Elisa shook her head. “They don’t have the rights to the photos, so they can’t sell them. They would have to get in contact with me first and purchase the rights to the pictures, which they never did.”

“Are you sure your contract doesn’t have a clause saying they retain the rights to the pictures?”

“I had a lawyer look over the contract before I signed it. The rights are mine.”

Brody scratched his chin. “So how do you know they’ve been doing this?”

Elisa couldn’t help but smile. “This is where I got lucky. One of the magazine’s editors knows me because they purchased some photos from me in the past. She told me when she was contacted, the deal sounded fishy and the man was really hesitant to say where he got the pictures from. Since she’s been in the business a long time, she had a feeling they were trying to sell the pictures without my permission. The guy practically clammed up when she asked him to send the pictures over so she could look at them first. He tried to get her to purchase the pictures on the spot.”

Thank goodness the scumbag had the balls to contact someone as prestigious as that particular magazine. If not, Elisa might not have known.

“So what can you do?” Brody asked her.

Elisa shrugged and picked up her water glass. “Find a good lawyer, and hope he or she can get the money this website owes me.”

Brody glanced at Tyler, then back at her. “My dad has a really good lawyer who handles all the legal business for the restaurants. He might be able to help you or at least give you some advice. Sometimes all it takes is a threatening letter.”

Elisa smiled, despite her uncertainty with her new dilemma. “Anything he could do would be great. I’m not even sure where to turn at this point.”

“Dad, can I stay the night at Tommy’s tonight?” Tyler butted in before his dad could respond to her.

Brody stared hard at his son for a moment before answering. “Can you go another night? I had something planned for us.”

Tyler set his phone on the table and pinned his father with puppy-dog eyes. “But, Dad, his mom just got Rock Band and Tommy and I really want to play. And his mom said she would come pick me up at Elisa’s house. Please?”

Something dark passed through Brody’s eyes as he regarded the boy. Elisa’s heart cracked open at the tug-of-war Brody must be going through. Here he was, trying to make an effort to spend time with the boy, and Tyler wanted to hang out with friends. How lonely that must be for Brody. Elisa wanted to comfort him. She wanted to place her hand over Brody’s much bigger one and tell him it was okay, that Tyler was bound to reach this phase sooner or later.

Brody ran his hand over Tyler’s sun-kissed hair. “All right, you can go. But tell Tommy’s mom that I’ll drop you off.”

“Yes!” Tyler pumped his fist in the air. “Thanks, Dad.” His fingers flew with lightning speed over the keypad of his cell phone.

Brody directed his smile at Elisa, but the look didn’t reach his eyes. Her hand itched to touch him, but she held back. She was unsure about making a gesture like that in front of Tyler.

The darkness that clouded his eyes moment ago melted away as he gazed at her. “I’ll stop by on my way home to look at those photos.”


Brody strolled up the concrete walk to Elisa’s front door and tried to ignore his racing heart. Twenty minutes ago, Tyler had been all grins and giddiness when he burst into his friend’s house. Rock Band had dominated their conversation ever since Brody had picked Tyler up from Elisa’s house earlier. Apparently it was the coolest thing ever. Maybe he was behind the times, but Brody didn’t see how pushing buttons on a fake guitar could be fun.

Tyler was only eleven, and Brody was already being ousted for video games. When Tyler had been little, Brody had never imagined a day when he wouldn’t have been able to relate to his son anymore. It’s like he didn’t know the boy. Or Tyler didn’t know him. Or maybe a bit of both. Somewhere along the way they’d become strangers to each other. Worst of all, Brody had stopped trying, even though it hadn’t been intentional. Work had snuck its way to the top of his priorities, and Tyler had been shoved to the bottom.

The knowledge made him sick to his stomach. As though he were the worst father ever who’d lost all touch with his own child. Maybe he ought to buy a gaming system so they could play Rock Band together.

He took his frustration out on Elisa’s door and knocked harder than he needed to. When the door swung open seconds later, the black cloud hanging over his head dissipated slightly. The tension eased from his body when the exotic woman on the other side smiled at him. Her dark eyes practically glowed when they assessed him.

She gestured him inside, then closed the door. “Are you okay?”

Damn, did he have “pissed off” written on his forehead? She’d asked him the same thing when he’d picked Tyler up. This time her words managed to cut through his bad mood like a knife through butter.

He rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. “Yeah. Tyler rarely spends the night with a friend on nights that I have him. It just caught me off guard.”

“What was it you had planned to do with him?”

Elisa’s breasts smashed together when she crossed her arms, momentarily distracting him from her question. “What’s that?”

One side of her mouth kicked up. “Earlier you said you had planned something for the two of you.”

Oh, that. Yeah, that had been his last desperate attempt at holding on to his son’s childhood.

He lifted his shoulders to feign indifference, even though he didn’t feel that way. “I was just going to take him out to play catch. We used to do it all the time.”

Elisa’s bottomless eyes softened. “That’s really sweet.”

“Unfortunately, ‘sweet’ doesn’t get you very far compared to Rock Band.” Was he already the uncool dad?

“What kid can resist Rock Band? I bet if you offer to take him out tomorrow, he’ll go.”

Would he though? At one time Tyler would have jumped at the opportunity to play catch with his dad. Now Brody had no one to blame but himself for letting too much time go by. He cleared his throat and tried to steer the conversation in a different direction. “Do you have those pictures for me?”

Elisa regarded him a moment longer with those watchful eyes of hers, eyes that saw way too deeply into him. “Sure, they’re over here.”

Thankfully she didn’t pursue the subject, for which he was grateful. Right now he lacked the words to properly express his feelings. Brody hadn’t been born with the ability to put his thoughts into words, which was something Kelly had constantly complained about.

Elisa’s knee-weakening flowery scent teased him as he followed her farther into the house. Something about the way she smelled always made him think of wildflowers on the Wyoming prairies.

On her kitchen table was a thick envelope. She picked it up, pulled out several proof sheets, and handed them to him.

“Be brutally honest,” she said. “If you don’t think they work, we can do them again.”

The photos looked like they belonged in a gourmet magazine. Each picture captured the delicious essence and perfection of the dish. This woman really didn’t know how good she was. Brody would be damn proud to frame every one of these and hang them front and center in the restaurant.

“These are outstanding,” he said as he glanced from one photo to the next.

“I thought they turned out better, but I wanted to make sure you were happy with them.”

He took his attention off the pictures and placed it on Elisa. Her teeth worried her bottom lip like a child seeking approval from a parent. Her uncertainty was the sexiest yet sweetest thing he’d ever seen.

“I think you did a perfect job with them,” he reassured her.

Her eyes lit up when she smiled. “Thanks. Looks like you were doing pretty good business today.”

He nodded. “Our numbers have been slowly climbing over the past week. I just hope it’s a sign of things to come and not just a fluke. But as good as these are, we have a little problem.

“Another one?” she answered with a grin.

He set the photos on the table and ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Anthony doesn’t want his food photographed.”

Elisa blinked her big brown eyes and shook her head. Her disbelief was as evident as his. “Why?”

“I think it boils down to his confidence. And fear.” Anthony had had a lot tossed at him in the past couple of days, and thus far he’d handled it pretty well. But when Brody had mentioned publishing the pictures in a county-wide magazine, the ex–air force pilot had become more nervous than a nun in a porn shop.

“What, fear of failing?” Elisa wanted to know.

“I think it has more to do with my father.”

Her dark brows pulled together. “He’s afraid of your father?”

“Well, yeah, who can blame him? My dad can be pretty intimidating.” He leaned against the edge of the table and crossed his arms over his chest. “Anthony knows what’s on the line here. I don’t think he thinks he can handle the pressure of bringing the restaurant back and have my father breathing down his neck. Anthony saw what happened to Travis.”

“So, Anthony is afraid he’s putting his job on the line. Basically he wants to play it safe.”

Brody nodded. “Pretty much.”

“Then maybe you should have the sous-chefs prepare the food for the magazine. Give Anthony more time to ease into things. Maybe it’s just too much too fast.”

Brody rubbed a hand along his whisker-covered jaw, thinking he desperately needed a shave. It seemed for every one step forward he took, he had to turn around and take two steps back. How many steps backward could he take before his old man gave him the boot? Brody got that Anthony was just as terrified as he, given what had happened with Travis and the chef before him. The bartender had a living to make and couldn’t do so if he got fired. Somehow Brody had to convince Anthony that the failure would be on Brody’s own shoulders and not on his.