Her other major expense was satellite service, giving her fast access to the Internet. Uploading and downloading took forever on dial-up. Speed and ease of working back and forth with a customer were top priority. She had lost too many customers prior to the expense. The other faster services were not available in her area and probably wouldn’t be for some time. So she settled on satellite in order to continue living in Squabbin Bay. Of course, back then it had been because she believed she was going to get married. But after four years … well, she broke it off when she saw Cal fooling around with Brenda Scott. They married a month later, and then he split less than a year after that.
Now she wasn’t sure why she wanted to stay in the area. It wasn’t the fast track to success, but it was home and the place she felt the Lord would have her live. Most of her friends while growing up had moved out to go to college and simply never returned.
The phone rang. “Hello.”
“Randi, you’ll never believe this,” her friend Susie blurted out. “There’s a handsome new photographer moving to town. He’s going to work for Dena Kearns and live in the apartment above the studio. I hear he’s a hunk.”
Susie was a bit of a gossip but always tried not to pass on bad news about others. The idea of a new man in town would have all the women buzzing.
“He is,” Randi confirmed.
“You’ve met him? Tell me—what’s he like? How’d you meet him? Are you interested? Is there room for the rest of us?”
Randi chuckled. “Whoa, girl. The man wears his hair to just above his shoulders. It’s brown and wavy. I imagine he can tie it back into a small ponytail.”
“Eww, I don’t like men in ponytails. On the other hand, if he looks great, who cares how he wears his hair?” Susie laughed.
Randi thought back on his thick brown hair, skin tone, and the structure of his face, and her heart fluttered. “Hey, I’m sorry, but I’ve got a deadline, Susie. Call Jess. She’s seen him.”
“Sure, no problem. Talk with you later.”
Randi dropped the phone in the cradle. She had a deadline, and if she didn’t get this finished before midnight, she’d lose a client.
She had the new Web page design uploaded and fully functional before twelve a.m. The online appointment with her client went well. He was pleased, and the payment for the job was done immediately, also online.
The next morning, Randi set off on her daily jog around the harbor and past the inlet two miles south of her cottage.
In total it was a five-mile run. Once in a while Jess would join her, riding a bike, but the hour and the exercise didn’t suit her friend. Fortunately for her, she didn’t have a body that would gain weight, unlike Randi. She fought the bulge every day. She ate right, exercised, and still had to work at maintaining her weight. Sometimes life wasn’t fair.
Lord, it seems some folks don’t have to struggle for anything, yet I have to. Why? She ran on to the last corner before the inlet. As she turned the corner, she saw a Jeep along the side of the road and a pair of jean-clad legs stretched out on the ground beside it.
Lord, no. All those television shows of criminal science investigations flowed through her mind. She squeezed her eyes shut and headed toward the vehicle. Shaking, she pushed forward. Lord, don’t let it be a dead body. Please don’t let it be a dead body.
Jordan lay perfectly still, even though the morning dew was soaking through his clothes. He’d been waiting ten minutes for just the right shot. The nest of baby ducks, the mother hovering over her little ones, and the sun’s rays bursting through the clouds would form a beautiful picture. His finger poised on the shutter-release button.
Just a moment more—that’s it, Momma—move a little to the right—perf—
Crash! Thud!
Someone trampled the ground around him. “What—?” There she was again, that klutzy waitress with those wonderful dark eyes.
Jordan clicked off an accidental picture. He aimed the camera back to the mother duck and ducklings, but the shot was gone. The mother now sat on top of the nest, keeping the babies under her wings. Jordan clicked off a couple of pictures then turned toward his intruder.
“I take it you’re fine,” she said, huffing.
“Damp, but fine.”
“Do you often lie down by the side of the road to take pictures? Isn’t that dangerous?”
Jordan sat up and placed the lens cap on his single-lens-reflex film camera. It hung beside his digital camera around his neck. “Sometimes. Do you often trample over everything?”
