“One more week, they think. Hardy will be over the moon, bringing his two girls home.” Joe paused. “But I hope my sister’s not going to want to have any more children. Hardy says he couldn’t survive this again, even if Haven wants to take the chance.”
“Is there a risk of preeclampsia if she gets pregnant again?”
Joe nodded.
“Haven may be fine with just having one child,” I said. “Or Hardy may change his mind. You never can predict what people will do.” Having reached the last picture, I handed the tablet back to Joe.
We were at his house in the Old Sixth Ward, a charming bungalow with a slightly smaller companion house in the back. Joe had painted the interiors of both buildings a soft, creamy white and stained the trim a rich walnut. The decor was spare and masculine, with a few pieces of beautifully restored furniture. Joe had spent more time showing me the smaller house, where he worked and kept his photography equipment. To my surprise, there was even a darkroom, which he admitted he seldom used, but would never get rid of.
“Every now and then, I’ll shoot a roll of film because there’s still something magical about developing a print in the darkroom.”
“Magical?” I repeated with a quizzical smile.
“I’ll show you sometime. There’s nothing like seeing an image appear in the developer tray. And it’s all about craft: You can’t tell if the exposure is too light or dark, you can’t see the details of burning and dodging, so you have to go with what feels right, what past experience has taught you.”
“So you prefer that to Photoshop?”
“No, Photoshop has too many advantages. But I still like the idea of having to wait to see a picture in the darkroom. Taking time, and seeing the image with a fresh perspective… it’s not as practical as digital, but it’s more romantic.”
I loved his passion for his work. I loved it that he thought of a tiny windowless room filled with trays of caustic chemicals as romantic.
Scrolling through files of photos on a computer monitor, I found a series of shots he’d taken in Afghanistan… beautiful, stark, riveting. Some of the landscapes were otherworldly. A pair of old men sitting in front of a turquoise wall… a soldier’s silhouette against a red sky as he stood on a mountain path… a dog, seen from an eye-level perspective with a soldier’s booted feet in the foreground.
“How long were you there?” I asked.
“Only a month.”
“How did you end up going?”
“A friend from college was filming a documentary. He and his camera crew were embedded with troops at a firebase in Kandahar. But the stills photographer had to leave early. So they asked if I would step in and finish. I was sent to the same two-day training session the rest of the crew had gone through, basically how not to screw things up in a combat environment. The dogs at the front lines were incredible. Not one of them flinched at the sound of a gunshot. One day on patrol, I watched a Lab sniff out an IED that the metal detectors didn’t catch.”
“That was incredibly dangerous.”
“Yes. But she was a smart dog. She knew what she was doing.”
“I meant dangerous for you.”
“Oh.” His lips quirked. “I’m pretty good at staying out of trouble.”
I tried to return the smile, but there was a stabbing sensation in my chest as I thought of him taking that kind of risk. “Would you do something like that again?” I couldn’t resist asking. “Take a job where you could be hurt or… or worse?”
“Any of us could be hurt, no matter where we are,” he said. “When your number’s up, it’s up.” His gaze held mine as he added, “But I wouldn’t go into a situation like that if you didn’t want me to.”
The implication that my feelings might sway such a decision was a little unnerving. But part of me responded to it, craved that kind of influence over him. That worried me even more.
“Come on,” Joe murmured, leading me out of the small building. “Let’s go into the house.”
Exploring, I went into the small bedroom. The queen-size bed was covered with simple white sheets and a white quilt. I admired the headboard, a panel made of wooden vertical slats. “Where did you get this?”
“Haven gave it to me. It was the door of an old freight elevator in her apartment building.”
Inspecting the piece more closely, I saw a long-faded word stenciled in red letters on the side – danger – and I smiled. I ran my hand across the smooth surface of a turned-over sheet. “These are nice. Looks like a high thread count.”
“I don’t know the thread count.”
I kicked off my shoes and crawled onto the queen-size bed. Reclining on my side, I shot him a provocative glance. “Apparently you don’t share my appreciation for luxury linens.”
Joe lowered himself next to me. “Believe me, you’re the most luxurious thing that’s ever been on this bed.” Slowly his hand followed the curve of my waist and hip. “Avery… I want to take your picture.”
My brows lifted. “When?”
“Now.”
I looked down at my sleeveless top and jeans. “In this outfit?”
Idly, he traced a pattern on my thigh. “Actually… I was thinking you could take it off.”
My eyes turned huge. “Oh, my God. Are you seriously asking me to pose for naked pictures?”
“You can cover yourself with a sheet.”
“No.”
From the way Joe looked at me, I could tell he was calculating how to get what he wanted.
“What is the point?” I asked anxiously.
“My two favorite things in the world are you, and photography. I want to enjoy both at the same time.”
“And then what will happen to these pictures?”
