Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Adam
I’m smitten by the small mountain town of Langston Falls, Georgia, just over the Smoky Mountains.
It’s our last stop before we head home to Heartsboro.
Keri told me she’s visited this area many times.
It’s where she and her dad used to choose and cut their Christmas tree at the Bennett Farms Christmas Tree Farm and Winery.
The place oozes with charm with its big red barn, vineyard, and acres of spruce and Fraser fir trees as far as the eye can see.
We end up buying a case of wine, the bottles of “Big Red Blend” the perfect gifts for our friends back home.
We’ve had an amazing adventure these last few weeks.
But I’m anxious to stay in one place for a while.
To plant roots while planning our photography project.
The dog days of summer have started, and Keri and I both agree we want to wait until fall when the weather is more comfortable.
This will give us time to map out the locations we want to shoot at and for more farmhouse renovations.
Before we left California, I texted my agent, Dan, about our idea to get his take.
I even sent him one of my favorite, unedited shots of Keri on top of Feather Falls wearing her cerulean gown so he could get a feel for what we had in mind.
He seemed interested and asked if he could share the photo with a few colleagues.
I told him to go for it and never heard anything back.
Until today.
He tried calling me earlier while Keri and I were at the winery.
While she’s perusing the Langston Falls gift shop, I’m sipping on coffee in the town square, with Molly at my feet, enjoying this brief respite of cooler mountain air.
Now is as good a time as any to give Dan a quick call back. He answers on the second ring.
“Adam?”
“Hey, Dan. How are you?” I can hear him sigh on the other end. “You okay?”
“Um, yeah. I’m good. How are you?”
“Great! We’re almost home. Keri’s shopping, so I had a few minutes to call you back.”
“Cool. Cool. Well, I, uh… I have some news.”
“Oh?” I frown, uneasy at his tone.
“Do you remember Pierre Jardo? You shot one of his perfume campaigns several years ago.”
“How could I forget? He was a big, loud bully with some of the models on set.” I can still picture the enigmatic Frenchman shouting obscenities in his native tongue as we desperately tried to pull off his avant-garde choices for his advertising campaign. It was a challenging gig for sure.
“Well, I don’t know if you heard… He was in a car crash last year.”
“Bummer. Is he okay?”
“Oh, yes. He’s much better. It was touch-and-go for a while, but he’s fully recovered. And a little softer around the edges, if you know what I mean.”
“Well, that’s a positive.” I chuckle.
“He used your photo, Adam.”
“Say again?”
“Pierre Jardo used the photo you took of Keri for his website. He said it was ‘magnifique.’”
“Dan, what are you saying?”
“I shared your photo with one of my colleagues, who happens to work with Pierre. When he found out it was you behind the lens, he remembered you fondly and didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Go on.” I grip my phone, bracing myself.
“Since his accident, the man has had this newfound appreciation for being alive. His new French perfume, Nouvelle Vie, comes out just in time for the holidays. The name means ‘new life,’ or something like that. It’s a high-end, luxury fragrance.
It’s a very niche and refined scent. His original concept involved angels, but his creative team and the photographer couldn’t get it right.
When he laid eyes on Keri in her blue dress, he fell in love with her immediately.
I didn’t know he was going to pirate your photo and put it on his website.
I can barely understand the man through his translator.
He basically said he’s willing to pay top dollar and doesn’t have time to wait for a formal agreement.
He didn’t think you’d mind because you know each other.
Adam, he’s running with it and wants more concept shots immediately. ”
My jaw drops as Dan’s explanation spills out, my heart pounding and blood pressure spiking. Fury and disbelief twist inside me. Pierre has absolutely no right to my angel. The urge to shield Keri, to keep her safe from that man’s grasp, ignites with a protective fire I can’t ignore.
Speaking of angels, I look up from my phone and see her coming toward me with two shopping bags in her hands. She catches my eye and grins, lifting the bags up with a shrug.
“Dan, I gotta run. Get a lawyer, issue a cease and desist, and shut this down. Do you hear me?”
