He had managed to capture the sun playing on the river water, winking through daisies and primroses, and fading gradually into the carpet of bluebells under the trees further away.
It was gorgeous. “Is this ‘the one’?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so, but it’s good. I want to say ‘beautiful,’ but it’s more than that. And I’m not good with words. Can you think of another way to say this? Maybe if there is nothing historical here, it could be something from your poems.”
He looked at her, smiling, expectant, sure of her ability to come up with something.
Words had never seemed more elusive, harder to craft. Anything she said would sound trite. She lifted her hand, the one with the flowers, and wiped her brow with the back of her wrist.
He made a sharp intake of breath and reached to grab her wrist. His face had gone very still as he took her hand gently between his and opened her palm to remove the flowers.
He reached down and plucked more long stalks of grass, then wrapped them around her hand. After a moment he tucked the daisy between her fingers like an engagement ring. He looked through his lens for a moment before glancing up at the sky. The sun had found a bare space between the reeds and glittered on the water. Gabriel led her closer and made her hold her hand this way, then that, until he thought he found the angle.
“You look so beautiful,” he said softly from behind his lens. “Now, don’t move.”
She didn’t move. Not because he asked her but because she had the strong feeling that if she took a single step she would fall. So, she stood there and waited for him to take a million pictures.
“You’re the spirit of the forest. Don’t ever leave,” he finally said when he was done.
“Spirit of the forest?”
“Your green hair and everything thing about you,” he said, putting his camera away. “Your voice, your smile, the light in your eyes, it makes you part of this landscape; it’s where you belong.”
No, she wasn’t going to fall.
She had already fallen.
“You know what we should do when we’re finished with the book?” he asked a moment later. Or was it a week later?
She blinked the sun out of her eyes and focussed on him.
“Yes?”
“Make a series of framed images and poems for George and Millie as a wedding present. My pictures, your words.”
It had been her idea, not the wedding gift part but using his pictures to go with her words. For the greeting cards.
“There are so many beautiful places on the island. If you’ll come with me,” he continued, warming to his theme.
“Yes,” she agreed. It might have been wiser to refuse, safer to say no, but she wasn’t strong enough. She was a little bird, only a little bird.
“Why are you sad?” he asked her a little later as they found their bikes.
“Stop reading my mind.”
He held her gaze for a fraction too long then went back to strapping his camera bag in place. When he finished, he came over, standing inches away from her, and studied her face.
“I don’t read minds, only faces, and yours is like an open book,” he said in that low, warm voice that made her stomach flip.
“No, it’s not.”
“And now you’re afraid of me. Worried that I’ve intruded too close to your guarded inner soul where you keep secrets.”
“I don’t have secrets.”
“Everyone has secrets.”
“Even you?”
