By the time she returned to school in the fall, she’d filled half a notebook with the words J.D. & Sam 4-ever! Years later, whenever she’d indulged in daydreams of the perfect man, as often as not, it was J.D. she thought of.
Reality was even more amazing than those fantasies. The good-looking boy she’d known had grown into a very sexy man. One who was affecting her more than any of the studs she’d photographed so far. Was it the memory of her puppy love for him that made her feel this way, or some connection that existed between them still?
“I remember your folks moved away the year I turned sixteen,” he said. “Where are they now?”
“They were killed in a car accident not too long after we moved.” A rough time she tried not to think about.
“Damn. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Thanks.” It had been so long ago the hurt was just a dull ache in her chest that resurfaced only occasionally—on important anniversaries, or when something happened to trigger a sharp memory of her mother’s smiling face or her father’s laugh.
“So what happened to you after they died?” Josh asked. “You were an only child, right?”
She nodded. “I went to a foster home.” Five foster homes, to be exact. She’d left the last one at seventeen, tired of being bounced around like a dog no one wanted. Another reason she’d volunteered for this job for Frameworks for the Future. Kids deserved real homes. The houses the organization built helped families stay together, so maybe, in an indirect way, she was saving some other child from the kind of teenage years she’d suffered.
“That must have been rough,” Josh said.
“Hmm. Roll over onto your back for me, propped on your elbows.” She kept her eye fixed to the camera lens, shifting all her focus to the job at hand. Think only about the picture. Not about the past or what might have been. Nothing else mattered right now. The technique was a kind of working meditation, one that had drawn her to photography in the first place. “Now, look at the camera.”
“How’s that?” He flashed a frankly sexual smile, his eyes communicating just how much he wanted the woman who was the object of his gaze.
Samantha’s mouth went dry and coherent speech became impossible. Her breasts tingled and she squeezed her thighs together against the tension building there. If Josh could do this to her with one look, think what he could accomplish with his hands and mouth….
Her own hands shaking, she gripped the camera and adjusted the focus for a tighter shot. The calendar. This was all about the charity calendar. Josh’s look was for the women who would buy the calendar. The women who would hang his picture in their offices or bedrooms and fantasize that he was looking solely at them.
“You’re being awfully quiet back there,” Josh said. “Is something wrong?”
“No. That’s great.” She clicked off two more shots, then straightened. “You did a great job. You can get dressed now.”
“Do I get to see the pictures before they’re published?” he asked as he hopped off the table.
“If you want to.” Considering the way he’d affected her—not to mention the memories his presence dredged up—she wasn’t sure it was a good idea to see him again. Her love for him years ago had been sweet and innocent, her fantasies since then were wild dreams, never meant to be real. Trying to make them real was a recipe for big-time disappointment, she was sure.
She could have loaded the digital proofs into her computer and showed them to him right then, but the thought of him leaning close over her shoulder, his breath stirring her hair as he bent to study a picture, his arm barely brushing her shoulder…She closed her eyes and shook her head. No, she definitely needed to cool down before she spent any more time alone with Josh.
“Give me your number,” she said. “I’ll call you when the proofs are printed.”
“That would be great.” He took a wallet from his jeans and fished out a card. “Here’s my card.”
She glanced at the rectangle of pasteboard. “Remarkable Renovations,” she read.
“That’s me. That’s my mobile number. It’ll reach me pretty much anytime.”
She nodded and looked for someplace to put the card. Someplace it wouldn’t get lost in the messy room. She wasn’t a stickler for organization. Impulsively, she stuck the card in her bra, where it nestled between her breasts, one corner poking into the soft flesh.
Josh pulled his jeans on over his boxers and reached for his belt.
She tried not to stare, but had a hard time keeping her eyes off him. He had a great tan and the kind of muscles that came from hard work. Great abs. She wondered if he still surfed….
“I’ll see you soon, then.” He picked up the gym bag and nodded, then headed for the door.
“Yeah. See you.” She waited until he was down the steps before she closed the door, then rested her forehead against the smooth wood and took deep, calming breaths. Too bad deep breathing didn’t do anything but make her dizzier. When she closed her eyes, all she could see was the image of a naked Josh stretched out before her, a look in his eyes that said he wanted to do incredible things to her body. It had been all she could do not to toss aside the camera and start stripping off her own clothes.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had such a strong physical response to a man. That in itself set off all kinds of alarm bells. The fantasies she’d had of Josh for years were her secret indulgence. They’d been harmless.
After all, no one could get hurt in a fantasy. Reality was a different story. One of the first lessons she’d learned when she went into foster care was that the thing you wanted most in life was most likely to be taken away.
Call her foolish or superstitious, but being with Josh felt too much like tempting fate by reaching for her dream—only to have it snatched from her hands.
2
THE NEXT EVENING, Sam slowly cruised past the old bungalow, checking to make sure no other cars were in the driveway or parked at the curb out front. She still had enough light to get good photos of the exterior of the house, but she didn’t want anyone to see her indulging in her secret hobby.
