by Nora Roberts
“Woman usually wants something when she wanders around half naked.”
Her fear ebbed as cold fury rushed in. Bryan glared. He grinned.
“You ignorant ass,” she hissed just before she brought her knee up, hard. His breath came out in a whoosh as he dropped his hand. Bryan didn’t wait to see him crouch over. She ran.
She was still running when she rammed straight into Shade.
“You’re ten minutes late,” he began, “but I’ve never seen you move that fast.”
“I was just—I had to…” She trailed off, breathless, and leaned against him. Solid, dependable, safe. She could have stayed just like that until the sun rose again.
“What is it?” He could feel the tension before he drew her away and saw it on her face. “What happened?”
“Nothing really.” Disgusted with herself, Bryan dragged her hair back from her face. “I just ran into some jerk who wanted to buy me a drink whether I was thirsty or not.”
His fingers tightened on her arms and she winced as they covered the same area that was already tender. “Where?”
“It was nothing,” she said again, furious with herself that she hadn’t taken the time to regain her composure before she ran into him. “I went around back to get a look at the trailers.”
“Alone?” He shook her once, quickly. “What kind of idiot are you? Don’t you know carnivals aren’t just cotton candy and colored lights? Did he hurt you?”
It wasn’t concern she heard in his voice, but anger. Her spine straightened. “No, but you are.”
Ignoring her, Shade began to drag her through the crowds toward the parking section. “If you’d stop looking at everything through rose-colored glasses, you’d see a lot more clearly. Do you have any idea what might’ve happened?”
“I can take care of myself. I did take care of myself.” When they reached the van she swung away from him. “I’ll look at life any way I like. I don’t need you to lecture me, Shade.”
“You need something.” Grabbing the keys from her, he unlocked the van. “It’s brainless to go wandering around alone in the dark in a place like this. Looking for trouble,” he muttered as he climbed into the driver’s seat.
“You sound remarkably like the idiot I left sprawled on the grass with his hands between his legs.”
He shot her a look. Later, when he was calm, he might admire the way she’d dealt with an obnoxious drunk, but now he couldn’t see beyond her carelessness. Independence aside, a woman was vulnerable. “I should’ve known better than to let you go off alone.”
“Now just a minute.” She whirled around in her seat. “You don’tlet me do anything, Colby. If you’ve got it in your head that you’re my keeper or anything of the sort then you’d better get it right out again. I answer to myself. Only myself.”
“For the next few weeks, you answer to me as well.”
She tried to control the temper that pushed at her, but it wasn’t possible. “I may work with you,” she said, pacing her words. “I may sleep with you. But I don’t answer to you. Not now. Not ever.”
Shade punched in the van’s lighter. “We’ll see about that.”
“Just remember the contract.” Shaking with fury, she turned away again. “We’re partners on this job, fifty-fifty.”
He gave his opinion of what to do with the contract. Bryan folded her arms, shut her eyes and willed herself to sleep.
He drove for hours. She might sleep, but there was too much churning inside him to allow him the same release. So he drove, east toward the Atlantic.
She’d been right when she’d said she didn’t answer to him. That was one of the first rules they’d laid down. He was damned sick of rules. She was her own woman. His strings weren’t on her any more than hers were on him. They were two intelligent, independent people who wanted it that way.
But he’d wanted to protect her. When everything else was stripped away, he’d wanted to protect her. Was she so dense that she couldn’t see he’d been furious not with her but with himself for not being there when she’d needed him?
She’d tossed that back in his face, Shade thought grimly as he ran a hand over his gritty eyes. She’d put him very clearly, very concisely in his place. And his place, he reminded himself, no matter how intimate they’d become, was still at arm’s length. It was best for both of them.
With his window open, he could just smell the tang of the ocean. They’d crossed the country. They’d crossed more lines than he’d bargained for. But they were a long way from crossing the final one.
How did he feel about her? He’d asked himself that question time after time, but he’d always managed to block out the answer. Did he really want to hear it? But it was three o’clock in the morning, that hour he knew well. Defenses crumbled easily at three o’clock in the morning. Truth had a way of easing its way in.
He was in love with her. It was too late to take a step back and say no thanks. He was in love with her in a way that was completely foreign to him. Unselfishly. Unlimitedly.
Looking back, he could almost pinpoint the moment when it had happened to him, though he’d called it something else. When he’d stood on the rock island in the Arizona lake he’d desired her, desired her more intensely than he’d desired anything or anyone. When he’d woken from the nightmare and had found her warm and solid beside him, he’d needed her, again more than anything or anyone.
But when he’d looked across the dusty road on the Oklahoma border and seen her standing in front of a sad little house with a plot of pansies, he’d fallen in love.
They were a long way from Oklahoma now, a long way from that moment. Love had grown, overwhelming him. He hadn’t known how to deal with it then. He hadn’t a clue what to do about it now.
He drove toward the ocean where the air was moist. When he pulled the van between two low-rising dunes he could just see the water, a shadow with sound in the distance. Watching it, listening to it, he slept.
