Aphotographer.
A tingle of unease rippled through her, unrelated to how enticing he was, James-Dean-ing it over there. Her mind churned, trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. She was missing something.
“I’ve got to run, Dix. I’ll check in tomorrow. Hmm? No, no, haven’t seen him yet. I got sidetracked. Only a couple of miles away.” He straightened, a deliberate shift as his gaze tripped back to her. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Convince them to move to Atlanta? What else? That, or leave an eleven-year-old kid alone with John Nelson?”
Fontana dug her elbow into brick as black edged her vision. She dropped her head to her clenched fist and drew a breath that barely cut through the fog in her mind.Fuck, fuck,fuck.
Unaware, he continued his conversation, unbothered, not sensing her disquiet. “The only bright spot in this mess is that there’s already a buyer lined up for the Rise. Someone’s waiting in the wings to take it all, including, if you can believe it, that decrepit shanty out back. Though, I’ll have to evict some impoverished single mother or something.”
Fontana was stalking across the gravel lot before she hadtime to rationalize, her anxiety swelling into full-blown panic. This sensation would take more than a long walk to shake off.
She’d known, deep down, that nothing safe could last.
Knees shaking, she braced herself against his car and got a good look—too good—into the back seat. Hulking black camera. Metal box holding more cameras, lenses. Silver tripod. Igloo cooler.
Hadn’t Kit once told her that photographers needed to keep their film cool?
Fontana’s lids lowered as her stomach churned. With trembling hands, she gripped the window ledge, warm chrome biting into her palms.
“Hellcat, you okay?” She heard his footfalls crunching over gravel, then the heat of his body as he closed in. It was never easy battling with someone who smelled like this side of heaven. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”
She blinked as his simmering gaze locked onto hers. Suddenly, the resemblance hit her. Eyes, definitely the eyes. The full upper lip. The nose...oh,crapif Kit didn’t have his nose.
“Campbell. Campbell True,” she whispered.
Surprise had his shoulders lifting, spine locking, the color draining from his cheeks.
Fontana braced her hand on his car and laughed raggedly, the shuddering movement pulling her closer to him when she wanted to be anywhere else—on the moon, in hell. “You don’t have to worry about how to evict your impoverished tenant, Mr. True. I got the message...loud and clear. And if it makes you feel any better, I’m not a single mother. Just a working-class girl with a sister in college.”
Campbell peeled himself off the car and took a stumbling step back. She bet it was as graceless a move as he ever allowed himself to make. “I’m sorry, I?—”
“Don’t be sorry,” she said, cutting him off.At the knees with a machete if she could have. “Be a decent brother to Kit. Lord knows he needs someone.”
Finished in more ways than one, Fontana headed back into Prescott’s before he could reply, or worse,muchworse, reach for her. When she was weak enough to possibly accept his touch. “Or is that too much to ask for someone as unconcerned as you?”
chapter
two
Basket Case–Green Day
CAMPBELL
“Bitch,”Campbell growled, slamming the back door behind him. The sound echoed through the quiet house, followed by his muttered curse as he stormed into the kitchen. The redone tiles—violent shades of color that reminded him too much of Celia—made his stomach churn.
Crazy Hellcat’s right about you, his mind taunted as he crossed the dining room, the massive table cluttered with funeral offerings: deviled eggs, hummingbird cakes, ham, fried chicken, every shape and color of casserole. He scanned the room, searching for any sign of Kit, and jerked his tie loose. Wrapping the silk strip around his fist, he yanked. The sound of his footfalls striking heart pine and the tick of his mother’s mantle clock echoed in the tense silence.
Be a decent brother.
Could coming back, awful in its own right, get any worse?Yeah, Camp, it could.How about a temperamental, likely penniless boarder you’ve got to kick out on her shapely ass?
Shapely, and galaxies from his norm. The only reason he could find for his clumsy proposition was the erection he’d gotten seeing her slender body wrapped up in those oddly inviting overalls. Because, sad but expected, being back in his hometown always had him reverting to a pattern of puerile behavior, propositioning everything in sight.
Mindless, immature distractions meant to tuck true emotions out of sight.
He unbuttoned his shirt as he moved through the house, a loose button falling with a soft plink to the polished wood before skating beneath his shoe. He passed the paneled den where his father had died of a heart attack in his Louis VIII chair, past paintings of Celia and Grandmother True, his mother’s portrait presumably relegated to the storage shed. He got clear to the veranda before he realized that no one was home.
Jamming his hands in his pockets, Campbell dropped his head back, the rebuff bruising his already lacerated emotions. He wanted to rip something,someone, apart. If he went up the winding staircase to find Celia had destroyed the darkroom he’d built his junior year of high school, he was going to follow through on the impulse.
