She took a step back.“Um, sorry.”
What was she apologizing for?She’d had her hands all over his bare ankle only moments before.Six years ago, she’d had her hands ona lotmore intimate parts of him than that.
Her light blue eyes skittered between him and the machine until they finally landed back on his.He’d forgotten how pretty they were.The color of a clear Colorado winter sky, with velvety brown lashes forming the perfect frame.
“Comfy?”she asked.
“Oh,socomfy,” he quipped.
“You do your heavy-metal thing or watch a movie on your phone or whatever it is you do to entertain yourself, and I’ll be over here compiling my notes.”
“So, like I can cue up my favorite porn channel?”
“No X-rated visuals.We’re strictly PG in here.”
“You said whatever I entertain myself with, so I assumed …”
Her face flushed the same color as the hot pink elephant on her desk.“Keep in mind that children come in here, not to mention old people who might have a heart attack if they get a look at your … entertainment.”
“Jeez, a guy can’t have any fun anymore.”He slid his earbuds from his pocket and inserted them in place.Then he laced his fingers behind his head, lay back, and closed his eyes, but not before catching a glimpse of Angie stomping off.
Soon a soft female voice lulled him into another world when it asked him what kind of story he wanted to tell when he framed a subject in his camera’s lens.“Think of the picture as a stage.Where does the light fall?What’s in the shadows?”
As he listened to the narrator tick off approaches for different shots, he slowly swiveled his head toward Angie, trying to decide how he would capture her image as she was right now.She was turned from him, and what he could see of her profile was soft, despite the harsh lighting outlining the curve of her cheek and turning the gold in her hair silver.A few fine lines radiated from the corner of her eye and bracketed her mouth.Those had been etched there by many smiles, and that’s how he remembered her—always vibrant, always happy, always trying to bring cheer to everyone around her, whether they needed it or not.That was what he’d found so attractive about her back then.But that girl no longer existed.Or was it possible she was simply buried beneath a determination so profound it dominated everything else?The same could be said about him.Maybe they were kindred spirits.
Knock it off, you knucklehead.
His twenty-minute imprisonment passed more quickly than he’d expected, and soon Angie was rousting him from a pleasant daydream where he had just poked the puck off his opponent’s stick and streaked up the ice, all while fighting off another player draped over his back like Superman’s cape.He’d left that guy in his rearview and had all the time he needed to tee up the perfect shot.He’d unloaded a wrister that somehow traveled through the legs of four guys parked in front of the goal mouth.A seeing-eye shot that had found the back of the net, popping the mesh so hard it made the goalie’s water bottle arc into a spectator’s lap.The entire sequence had been captured in his virtual camera’s lens.
Sweet!
Angie’s mouth was turned down in a frown.“Youwerelistening to porn weren’t you?”she accused.
He slid out an earbud.“Why do you say that?”
“The stupid smile on your face.”
He held out the bud to her.“Camera porn.”She simply stared at him.“Have a listen.”Then he glanced down at his crotch.“If I were really listening to porn, I think you’d see a whole lot more action in my sweats right about now.”
She too looked at his crotch but quickly skated her gaze back to his offering.Surprisingly, she lifted the bud from his fingers and put it against her ear.“Oh!I didn’t realize you were into … photography?”
“See what happens when you assume?There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
“Then again, there’s a lot Idoknow about you.And that’s plenty.”
Chapter 5
Priorities
Thenextevening,Sam’sphone buzzed with a number he didn’t recognize.Maybe it was the doc; maybe it was a trainer.Maybe it was Angie calling from a different number.He muted the TV and picked up.
“Hi, Sam,” came a breathy voice.
Definitely not the doc, the trainer, or Angie.Sam’s circuitry ran through the female voices he knew, but he came up empty.
“It’s Charlotte.Remember me?Emily’s friend?”
“Oh hey.”How had she gotten his personal phone number?He didn’t hand it out to random people—not even the attractive ones who were friends of people he knew.
