car, blazing red in the sunlight and looking fast and seductive.
Everything His Heart Desires Page 7
