Chapter 4
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B rynn settled at her desk and downloaded the shots she’d taken at the park. She focused on the screen, but her mind was on Tucker Giles. If he hadn’t told her he was military, she’d have known it anyway. He seemed solid as bedrock, controlled, focused, but the fact he still held some enmity toward Natalie after four years… She shook her head. She needed to do some digging and find out what publication she’d done the interview for and read it.
She needed to keep her distance from Tucker Giles. But with his sea-green eyes, blond-streaked hair, and just a hint of scruff along his jaw…he was more than just attractive. Not to mention those broad shoulders and muscular arms… But he was military. A SEAL. And they had a reputation for being fast with the ladies, hard drinkers, and a little wild. That didn’t seem to fit Tucker at all.
He’d warned her twice to be on her guard with Natalie. Something she already knew to be. What did that say about her that she continued to work for someone she didn’t completely trust? Was she repeating old patterns? She’d give it some serious thought.
She turned her focus back on the images on her computer screen and then dropped deep into the process of studying, tweaking, and cropping.
A half-hour later, when a familiar voice came from behind her, she started. “Hello, doll. How’d the shoot go?”
Brynn turned to look over her shoulder at her neighbor, Martin, as he leaned against the doorframe. No matter how he stood, he always looked like he was posing. With his well-toned arms, slim frame, and immaculately styled hair, he looked like the model he’d been during his childhood and teen years.
Now, he was one of Natalie’s writers and published articles on changing styles and fashion trends, not just in the US but in other countries as well. He’d go with her to Australia to check out Aussie Land’s fashion statements.
“I didn’t hear you knock, Martin.”
“I thought you were still out. I was just dropping off some pasta and salad I threw together earlier.” He raised the two bags he carried. “I’ll put them in the fridge.”
“As much as I appreciate it, you don’t have to feed me.”
“Someone has to. Otherwise, you’d blow away in the wind.”
“I’d have gotten around to eating something soon.”
“Sure.”
Was that sarcasm she heard in his voice? “Come in and take a look at the photos I shot today.” She moved back to the beginning shots, slid clear of her seat, and made room for him. “Would you like a glass of iced tea?”
“I could be persuaded,” he said as he took her place.
She went into the kitchen and got out two glasses, poured each of them a glass, and wandered back to her desk. She set his glass next to him and took a seat at the island/bar.
Watching him while he scanned the photos made her self-conscious. She took a drink of her tea.
Five minutes later, Martin moved to the couch. “They’re great, Brynn—as always. The company wanted to test its product, and that’s what you did. And you actually made the kids and the clothing look great while doing it.”
She valued Martin’s opinion. His experience in front of a camera and his having viewed thousands of fashion photos for Living Large made his perspective invaluable.
“I have a few more to tweak, and I’ll send them off to the client. I hope he likes them as well as you do.”
“I have no doubt he will.”
“I missed you at the park today.” He’d canceled at the last minute. More than likely because of Tate. “You missed meeting the diving expert Natalie hired to teach me to scuba.”
“What was he like?” he asked. He threw up a hand to stop her from replying. “Wait, let me guess. Mid-forties, balding, with a gut and a beard.”
She laughed. “Why would you think that?”
“Natalie has a thing about you. She wants you focused and working on what she wants you to work on. No distractions allowed. She wouldn’t hire anyone who might interfere with her agenda.”
She’d missed the mark this time, then. “He’s not forty, and he doesn’t have a gut.”
Martin’s brows rose. “Handsome?”
“Yes. Six feet tall. Amazing green eyes, sun-streaked hair, a little scruff, and he’s in fantastic shape. He was polite enough to carry my pack back to the car and wait until I drove off before he left.”
“He sounds interested. Here’s your opportunity, Brynn. You need to jump that guy before someone else snatches him up.”
She laughed, then shook her head. “He may already have a girlfriend. We just met and talked long enough to set a date for my first scuba lesson. That’s all. This is a business transaction, not a date-date.”
“Darling, you need to take advantage of the situation. The idea is to get laid, and if the sex is good enough, then make a decision about everything else.”
She shook her head. If she’d learned anything, it was jumping into any kind of relationship, even dating, too quickly, was a recipe for disaster. “You already know my views on casual sex. And I’ll tell you what I’ve told you before. If it doesn’t mean something, it isn’t worth doing.”
Martin breathed an exaggerated sigh. “Sometimes, all it’s meant to be is to fulfill needs or have fun. A healthy sexual appetite is just as important as the rest. Since we’ve been neighbors, I can count on one finger how many times you’ve brought someone home for dinner, and no one has ever spent the night.”
She raised a brow and folded her arms. “I didn’t realize you were so interested in my love life, Martin.”
“Of course I am. I’m nosey as hell, and I love to gossip.”