“They’re just for me. I won’t show them to anyone. Later I’ll delete every single one if that’s what you want.”
“Have you done this before?” I asked, suspicious. “Is it some ritual you have with your girlfriends?”
Joe shook his head. “You’re the first.” He paused. “No, you’re the second. Once I was hired to shoot a car ad with a model wearing only silver paint. I went out with her a couple of times after that. She was never actually a girlfriend.”
“Why did you break up?”
“After the silver paint came off, she wasn’t all that interesting.”
I couldn’t hold back a reluctant laugh.
“Let me take your picture,” Joe coaxed. “Trust me.”
I gave him a furiously pleading glance. “Why am I even considering this?”
His eyes flashed with satisfaction. “That means yes.” He left the bed.
“It means I’m going to kill you if you betray me,” I called after him. Hearing myself, I rolled my eyes. “I’m talking like a telenovela character.” I undressed quickly and climbed into bed, shivering at the coolness of the sheets.
In a minute, Joe returned to the room with his Nikon and a small stand-alone flash. He opened the shades, leaving the windows covered with sheers that softened the brilliant afternoon light. As he pulled away the top cover on the bed, I jerked the sheet up high under my chin.
Joe looked at me in a different way from ever before, assessing highlights, shadows, visual geometry.
“I’m not comfortable being naked,” I told him.
“The problem is that you’re not naked often enough. You need to go without clothes about ninety-five percent of the time, and then you’ll get used to it.”
“You’d like that,” I muttered.
Joe grinned and leaned over to kiss the exposed skin of my shoulder. “You’re so pretty without your clothes,” he murmured, working his way toward my neck. “Every time I see you in one of those big loose shirts, I think about all those sexy curves underneath, and it makes me as hot as hell.”
I slid him a perturbed glance. “You don’t like the way I dress?”
He paused in his kissing just long enough to say, “You’re beautiful no matter what you wear.”
The puz
zling thing was, I knew he actually meant it. I could tell it was the truth, had been the truth for him since the beginning. My figure flaws weren’t flaws to Joe – he had always regarded my body with a mixture of appreciation and lust that was pretty damned flattering.
I thought it was possible that I’d been testing him without being aware of it, trying to find out if the sack dresses and big tops and baggy pants would make any difference to him. Clearly they hadn’t. Joe thought I was beautiful. Why should I think less of myself than he did? What point was there in letting those beautiful clothes hang in my closet unworn?
“I have some really stylish new outfits that Steven helped me pick out,” I said. “I just haven’t found the right time to start wearing them.”
“You don’t have to change anything for me.”
Perversely, that made me wish I’d worn something new and pretty today, something that measured up to the way he saw me.
At Joe’s direction, I lay on my side, awkwardly propping my head on my hand.
Lowering to his haunches, Joe positioned the camera. The shutter clicked and the nightstand unit flashed, covering me with fill light to balance the brilliance from the window behind me. “You’ve got no reason to be shy,” he said. “Every inch of you is luscious.” He paused to adjust the stand-alone flash, tested it again, and focused on me. His voice was soft and encouraging. “Can you show me your leg?”
I hesitated.
“One leg,” he coaxed.
Cautiously, I slid out my top leg and hooked it over the top of the sheet.
Joe’s gaze traveled along my exposed limb, and he shook his head as if presented with more temptation than a man could stand. Setting aside the camera, he bent to kiss my knee.
I reached out to stroke his dark hair. “You’re about to drop your camera.”
“I don’t care.”
“You will if it smashes on the floor.”
His hand began to insinuate itself beneath the sheet. “Maybe before I start taking pictures, we should —”
“No,” I said. “Stay on task.”
He withdrew his hand. “After?” he asked hopefully.
I couldn’t restrain a grin. “We’ll see.”
My smile was captured with an immediate click of the shutter. Joe proceeded to shoot pictures from different angles, adjusting the focus ring with expert precision.
“Why do you have it on manual?” I asked, tucking the sheet more securely beneath my arms.
“In this lighting, I can find the right focusing point faster than auto mode can.”
It was sexy, watching his hands on the camera, the skillful way he held and manipulated it. There was a particular pleasure in watching a man do something he was that good at. His expression was absorbed and intent as he took a series of shots with me lying on my stomach, my hips covered with the sheet, the length of my back exposed. I rested my head in the crook of my folded arms and gave him a sideways glance. The shutter clicked several times.
“Damn, you’re photogenic,” he murmured, approaching the bed. “Your skin catches the light like a pearl.” As he continued to take shots from various angles, praising and flirting, fondling whenever he got the chance, I found myself beginning to have a good time.
“I’m beginning to think you’re just using this as an excuse to feel me up,” I commented.
“Side benefit,” he said, climbing onto the bed with me. Still holding his camera, he straddled my hips in an easy movement, his denim-clad thighs on either side of me.
