Gathering the necessary items, Elisa walked toward the kitchen, while her heart thumped harder with each step.

You’re a professional woman who’s done hundreds of shoots. No reason why this one is any different.

Okay, so she’d told smaller lies than that. But maybe if she repeated the words often enough, she wouldn’t come across like a lovesick zombie.

In the kitchen, Anthony was hard at work cooking… whatever Brody had asked him to cook. Elisa actually had no idea which dishes to expect, but she had no doubt they would be spectacular. She may have always preferred to do her shooting outdoors, in nature, but today’s assignment still had that familiar excitement coursing through her blood. That was always a nice reminder of why she loved holding a camera.

Brody was nowhere to be seen, and Elisa tried not to let that little fact dampen her mood. Tried, and was unsuccessful.

Anthony glanced up when she approached and graced her with an ear-to-ear grin.

“Good morning, Elisa,” he greeted in that deep rumbling voice of his.

“Looks like you’ve had a busy morning,” she replied with a glance at the food that had already been prepared and plated. Three meals, which consisted of a soup, sliders, and some kind of flatbread, were lined up on a roll-away cart. Elisa studied them, thinking how Anthony had a magic touch with food, a talent he most likely didn’t know he possessed. At least from what Brody had told her.

Speaking of Brody, where was he?

“Do you mind if I make some adjustments to these?” she asked the cook in an attempt to take her mind off the man who constantly plagued her thoughts.

Anthony waved his hand toward the food. “Be my guest.”

She set her camera down and rearranged the triangular-shaped cut flatbread, then moved a tiny bowl of dipping sauce just a fraction. Most people wouldn’t notice the difference, but that small adjustment could be the difference of catching the light perfectly or missing it completely. After that she stacked the two slices of toasted baguette bread, which accompanied the soup, on top of each other instead of leaving them side by side. That would enable her to catch the crisp edges of the bread a lot easier.

When she was satisfied, Elisa picked up her digital camera and captured each dish one by one. While working, she made sure to shoot each piece from different angles, so as to get a better idea of how the food would look most appealing. Of course, the end result was always a different story, but practice shots never hurt anything.

By the time she had finished, Anthony had two more plates done. But Brody still wasn’t around. Maybe he didn’t know she was there? Then again, he’d asked her to come at this specific time, so he had to know she’d be here by now.

Now you just sound like a high schooler.

She and Anthony worked side by side for a little while longer before there wasn’t much left for her to do except upload her shots to her laptop. She pushed through the kitchen doors but didn’t make it to her equipment because her body instantly picked up on Brody’s presence. Dang it, she hadn’t even seen him, and her Brody radar had gone haywire.

There, behind the bar, stood the man of her fantasies, talking to his “consuming” brother RJ. The two men seemed to be deep in conversation, but Elisa’s eyes barely touched on Brody’s blonder brother. No, her eyes were all for the black-haired man with the piercing gray eyes and too-wide shoulders. His arms were crossed over his chest, which only reminded Elisa of how powerfully masculine he was. And yet gentle at the same time. Brody McDermott was a multifaceted man who never failed to surprise her.

What wasn’t a surprise, however, was her reaction to him. How painfully predictable she was. Rapid heartbeat: check. Sweaty palms: check. Jittery, overloaded hormones: double check.

Oh, and let’s not forget your deep, unrequited love for him. He can probably feel it from over there.

Lord, the man had turned her into a head case.

She set her camera down by her laptop, when RJ said something in a low tone. Brody’s response was a deep, rumbling laugh, which danced across her sensitive nerve endings like a feather. Then he said something back to his brother, which she missed because her head was too busy spinning like a damn top.

Maybe she could fake some stomach bug, so she could hightail it home. The uneasy feeling in her stomach was close enough to making her want to vomit.

Instead, she pulled in a cleansing breath and forced herself to focus on work. This was, after all, why she was being paid. Not to fall at the man’s feet. That was for behind closed doors.

She took the SD card out of her camera and inserted it into the slot of her laptop. The photos took a few moments to transfer from the card to her hard drive, time she used to keep her back to Brody. The conversation behind the bar had stopped. Her willpower around the man was weak, but she somehow managed to keep her attention in front of her and not steal peeks over her shoulder.