“Hey, I thought you were—never mind.” Randi stepped back. “Enjoy your day.”
She started to run down the road.
“Hey, Randi, I’m sorry.” Although he wasn’t quite certain what he had to be sorry for. Hadn’t she interrupted his shot? Didn’t he have a right to be annoyed by the intrusion?
She waved but kept running. He leaned on his Jeep for a moment and watched her strides. He lifted his digital and aimed. After snapping a couple of pictures, he rounded the Jeep to the trunk where he kept his photography equipment. He thought back on Dena’s office and the shelves of lenses and cameras, all neatly arranged. If she could see my trunk, she probably wouldn’t hire me.
The interview had gone well. He and Dena Russell shared similar tastes and eyes toward photography. He realized she’d asked him to pick his favorite of the prints to get a sense of his eye.
Her vast experience of film, lighting, and settings proved he could learn a lot from her. Just her array of cameras and lenses spoke volumes. She probably had close to a hundred lenses alone. Jordan looked down at his pitiful supply in comparison. He had ten lenses, plus four cameras—two film, two digital. If he didn’t count his cell phone and the Polaroid he used when painting.
Jordan sat on the hood of his Jeep and watched the golden sun rise over the horizon. Wisps of fog rose from the water.
He lifted his digital and tried to capture the soft vapors.
The footsteps of a jogger, probably Randi, approached from the direction she had run in earlier. He had to give her credit.
He found exercise boring and unfulfilling. He’d heard the talk about endorphins released in the brain from hard exercise, that it helped clear the head, helped process information faster.
“You run often?”
She crossed the road and lightly jogged in place. “Five days a week, weather permitting. Do you?”
“Only away from something,” he quipped.
She narrowed her gaze.
He lifted his camera. “A bear, a moose, an occasional mountain lion, or panther.”
“Really?”
“Occasionally.” He held back from the urge to boast. He didn’t need to impress this woman. And yet he wanted to.
“Dena’s been all over the world. Have you?”
Jordan half chuckled, half snickered. “No, I’ve not been that fortunate. But if I understand Mrs. Kearns’s history, she didn’t do much until the last decade.”
“True. So are you moving here?”
She stopped jogging in place and stretched. Jordan swallowed his wayward thoughts and focused his camera and his own attentions back on the stray wisps of fog rising from the water.
He decided to avoid the question, not knowing the answer himself yet. “So what do you do around here besides spill lobster bisque on people?”
He’d been attracted to this woman since he first spotted her in the restaurant. The very thought of falling for someone made his hands shake as he clicked off a shot. He groaned.
“What’s the matter?”
“I messed up the picture.”
“How?”
Jordan had no desire to tell her why. “Just went out of focus.”
“Oh. I never could hold a camera straight. I took photography when I was a kid for 4-H, and my pictures were all blurred and washed out. I failed at developing them, too. Of course, I probably just took a lousy picture.”
“What kind of camera?”
“I do
n’t know—one of those rectangle ones from Kodak, I think. It was so long ago. When did you start taking pictures?” she asked.
“High school. Someone donated some photography equipment to our art department. The school set up a darkroom in what used to be a storage room for the science lab. Anyway, a couple of friends and I signed up. I’ve been hooked ever since.”
“Did you go to college?”
“Yeah, but I majored in fine art. Do you know how few jobs are out there requiring that degree?”
She shook her head. She’d stopped stretching and jumping, making it easier to look back at her. “You have beautiful eyes.” He clicked off a couple of pictures.
He hoped he’d captured the startled look on her face. It was so real, so innocent. Then her face contorted into the strangest expression.
“Do you do that to everyone?”
“What?” Jordan lowered his camera.
She pointed at the camera and waved her finger back and forth. “This … Just snap pictures of people without their permission.”
“Sorry. I love your eyes. They’re incredible.”
Rose crimson filled her cheeks. He started to aim but lowered the camera. He slid off the hood of the Jeep and stood beside her.