Bryan woke when she heard the gulls. Stiff, disoriented, she opened her eyes. She saw the ocean, blue and quiet in the early light that wasn’t quite dawn. At the horizon the sky was pink and serene. Misty. Waking slowly, she watched gulls swoop over the shoreline and soar to sea again.
Shade slept in the seat beside her, turned slightly in his seat, his head resting against the door. He’d driven for hours, she realized. But what had driven him?
She thought of their argument with a kind of weary tolerance. Quietly, she slipped from the van. She wanted the scent of the sea.
Had it only been two months since they’d stood on the shore of the Pacific? Was this really so different? she wondered as she stepped out of her shoes and felt the sand cool and rough under her feet. He’d driven through the night to get here, she mused. To get here, one step closer to the end. They had only to drive up the coast now, winding their way through New England. A quick stop in New York for pictures and darkroom work, then on to Cape Cod where summer would end for both of them.
It might be best, she thought, if they broke there completely. Driving back together, touching off on some of the places they’d discovered as a team might be too much to handle. Perhaps when the time came, she’d make some excuse and fly back to L.A. It might be best, she reflected, to start back to those separate lives when summer ended.
They’d come full circle. Through the tension and annoyance of the beginning, into the cautious friendship, the frenzied passion and right back to the tension again.
Bending, Bryan picked up a shell small enough to fit into the palm of her hand, but whole.
Tension broke things, didn’t it? Cracked the whole until pressure crumbled it into pieces. Then whatever you’d had was lost. She didn’t want that for Shade. With a sigh, she looked out over the ocean where the water was green, then blue. The mist was rising.
No, she didn’t want that for him. When they turned from each other, they should do so as they’d turned to each other. As whole, separate people, standing independently.
&nb
sp; She kept the shell in her hand as she walked back toward the van. The weariness was gone. When she saw him standing beside the van watching her, with his hair ruffled by the wind, his face shadowed, eyes heavy, her heart turned over.
The break would come soon enough, she told herself. For now, there should be no pressure.
Smiling, she went to him. She took his hand and pressed the shell into it. “You can hear the ocean if you listen for it.”
He said nothing, but put his arm around her and held her. Together they watched the sun rise over the east.
Chapter 12
On a street corner in Chelsea, five enterprising kids loosened the bolts on a fire hydrant and sent water swooshing. Bryan liked the way they dived through the stream, soaking their sneakers, plastering their hair. It wasn’t necessary to think long about her feelings toward the scene. As she lifted her camera and focused, her one predominant emotion was envy, pure and simple.
Not only were they cool and delightfully wet while she was limp from the heat, but they hadn’t a care in the world. They didn’t have to worry if their lives were heading in the right direction, or any direction at all. It was their privilege in these last breathless weeks of summer to enjoy—their youth, their freedom and a cool splash in city water.
If she were envious, there were others who felt the same way. As it happened, Bryan’s best shot came from incorporating one passerby in the scene. The middle-aged delivery man in the sweaty blue shirt and dusty work shoes looked over his shoulder as one of the children lifted his arms up to catch a stream. On one face was pleasure, pure and giddy. On the other was amusement laced with regret for something that couldn’t be recaptured.
Bryan walked on, down streets packed with bad-tempered traffic, over sidewalks that tossed up heat like insults. New York didn’t always weather summer with a smile and a wave.
Shade was in the darkroom they’d rented while she’d opted to take the field first. She was putting it off, she admitted, as she skirted around a sidewalk salesman and his array of plastic, bright-lensed sunglasses. Putting off coping with the last darkroom session she’d have before they returned to California. After this brief stop in New York, they’d head north for the final weekend of summer in Cape Cod.
And she and Shade had gone back to being almost unbearably careful with each other. Since that morning when they’d woken at the beach, Bryan had taken a step back. Deliberately, she admitted. She’d discovered all too forcibly that he could hurt her. Perhaps it was true that she’d left herself wide open. Bryan wouldn’t deny that somewhere along the way she’d lost her determination to maintain a certain distance. But it wasn’t too late to pull back just enough to keep from getting battered. She had to accept that the season was nearly over, and when it was, her relationship with Shade ended with it.
With this in mind, she took a slow, meandering route back toward midtown and the rented darkroom.
Shade already had ten rows of proofs. Sliding a strip under the enlarger, he methodically began to select and eliminate. As always, he was more ruthless, more critical with his own work than he’d have been with anyone else’s. He knew Bryan would be back shortly so that any printing he did would have to wait until the following day. Still, he wanted to see one now for himself.
He remembered the little motel room they’d taken that rainy night just outside of Louisville. He remembered the way he’d felt then—involved, a little reckless. That night had been preying on his mind, more and more often as he and Bryan seemed to put up fences again. There’d been no boundaries between them that night.
Finding the print he was looking for, he brought the magnifier closer. She was sitting on the bed, her dress falling off her shoulders, raindrops clinging to her hair. Soft, passionate, hesitant. All those things were there in the way she held herself, in the way she looked at the camera. But her eyes…
Frustrated, he narrowed his own. What was in her eyes? He wanted to enlarge the proof now, to blow it up so that he could see and study and understand.
