The Obsession(75)

“Isn’t any light,” he muttered, but rose and went to the rail.

“Call the dog over.”

Since otherwise Tag might take too personal an interest in the plate he’d left on the glider, Xander called the dog.

“Just drink your coffee, watch the sunrise. Pay no attention to me. Just look out—no, turn a little more to your right—and lose the scowl. It’s morning, you’ve got coffee and a dog. You just rolled out of bed after spending the night with a beautiful woman.”

“Well, that’s all true.”

“Feel it a little, that’s all. And watch the sun come up.”

He could do that, he supposed. It was a little strange doing it while she moved around him with the camera. But the dog, apparently used to it, leaned against his leg and looked out over the water with him.

It was a hell of a show, those first trickles of light, the promise of them, the slow blur of rose hitting the water. Then the shimmer of gold rising up, edging the clouds.

Plus she made damn good coffee in that fancy machine of hers.

He’d just enjoy it, ignore the way she muttered to herself, pawed through her bag for something.

—

Oh, it was perfect. He was perfect. Hardly more than a silhouette, the tall, sleep-rumpled, barefoot, sexy man with the loyal dog at his side, watching the new day whisper over the water.

Long legs, long arms, big hands, white coffee mug, dark stubble on a sharp profile at the break of dawn.

“Great. Great. Thanks. Done.”

He glanced back—and she couldn’t resist one more.

“Now done.”

“Okay.” He went back to the glider and his pancakes, and when she joined him, ignoring her own plate to view the shots, he held out a hand. “Let’s see.”

She didn’t give him the camera, but scooted closer, angled the screen, scrolled through.

He didn’t know how she got so much out of the light—or the lack of it—how she’d tossed him into relief, managed to make him look moody and content at the same time. Or how she’d managed to capture every shade of sunrise.

“You’re good.”

“Yes, I am. I’ll print out a release.”

“What are you going to do with them?”

Still scrolling, she stopped on one, did something that zoomed in on his profile. “I need to take a closer look at them on my computer, pick the one I think is best for the sexy, moody gallery print I have in mind, then work on it some. Pick another—probably the one where you started to turn, look back at me with the sunrise behind you—for a stock print. You’re going to end up on a book cover.”

“What?”

“I know what sells there,” she said. “One of these days, you can add yourself to your collection. That’s a good, and unexpected, morning’s work.”

She leaned over, kissed him—something she’d never done before. And stifled his instinct to object.

“Are you going to start on that this morning?”

Now she zoomed in on the dog’s profile. “That and some other work.”

“Okay, I’ll get going on the yard.”

“The yard?” Distracted, she looked over at him. “My yard?”

“No, I thought I’d just drive around until I found one that appealed to me, and dig in. Yeah, your yard.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I’m up, and I like yard work.”

“Says the man without a yard.”

“Yeah, that’s a downside.” To Tag’s bitter disappointment, Xander polished off the pancakes. “But I give Kevin and Jenny a hand now and then. And Loo. Where are your tools?”

“I have a shovel, a fan rake, and this set of garden tools—you know, little spade, clippers, the fork thing.”

He sat for a moment. “And you expect to deal with that yard with a shovel, a rake?”

“So far. What else?”

“You need loppers, a wheelbarrow, you can use some of the empty drywall buckets around here, a pickax. You need both a fan rake and a garden rake, shears—”

“I need to make a list.”

“I’ll see what I can do with what you’ve got, and we’ll go from there.”

—

Since she’d planned on a full morning’s work, she settled down at her temporary station. He could play in the yard, she thought, though she imagined he’d get tired and bored with the sheer grunt work of it and come back in, nudge at her to knock off.

Have sex, take a ride, do something she didn’t have on her morning agenda.

That was the problem with having someone around. They so often wanted to do something you didn’t have time for.

She took care of some basics first, some bread-and-butter shots. Pleased with the barn studies, she uploaded them before spending time on the one she’d chosen of Cecil.

But since the pictures she’d just taken tugged at her, she shuffled back the other work she’d intended to finish and studied them—frame by frame—on the big screen.

She started on the last shot—the lucky, impulse shot where he’d been half turned toward her, with a half smile, good and cocky, on his face.

God, he was gorgeous. Not slick and polished—nothing slick or polished about him. It was all raw and rough, and only more so with that morning stubble, the ungroomed hair.