THREE
“I HAVE TO hand it to you,” Sol said. “That is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in my life and she hates you. In under two minutes. That’s talent, Alex.”
“Shut up. Please. Just . . . shut up.” Alex ran a hand down his face.
He’s right. She’s lovely and I just . . .
I just.
Why didn’t Cylan warn me the maid of honor was a photographer?
“You only have to work together for the next week. Nothing big,” Sol needled. “Do you know anything about women?”
“There was Lyn.”
Sol frowned.
So did Alex.
Pretty and tall, with auburn hair and a runner’s body, Lyn had been Alex’s last serious relationship. Ten years ago. They’d shared classes for two semesters in college and had spent a not insubstantial amount of time as study partners before Lyn, in her blunt way, informed him that they should be fucking, too. Alex had dated here and there, and he liked women plenty, but he’d convinced himself that med school came before a personal life. But Lyn was so direct and uncomplicated about it—so very casual—that it’d been easy to make the transition. They weren’t lovers so much as people with mutual interests exploring a physical need.
They were athletes testing the limits of their athleticism one fuck at a time.
His Catholicism was easy to ignore then; he was too damned busy with clinicals and class to go to church most weeks. The guilt couldn’t catch up with him because he didn’t have time to let it. As weeks with Lyn turned into months, church became less and less of a priority, and for the first time, he thought maybe it was okay to allow a lapse of tradition. The busier he became, the less time he set aside for venerations; it seemed more and more to him that the church was passé, too old, not agile enough to keep up with the rapid pace of modern life. And Lyn was modern life. She was all about her career, all about getting ahead. He appreciated her drive. Her gruff demeanor and emotional detachment were endearing in their own weird ways.
He grew fond of her, and he assumed she felt the same, but then his father’s plane collided with a Denver mountainside in a freak accident. Alex was devastated in a way he’d never been devastated before, and so he turned to the girl he thought knew him best. Lyn’s answer was to tell him she couldn’t attend the funeral with him, she had a new clinical assignment starting that Monday and he must understand, but he should call her when he was back in town.
Except he didn’t understand. At all. As he sat in the pew at Saint Thomas Aquinas in Dallas, listening to his father’s funeral Mass, thinking about how he’d given up on God and faith, he determined it wasn’t medical school or Lyn that would provide the warmth and comfort he needed to keep from shattering into a thousand pieces during his darkest hour. It was stone walls, rosaries, and hymnals.
He left medical school, and Lyn, the next week.
She took it exactly how he expected she would.
“Well, that’s too bad. Call me if you change your mind.”
He never heard from her again.
I didn’t miss her then, I don’t miss her now.
Sol sucked in a breath. “Yes, but Lyn was awful. We all hated her.”
“Yes, thank you for reminding me.” Alex slapped at his pockets for his car keys before remembering his car had gone in for extensive surgery. “I need a car.”
“For?”
“I need to replace Theresa’s camera.”
“I can have Lorelai drive you if you want. To . . . where are you going?”
“Wherever I have to. Canon Mark IV, I think she said. I’d ask her, but I’m pretty sure she wants to kill me, and no, I don’t want a driver. I want a car.”
Sol eyed him a long minute before ducking behind the front desk and producing a set of keys. “It’s a thirty-year-old Porsche. I think you know what I’d do to you in the eventuality of its demise.”
“Just give it to me. Please? For fuck’s sake.”
Sol flicked him the keys. “Fine, but only because you’re being noble. And don’t forget to confess to using your naughty words, Church Boy.”
Alex didn’t dignify that with an answer, instead finding his way down the hall, out the side door, and into the adjacent garage. Sol’s Porsche was as he remembered it, cherry red and glinting like a ruby, and he climbed inside, wishing he wasn’t a big man inside of a small tin can. Finding local camera shops online was easy. Finding one that’d have her camera, not so much, but after a half-dozen calls he was saved by a little place in Metairie, about twenty minutes away.
“I need a lens, too,” Alex said to the old man behind the counter at the camera shop. Harvey, his name tag said, and he looked like a Harvey, with a gray mustache, grizzle around his mouth, and a mustard stain at the corner of his lips from his half-eaten muffuletta. Harvey kept eyeing his sandwich longingly the entire time Alex perused the counters.
“What kind of lens?”
Alex frowned. “I don’t know.”
Harvey looked annoyed. “You don’t know what millimeter?”
“No. Just . . . I don’t know. Give me one of each.”
“They’re about fifteen hundred bucks apiece, fella.”
Fella. Who says fella?
Guys named Harvey wearing mustard say fella.
“I don’t . . . an array. Of millimeters. I don’t care. Just ring me up and you can get back to your sandwich.”
“It’s your money, kid.” Harvey’s eyes strayed to the window and the red Porsche at the curbside. He ogled it over the rims of his glasses. “Guess that’s not a problem, though. Must be nice.”
Alex couldn’t remember the last time someone called him kid, but then again, a guy named Harvey did what guys named Harvey did, and apparently that included patronizing his customers even when they were shelling out six thousand dollars for a camera and three separate lenses. Harvey packaged them up, pausing only twice to bite into his enormous sandwich, before swiping Alex’s American Express card and waiting for authorization on a machine that looked like it had been crafted in the Paleolithic age.
“DuMont, eh? Like that poof down in New Orleans with the hotel? I heard he’s marrying a Barrington.”
“That’s my brother.” Alex flourished his pen and signed his receipt. “And it’s no one’s business but theirs.”
Harvey frowned. “Guess not. I heard stories, is all.”
So has everyone, Harvey.
So has everyone.
Alex collected his bundle of camera stuff and left without another word. As he climbed into the Porsche, he caught a glimpse of Harvey, who stood at the window of the shop, watching Alex, his beloved muffuletta clasped in hand.
