After the contract was signed and hidden away, ostensibly so that Kerry might not be able to change his mind, they sat before the computer and flipped through other collections of photographs Jordan had taken.

As the lass had done before, she was quick to point out the composition of the shots, while completely ignoring the emotions those shots evoked. After an hour of watching her reveal herself, in what she said and left unsaid, they stumbled into a file she hadn’t meant to open. The woman in the first picture was so compelling to Kerry, however, that he balked when she closed it again.

“Who is she?”

Jordan sighed and held her tongue.

“Let me see it again,” he said. “It is only a picture, is it not?”

She nodded, clicked on the file again, and the image filled the screen. It was a very close shot of an older woman’s face. Her chin rested on the heel of her hand and a ghost of a smile turned up the edges of her lips. Though her skin was dotted with freckles and lines, her dark eyes were wet and bright with reflected light. In fact, the entire shot was rather dark, and yet it lightened his soul to see it.

“My mother,” Jordan said, as if the words had to be squeezed out of her.

“She’s beautiful.”

Jordan rolled her eyes.

He thought it passing strange. “Ye doona think she’s beautiful?”

She shrugged. “You’re just being nice.”

“Fie! I am not being nice.” He pointed at the screen. “Look at her.”

“The shot’s too dark.”

“Yet she lightens the spirit. Makes me feel…hope. Do ye remember what she was looking at?”

Jordan folded her arms and visibly retreated from him, from the photograph. “Her second husband.”

“Ah. So it is not yer mother that ye dislike.”

“I don’t dislike him. I dislike what she’s become with him.”

“And what is that?”

She shrugged. “Content.” Her arms unfolded then and she gestured wildly while she complained, saying more than just her words could convey. “She promised we would go places together. See things. We had a whole list of things we were going to do together after I finished college, and now…”

Jordan cleared her throat and took a deep breath. When she spoke again, the emotion was gone from her voice.

“Now my mother doesn’t want to leave him. For anything. She won’t go out to dinner with me unless he’s invited too. She won’t come to New York for the weekend without him. It’s like she doesn’t…need a daughter anymore.”

The lass stretched forward and turned off the computer with a violent press of the power button.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to rant.” She scooted away and tucked everything back into her black bag, then she pasted a very false smile on her face. “I am very pleased with your shots, though. And I am excited about tomorrow.” She got to her feet and backed around the far end of the couch as if she needed more distance between them. “I’m sorry the couch is so short, but there are pillows and blankets in the little cubby, there.”

“The floor will accommodate me nicely.”

She shrugged and kept moving through the kitchen to the bed chamber. “There’s a little bathroom through there. I’ll…” She paused and held the door while she was half in and half out of the room. “Sorry again about the rant.”

“Never a worry, lass. But if ye’d care to talk about it—”

“I wouldn’t. Thanks, though. No need to get too personal, right?”

Which was just another way of saying not personal at all.

“Poor, lonely lass,” Kerry whispered. “Tomorrow will be better. I vow it.”

~ ~ ~

Jordan tried desperately to forget the man bedding down twenty feet from her bedroom door.

For half a second, she deliberated on whether to take off her make-up, but she knew she wouldn’t get any sleep at all if she didn’t go through her regular routine. Besides, her skin wouldn’t thank her in the morning.

Digging through her toiletry bag, the only head band she could find was an old one of her mother’s that must have been hiding in the bottom for ages. It was white terrycloth with a cluster of little cherries sewn onto the middle of the knot. She could see her mother’s face clearly—a memory of when Jordan was young, looking up at her mother’s reflection as she cleaned her own face at night.

The image made her chest sting and she held the headband over the trash can, to keep from reliving that pain again, but when she opened her hand, it hooked on her ring finger and refused to drop.

Oh, well. Just until I buy a new one.

She pulled the band over her head, down to her neck, then forced it up again, pushing her hair away from her face. While she dug out the serum to clean her skin, she caught sight of her reflection and froze. Her mother stared back at her.

Beautiful, the Scot had said. Beautiful because he saw something in Jordan’s mother? Because of how he felt when he looked at the picture? But what did he feel when he looked at her?

The nose was the same as her mom’s. In another twenty years, Jordan would probably look just like the photo. But would anyone think her beautiful then? In twenty years, would she have someone in her life that made her smile like that? Light up like that?

Not at the rate she was going…

Lying in bed, Jordan wondered where Kerry would be twenty years from now, but all she could imagine was the scene from Brigadoon, when the valley fills with mist and takes the little village, and all its people, away.

It was her own fault. She knew nothing about him. He was photogenic, and he looked just like the Mather statue. He’d been kind enough to let her shoot him, a charming enough dinner date, and willing to stay detached—or at least she thought he was willing.

It was all she knew. And if she was going to save her job at Foster and Foster, she was better off not knowing more.

There was a chance, she supposed, that after her little rant, Kerry might not be there in the morning. But she doubted it. There was something about the guy that screamed honorable. And an honorable man wouldn’t sneak out in the middle of the night.

Would he?