He fought the urge to raise the camera.
She looked away. “I’d better get going.”
“Randi.” He reached out and caught her wrist.
She pulled away and ran down the road. He’d done it again, become too personal with a stranger. Why, Lord? She is incredible. But I’ve photographed beautiful women before. I don’t understand what’s going on here. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say I’ve fallen in love and want to make this woman mine. But that’s foolish thinking. Forgive me, Lord. Forgive me, Randi.
Randi was still shaking after she got home. She’d never had a man enter her heart so quickly, so deeply, before. Yesterday the kiss, today … “Lord, what just happened? I wanted to jump into his arms because he said he loved my eyes. Thankfully, with Your grace, I fought it and ran away.”
She still couldn’t decide if she wanted him to move into town or not. At the moment she was leaning toward no, that he should go back to wherever he came from and stay out of her path.
After years of prayer for her future husband, could she sense a connection to this man that went beyond the physical? She shook her head. Should one be that connected to another so quickly? Four years of dating Cal never produced this kind of unexplained closeness. “Okay, Lord, I need Your grace here.”
She got ready for work at the Dockside Grill, which years ago had been called the Dockside Café. Then Dorothy started thinking grills were more popular than cafés and changed the name. Randi didn’t see much difference in the clientele.
The wall clock read eight thirty; she had two hours to work on a Web page before going to Dockside. She sat down in front of her computer and researched a potential new client’s Web page. She’d been asked to evaluate it and make suggestions for enhancing and updating the Web presence of the company.
She stopped at a popular search engine on the Internet and typed in Jordan Lamont’s name. She saw only one reference to a photograph—an elderly woman with well-worn skin, a Native American. Her eyes reflected the years of life, the joys, the struggles, the pain, and the glory. “How’d he do that?” she wondered aloud. It was as if she could see into the old woman’s soul. There, in the refracted light of her pupils, she saw the reflection of the photographer.
Randi clicked the computer window shut and jumped away from the computer.
Her heart felt exposed. She got down on her knees and prayed for the rest of the morning before going to work. “Please, God, don’t let him move to Squabbin Bay.”
three
One month, two days, and seventeen hours since he’d moved to Squabbin Bay—and still no sign of Randi. He couldn’t imagine a person could go unseen for such a long period of time in such a small town. He didn’t dare ask Jess. Word had gotten back to him that she thought he might have been overly interested in Randi. On the other hand, he couldn’t blame Randi for her concerns.
He’d asked for the Lord to intervene and keep their attraction to one another in control. He’d even gone so far as to pray for Randi daily. And with each passing day, he’d had an increasing wonder as to whether or not she was the wife the Lord had designed for him. But not to see her at all …
“Maybe it’s for the best, huh, boy?” He rubbed the top of his dog’s head. Duke’s long, velvety ears flapped back and forth from the rubbing. Together he and the basset hound lay on an old blanket, eating fried chicken and watching the sun go down. He’d had to leave Duke at the apartment with his roommates during the interview. He tossed his faithful companion a chunk of his boneless portion. He knew the fried batter wasn’t good for the poor creature, but Duke had a thing for chicken. So rather than have him try to eat the bones, Jordan had long ago given in to buying Duke his own boneless breast of chicken.
“She’s a hoot, Duke.”
Duke lapped his jowls and waited for another tender morsel.
Jordan wiped his hands on a wet cloth and positioned the camera on the mini tripod. Tonight was the first evening he’d had to relax and enjoy his passion for photography.
He was hoping to catch a sunset using a telephoto lens with a graduated neutral density filter. He focused on the horizon but not on the sun. He’d heard too many stories of photographers ruining their eyes trying to photograph the sun. The best way he could describe it was to imagine himself holding a magnifying glass between his eye and the sun. Not a comforting thought.