There’s no place like home.
God, get me out of here.
Alex wasn’t good at apologies. He wasn’t good at a lot of things, come to find out, but apologies were particularly trying. Maybe it was that he didn’t screw up with regularity. Or maybe it was that he was prideful. He prayed to be less so, often, but it seemed to be an ingrained part of his disposition. Stiff upper lip and all that. His father had been on the serious side, and his mother always said he was more like his father than the other two boys.
Which is how a 230-pound man was rehearsing an apology inside of The Seaside’s glass elevator.
I’m very sorry I broke your camera. Here, have a new one.
I’d like to start over, Theresa. Hopefully this will help.
I hope one of these lenses will . . .
It’s with sincere regret . . .
I’m terribly sorry, Theresa, that Cylan didn’t tell me that the maid of honor was a photojournalist when he instructed me to keep the press out, but had he, I never would have physically assaulted you or your camera.
Fuck you, Cylan.
Alex was scowling by the time he approached Theresa’s room. His knuckles rapped on the door in quick succession, tap-tap-tap, and he heard a thud followed by rustling from inside.
“Minute!” came her voice. There was another clatter and then the door was opening.
Oh my.
He’d already acknowledged Theresa Ivarson’s appeal despite her abject loathing of him as a person, a construct, a DuMont institution. Red hair, statuesque build, creamy skin—there was a lot to like, even when her eyes had bored through his skull like she wanted him to spontaneously combust. But he hadn’t really appreciated her as much as he did in that moment. The twitchy, reptilian part of his brain was very aware of her physicality. She was fresh from the shower. Her hair hung to her hips, clinging to flawless white skin that had droplets of water everywhere—including her legs, which were long and shapely beneath the logoed Seaside towel that covered some of her thighs, but not all, and were those freckles above her knee? Wide hips. Tapered waist. Cleavage that really ought not be so close because it looked soft and pillowy and perfect for . . . stuff.
A swan neck. A pointed chin with a divot in the middle. Lush, wide lips, a narrow nose, high cheekbones.
Furious brown eyes.
Like, completely furious.
Burn him to death furious.
Can you blame her?
What is wrong with me? Look away!
“Here. Sorry.” Alex shoved the white plastic bag at her and shook it when she hesitated to accept. “I . . . take it.”
“Why?” she demanded.
“Because I . . . What do you mean why?” He frowned, his eyes fixing on the ceiling tiles, the fleur-de-lis pretty and coppery and why hadn’t he noticed how good the dentil molding was here? His wasn’t nearly as good in Dallas, which wasn’t Darren’s fault—that’d been installed long before he’d become Alex’s builder.
“I mean, why are you here?” Theresa asked.
“I’m apologizing,” he said.
“Really?”
“Yes!”
He looked down at her. She seemed less molten, which was good, but there were lines furrowing her brow that telegraphed annoyance and she still hadn’t accepted the package. And she was altogether too naked beneath that towel—though aren’t we all naked beneath our clothes? Can’t you just stop hyperfocusing?—and it was just so . . . irritating. She was irritating to him.
And hot.
Beside the point. I’m not Sol.
“Fine.” She snatched the bag and peered inside. And then she blinked slowly. She looked from the contents, up to him, and then back inside the bag, at the boxed camera and the myriad of lenses. Her mouth flattened into a thin line, her fingers flexed in the bag and made it rustle.
And then she slammed the door.
Alex stared at it. His hand lifted, ready to fire off another barrage of efficient, hard knocks, but no. Let the annoying woman be annoying. It was far easier to discount her attractiveness when she was an obvious ingrate who couldn’t accept a peace offering when it mattered most. It was Sol and Rain’s affair, not theirs, but if she couldn’t overcome an admittedly atrocious first impression, well, that wasn’t on him, it was on her.
He was nearly to the elevator when her door opened again.
“You can return two of these lenses. I . . . thank you,” she called after him.
He stopped.
Oh thank God. Now I can’t hate her.
Love thy brother, Alex. Or sister, as the case may be.
He turned around. Theresa had put on a pair of pajama shorts and a tank top, which didn’t cover too much more skin than the towel had, but it was far less arresting all the same. He clasped his hands behind his back as she approached, her bare feet padding over the carpet. Her toes were painted baby blue.
It was cute.
“I need the thirty-five millimeter one. The others are for— You don’t care about camera stuff. But thank you. You didn’t have to do this.”
She stopped a foot in front of him and smiled. A real smile. The kind that showed off white teeth and made tiny lines appear beside her eyes. Her brows, as red as her hair, lifted up and nearly kissed her hairline.
She’s tall. Almost as tall as me.
“You’re welcome,” he managed to say. There was a lump in his throat that hadn’t been there before, but that was likely better than a lump in his pants, which he’d been terrified of in the face of her near nakedness. It was bad enough that he’d grabbed her and broken her equipment, but a poorly timed erection was too much for his pride to bear. At least, he thought so. Or the shreds of his dignity thought so.
Same thing.
“It might be covered by warranty still. The camera especially. I know this is a lot of money . . .”
“Take it,” he barked. Seeing her appreciation falter at the sharpness of his tone, he inwardly cringed and tried again, softer this time. He hoped. “Please. Take it. I’ll have one of Sol’s people return the other two lenses if you can’t use them.”
She took out the camera box and the lens she needed and handed him the rest still inside the bag. “Thanks. Truly. Thank you. You’ve saved Rain’s wedding pictures. I’ll see you tomorrow at brunch?”
“You’re welcome. And yes, you will,” he said. She nodded and turned back to her room, the boxes stacked atop each other as to not topple to the floor.
He did not at all watch her perfect ass swaying back and forth with her steps.
Heaven help me for noticing.