Since she’d bought her very first camera at age sixteen, Sam had taken photos of houses. Comfy bungalows and ranch houses built in the boom right after World War II. The kind she imagined had sheltered big families with lots of children and grandparents.
The kind of house she longed to have for herself. Since that was impossible, she channeled those personal longings into a hobby that eventually became her career. She snapped shots of broad front porches and imagined lazy Sunday afternoons with three generations of a family gathered to drink lemonade and listen to a baseball game on the radio. She photographed peeling paint and missing shingles and in her mind saw the houses in their prime, when they were beloved homes.
She had files full of these photographs, dating back years. From time to time she revisited favorite houses to see how they were faring. She mourned when another old treasure was razed to make way for a more modern dwelling, but lately she’d been thrilled to find more of these faded beauties being renovated. Midcentury modern was hot now and whole streets of once neglected homes were being restored for families. Sam took pictures of the spruced-up dwellings and dreamed of the day when she’d be able to afford one of them for her own. Maybe she hadn’t had that ideal childhood she’d wanted, but one day she hoped to create that dream for children of her own.
The house she was targeting tonight was the one she often pictured in those dreams recently. A bungalow built in 1950, it featured a wide front porch flanked by white brick pillars and a candy-pink stucco exterior. When she’d first discovered it, the yard had been overgrown with vines. She’d picked her way through the vegetation and carefully climbed the front steps. In the cool shade of the porch she’d found the heavy iron eyes in the ceiling where a swing had once hung.
But six months ago, someone had cleared the tangle of vines from around the door and trimmed the trees. There were signs of work being done—a new roof, b
roken windows replaced, the stucco repaired and repainted. Sam photographed each stage of the renovation. Two weeks ago, a sign had appeared in the front yard with the name of the remodeling contractor. It was that sign that had brought her here tonight.
Certain the coast was clear, she turned her car at the end of the street and drove back to park across from the house. She pulled the business card from her bra and compared it to the sign in front of her dream house. Remarkable Renovations.
So Josh was responsible for the work on this beauty. One more thing that proved he’d turned out even better than she’d pictured him in her dreams. Not only was he gorgeous and sexy, he was still a genuinely nice guy.
Camera in hand, she got out of the car and walked up to the house. Now, while she had the place to herself, she wanted to photograph some of the improvements. The porch railings, along with some boards in the floor, had been replaced. She photographed them, the juxtaposition of new wood and old brick making a pleasing pattern.
Then she stood on tiptoe and tried to see through the small diamond-shaped window in the door into the interior of the house. But the lighting was too bad this late in the day to make out much. Disappointed, she gave the knob a halfhearted turn. To her surprise, the door was open. A bad thing in a neighborhood where the crime rate was still high. But a good thing for her curiosity.
The interior of the house was dim and cool. As Sam shut the door behind her she heard the low hum of the air conditioner kicking on. The front living room was in the process of being restored. Bare plaster on one wall showed where a fireplace mantel had been removed. In front of this a new stone hearth had been laid, the mortar still wet. Sam bent and ran her hand over the rough stone. Had Josh laid this himself?
She raised the camera and clicked off a series of shots—the outline of the missing mantel, the new stone against the worn cypress floorboards, bars of shadow from the windows falling across the floor.
She moved into a dining room, which boasted new wainscoting and a classic fifties-style light fixture of stainless steel and glass. Sam smiled and pointed her camera overhead. Light fixtures like this had been torn out by the hundreds during the seventies, eighties and nineties, and now they were all the rage again. Josh had been lucky to find one that fit the house so well.
She backed up to get a better shot of the new wainscoting, but froze as she heard the distinct echo of footsteps behind her. Stifling a squeal and clutching the camera to her chest she whirled and stared at the figure of a man that filled the doorway. His face was in shadow, but in his hand he carried a hammer. Sam stared at the weapon, heart pounding painfully….
“Sam? What are you doing here?” Josh stepped forward, into the light.
“Josh!” She swallowed, and assumed what she hoped was a nonchalant expression, though her heart still raced. “I—I was looking for you.”
He frowned. “How did you know to find me here?”
“Um…I saw your sign out front.” She gestured toward the front of the house.
“What, you were just driving around looking for my sign?”
“Of course not.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I come by here all the time…on my way to buy groceries.” A lame lie. There was a market not two blocks from her studio where she did all her shopping. But Josh seemed satisfied.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
She thought fast. “The proofs of the photos I took of you are ready, if you want to come by and look at them.”
He nodded, his gaze still fixed on her, studying her. “You could have called to tell me that.”
His eyes met hers, probing. Something inside of her—the girl who had worshiped him once upon a time—couldn’t bring herself to tell another lie. “I wanted to see what you’d done with this house,” she said. She looked around, at the new wainscoting, the new paint and windows. “It’s such a beautiful old place. It’s nice to see someone taking care of it.”
He grinned. “Then, come on, I’ll give you the grand tour.”