He set the wide-angle lens on the digital to underexpose for a more dramatic sunset—he hoped. They sat on a western bluff of the peninsula that made up Squabbin Bay. Fortunately the peninsula was long enough that only a small spit of land protruded into the horizon. Technically it was a less boring picture to have the jagged coastline jutting out into the horizon. It gave the eye something to look at besides the sunset.
A jogger ran on the beach below. The posture of her body, the movement of her legs … Jordan aimed the camera at the runner. A gentle smile eased up his face. It was she, finally, after all this time. “Randi!” he hollered and waved.
She came to a sudden halt and lifted her hand to her forehead, scanning the bluff above her.
“It’s me, Jordan. Jordan Lamont.” He paused and added, “Dena Kearns’s new photographer.”
She gave a hesitant wave then continued running down the beach.
Well, that’s my answer. Whatever mutual attraction or connection he’d imagined they had for one another obviously wasn’t the case. He’d fallen for a woman who had no real interest in him whatsoever. “Sorry, Lord. I guess I misread You. I thought—oh, never mind what I thought. It doesn’t matter. I was wrong, and I will continue to wait on You for my spouse.”
Jordan quickly pushed his thoughts aside and refocused on the horizon. The sun would be coming down on the right-hand third of the viewfinder just behind the shore’s jutting coastline. One of the first lessons he’d learned in photography was the principle of the thirds, which really transposed to dividing the picture into nine equal parts.
The golden rays turned a variety of colors ranging from orange to purple as earth’s star settled down for the night. Jordan clicked off several shots then put the equipment away. Tomorrow was his day off, and he planned to paint. It would be his first day to paint since arriving at Squabbin Bay.
He loaded up the Jeep and whistled. “Come on, boy, let’s go home.” Duke ambled over. Jordan had learned long ago that basset hounds preferred to think it was their idea when to do this or that. He’d also learned food was a powerful motivator. “Want another piece of chicken?”
Duke’s little legs picked up speed. His ears flapped as he ran. Once he came up to the Jeep, Jordan lifted and placed him in the passenger seat then climbed in himself. He drove out the dirt road that led to the secluded spot. At the end of the road, leaning against t
he gate, was Randi. He pressed the brakes.
Her arms were crossed, and the look on her face seemed stern, angry almost. “Are you following me?” She pushed off the post and rounded the Jeep. “Why were you here? Did you follow me?”
He thought back on their last encounter when he had reached out and grabbed her wrist. Time told him he’d read that situation all wrong. Very wrong, according to the attitude he was seeing right now. “Randi, I don’t know what you think I’ve done, but I am not following you.”
“Oh, really? Since when do you come to this remote location? How’d you even know about it?”
“Look—I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. But I came out here tonight because Dena recommended it. I had no idea you would be jogging on the beach.” He wanted to beg for forgiveness, but he honestly didn’t have a clue as to what he should ask forgiveness for.
“Oh.” She stepped away from the vehicle.
“Good night, Ms. Blake.” He wanted to toss in that he’d see her around, but it appeared that would not be received as a pleasant prospect.
She nodded and started jogging in the opposite direction. Jordan drove back toward town and his apartment. His heart felt as if it been ripped out of his chest and squeezed in a vice. “Help me, Lord. I really thought she was the one You designed for me. Of course, it was probably too soon to think such a thought. Forgive me. I just got carried away.”
Randi felt more out of sorts than a flounder flopping on the deck of a ship. Could she have misread Jordan on their two previous encounters? Two types of people are out there, she reasoned, those who are demonstrative and those who are not. It was entirely possible Mr. Lamont was just a touchy-feely kinda guy. But … weren’t most guys that way? Randi groaned and plopped on the overstuffed chair in her living room. To say she’d been avoiding him since he moved into town would be putting it mildly. Not only had she changed the area where she normally ran, but she also had stopped working at Dockside Grill and taken another waitress job in Ellsworth on Route 1A. And though she’d been telling folks the tips were better, and they were, she knew the real reason—and it had nothing to do with increased pay.
Trespassed Hearts Page 2