She was holding back now. Every day he could feel it, sense it. Just a little bit more distance every day. But what had been in her eyes on that rainy night?
He had to know. Until he did, he couldn’t take a step, either toward her or away.
When the knock came on the door, he cursed it. He wanted another hour. With another hour he could have the print, and perhaps his answer. He found it a simple matter to ignore the knock.
“Shade, come on. Time for the next shift.”
“Come back in an hour.”
“An hour!” On the other side of the door, Bryan pounded again. “Look, I’m melting out there. Besides, I’ve already given you twenty minutes more than your share.”
The moment he yanked open the door, Bryan felt the waves of impatience. Because she wasn’t in the mood to wrestle with it, she merely lifted a brow and skirted around him. If he wanted to be in a foul mood, fine. As long as he took it outside with him. Casually she set down her camera and a paper cup filled with soft drink and ice.
“So how’d it go?”
“I’m not finished.”
With a shrug, she began to set out the capsules of undeveloped film she’d stored in her bag. “You’ve tomorrow for that.”
He didn’t want to wait until tomorrow, not, he discovered, for another minute. “If you’d give me the rest of the time I want I wouldn’t need tomorrow.”
Bryan began to run water in a shallow plastic tub. “Sorry, Shade. I’ve run out of steam outside. If I don’t get started in here, the best I’ll do is go back to the hotel and sleep the rest of the afternoon. Then I’ll be behind. What’s so important?”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Nothing. I just want to finish.”
“And I’ve got to start,” she murmured absently as she checked the temperature of the water.
He watched her a moment, the competent way she set up, arranging bottles of chemicals to her preference. Little tendrils of her hair curled damply around her face from the humidity. Even as she set up to work, she slipped out of her shoes. He felt a wave of love, of need, of confusion, and reached out to touch her shoulder. “Bryan—”
“Hmm?”
He started to move closer, then stopped himself. “What time will you be finished?”
There were touches of amusement and annoyance in her voice. “Shade, will you stop trying to push me out?”
“I want to come back for you.”
She stopped long enough to look over her shoulder. “Why?”
“Because I don’t want you walking around outside after it’s dark.”
“For heaven’s sake.” Exasperated, she turned completely around. “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve been to New York alone? Do I look stupid?”
“No.”
Something in the way he said it had her narrowing her eyes. “Look—”
“I want to come back for you,” he repeated and this time touched her cheek. “Humor me.”
She let out a long breath, tried to be annoyed and ended by lifting her hand to his. “Eight, eight-thirty.”
“Okay. We can grab something to eat on the way back.”
“There’s something we can agree on.” She smiled and lowered her hand before she could give in to the urge to move closer. “Now go take some pictures, will you? I’ve got to get to work.”
He lifted his camera bag and started out. “Any longer than eight-thirty and you buy dinner.”
Bryan locked the door behind him with a decisive click.
She didn’t lose track of time while she worked. Time was too essential. In the dark she worked briskly. In the amber light her movements flowed with the same rhythm. As one set of negatives was developed and hung to dry, she went on to the next, then the next. When at length she could switch on the overhead light, Bryan arched her back, stretched her shoulders and relaxed.
An idle glance around showed her that she’d forgotten the carry-out drink she’d picked up on the way. Unconcerned,
she took a long gulp of lukewarm, watered-down soda.
The work satisfied her—the precision it required. Now her thoughts were skipping ahead to the prints. Only then would the creativity be fully satisfied. She had time, she noticed as she took a quick glance at her watch, to fuss with the negatives a bit before he came back. But then she’d end up putting herself in the same position she’d put him in—leaving something half done. Instead, mildly curious, she walked over to study his proofs.
Impressive, she decided, but then she’d expected no less. She might just be inclined to beg for a blowup of the old man in the baseball cap. Not Shade’s usual style, she mused as she bent over the strip. It was so rare that he focused in on one person and let the emotions flow. The man who’d taken it had once told her he had no compassion. Bryan shook her head as she skimmed over other proofs. Did Shade believe that, or did he simply want the rest of the world to?
Then she saw herself and stopped with a kind of dazed wonder. Of course she remembered Shade setting up that picture, amusing, then arousing her while he changed angles and f-stops. The way he’d touched her… It wasn’t something she’d forget, so it shouldn’t surprise her to see the proof. Yet it did more than surprise her.
Not quite steady, Bryan picked up a magnifying glass and held it over one tiny square. She looked… pliant. She heard her own nervous swallow as she looked deeper. She looked… soft. It could be her imagination or, more likely, the skill of the photographer. She looked… in love.
Slowly, Bryan set down the glass and straightened. The skill of the photographer, she repeated, fighting to believe it. A trick of the angle, of the light and shadows. What a photographer captured on film wasn’t always the truth. It was often illusion, often that vague blur between truth and illusion.
A woman knew when she loved. That’s what Bryan told herself. A woman knew when she’d given her heart. It wasn’t something that could happen and not be felt.