One Summer

“And that’s your dinner?”

“Just a start.” Bryan took a huge bite of chocolate. “I’m sending out for pizza.”

“With pepperoni?”

Bryan grinned. “With everything.”

Maria pressed a hand to her stomach. “And I eat with my choreographer, the tyrant, which means I eat next to nothing.”

“And I’ll have a soda instead of a glass of Taittinger. We all have our price to pay.”

“If I like your proofs, I’ll send you a case.”

“Of Taittinger?”

“Of soda.” With a laugh, Maria swept out.

An hour later, Bryan hung her negatives up to dry. She’d need to make the proofs to be certain, but out of more than forty shots, she’d probably print no more than five.

When her stomach rumbled, she checked her watch. She’d ordered the pizza for seven-thirty. Well timed, she decided as she left the darkroom. She’d eat and go over the prints of Matt she’d shot for a layout in a glossy. Then she could work on the one she chose until the negatives of Maria were dry. She began rummaging through the two dozen folders on her desk—her personal method of filing—when someone knocked at the studio door.

“Pizza,” she breathed, greedy. “Come on in. I’m starving.” Plopping her enormous canvas bag on the desk, Bryan began to hunt for her wallet. “This is great timing. Another five minutes and I might’ve just faded away. Shouldn’t miss lunch.” She dropped a fat, ragged notebook, a clear plastic bag filled with cosmetics, a key ring and five candy bars on the desk. “Just set it down anywhere, I’ll find the money in a minute.” She dug deeper into the bag. “How much do you need?”

“As much as I can get.”

“Don’t we all.” Bryan pulled out a worn man’s billfold. “And I’m desperate enough to clean out the safe for you, but…” She trailed off as she looked up and saw Shade Colby.

He gave her face a quick glance, then concentrated on her eyes. “What would you like to pay me for?”

“Pizza.” Bryan dropped the wallet onto the desk with half the contents of her purse. “A case of starvation and mistaken identity. Shade Colby.” She held out her hand, curious and, to her surprise, nervous. He looked more formidable when he wasn’t in a crowd. “I recognize you,” she continued, “but I don’t think we’ve met.”

“No, we haven’t.” He took her hand and held it while he studied her face a second time. Stronger than he’d expected. He always looked for the strength first, then the weaknesses. And younger. Though he knew she was only twenty-eight, Shade had expected her to look harder, more aggressive, glossier. Instead, she looked like someone who’d just come in from the beach.

Her T-shirt was snug, but she was slim enough to warrant it. The braid came nearly to her waist and made him speculate on how her hair would look loose and free. Her eyes interested him—gray edging toward silver, and almond-shaped. They were eyes he’d like to photograph with the rest of her face in shadow. She might carry a bag of cosmetics, but it didn’t look as if she used any of them.

Not vain about her appearance, he decided. That would make things simpler if he decided to work with her. He didn’t have the patience to wait while a woman painted and groomed and fussed. This one wouldn’t. And she was assessing him even as he assessed her. Shade accepted that. A photographer, like any artist, looked for angles.

“Am I interrupting your work?”

“No, I was just taking a break. Sit down.”

They were both cautious. He’d come on impulse. She wasn’t certain how to handle him. Each decided to bide their time before they went beyond the polite, impersonal stage. Bryan remained behind her desk. Her turf, his move, she decided.

Shade didn’t sit immediately. Instead, he tucked his hands in his pockets and looked around her studio. It was wide, well lit from the ribbon of windows. There were baby spots and a blue backdrop still set up from an earlier session in one section. Reflectors and umbrellas stood in another, with a camera still on a tripod. He didn’t have to look closely to see that the equipment was first-class. But then, first-class equipment didn’t make a first-class photographer.

She liked the way he stood, not quite at ease, but ready, remote. If she had to choose now, she’d have photographed him in shadows, alone. But Bryan insisted on knowing the person before she made a portrait.

How old was he? she wondered. Thirty-three, thirty-five. He’d already been nominated for a Pulitzer when she’d still been in college. It didn’t occur to her to be intimidated.

“Nice place,” he commented before he dropped into the chair opposite the desk.

“Thanks.” She tilted her chair so that she could study him from another angle. “You don’t use a studio of your own, do you?”

“I work in the field.” He drew out a cigarette. “On the rare occasion I need a studio, I can borrow or rent one easily enough.”

Automatically she hunted for an ashtray under the chaos on her desk. “You make all your own prints?”

“That’s right.”

Bryan nodded. On the few occasions at Celebrity when she’d been forced to entrust her film to someone else, she hadn’t been satisfied. That had been one of the major reasons she’d decided to open her own business. “I love darkroom work.”

She smiled for the first time, causing him to narrow his eyes and focus on her face. What kind of power was that? he wondered. A curving of lips, easy and relaxed. It packed one hell of a punch.

Bryan sprang up at the knock on the door. “At last.”

Shade watched her cross the room. He hadn’t known she was so tall. Five-ten, he estimated, and most of it leg. Long, slender, bronzed leg. It wasn’t easy to ignore the smile, but it was next to impossible to ignore those legs.

Nor had he noticed her scent until she moved by him. Lazy sex. He couldn’t think of another way to describe it. It wasn’t floral, it wasn’t sophisticated. It was basic. Shade drew on his cigarette and watched her laugh with the delivery boy.

Photographers were known for their preconceptions; it was part of the trade. He’d expected her to be sleek and cool. That was what he’d nearly resigned himself to working with. Now it was a matter of rearranging his thinking. Did he want to work with a woman who smelled like twilight and looked like a beach bunny?

Turning away from her, Shade opened a folder at random. He recognized the subject—a box-office queen with two Oscars and three husbands under her belt. Bryan had dressed her in glitters and sparkles. Royal trappings for royalty. But she hadn’t shot the traditional picture.

The actress was sitting at a table jumbled with pots and tubes of lotions and creams, looking at her own reflection in a mirror and laughing. Not the poised, careful smile that didn’t make wrinkles, but a full, robust laugh that could nearly be heard. It was up to the viewer to speculate whether she laughed at her reflection or an image she’d created over the years.

“Like it?” Carrying the cardboard box, Bryan stopped beside him.

“Yeah. Did she?”

Too hungry for formalities, Bryan opened the lid and dug out the first piece. “She ordered a sixteen-by-twenty-four for her fiancé. Want a piece?”

Shade looked inside the box. “They miss putting anything on here?”

“Nope.” Bryan searched in a drawer of her desk for napkins and came up with a box of tissues. “I’m a firm believer in over-indulgence. So…” With the box opened on the desk between them, Bryan leaned back in her chair and propped up her feet. It was time, she decided, to get beyond the fencing stage. “You want to talk about the assignment?”

Shade took a piece of pizza and a handful of tissues. “Got a beer?”

“Soda—diet or regular.” Bryan took a huge, satisfying bite. “I don’t keep liquor in the studio. You end up having buzzed clients.”

“We’ll skip it for now.” They ate in silence a moment, still weighing each other. “I’ve been giving a lot of thought to doing this photo essay.”

“It’d be a change for you.” When he only lifted a brow, Bryan wadded a tissue and tossed it into the trash can. “Your stuff overseas—it hit hard. There was sensitivity and compassion, but for the most part, it was grim.”

“It was a grim time. Everything I shoot doesn’t have to be pretty.”

This time she lifted a brow. Obviously he didn’t think much of the path she’d taken in her career. “Everything I shoot doesn’t have to be raw. There’s room for fun in art.”

He acknowledged this with a shrug. “We’d see different things if we looked through the same lens.”