“Hey,” I protested, tugging the sheet higher over my breasts.
Rising on his knees, Joe angled the camera directly above me and took a few shots. As close as we were, it was impossible not to notice that the button-fly crotch of his jeans was straining. Playfully, I walked my fingers up to his crotch and wiggled them into the spaces between the metal buttons.
Joe fumbled to adjust the focus ring. “Avery, don’t distract me.”
“I’m trying to help you.” I unfastened the top button.
“That’s not helping. In fact” – he let out an unsteady breath as I began on the second button – “that’s the opposite of helping.” He pried my hand from the placket. “Be a good girl and let me take a few more shots. I like this pose.” After pressing a kiss into my palm, he positioned my arm up around my head in an abandoned posture. His fingers adjusted my elbow, softening the angle. With every alteration of his weight, I felt the enticing pressure of him against my groin.
Picking up his camera, Joe rose to his knees again. I looked into the lens while he looked at me, and I thought of the last time we’d had sex, how he’d stood at the side of the bed and pulled my legs up to his shoulders, how he’d teased and entered me slowly.
As I lay there, warmed by the erotic memory, I felt a deep, unfamiliar sense of ease, of languorous openness. My inhibitions had dissolved, and for once I wasn’t trying to hide anything. It was so completely the opposite of what I’d expected that my lips parted with a faint, wondering smile.
The shutter clicked a few more times. “That’s it,” Joe said softly, the camera lowering.
“What do you mean?”
“I got the shot I wanted.”
I blinked. “How can you tell?”
“Sometimes I can feel it even before I see it. Everything lines up. The second I push the shutter, I know I’ve found the sweet spot.”
As he stretched to set the camera on the nightstand, I went for the buttons of his fly again, and I heard his quiet laugh. He stripped off his T-shirt and tossed it aside. Intent on my task, I worked at the fastenings, my hair pooling and sliding over his bare stomach. I licked at the line of crinkled hair leading into his jeans, my tongue sliding over roughness and silk. He made a fervent sound, his hands coming to my head, a slight tremor in his fingers. Another button, another, and then I pulled at the waist of his boxers.
Joe moved to help me. Before he could shove his jeans all the way off, I was on him, grasping the thick shaft with both hands. It was scorching hot, the thin skin moving easily over hard flesh. I put my mouth on him, and he went still, his jeans bunched around his knees, his lungs working in powerful bursts. I painted him with my tongue, taking in the salt and satin and a rampaging pulse, his pleasure so intense that I could feel its echoes in my own body. When I heard his muffled pleading groan, I lifted my head inch by inch, sucking wetly all the way. His entire body was rigid, his face flushed.
I crawled over him and he tangled one of his hands in my hair, forcing my head down to his. As he kicked off his jeans, I straddled him and reached down to guide him in place. With a hoarse murmur, he moved to help me, his hand closing over mine.
I began to ride fast and hard, pumping in reckless abandon. Wanting to make it last, Joe reached for my hips, forcing me to ease the pace. His hands played over me gently, caressing, coaxing me to lean forward. Lifting his head, he caught my nipple and pulled it deep. I writhed with the heat of him inside me, my body filled and brimming with sensation. He pulled me down farther, and we tried to find ways to pull each other even closer, using arms, legs, hands, mouths, breathing the same air, matching kisses and caresses and heartbeats.
Much later, Joe showed me the photo after he’d loaded it onto his laptop. A bright wash of light had imparted a pearly glow to my skin and turned my hair ember red. The eyes were heavy-lidded, the lips full and slightly parted. The woman in the photo was seductive, inviting, radiant.
Me.
As I stared at the image in wonder, Joe wrapped his arms around me from behind and whispered in my ear, “Every time I look at you… this is what I see.”
Nineteen
“E
veryone be quiet,” Sofia said, adjusting the TV volume. “I don’t want to miss a word.”
“You’re recording it, right?” Steven asked.
“I think so, but sometimes I don’t get the settings right.”
“Let me check,” he said, and she handed him the remote.
Everyone in the
studio had gathered to watch the broadcast of a local television-magazine show. The producers had sent a camera crew and reporter to the Harlingen wedding we had done recently. The hour-long wedding special featured the latest tips, fashions, and trends, as well as profiling Texas-based businesses. The last segment of the show focused on practical advice for wedding planning. A Houston planner named Judith Lord had been asked to discuss choosing venues and vendors. I had been invited to follow up with advice about day-of preparation and logistics.
The Judith Lord segment was elegant and dignified, exactly what I hoped mine would be like. Judith, a long-established grande dame of the business, possessed a fondant-over-steel composure that I admired immensely. The reporter asked her a few easy questions, the interview cut to a shot of Judith and a client browsing through a row of wedding dresses and another showing them enjoying wedding cake samples, with Mozart playing in the background.