Just when she wanted to be angry with him, he’d pop off with something so completely honest she wanted to laugh. “Yeah, you are. That means I’ll make a point of getting laid at the guy’s house so you won’t know anything about it.”
He clutched his chest as though he were having a heart attack. “You wouldn’t be that cruel, would you?”
“Naturally, I would.” She flipped a long strand of hair over her shoulder and took on a Southern accent. “Otherwise, you might sully my reputation.”
“That’s an impossibility, Brynn. No one would believe me.” Martin’s teasing look turned to one of concern. “All joking aside, Brynn…it’s been three years since they sent that fucker to prison. He can’t hurt you anymore. Don’t you think it’s time to at least try to move on?”
She wished she’d never told him about Chad, but it was hard to avoid when she still had screaming nightmares on occasion, and his apartment was next door. “I’ll be able to move on when I find someone who makes me feel safe.”
“Safe sounds a little boring, Brynn.”
He would say that. He was addicted to his boyfriend, Tate’s, high-drama approach to everything. She could see so many things in Martin’s relationship with his boyfriend that mirrored what she’d experienced with Chad. All of it set off alarm bells in her and made her anxious. “Martin, I know three years is a long time, but I still remember what it was like.” Before Chad, when she’d had a normal boyfriend. “When all the sex you experience is makeup sex, you miss out on the other kinds possible.”
He frowned and turned away. “I need to go. And you need to eat.”
She sighed. He never wanted to talk about his relationship problems, only hers. “Why don’t you drink your tea while I eat? You can keep me company. Otherwise, I’ll just keep thinking about the scuba lessons and how many ways I’ll embarrass myself in front of Mr. Perfect.”
“Perfect? You didn’t say he was perfect.” Martin said as he moved to the bar to sit in one of the chairs there.
“Pretty close.” She dished up the pasta and put it in the microwave, then put a dash of dressing on the salad. “He told me not to let Natalie talk me into anything I didn’t want to do.”
“Wow.” His brows rose. “He knows her?”
“Yeah. She arranged for him to give me the lessons.”
“Hum, that sounds suspicious. She hired him, but he’s warning you about her. They weren’t lovers, were they?”
The microwave kicked off, and she got a towel to remove the bowl. “He’s a little young for her. But anything’s possible. Both of them said they’d met when she interviewed him four years ago. He’d have been maybe…twenty-three, twenty-four. But that’s only a guess.” She sat down at the table and took the first bite.
“What’s his name? I’ll do a Google search while you eat.”
She felt odd giving him the information; it was a little like stalking. “This is good. Is this a new recipe?” she stalled.
“No, but I did add some extra garlic and some Italian sausage to the hamburger. What’s his name?”
She studied her food before answering. It wasn’t stalking if she looked him up to see if he had a social media presence. “Tucker Giles. He’s in the Navy.”
While she ate, Martin surfed the net and sipped his tea.
“He has no Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter profiles. I’ve run a background check, and he doesn’t have a record.”
“Jesus, Martin!”
He looked up, his expression innocent. “You said you wanted to feel safe. I’ve ordered the report.”
“He’s in the Navy, Martin. They might track someone checking up on one of their personnel.”
Completely unphased, he said. “They probably go through background checks for housing and credit checks all the time. Relax.”
She supposed he was right, but she felt like she was invading Tucker Giles’s privacy. Just as her privacy had been invaded. “The Navy would discharge him if he were a drug addict or a criminal, Martin. I don’t need a background check to know that.”
“But you do need one to allow you to trust him enough to sleep with him.”
Once he got the bit between his teeth, he would not let it go. “That isn’t the plan, Martin. Learning to scuba is the plan.”
“You’ll be isolated underwater with him in a hostile environment. Do you think you’ll trust him enough for that without a background check?”
There was something wrong that Martin was so manic about this. “Martin, I’m not going to read the report. If I start running background checks on every person I meet, where will it end? Do I run checks on every model I hire or every parent I sell a picture to? Or do I run one on you? Is there anything in your background you wouldn’t want me to know?”
He raised his head slowly.
“Do I tell all the people I come in contact with that I’m going to run a background check on you before doing business with you or accept you as a friend?”
He stared at the computer screen silently for a moment. “How will you know he’s trustworthy if you don’t run a check?”
“I won’t, any more than I knew I could trust you when we first met. I’ll have to make that determination after we’ve known each other for a while. Look, I need to be able to live my life without constantly distrusting my instincts about people.
“I trust you,” she said. “Is there any reason I shouldn’t? Should I run a background check on you?”
He shook his head. “No. I’d never hurt you, Brynn.”
The tension in the pit of her stomach eased. “After I’ve started my scuba lessons, once we’ve spent some time together, I’ll know whether I can trust Tucker or not. He’s a stranger right now. Just because I found him attractive doesn’t mean there can be anything between us.”
