by Mindy Klasky
“Let me guess,” she said now, needing to beat back the wave of emotion that threatened to knock her over. She nodded toward the book in his hand. “Time for the annual Hemingway re-read.”
“You know me,” he said.
And she did. She knew he re-read the collected works of Ernest Hemingway every fall, a reminder of how he’d discovered his favorite author in a freshman English class. She also knew he’d just completed the same sort of physical appraisal she had, and she wanted to know how she measured up.
Ouch.
She didn’t want that, not at all. If she’d known she’d be seeing Nick today, she would have dressed for the occasion, maybe slipped into her old leather pants, the familiar armor from her years of working in music clubs.
At least be truthful with yourself, said School Principal.
All right. Jamie had dressed for the occasion. She’d chosen her sleek pants with care. She’d added a second dose of conditioner to her hair that morning. She’d taken time to put on mascara, and she’d refreshed her lipstick before setting foot in Anna Benson’s office.
Because she’d known from the moment she was invited to take headshots for the Rockets that there was a chance she’d run into Nick.
Time was flowing at a strange pace here. Centuries had passed since Nick had spoken. Jamie felt like she was moving through molasses, her mouth sagging open, her lips slowly contorting around dragged-out words. She dug her fingernails into her palms and told herself to get it together.
She tested her voice inside her head, brightened it a few shades, pulled back when she realized she’d have all the sincerity of someone selling banking services in a TV ad. “You heard the plan,” she said. “We’re going to pull together a calendar. Let’s see what we can make work in here, since we’ve got all the equipment set up.”
Robert slid forward, obviously undeterred by the jagged edge she heard in her own voice. “They do call you the Professor,” he said to Nick before glancing at Jamie. “Maybe we could pose him behind the desk? Feet up? Reading his book?”
It wasn’t a bad idea. She nodded slowly. “Let’s try it. We can always regroup if we don’t like how things turn out. Robert, will you take care of Nick’s makeup?”
“Makeup?” Nick said, taking a full step back.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Hotshot,” she said, and she thought no one else would hear anything amiss in her tone. “All the other guys will get theirs, too. It’s just enough to keep the camera from reflecting too much.”
As Anna and Zach laughed, Robert guided Nick over to the table where he’d already spread out his wares. Jamie didn’t have to worry about her assistant. He was always on his game—even when he was quite visibly cataloging every single second of the experience to share with his husband when he got back home. Robert started explaining what he was doing, for Anna and Zach’s benefit as much as for Nick’s.
Before Jamie could adjust the reflectors for her intended approach, her phone buzzed in her bag. She never turned on the sound when she was on a job—it would be too distracting for her subjects. But she’d developed hyper-acute hearing, so she never missed an important message.
Such as this one. From Lauren, Olivia’s babysitter. Home from school.
Okay. So it wasn’t an important text. But it was one of the regular ones, part of the ebb and flow that carried her through her workday. Lauren’s routine communications knit Jamie into her daughter’s life, sewing up the gaps that had emerged so terribly in New York. And that made each text more valuable than gold.
Any homework? she wrote back.
Five pages of reading. One of math. Already working on it.
Jamie grinned, picturing her daughter sitting at the kitchen table. When Olivia concentrated, she bit down on the tip of her tongue. Right now, she’d be holding one of her sparkly princess pencils. She’d probably have to be reminded of the proper grip a few times. She’d be extraordinarily precise as she drew circles around rhyming words, or underlined spelling mistakes, or whatever else was on the first grade homework agenda for the day.
She was such a little scholar.
“Everything okay at home?” Robert asked from across the room.
She slammed her phone into her bag, feeling as guilty as if he’d caught her shoplifting. “Not home,” she lied. “Just a message from the Raleigh Garden Society. They’re thinking about hiring me to shoot the centerpieces at their annual luncheon.”
It scared her a little, how easy it was to make up the story. But her tone was perfect, breezy and just a little bored, exactly the way a busy photographer should talk about something as mundane as tea roses.