“Yes. Yes, of course. If that’s what you want. But hear me out real quick…”
“Dan…”
“This could be a very lucrative deal for all of us…”
I hang up on him and shove the phone into my back pocket. I plaster an overexaggerated smile across my face, giving Keri my undivided attention. “What did you find, Angel Face?”
“A little of this and a little of that. Some picture books for Madison and Beverly’s boys.
Some art made out of antique barnwood. Flowers for Jenny and Janie from Langston Petals.
And…” She reaches into one of the bags and pulls out a vintage Rand McNally road atlas, the collectible tattered at the edges. “This!”
She hands it to me, and I palm the worn cover.
“It’s a collector’s item, going back fifty years. I thought it would be fun to trace our adventure through it. I also got an idea for our living room. You know, where our hideous green velvet couch lives?”
“What kind of idea?”
I watch her, wanting this version of her in my memory always.
Blonde hair tucked under a ball cap, sun-kissed cheeks.
Blue eyes bright with excitement, hands gripping her shopping bags.
I love spending every waking moment with her, seeing the bits of herself she doesn’t bring out for just anyone.
Her routines and her affinity for pretty things.
Her loyalty and quiet caretaking. She’s come into her own since we met.
And I like to think I had something to do with it.
She’s finally let her walls down. She’s grabbing life by the horns rather than passively waiting for her circumstances to change. And they could change drastically.
“I want us to get a giant map we can hang on the wall and mark pushpins at all the places we’ve visited.”
I nod eagerly, but my gut knots with dread.
The closer we get to home, the more panic settles in.
I have unfinished business with Roxy waiting.
And now Dan, along with his coworker's bully client Pierre Jardo, have put me in an impossible situation.
My pulse races. What if we just drove away and never looked back?
A rumble of thunder in the distance interrupts my thoughts. I blink and look at Keri.
“Did you hear me?” she asks. She sets her bags down and sits on my lap, palming my cheeks between her hands. “Where were you just now?”
I rub my face, trying to ground myself. “Nowhere.” Everywhere at once. My mind is racing, exhaustion and worry written across my features. “Sorry. I’m just tired. I’m here. I’m listening,” I say, forcing myself back to the present.
She tilts her head so her ballcap won’t be in the way and kisses my cheek. “There’s rain in the forecast. We’d better get out of here before it hits.” She wraps her arms around my neck and whispers seductively, “Take me home, Adam.”
Relief rushes through me. “To the camper van, your apartment, or to the old farmhouse? We have many choices, you and I.”
She purses her lips to the side and taps her index finger against her cheek while thwarting off a smile. “Hmmm. I don’t know. I was kind of thinking about the old farmhouse. You know, the property where we’re planning on living out our very own happily ever after?”
I nod. “Good choice.”
She stands and picks up her bags. I grab Molly’s leash and my paper coffee cup. “Do you want to trade?”
She eyes the coffee for a beat before she shakes her head. “Nope, I’m good.”
We walk past the small-town shops of Lanston Falls, heading toward the van. Dark clouds have formed and pepper the sky, rolling rumbles in the distance. “And for the record, I think a giant map with pushpins is totally the way to go in our living room.”
Her smile is magnetic, and I’m a lucky man to be the recipient.
She’s always including me. She looks out for me.
She compliments strangers. She stops and pets every dog she passes, thanks to Molly, even though she once claimed to be a cat person.
She makes me laugh with her goose-honk when I’m sad.
She feels lost loved ones in rays of sunshine and rainbows and in the constellations at night.
She buys my friends' toddlers gifts, and she pauses to listen to the birds. She gives and never takes, her heart full of big love. Every single day. She is love, and for that, I’m grateful.
My resolve hardens: I must protect and provide for her.
I’m determined to build trust between us, which means telling her about Dan and Pierre, and finally confronting Roxy and Justin.
Whatever it takes, I won’t let anything threaten what we have.
But first, I just want to get home. I want to wrap her in my arms with the summer rain falling on our tin roof, and let the world fade away, if only for one moment where we’re safe.
Where the storms can’t reach us.