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“Hello?”
“I hear you,” he called out. “Hang on a second.” He stood in the darkroom with some film he’d shot in Belize only a few weeks before, just finishing up the developing. A hobby, not a profession, which explained how he’d nearly ruined the entire roll.
But he was glad he hadn’t. Leaving South America for his sister’s wedding, he’d been tired and exhausted, having just handled a particularly grisly story of murder and mayhem among two feuding drug lords. On the way to the airport, along the side of the road, he’d come across a group of children playing. Not as they played here in the States, with toys and gadgets and electronics. Not these kids, who’d probably never had a single possession to call their own in their entire lives.
They’d been playing at a game of stones, and their sheer pleasure at being alive and free to play had grabbed him by the throat.
The picture was of a boy no more than six, half-naked with his ribs and stomach protruding. He held his treasured pile of stones, grinning a toothless grin, which made Nick smile, too.
“I appreciate your working me in like this,” came the woman’s voice again, just on the other side of the door now, removing his thoughts entirely from that world and placing them firmly in the present.
She still sounded soft and sweet, and more than a little harried. “No problem.” He wondered if she had a face and body to go with that sensuous voice. Wondered if she was lush and curvy, or lean and petite. Wondered if she dressed as hot as she sounded. Wondered—
“Sadie is very cooperative.”
Oh, yeah. She had a way of speaking that brought to mind sweaty, wild, against-the-wall sex. “Sadie?”
“My dog. She’ll be no trouble at all.”
Hell, he’d nearly forgotten. But how hard could it be to snap a photo of a dog? If he couldn’t do that, then he ought to just pack it in and call it a day. “Be right with you.”
Suddenly he was looking forward to this doggie gig. Sure, he’d had a nice, leisurely afternoon planned out, but Nick was nothing if not a man willing to make the most out of every opportunity. Spending time in the company of an incredible-sounding female seemed nice and leisurely, too, so he hung up the last picture from his roll, wiped off his hands and opened the darkroom door.
And was greeted by a sight that made him grin.
His pretty-sounding client had her back to him. Specifically her butt, as she was bent over a mass of something he assumed was a dog. Not a canine-lover, Nick ignored the animal and let his gaze soak up the very nice view its owner provided.
She wore khaki shorts that were riding up at the moment because of her bent-over position, and since he happened to be somewhat of a lingerie connoisseur, he could tell she wore thong panties, as nothing marred the clean lines of the shorts over the twin curves of her cheeks.
Very nice, he thought on an appreciative sigh. Her legs were nice, too, long and bare and toned. As for the rest of her, he caught a blur of equally nice long, toned arms in a white sleeveless blouse, and a flash of shoulder-length, wavy, russet hair as she whirled around with a half smile already in place.
On her hauntingly familiar face. He knew that face, knew that body. Knew those misty gray eyes. And one night, a lifetime ago, he’d known more than that. “Danielle?”
Her smile faded, replaced with an expression of shock. “My God. Nick. I haven’t seen you since…”
“High school graduation.” Never taking his eyes off her, Nick shook his head at the vision of all his adolescent fantasies, standing in the flesh before him. They’d gone through four years of school together, and though they’d never spoken except for that one fateful night, he’d had enough imagination even then that it hadn’t mattered.
How many nights as a horny teenager had he lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking of the hottest girl in the school, knowing he wouldn’t get a chance to be with her? He would have sworn that that girl had never, not once, noticed the tall, skinny nerd he’d been.
And yet she’d known his name.
That’s when he heard the odd rumble, and realized there was a huge mass of teeth and muscle standing behind Danielle.
Growling. Not a friendly, how-do-you-do growl, either, but a should-I-eat-your-face-or-your-heart-first sort of growl.
Nick had faced guerrilla warfare, crash landings in unfriendly territories, typhoid fever and countless other emergencies, but he’d never quite imagined himself going like this.
He took a better look at the dog, or what he hoped was a dog, as it was past hip height to Danielle. Its short muzzle was black, and at the top of this inky mask, two mahogany-brown eyes peered out below a thick, simian brow. The shorthaired coat was a riot of brown-and-black tiger stripes.
Yep, just a dog.
The next thing Nick knew, he’d been hit in the chest with what felt like a bowling ball. No, make that a wrecking ball. Staggering back, he hit the wall, but was saved from sliding gracelessly to the floor by the two huge, massive paws on his chest, pinning him in place.
Nick stared into the brown, bloodshot eyes and realized the dog was about as tall as he was. There was a huge tongue, lots of drool and really bad breath. That’s about all he caught before Danielle lugged the thing off him.
“Sadie,” she admonished. “You’ve got to stop greeting people like that.”
