“I hope you don’t mind,” Rob said softly, and Hannah realized she’d been staring at the photo for a while without saying anything.
She turned from the image to smile at him. “I love it. I really do. I was just... You captured everything I was feeling in that moment so well that I was sort of feeling it again.”
His eyes widened, and a flush of pleasure pinkened his cheeks. “Thanks. That’s... I’m glad you like it. I can send it to you.”
“Please do.” Hannah could hear Erika’s voice in her mind, urging her to go into her laptop files and find the paperwork Rob would have to sign to give her the rights to use the photo for commercial use. It would be an amazing photo for social media, but also for any print work or for articles about the podcast.
But she didn’t want to. That moment and this photograph were intensely personal to her—almost raw, emotionally—and she didn’t want to expose that to the world to comment on for a temporary uptick in engagement.
The next picture was a red barn, and the laughter popped the bubble of intensity the previous photo of her had trapped her in. Two more angles of the barn, and then there was a photo of his parents sitting on a couch, surrounded by the debris of a Christmas morning. There were boxes and wrapping paper strewed around them, and they were both sprawled against the couch cushions as if utterly exhausted. But there was something joyful about the way they looked at each other that made Hannah’s eyes well up with tears. Mike and Lisa Kowalski clearly had the kind of love she could only hope to find someday.
“I was fourteen when I took that one,” Rob told her.
“Fourteen?” She blinked back the tears and turned to him. “You were really only fourteen?”
“My grandparents had bought me a really nice digital camera for my birthday. I still have it, actually. It meant so much to me because it wasn’t just a gift. It was...like an investment, I guess. They believed in me.”
“They were right to.” She clicked to the next picture and saw a teenage Brian holding up his middle finger to the camera.
“Yeah, the teen years were fun.”
She laughed. “But you can see that he’s amused and... I’m not sure how to explain it. There’s affection. Like maybe even if I didn’t know you were brothers, I’d guess it from the photo.”
There were so many photos in the slideshow, and she loved all of them. He had so much talent, and she hoped his plan to use the freedom of owning the campground to further his photography worked out.
“So that’s it,” he said when she reached the end and it circled back to the photo of Stella catching the stick in midair. “What did you think?”
“They’re amazing, Rob. Really. Obviously I love the pictures of your family because I can really feel your love for them and how well you know them.” She tried not to think of the picture he’d taken of her during their work. He knewher, too. “But I can feel it in your landscape pictures, too. How well you know the land and how much you love it really shines through.”
She could see the pleasure at her words in his eyes, but he just dipped his hand and lifted a shoulder as though embarrassed by the praise. “It’s home, you know? It’s almost as much a part of who I am as my family is.”
Hannah felt a tightening in the pit of her stomach, and she had to clear her throat to speak past the lump of emotion. Rob really, truly belonged here. “You should find markets for these. Not all of them, obviously. Some are clearly personal, but you could sell any of them.”
He nodded. “I was thinking this winter, when I’m not working on the house, I’d really go through them and make an actual professional portfolio of the ones with commercial potential.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to offer to help, but obviously she’d be back in California and she wasn’t sure how—or evenif—communication between them would work.
Rob looked at the clock on the wall—one that had actual numbers and hands and was possibly as old as them—and swore under his breath. “Brian will be back anytime now.”
“Seriously? How long have we been sitting here?”
He laughed. “It’s always like that with you. Time just flies by when we’re together. He didn’t give me an ETA, but I know he planned to be back by supper because he said he’d pick up grinders at a place we like that’s close enough to want them, but too far away to actually grab them on a whim. Damn, do you want me to call him and have him get you something?”
Her initial urge was to say yes, but the word didn’t come out. She loved spending time with Rob, and she liked his brothers, but there was something so...serious relationship-y, for want of a better word, about hanging out in the house and eating with them.
“I can’t. I have chicken thawed I need to throw on the grill or I’ll end up throwing it away,” she said casually. “And I should go now so you can at least cross a couple of things off of whatever list you were supposed to be doing today.”
His disappointed sigh echoed her feelings, but he walked her to the door. “I wish he wasn’t coming back for a few more days. Or weeks.”
Hannah smiled, nodding. She felt the same way, although a tiny voice in her head was reminding her about six weeks were all she had left here. “Me, too. But you know where to find me.”
Rob hauled her up against his body and kissed her until she was breathless and could barely remember her own name, never mind why she had to leave his arms right now.
Then he released her and gave her one of those grins that was as potent as his kisses. “I absolutely know where to find you.”
She left in a hurry, before she could wrap her arms around him and demand more. Brian coming home to find them naked on the floor of the store would be a funny story in ten or fifteen years, but awkward as hell in the moment.
It’s always like that with you. Time just flies by when we’re together.
