Then what happens when you leave?

As she’d told him earlier, her ultimate dream was to travel the world and capture some of its wonders through her camera. Life in Trouble was nice… but lacking. In her mind it had always been temporary, until that one dream job came along.

Until now.

With Brody standing in front of her, smelling so good, big and wide and so masculine, it didn’t seem all that lacking.

“Just for drinks,” he continued when she hadn’t accepted his invitation. “You don’t even have to eat anything. Because after that meal I wouldn’t blame you.”

She giggled despite the tension humming through her body. Just do it! Go out with him and have all sorts of wicked sex.

And then he touched her. If she thought herself incapable of speech a second ago, now she was practically paralyzed. She just stood there like some fool while he cupped her cheek with one warm hand. His hand was callused but felt divine on her skin. He rubbed his thumb in small circles over her earlobe. She’d never thought of her ear as an erogenous zone, but her eyes almost rolled back in her head. Had any man ever paid such attention to her ear before?

She sucked in a sharp breath when he skimmed his thumb just along the edge of her jaw.

“You think you can stay away from me, but you can’t,” he stated in a low voice. “Even if you don’t come back here, we’ll see each other again.”

She barely managed to peel her tongue off the roof of her mouth. “Is that a warning?”

He stepped closer and bent down so his lips were against her ear. “Just a promise,” he whispered.

Without another word, he sauntered away as though pleased with himself for throwing her off balance.


The rapid ticking of the egg timer echoed in the quiet darkroom. A steady stream of water ran from the faucet and cleansed the photo paper resting in the holding tank. Cleaning the paper of the chemical it just sat in would take thirty minutes. Elisa used the time to mix some new chemicals for her next batch of photos.

Since the digital age, developing your own photographs was becoming a lost art. No one used film cameras anymore. Even she didn’t use them that much, except for her landscapes. Why would people use film cameras when they could take the pictures and immediately upload them to their computer? Why waste all this time mixing, stirring, cleaning, scraping, and in the dark no less? Honestly, there was nothing more therapeutic for Elisa. In her darkroom, it was quiet. She was alone. Nothing but her and the photos—photos she’d captured with her camera and created on paper. The best part of the developing process was being able to watch the image appear on the paper, the fruits of her labor slowly emerging before her eyes. The results gave her satisfaction like nothing else could.

Plus being in her darkroom gave her time to think, which she did a lot of.

The meal she had at the Golden Glove a few days ago might not be worth remembering, but the man she ate with was. His deep voice, like magical fingers caressing all her sweet spots, had been inside her head since departing from him. Like a forbidden promise she had little will to deny. He could be very dangerous if she spent too much time with him. His smile alone could chip away at the protective barrier she’d built around herself. Would he be worth coming out of that shell for?

You think you can stay away from me, but you can’t.

She’d thought Micah had been worth it. After that fiasco, she’d gotten back to reconstructing her life, this time taking extra care to keep herself even more protected. But a friendship would do no harm, would it? Brody had asked her to come back. Then proceeded to make her pulse race and give her erotic dreams. Would it really hurt her to eat out every once in a while? There had to be something on the menu worth eating.

However, once the photos got sent to the magazine, she had no reason to see him again. Unless it was on her terms. That she could do. Plus she deserved a little eye candy every once in a while. And why not a date? She hadn’t made it a priority since moving to Trouble, since she’d wanted to focus on her career. Some women would consider a few years to be a major dry spell. Elisa considered herself career driven. If the right guy came along, she’d go out with him. However, although she loved Trouble, there didn’t seem to be that many eligible men here.

The metroplex of Dallas/Fort Worth, where she’d gone to school at Texas Christian University, had plenty of young men for her to choose from. But Elisa had never really been at home in Texas. Years before her parents’ deaths, they’d taken a driving trip through the West to see the countryside. They’d explored Wyoming and had stopped in Trouble for lunch. After college and her parents’ deaths, there had been nothing to keep her in Fort Worth—just the memories of the family she used to have. On a whim, she’d packed her things and relocated from north Texas to southern Wyoming. Unexpectedly, there were things she missed about Texas: the breathtaking sunsets and blue sky that went on forever and ever. But Wyoming had its own beauty, and Trouble was a rare gem of a small town that could hardly be found across the U.S. Very quickly, she’d fallen into a pleasant routine, bought a house, and had been working on her photography. All in all, she’d never been happier. Even if she knew she’d leave in a heartbeat if the right job offer came along.