Nick straightened and ran a hand down his shirt, grimacing when he encountered great globs of…slobber. “Greeting?”
“Well, she’s a bit nearsighted. She likes to get close to see your face.”
“Uh-huh.” Nick glanced down at the biggest, beefiest dog he’d ever seen. “I thought she was interested in eating me.”
“Oh, no! Sadie is the sweetest thing, she’d never hurt anyone.” Proving so, she bent and cupped Sadie’s huge jowls in her palms, smiling a smile that seemed both indulgent and infinitely sad. “She’s had a rough time of late, that’s all.”
And so had Danielle, Nick guessed. He knew little about her other than she’d headlined his every wet dream for several happy years, but his instincts were never off. Something was wrong, he could see it in the exhaustion in her eyes, in the way she carried her lithe body. Hell, he could practically smell it on her.
And everything within him wanted to ask her about it. Could he help? He’d done so once, though he’d always wondered how things might have been different if she’d let him do more. It did startle him how easily and instantly he fell back into that pattern of wanting to save her.
But damn it, he was on vacation. No rescuing fair maidens in distress required. He was going to just hang out, take some pictures, get some recreational sex if he could, and do whatever came to him that didn’t demand much thought.
And yet it was utterly beyond him to ignore anyone’s problems. Just as he opened his mouth to ask her about it, she closed off her expression to his questing gaze. “So,” she said. “Who’s taking the pictures of Sadie?”
“You’re looking at him.”
“Oh. Can we get started? I’m a bit…strapped for time.”
2
NICK EYED SADIE with a wariness that might have amused Danielle under any other circumstances, but this wasn’t just a whim. And she really was strapped for time, even if she wanted to stop time and just stare.
Nick Cooper. God, she’d always wondered about him, wondered if… No. She couldn’t go back. What was done was done.
“I don’t suppose I can talk you into waiting,” he said. “As I mentioned on the phone, my sisters—”
“No.” As she half expected the cops to come haul her away, and as she hadn’t yet proved ownership of Sadie, she had to press on. “I can’t wait.”
His eyes had always been amazing, almost hypnotic in their fathomless green, and now they landed on her, slowly assessing. Certainly kind, certainly compassionate, but she didn’t need kind and compassionate, she needed those pictures.
“So why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?” he said after a long beat.
So he was still intuitive, still willing to put aside everything else and come to her aid. But she was no longer a lost, frightened, desperate seventeen-year-old. She didn’t need his help, she needed his camera. “Nothing’s wrong.” To go along with her denial, she forced a smile.
He looked her over for another long, unsettling moment. As before, taking his sweet time. And as before, leaving her squirming because she had no idea what he saw when he looked at her like that.
But he simply nodded. “Okay, then.”
Danielle followed him down the hall toward one of the studios, still oddly unnerved at the sight of him. Whatever he did with himself, it involved his tall, leanly muscular body, which looked like one fully honed muscle. He wore jeans, faded and soft-looking, though there didn’t appear to be one single soft thing about him. They clung snugly to his backside and thighs, the fabric of his shirt stretched across his broad shoulders. She couldn’t seem to tear her eyes off him.
While she was staring stupidly, wondering how the boy she’d known had grown up into this picture-perfect man, he happened to glance back, and caught her.
He smiled, a friendly, no-secret-meaning-attached-to-it smile, and it was so simple, so contagious, she almost smiled back.
Ridiculous as it seemed, this man wasn’t just a blast from her past, but something else, something deeper, something she didn’t want to face after everything else. He was dangerous to her mental well-being, and she instinctively knew it.
“I’ve wondered about you,” he said. “About where you’d be, what you’d be doing.”
While that made her tingle in even more awareness, she shrugged it off. “Nothing special, really.”
“You had special written all over you,” he said. “Still do.”
She’d been on her own for…well, forever. She needed no one. Especially now, after Ted. So she couldn’t possibly be looking into his timber-green eyes, suddenly yearning to throw herself against him and beg for help.
Just because her life had gone to hell in a hand-basket was no reason to fall apart at a familiar face. No reason at all. “I haven’t thought about high school in a long time,” she said.
“I try not to think about it at all.”
She could believe it. By some grace of God, she’d been popular in those days. It had always baffled her. She’d been born on the wrong side of the tracks and had worked at a fast-food joint until all hours of the night helping her mother keep a roof over their heads. As a result, she hadn’t had the best of grades, and yet she’d hung with the “in” crowd—at least on the days she’d been coherent enough to socialize and not falling over in exhaustion.
They hadn’t always been the nicest of kids, her group, but for whatever reason they’d accepted her. But it still bothered her to think about how many others they’d taunted or been cruel to, for no good reason other than they could.