But not everyone in the room was fooled. She caught Nick looking at her oddly. His eyes were narrowed just enough to ask a question, and his head barely tilted to the side. He knew her well enough to know she didn’t give a damn about the Garden Society, aside from the fact that those society matrons might turn out to be future customers. Flowers had never been her thing, not even when she and Nick were dating.
It was time for her to get this photo shoot back under control.
“Okay,” she said briskly as Robert finished working his magic and whisked his makeup cape off Nick’s shoulders. Nick’s broad shoulders. Nick’s familiar, broad shoulders that she’d last touched…
Her heart was pounding. She didn’t want to be here. Didn’t want to have an audience as she dealt with her former fiancé. But she didn’t have a choice. Time to pull up her big girl pants and get to work.
She picked up her camera and looked through the viewfinder. The action immediately soothed her.
Over the years, she’d learned dozens of tricks to make the subjects of her photos forget the camera was there. She’d perfected the art of lulling them into ignoring the lens. The key was her utter confidence in holding the device. It became a part of her, a practically invisible extension of her hands and eyes. By looking through the viewfinder, she could step away from all her thoughts, all her cares, all her worries in the world.
Even if her subject was a man who was obviously uncomfortable, a man who clearly didn’t know how to hold himself, what to do, how to surrender to the camera. She hadn’t seen Nick this nervous … ever. Not even when she’d first lured him into posing for her, years before, when she was just starting to experiment with shooting live subjects.
Her patter began automatically. “Okay, Nick,” she said. “Relax. Why don’t we try a few easy shots with you standing in front of the desk? Point your feet toward the door. Turn your hips toward me. Back straight. Head forward. Chin down. Angle your head a little more this way…”
She demonstrated the precise line, and he followed her lead. Just like old times. Just like when they stood in his dorm room on campus, when he learned to take direction from her, when she’d learned to compose a decent picture.
She swiftly drowned the memories in a steady stream of chatter. “Hold the book in your right hand. You don’t need to strangle it; it’s not going anywhere. Look at the page. Not that much! Chin up. Eyes down. There you go!”
The camera clicked away, storing dozens of digital photographs. This was the magic that had led to her becoming a professional photographer. This was the trick that had saved her in those horrible months after graduation, when she’d visited and revisited her final conversation with Nick.
How had she missed his signals? How had she been caught so unprepared? Night after night, she’d stayed awake, replaying his last words in her mind. It’s not you, it’s me. He’d actually said that. It’s not fair to make you wait. I’ll be up and down from the minor leagues. I could get traded. We had four great years, Twelve. Let’s just end things here. Graduate tomorrow and have a great life.
She hadn’t known she was on the clock. She’d had no idea her time was up, until it was too late. She’d stumbled through graduation like a princess snared in a magical sleeping spell. She’d stopped eating for weeks, unable to keep food down even when she managed a few bites. She’d been exhausted, s
o emotionally stripped that she couldn’t drag herself out of bed most mornings. She’d been completely on edge emotionally, bursting into tears at commercials on television.
If Nick hadn’t broken up with her, she would have realized a lot sooner that she was pregnant.
But by the time she knew Olivia was on the way, Jamie had finally gotten over the worst of the break-up. She’d stopped reaching for her phone whenever she thought of something that would make Nick laugh. She no longer started typing witty texts, hoping to catch him off-guard, trying to surprise a deep laugh out of his broad chest. She didn’t start each day asking what he was doing, end each night wondering if she should fly to LA and beg him to change his mind.
She couldn’t let a baby change all that. She couldn’t let a baby take away all her hard-won gains.
And so she never told Nick about Olivia. She never asked for a penny in child support. She never hinted to Olivia that her father was a rich and famous baseball player. And she wasn’t about to upset that precious balance now.
