He glanced up, praying the rush of heat didn’t mean hewas blushing when he’d gotten a handle on that years ago. But, he was lost from one look. Sapphire eyes blazing, slim shoulders squared beneath her butt-ugly shirt, lips swollen and rosy, and her nipples—ah, shit—hard dents he just couldn’t ignore. No bra for this woman.
All at once, she was real. Much tooreal.
Every woman in his memory paled, crumbled to dust, and blew away in the breeze.
He might have bought her tough act if not for the tremor in her fingers, the way her hands suddenly clenched into fists.
Striding back to her, his fierce whisper echoed off the walls. “What kind of trouble are you in?”
“I’m not in trouble. Not really.” She dipped her chin, looking utterly defeated. “Not anymore.”
He lifted his hand, and in a move he would never, ever forget, she flinched, rearing like a frightened filly, before he could trace the curve of her jaw. All he’d intended.
“Fontana? Did you…” He lowered his arm, rage surging through him. “Did you think I was going tohityou?”
“No.” Breathless. Dishonest. A lie. “You moved so quickly and I—I wasn’t looking. You startled me, that’s all.”
His jaw tightened. “I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care what you believe.” Her fingers traced the edge of her sleeves, pulling them down—a defensive gesture that spoke volumes. Two measured steps carried her away, then she paused. What it cost her to look back, he couldn’t calculate. “You asked me what else you can do. Love your brother. And your grandfather. They need you.”
Troubled and confused, Campbell ducked out of the shed as Fontana headed for the gravel parking lot, her hair catching the breeze, a slight limp throwing her stride off balance. His stomach clenched, hollow except for a few sips of soda. The fool woman had offered her body but refused to call him by his first name. Worse, she flinched like an abused?—
Realization dawning, he scanned the liquid blue horizon, seeing nothing and absolutely everything. Who had touched her? And why did the thought of it make him want to kill the bastard? He slammed his fist against the side of the shed, cursing whoever had put Fontana Quinn’s hunk-of-shit Jeep in his path. If he’d left Atlanta an hour earlier, he wouldn’t know. Wonder.Care.
The very reason—no matter the cost—he refused to take photographs of people.
Pain, misfortune, grief seeped like sweat from the skin in a photograph.
He’d shouldered enough of his own, and he had no desire to see anyone else’s.
Through a viewfinder, it all came out. At least it did for him.
Looking at Fontana moments ago had been almost as bad. Both of them stripped down to a base layer, sensitized to each other in a way heknewwasn’t the norm. Covered in sharp edges that sliced if you let them.
Campbell pinched the bridge of his nose to ward off a headache and prayed no one came along to talk about fucking baseball. His emotions were raw, his skin tender from her touch, the scent and taste of her tangled inside him. They’d been locked together like two puzzle pieces, a near-perfect fit.
And…he’dseenher.
For a few fleeting seconds, he had seen the woman beneath the sturdy veneer.
Dropping his chin to his chest, he realized something had happened to him that had never happened before.
He’d stepped inside another person’s soul without a camera standing guard between them.
chapter
seven
Don’t Speak–No Doubt
FONTANA
Henry’s voicedroned in her ears, sounding like one of those unintelligible Peanuts adults. Fontana blinked herself back to the present, appalled to realize she’d drifted off.
Again.
It had been nearly a week since she’d kissed Campbell True, and for the life of her, she couldn’t erase that moment of reckless abandon from her mind. It was his stricken look—there one moment, masked the next—that had stopped her from marching straight to the Rise and confronting him. A split-second of vulnerability on an otherwise tough-love face.