But then she felt him. And not because he’d touched her. No, he didn’t need to make physical contact in order for Elisa to know Brody was around. Simply being in her personal space was enough for her senses to go on high alert.

And then there was how he smelled. Oh sweet mother, the man knew how to work it. He worked it in such a way that Elisa didn’t know which way was up or how to get back down to Earth. Where her sanity was.

“Looks like you’ve made some progress already,” he finally said. Entirely too close to her.

She plastered a smile on her face and hoped the heat flaming her cheeks wasn’t all that noticeable. “It’s been successful so far. I just have to get these photos uploaded. Then you can take a look at them and we can go from there.” Like maybe to a bed?

His gaze ran over her features, and a peculiar look passed in his eyes as though he had something on his mind other than pictures.

Well, she did as well so the man was in good company.

The moment passed when he nodded. “Sounds good.”

They spent the next half an hour going over the shots she’d taken in the kitchen, with him making comments and her taking notes of what he liked and what he didn’t. The magazine was allowing them only three images, so they had to weed out the photos that weren’t strong enough. Anthony thought they all looked good, which was surprising given his hesitancy in the first place.

After they were finished with that, Elisa closed her notebook and worked the kinks from her neck. “Sounds like we’re good to go,” she said.

“I’d say so,” he agreed.

Then the two of them stood there, staring at each other. Elisa was already wound so tightly that her head felt like it was going to explode. She stepped around Brody, grasping her digital camera a little more fiercely than she needed to.

“Well, I’ll just get this stuff ready,” she said in a lame attempt to pretend to be busy, when what she really wanted to do was grab Brody and yank his mouth to hers.

How could he seem so indifferent when she was ready to come apart?

His had shot out and grabbed her wrist. “Elisa,” he said.

She halted in her tracks, mostly because his grasp prevented her from going any farther.

And another thing she didn’t understand. How could he come off as being unaffected and then look at her as though he wanted to tear her clothes off?

Before she could say anything, he did something that had her head spinning even more than it already was. He kissed her. And not just your everyday affectionate, nice-to-see-you kiss. Like, a real kiss. A wholehearted, full-tongue-action, melt-your-bones lip action that made Elisa forget she was standing in the middle of his restaurant. With a job to do. A job that she currently didn’t give a flying rip about, because Brody was kissing her. Tunneling his hands through her hair and making her forget her own name.

“Get a room already.”

The comment from Brody’s brother, although too close to the truth, was enough to have her pulling away. For a moment everything had melted away. No restaurant. No photo shoot. No Mongolia.

And in that moment, there was only Brody. And, for the slightest second, it almost felt as though he may have felt the same way that she felt about him. After all, how could a man kiss like that and not feel anything?

Elisa licked her lips, savoring the taste of Brody. “We can’t do this here.”

One side of his mouth kicked up, like the devilish sneaky man he was. “I know. But I couldn’t stop myself. As it was, I had a hard time talking to my brother without stomping over here and dragging you out the door.”

Oh my.

Okay, good to know she wasn’t the only one on the edge.

Now she felt better. Kind of.

“I’ll go talk to Anthony and we can get this show on the road,” he said before turning around and stalking into the kitchen.

His retreat gave her ample opportunity to admire his firm rear end.


Brody had been forced to put all his personal crap on hold when a crisis erupted at the restaurant a few days after the photo shoot. On the same day a critic from the newspaper was scheduled to eat, Anthony had contracted a nasty stomach flu. It was shitty timing, of course, and Anthony had apologized like a man begging for his life. Brody had told him to take care of his health and come back to work when he felt better. Then he’d slammed the phone down on the receiver and gritted out some colorful expletives that would have made a trucker blush.

The only thing that hadn’t made Brody go completely postal was the fact that they’d finally gotten the photo shoot done. Hours of cooking, perfecting, and standing around while Elisa snapped one shot after another when she’d been here a few days ago had been as exciting as watching paint dry. The only upside was the time he’d been able to spend with the photographer.