“All right,” she said to Nick, returning to the photo shoot at hand. “Let’s try a few with you sitting on the desk. Hips toward me. Chest toward the door. Head forward, chin down.”
She shut down the jabbering voices at the back of her mind and concentrated on getting the best shots of her life.
CHAPTER 2
“Shoot me now,” Jamie moaned.
“I assume you’re using that as a term of art,” Ashley said.
“You’re my best friend. You’re supposed to show me sympathy and affection.”
“I’m cooking for you. Extra avocado?”
“Yes, please,” Jamie said, only a little abashed. She watched hungrily as Ashley added a handful of green cubes to the crisp bacon and bright red tomatoes that already spotted the omelet. “Seriously, though. I wanted an earthquake to happen. I wanted the stadium to rip in two and a hole to open up to the center of the earth, so I could just slip inside and die.”
“Feeling a bit melodramatic this morning, are we?”
Utilizing her skills as a trained chef, Ashley slipped the omelet onto a plate, automatically turning it to the perfect angle as she set it in front of Jamie. She topped off their orange juice glasses before taking her own seat at the high center island that passed as a kitchen table in her apartment.
Jamie smothered her sour reply in a rich, eggy bite. “Mmm,” she said. “You should consider cooking for a living.”
“Yeah, smartass,” Ashley said. “And maybe you should take a snapshot or two, with the camera in your phone.”
They laughed together. “Seriously,” Ashley said, after Jamie had taken another bite. “You knew he worked here when you decided to move back to Raleigh. And you’re the one who took the job at Rockets Field.”
“But I only took the job because it was for the front office. I wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near the players!”
“And now you have a major new project, and you’ll get dozens of new photos for your portfolio. I fail to see the disaster here.”
“Hello!” Jamie practically shouted. “Have I introduced you to my daughter?”
Ashley pitched her voice low. “I know he’s Olivia’s father, even if you haven’t told anyone else. But seriously, why do you care? You guys broke up senior year of college.”
“The day before graduation!”
“You don’t have to yell. I was there, if you’ll recall.” Of course Jamie recalled. Ashley was the one who had gotten her through the pomp and circumstance of the following day. Now Ashley crossed the kitchen to the coffee maker and took her time pouring a fresh cup of coffee. She persisted, “It was a long time ago, Jamie. You decided not to tell him about Olivia. You built the super-hot career as a celebrity photographer of musicians. You decided you wanted a lifestyle change, so you moved to Raleigh. You won, all the way around. Don’t get pissy about it now.”
But Jamie was pissy about it now. She was pissy because seeing Nick made her question every decision she’d made since accepting her diploma. She was pissy because she wondered if she was being fair to her daughter. She was pissy because she’d dreamed about Nick the night before—a sex dream, all twisted around things they’d done together a thousand times, things she hadn’t done with anyone in way too long…
Ashley spent an absurdly long time stirring cream and sugar into her coffee. Her smile was arch as she said, “Come on, Jamie. Don’t you think it’s time to move on?”
“I’ve moved on!” Jamie heard the note of panic in her voice, and she forced herself to repeat much more calmly, “I moved on a long time ago. I have a successful business. My daughter and I are happy and healthy—”
“And you haven’t had a boyfriend in seven years.”
“That’s not true!” Jamie protested. “I’ve been on plenty of dates!”
“Not since moving to Raleigh.”
Jamie sulked. “Just last weekend, I went to that fundraiser with Robert!”
“You’re proving my point. You went to a fundraiser because Robert’s husband couldn’t make it.”
“I wore a cocktail dress! And heels! I danced with a guy I’d never even met before.”
“And you gave him a fake number when he asked for yours. Jamie, you’re allowed to have a good time. You don’t have to live like a nun for the rest of your life.”
She’d been nothing like a nun in last night’s dream. There, she’d opened the front door of her house, wearing sky-high stilettos and slinky black lingerie—lacy cups of a half-bra, barely-there panties, a garter belt, for God’s sake…
Exactly what she’d worn for Nick, the night he got his offer to go pro.