All it would take would be a phone call from her former college professor, who’d also been her mentor, asking her to accompany him on a shoot. Professor Samuel Harper had been her advanced digital photography teacher and had previously traveled the world shooting for some of the biggest magazines, including National Geographic. Some of his work had hung in his classroom, and Elisa had fallen in love with it immediately. He’d displayed some of his most spectacular work, such as snow blowing off the peak of Mount Everest, and the migration of gray whales in Alaska’s Nelson Lagoon. The man was an absolute genius behind the lens, and Elisa had known she’d wanted to be just like him.

Right after graduation, he’d pulled her aside and had given her the best piece of news she’d ever heard.

“Sometimes, if the right offer comes along, I’ll go on an assignment for National Geographic,” he’d told her. “And if they’re generous enough, they let me bring a team with me. If and when that happens, I’ll give you a call.”

Too stunned to speak, Elisa had just shaken her head in disbelief. “You’d do that for me?”

He’d placed both hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eye. “You’re an incredibly fast learner and one of the most talented photographers I’ve seen in a long time. I’d bring you with me in a heartbeat.”

Only once since then had he called her. It had been for a shoot in Australia, covering the Ningaloo Reef. To her ultimate frustration, the timing hadn’t worked. She’d already purchased nonrefundable tickets to see her brother during the time when Professor Harper needed her to go. She’d been so torn over her inability to pursue her dream. But Marcello had been and always would be more important than anything. She didn’t regret the decision to travel to South America to see her little brother, because she so rarely got to see him.

Despite that, she still held out hope she’d hear from her old teacher, inviting her to globe-trot for National Geographic.

After mixing the fixer solution, she placed it on her supply shelf and waited for the photo to finish rinsing. When she first started working in a darkroom, she made the mistake of being impatient and leaving the room during the rinsing process. Even the tiniest filter of light would cause a photo to turn gray. Nothing was more disappointing than watching a picture, which she’d worked painstakingly on to get just the right angle, turn gray. Gray pictures didn’t sell. Gray pictures ended up in the trash. She’d thrown away a lot of gray, streaky, and spotty photos over the years. Not only was it disheartening; it was an incredible waste of supplies. Things like paper and solution weren’t cheap.

When the thirty minutes was up, Elisa shut the water off, grabbed the paper by the corner, and hung it on a drying clip. Then she ran a small sponge over the photo to remove excess water. When the whole process was finished, she had a breathtaking shot of the moon edging just above a ridge of foothills. It had taken her a long damn time to get this. Each evening she’d go out, hoping to catch the moon at just the right time. To her disappointment, the sky would either be too light or she would arrive too late. In her mind, she knew exactly what she wanted and would settle for nothing less.

Brilliant daylight pouring in through the windows practically blinded her when she left the darkroom. Elisa was just about to pick up the phone and make her weekly call to her brother when the doorbell rang. She swung the door open, and on the other side stood one of her neighbors, Kelly. Whenever Elisa thought of Kelly, images of Tinker Bell flashed through her mind. The other woman was five foot four at best and sported a spiky hairdo that made her look like she was about fifteen. Elisa’s trained eye always spotted professionally done hair. Every varied shade of blond woven into the pixielike cut wasn’t cheap.

“Hi,” Elisa greeted her visitor. She stepped back and let the other woman enter.

Painted red toenails encased in silver-jeweled sandals stepped over the threshold. Elisa led Kelly into the kitchen.

“Would you like something to drink?” she asked the other woman.

“No thanks.” Kelly grabbed her sunglasses off the top of her head and dropped them in her snakeskin bag. “I came by to ask you a huge favor. I wasn’t interrupting your work, was I?”