Chapter 2 #2
“No,” I said. “I have enough outdoor work for today, and wet equipment isn’t worth a campaign photo. We’ll reschedule the boards when the weather isn’t trying to kill your marketing department.”
Rafe pressed a hand to his chest. “She cares.”
“About my cameras. Deeply.”
Cole’s gaze moved to me.
Approval from a client should not have felt personal.
Apparently I was having a day of things feeling personal against policy.
The next twenty minutes were organized chaos. Cole and Rafe pulled loose gear under cover. Gray secured the bay. I packed my camera bodies before the first fat drops hit the metal awning over the storefront.
The rain came sideways almost immediately.
Tourists sprinted across the marina parking lot carrying towels over their heads as if cotton could defeat weather. Someone abandoned a rented beach wagon in the middle of a crosswalk. A child in a yellow poncho stood under an awning and looked delighted by the collapse of adult planning.
I photographed that only in my head.
No release, no commercial use.
Inside the Tide & Timber storefront, I claimed a corner table and started the first backup. Dual card slots in camera. Card to laptop. Laptop to primary drive. Primary drive to second drive before I formatted anything.
Gray watched me plug in the second portable SSD.
“Redundant backup?”
“I lost half a wedding once when a card failed eight years ago. Never again.”
“You lost it permanently?”
“No. Recovery service got most of it back. Cost me nine hundred dollars and three years off my life.”
He nodded like a man hearing a sensible conversion story. “Good system.”
There it was again.
Not praise exactly. Recognition.
I liked it far too much.
Rafe leaned over the back of my chair before I could stop him. “Show me the naked ones.”
“There are no naked ones.”
“Then what have we accomplished?”
“A legally usable commercial image library.”
“Gray really has found his audience.”
I clicked into the contact sheet and enlarged the first sequence from the beach.
Rafe’s jokes stopped.
That pleased me more than any compliment would have.
On screen, he was halfway to the water with the board tucked against his body, eyes on the break, morning light catching the edge of him. He looked easy, capable, and alive. Not like a man selling a fantasy. Like the fantasy had accidentally been caught doing its job.
“Damn,” he said quietly.
I glanced up at him.
He was not looking at himself anymore. He was looking at me.
The air changed.
Not dramatically. Nobody dropped a shirt this time. But his expression lost the public smile I had already learned to distrust as a photographic default.
“You’re good,” he said.
Simple words.
They hit me directly in the place I had spent a month pretending was not bruised.
Evan had called me talented often. Usually right before asking me to fix something.
Rafe was not asking for anything.
“I know,” I said.
The answer came out before humility could tackle it.
His grin returned, slower this time. “Oh, I definitely like you.”
“Terrible judgment.”
“Consistent judgment.”
Cole came around the counter with a stack of towels. “Show me what we have before he proposes to the photographer.”
“Too early,” Rafe said. “I haven’t seen her insurance coverage.”
Gray set a plastic bin beneath a drip near the back door. “She has liability insurance. It was in the contract packet.”
Rafe stared at him. “You make romance impossible.”
“I make it insurable.”
I laughed hard enough to bump the table.
And because I was apparently incapable of leaving work alone, I looked at the three of them standing in the shop while rain hammered the roof.
Rafe bright and shameless, one hand braced on my chair.
Cole steady at the counter, eyes moving once toward the windows to check the storm.
Gray crouched beside the leak with the practical irritation of a man offended by water existing where it had not been scheduled.
Three completely different men.
One house.
One business.
One deeply questionable summer arrangement.
My phone buzzed beside the laptop.
For one ugly second, my whole body tightened.
Evan.
It wasn’t him.
It was a calendar alert for my own first client call under the business name Piper Hale Photography, scheduled for that afternoon with a couple planning a small fall wedding in Savannah.
My business.
My name.
My call.
The tightness eased.
I closed the alert and looked back at the contact sheet.
“Tomorrow,” Cole said, “if the front clears, I have a six-thirty charter. Two repeat clients. They’ve already agreed to the release if you want working shots.”
I looked at him. “On the water?”
“If conditions are good.”
“Then yes.”
Rafe leaned closer. “You know that means five-thirty coffee.”
“I have survived bridal prep before sunrise. Your little boat cannot frighten me.”
Cole’s eyes held mine. “It’s not little.”
Silence.
Rafe made a strangled noise.
Gray closed his eyes.
Cole’s expression did not change for approximately two seconds.
Then he looked at the ceiling. “I meant the boat.”
“Of course you did,” I said.
Rafe bent over the counter laughing.
Even Gray’s mouth gave up and twitched.
Outside, thunder rolled over Cape Mercy.
I looked at the three men, my cameras safely packed, my work backed up, and six weeks of contract still spread in front of me.
Temporarily, I reminded myself.
The room in the beach house was temporary. The job was temporary. The summer was temporary.
Unfortunately, attraction appeared to have ignored the project timeline.