Sure, she could tell herself she’d been a wild, independent woman for all those years in New York. She’d worn leather and hung out with different men every night of the week. But the truth was she hadn’t been in an honest-to-God relationship since Nick had walked out on her.
And now, Ashley was waiting for a response to her perfectly reasonable challenge. Jamie swallowed hard to make sure her voice wouldn’t shake. “I don’t exactly have time to hang out in bars, looking for Mr. Right.”
“You had plenty of time to find Mr. Right in music clubs, but you didn’t have your eyes open. Besides, who says you have to hang out in bars to find a guy now?”
“What else am I supposed to do?” Jamie poked at her omelet so she wouldn’t have to look Ashley in the face.
“What about going to church?”
“Sure. I’m not really religious, but why should that be a problem? I could look for a nice Jewish doctor at Temple Shalom on Friday nights, then shoot for a more conservative guy with the Seventh-Day Adventists on Saturday. Add in a Saturday evening mass for the Catholics, and that leaves me with Quakers, Presbyterians, and Methodists on Sunday.”
“Baptists,” Ashley said amicably. “Don’t forget the Baptists, when you’re living in the South. Fine. If you don’t want to try church, how about volunteering?”
“Absolutely. Would I do that after I tuck Olivia into bed? Or maybe on the weekend, between her ballet lessons and soccer games? Spending time with my daughter was the whole reason I left New York.”
“Jamie, you’re being ridiculous.” This time Ashley sounded annoyed. “You’ve spent seven years building up every excuse you can think of for living in a convent.”
That nun thing again. But Jamie hadn’t been living in a convent, at least not in New York. There, she’d lived in a comfortably steamy corner of Hell. She’d built a career out of photographing sin—sex, drugs, and rock and roll, all shrouded in the smoke of downtown clubs. She’d loved every minute of it—the darkness, the allure, finding the hidden connections between her subjects, the soul-bonds that wrapped around performers’ souls. She’d loved the raw power, the pure emotion.
She’d let those feelings flavor every shot she took. Chronicling the music scene had been like making love—it had filled her body and her mind, it had nurtured deep parts of her soul, the shadowed corners k
ept completely separate from her life as Mother, as Daughter, as Sister, as Friend. In some mystical, artistic way, she’d become her subjects.
But that spiritual connection and five dollars would buy her a fancy no-foam latte.
Obviously unaware of the direction of Jamie’s thoughts, Ashley said, “Look, if you won’t make time to meet a guy in person, there are a thousand online dating services.”
“Like I could ever find a compatible guy on one of those!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Jamie shrugged and poked her fork around the remains of her omelet. “I wouldn’t know the first thing to write for a dating profile. ‘Unmarried workaholic single mom seeks life partner.’”
“Yeah, I thought you’d say that.” Grinning, Ashley reached into a basket on the counter, digging around in the cascade of recipes, notes, and newspaper articles. It only took her a moment to pull out one specific page. She tapped it with one short fingernail and said, “There.”
Jamie read out loud. “TrueLove.com. For today’s discriminating singles.” She looked up at Ashley. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“What have you got to lose?”
“My dignity?”
Ashley shook her head. “Long gone, babycakes. Look. You’re the one who says you’re unhappy. You’re the one thrown for a loop by meeting up with Nick. Come on, Jamie! Just complete a profile and see what happens.”
“What? See how many geeks and losers flock to my doorstep?”
“You’ve got a bad attitude! Besides, you’re not a geek or a loser.”
“And I’m not on TrueLove.”
“Yet.” Ashley put her hands on her hips. “Look. Either you complete a profile, or I’m doing one for you.”
“That’s blackmail!”
Ashley shrugged. “But it comes from a loving place.” She shoved her laptop across the center island.
“You had this planned all along!” Jamie protested.
“I didn’t. You know I always keep my computer close by. All my recipes are on here!”