Chapter Nine #3
An ancient and threadbare rug protected the random-width-pine floor; thick shades were drawn down and snugly fastened to stay that way over twin windows.
Shelves of practical gray metal were lined with bottles of chemicals, plastic tubs.
On others were boxes of thick black cardboard, which he assumed held her paper, contact sheets, and prints.
There was a long wooden worktable, a high stool.
“I didn’t realize you had a darkroom here.”
“It used to be a bath and dressing room.” Jo hit the white light, then moved around the prints she’d developed the night before that were still hanging on the drying line.
“I hounded Cousin Kate until she let me take out the wall and the fixtures and turn it into my darkroom. I’d been saving for three years so I could buy the equipment. ”
She ran a hand over the enlarger, remembering how carefully she’d priced them, counted her pennies.
“Kate bought this for me for my sixteenth birthday. Brian gave me the shelves and the workbench. Lex got me paper and developing fluid. They surprised me with them before I could spend my savings. It was the best birthday I’ve ever had. ”
“Family comes through,” Nathan said, and noted she hadn’t mentioned her father.
“Yes, sometimes they do.” She inclined her head at his unspoken question.
“He gave me the room. After all, it wasn’t easy for my father to give up a wall.
” She turned away to reach up for a box above her matting machine.
“I’m compiling prints for a book I’m contracted for.
These are probably the best of the lot, though I still have some culling to do. ”
“You’re doing a book? That’s great.”
“That remains to be seen. Right now it’s just something to be worried about.” She stepped back as he walked up to the box, then tucked her thumbs in her back pockets.
It took only the first print for him to see that she was well beyond competent. His father had been competent, Nathan mused, at times inspired. But if she considered herself David Delaney’s pupil, she had far outreached her mentor.
The black-and-white print shimmered with drama, the lines so clean, so crisp they might have been carved with a scalpel. It was a study of a bridge soaring over churning water—the white bridge empty, the dark water restless, and the sun just breaking the far horizon.
Another showed a single tree, branches wide and spreading and empty of leaves over a deserted, freshly plowed field. He could have counted the furrows. He went through them slowly, saying nothing, struck time after time at what she could see, and freeze and take away with her.
He came to a night shot, a brick building, windows dark but for the top three, which glowed startlingly bright. He could see the dampness on the brick, the faint mist swirling above black puddles. And could all but feel the chilly, moist air on his skin.
“They’re wonderful. You know that. You’d have to be ridiculously neurotic and humble not to know how much talent you have.”
“I wouldn’t say I’m humble.” She smiled a little. “Neurotic, probably. Art demands neuroses.”
“I wouldn’t say neurotic.” Curious, he lowered the last print so that he could study her face. “But lonely. Why are you so lonely?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. My work—”
“Is brilliant,” he interrupted. “And heartbreaking. In every one of these it’s as if someone’s just walked away and there’s no one there but you.”
Uneasy, she took the print from him, put it back in the box. “I’m not terribly interested in portrait photography. It’s not what I do.”
“Jo.” He touched his fingertips to her cheek, saw by the flicker in her eye that the simple gesture had startled her. “You close people out. It makes your work visually stunning and emotional. But what does it do to the rest of your life?”
“My work is the rest of my life.” With a sharp slap, she set the box back on the shelf. “Now, as I said, I’ve got a full morning.”
“I won’t take up much more of it.” But he turned idly and began to examine the prints on the drying line. When he laughed, Jo hunched her shoulders and prepared to snarl. “For someone who claims to have no interest in portrait photography, you sure hit it dead on.”
Scowling, she walked over and saw that he’d homed in on one of the shots she’d taken at the campground. “That’s hardly work, it’s—”
“Terrific,” he finished. “Fun, even intimate. That’s the doc with her arm slung around your sister. Who’s the woman with the acre of smile?”
“Ginny Pendleton,” Jo muttered, trying not to be amused. Ginny’s smile was just that, an acre wide, fertile and full of promise. “She’s a friend.”
“They’re all friends. It shows—the affection and that female connection. And it shows that the photographer’s connected, not in the picture maybe, but of it.”
Jo shifted uncomfortably. “We were drunk, or getting there.”
“Good for you. This is undoubtedly wrong for the theme of the book you’re doing now, but you ought to keep it in mind if you do another. Never hurts to mix a little fun in with your angst.”
“You just like looking at attractive, half-plowed females.”
“Why not?” He tipped a hand under her chin, lifting it higher when she would have jerked away. “I’d love to see what you do with a self-portrait the next time you’re feeling that loose.”
His eyes were warm and friendly, so damned attractive in the way they looked direct and deep into hers. She felt that little click again, sharper this time.
“Go away, Nathan.”
“Okay.” Before either of them could think about it, he dipped his head and touched his lips lightly to hers.
Then touched them there again, a little longer, a little more firmly.
Warmer than he’d expected, he thought, and more arousing, as she’d kept her eyes open and unblinking on his throughout. “You shivered,” he said quietly.
“No, I didn’t.”
He skimmed his thumb over her jawline before he dropped his hands. “Well, one of us did.”
And she was mortally afraid she would do so again. “You’re not going away.”
“I guess not—at least not the way you mean.” He pressed his lips to her forehead this time. She didn’t shiver, but her heart lurched. “No, definitely not the way you mean.”
When he left her, she turned to the window, hurriedly unfastening the shade to throw it up and the window behind it.
She wanted air, air to cool her blood and clear her mind.
Even as she gulped it in, she saw the figure standing near the edge of the dune swale with the wind breezing through his hair, fluttering his shirt.
Alone, as her father was always alone, with every person who would reach out closed off behind that thin, invisible wall of his own making. With a vicious pull, she slammed the window shut again, shot the shade down.
Damn it, she wasn’t her father. She wasn’t her mother. She was herself. And maybe that was why there were times when she felt as if she was no one at all.