She relaxed a little, not hiding her pleasure at the invitation. “I thought you’d never ask.”
EVEN AS HE POINTED OUT the new double-glazed bay window in the living room and the restored light sconces in the hall, Josh couldn’t keep his eyes off the woman at his side. Considering how much he’d thought about her since the photo session in her studio, he should have had her features memorized by now. The slightly upturned eyes and petite nose were the same as the Sam D. he’d known as a child, but her face had matured into one of real beauty, with defined cheekbones and a full, sensual mouth.
As a girl, Sam had been carefree and laughing—the first to try a new thing, the last to tire of a favorite game. The woman beside him now was more serious, though, he caught glimpses of the girl when she exclaimed over some feature of the house, such as the dining-room light fixture or the old milk box on the back porch. “So you like old houses?” he asked when they’d reached the end of the tour, on that same back porch. After the coolness of the house, the night air was warm and heavy, but he preferred it to the artificialness of the air-conditioning.
She nodded, then added, “I photograph them.”
“For real-estate magazines and things like that?”
She ducked her head. “No…I photograph them for me. I just like them.” She shrugged.
Her expression—defiant yet, at the same time, sad—made his heart stutter in its rhythm. “How many have you photographed?” he asked.
Another shrug. “Hundreds. Some of them have been torn down now. Others have been remodeled, like this one. Others are just…neglected.” Her voice grew huskier with emotion.
He tried to imagine how long it must have taken her to document such an architectural record. “What do you do with the photos?” he asked.
“I keep them.” She turned away from him, gaze focused on the milk box. It had been designed to open from either side. The milk man left the milk, eggs and butter in one side and the housewife could retrieve the delivery from inside. “Maybe I’ll put together a book one day on Miami’s midcentury modern homes,” she said. “Or a gallery show.”
“That would be interesting. I’d buy it.” Then he’d see how many of the run-down places he could find to revamp and resell. These older neighborhoods were becoming more upscale every month and there was a demand for authentic “old” homes that had been updated.
She glanced at him again, her expression less troubled now. “What I’d really like to do is take pictures of the families who live in the places once they’re restored. I’d like to connect with real-estate agents who would buy the photos as a house-warming gift for the families. They’d always have a record of the day they moved into their new home.”
She spoke so earnestly, eyes shining. She made moving day sound like more than just another task in the process of changing houses. She made it sound as important as a wedding or a christening. “You should do it,” he said.
“Maybe I should start with this house,” she said. “Who owns it?”
“I do.” He ran a hand over the smoothly planed facing around the back door. “I’ve been working on restoring it in between my other jobs, so it’s going slowly. But I’m almost finished now.”
“That’s wonderful!” She smiled at him, her face radiant with joy. “Amazing.”
He laughed at her enthusiasm. “I’m glad you approve. Will you photograph it for me when it’s done?”
“I’d love to.”
He had to look away. Her smile was doing funny things to his insides. It was all he could do not to pull her into his arms and kiss her senseless. Just looking at her made him feel lighter and more carefree than he had in years, reminding him of a time when there had been more to his life than work. “I’d like to see the other pictures you have of this place,” he said. “I meant to take some before I started work, but then I got distracted.”
“Sure. I can do that,” she said.
The more time Josh spent alone with Sam, the more
he realized how much he missed having a special woman in his life. Of course, the time wasn’t right for a relationship—he was too busy and he needed to firmly establish his business before he could afford to relax. He wanted Remarkable Renovations to be the first name people thought of when they considered restoring or remodeling property in Miami. Still, he couldn’t help but think Sam was very special, indeed.
As if reading his thoughts, she turned away from him once more. “I’d better go now,” she said.
“Don’t rush on my account,” he said.
She walked back through the house, toward the front door. “I have work to do this evening.”
“More calendar photos?” He didn’t like to think of her cozied up in her studio with some other naked man, though, part of him realized how hypocritical this was. After all, nothing had happened between them yesterday when he’d had his clothes off—a fact he was growing to regret.
“No. A pet portrait.”
He scratched his head. “A pet portrait?”
“I take pictures of people with their pets. Dogs and cats mostly, but I’ve done iguanas, rabbits and birds, too.”
He nodded. “You do a lot of different things, don’t you?”
“Just trying to make ends meet.”
“Hey, I can understand that.” He’d done a lot of things to keep his head above water, too, from stripping to tending bar at a popular tourist hotel. He’d been determined to make it on his own without help from his parents or anyone else. Times had been hard. Really hard. He never cared to live through those desperate days again.
She grasped the doorknob and opened the door. “Come by whenever you like to see your proofs.”
“I’ll do that.” But he’d already made up his mind that proofs wouldn’t be the only thing he’d stop to see. He’d told himself he was too busy working to have time for a relationship, but now that Sam had walked back into his life, he wasn’t going to let her leave too quickly. He wanted to find out more about the woman who’d grown from the girl he once knew—and see where the physical attraction between them would lead.
Men at Work Page 9