Nick had been one of those other kids.
She remembered him well. He’d been gorgeous even then, though back in those days he’d been tall, lanky to the point of skinny, and tough. Very tough. Way too much so for her crowd to try to break through his wall of resistance. They’d tormented him—not that he’d ever given an inch or even let them know he was bothered.
She herself had never done anything to him, but it shamed her that she’d stood in the presence of kids who had—boys who’d tried picking a fight, girls who’d snubbed him.
Nick hadn’t appeared to care, going on as if they hadn’t existed. Until that one night when she’d needed him, and without question or rebuke, he’d been there.
Just as he was there for her now.
No doubt, he was a world removed from the boy he’d been. No longer did his shoulders look too wide, his chest too broad for the rest of his body, which had gone from too skinny to oh-just-right.
He’d turned out…spectacular. No other word need apply.
Not that she was noticing. God, no. Her head had been turned by an interesting face before and look at where that had landed her. No more men in her life, thank you very much, especially men who could melt earwax at fifty paces. She had other, pressing concerns.
Such as being on the run from the law.
Details.
But she was so engrossed in those details, and the fact that Nick quite possibly had the best set of buns she’d ever seen, that she didn’t realize he’d stopped in front of an open studio until she plowed into him.
“Oops.” Her hands automatically lifted to brace herself, setting down on his back. Snatching back her hands, she thrust them behind her. He’d been warm and rock-hard. “Sorry.”
He didn’t seem bothered in the least, the opposite actually, as he turned and gave her another smile.
“So…” She nearly stuttered. “What’s first?”
“You bring in—” He gestured to the leash she held.
Sadie. Who stuck her head around Danielle’s legs, looking as if she’d rather face ten Teds than be here. “Woof,” the dog offered cautiously; a loud, low sound of nerves as she shifted back and forth on her massive paws.
Danielle coaxed her into the studio with a biscuit from her pocket while Nick moved in ahead of them to set up.
“Look,” she whispered, squatting before the uneasy dog. “Do this for me. Do this for our future.” She cupped Sadie’s huge jowls and looked deep into her worried eyes. “Please?”
Sadie leaned close and licked her chin, and Danielle hugged her tight. “I know. You love me. I love you, too,” she promised softly. “It’ll be okay.”
“What will?” asked Nick, who’d come up behind her.
3
“DANIELLE? What will be okay?”
Meeting Nick’s steely, curious gaze, Danielle unwrapped her arms from around Sadie and stood. “The pictures,” she said as smoothly as she could. “The pictures will be okay.”
“Uh-huh.” Nick studied her for another long moment, in that deeply personal, intense way he had, the one that told her he wasn’t missing a thing.
Neither was she. She might have known this man when he’d been a boy, but that had been a very long time ago. She knew nothing about him now, and had no reason to trust him, even if she wanted to.
His eyes stayed on hers. “You need a backdrop. Outdoorsy or traditional?” Pulling down several, he gestured to her choices. “Personally, the traditional makes any subject look wan, but the outdoorsy one is fairly cheesy, so…” He lifted a broad shoulder. “I’m not a professional. Just pick the one that appeals.”
He wasn’t a professional. So who are you? she wanted to ask, but that would be getting to know him, that would be opening herself up, and she wouldn’t do that. “You’re not thrilled about doing this.”
“I said I would.”
His tone suggested he would always do what he said. But she knew that wasn’t the case. People lied. People changed. People couldn’t be trusted. She drew a deep breath. “The cheesy outdoorsy backdrop, please.”
A small smile crossed his face as he pulled down the screen of a wooded clearing surrounded by pine trees, wild grass and a little creek. Definitely on the cheesy side.
But that smile…holy smokes, it should be registered as an illegal weapon. She watched his hands on the backdrop as he pulled it into place, mesmerized by the flex of the muscles in his forearms, by the easy, economical movement of his body as he straightened and looked at her.
“Warned you,” he said, mistaking her unblinking stare for shock over the backdrop. “How do you want the dog?”
“Uh…” Danielle shook her head to clear it and concentrated on Sadie, who was looking at her with suspicious concern. “Standing at an angle to the camera to show off her coloring.”
“Coloring?”
“Most of her breed is a solid shade of red or fawn. But Sadie’s dark stripes are what the original English breeders had in mind when they crossed a mastiff with a bulldog. I’d like to show that off.”
“Got it.” He put his eye to the lens, fiddled with the camera. “So…what do you do these days?”
“I handle dogs.”
He pulled back from the camera to look at her. “You mean for other people?”
“Yes.”