Martin closed the computer. “I get it. Doing the background check would almost make you more paranoid around him.”
“I’d feel like I was lying to him if I didn’t tell him I ran a check on him. What kind of start to anything, even a business relationship, would that be?”
“Okay. Forget I ran it.”
She drew a slow, relieved breath.
“He’s never even had a parking ticket,” Martin said.
“Martin!”
He grinned. “Just kidding. You have to wait for the file to find that out.”
She laughed. “You’re a good friend, but sometimes, you’re an ass.”
He laughed.
Through the adjoining wall, a door slammed hard.
Martin’s laughter died. “That’s probably Tate. I’ll go see if he’s hungry.”
Brynn rose to take her bowl to the sink. “It was delicious, Martin. Thanks for feeding me.”
“You’re welcome.”
Recently, Tate seemed to be in a constant manic mood. Anxiety tightened her stomach again. As she walked Martin to the door, she said, “I’ll give some thought to what you said about my moving on, Martin, but I want you to think about everything I’ve shared in the past, too.”
He turned to face her, his expression shuttered. “Have a good evening, Brynn.”
When he closed the door behind him, she leaned against it and sighed. The romantic future she saw for Martin looked as painful as the one she’d left behind. He wouldn’t listen to her any more than she had listened to her friends. It would take that one moment when his eyes were finally open to lead him to end things.
People had to make their own mistakes. She just hoped his wouldn’t lead to what her own had.
Her phone rang, and she wandered back to the desk and picked it up. It was Natalie, and she was more than tempted to ignore the call, but the woman was relentless. She drew a deep breath and answered the phone.
Natalie dove right in as she always did. “Hey, I just wanted to touch base with you.”
“Yes.” She wasn’t going to make it easy for her. This overstepping her bounds had to stop.
“How did the shoot go?” Natalie asked.
“It went well.”
“Good. Did you and Tucker make contact?”
“Yes.”
“How did it go?”
Brynn couldn’t resist stringing Natalie along. “I told him I’d meet with him on Sunday to discuss the lessons. I needed some time to cool down.”
Natalie fell silent for several seconds. “Look, Brynn. I know I messed up by rushing things. I should’ve called you as soon as I spoke to Tucker. I got hung up putting out a couple of fires. When you called me, I knew I’d messed up. But you have to put some of this distrust behind you. It’s been three years.”
She’d heard enough. It was one thing for Martin, someone who cared about her as a human being, to say it, but for Natalie to say it because Brynn’s issues were standing in the way of what the magazine editor needed or wanted… Rage rolled through her, sending a rush of blood into her ears. Brynn pushed the button, ending the call, set the phone on the desk, and went into the bedroom.
The phone began to ring while she undressed and got in the shower. She stood under the spray for a few minutes before soaping her skin and washing her hair. By the time she stepped out of the shower, the mirror over the sink was fogged with steam. She wrapped a towel around her hair and used another to dry off.
She slipped into the robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door and spent some time drying her hair.
When she finished, she needed a cup of tea. She sauntered into the living room and retrieved her coffee cup from the kitchen table and her phone from atop the desk. Natalie had left a message. Brynn decided she needed to sip the tea and relax before listening to it.
She settled on the couch and breathed in, slowly calming herself. She pushed the button on the message Natalie had left.
“All right, I know I stepped over a boundary, Brynn. I won’t do it again.” There was suppressed anger in her tone. Or was it frustration? “After you and Tucker meet and you talk about the lessons, I need you to call me and let me know if you’re really interested in making the Australia trip. Otherwise, I’ll have to contact someone else.”
Brynn thought about that for a moment. She wanted to go on the trip— really wanted to go. But not at the expense of having Natalie constantly pulling her strings. She worked for the woman. Their relationship was rooted in a business partnership, not a friendship. Natalie needed to stay out of her personal business.
She didn’t need the woman’s advice. She’d moved twenty-nine hundred miles away from her parents because they had been as relentless as the press, even while she’d struggled to recover. They’d been devastated at her physical condition, but they had expected her to bounce back as soon as the physical injuries had healed. And when she hadn’t…They’d treated her like she was an embarrassment and somehow defective.
She set aside her empty teacup even as she pushed away the thoughts that threatened to drag her into a pit of pain and anger. She’d fought free of all that three years ago. Her two-year cross-country trip had been her salvation. She’d made the right choice.
Did she view Natalie’s advice…interference…demands as similar to her parents? Possibly so. She’d go in to talk to her tomorrow and see if they could come to an understanding. And if they couldn’t…she’d have to walk away.
She had contracts with several small businesses for graphic design work on their websites, ads, and social media posts. She also did photography work for some of them. It would be financially difficult, but she’d done difficult work before.