People should see your work. The sentence followed her to the beach. She kept waiting for him to say something else. He hadn’t.
The Gulf was calm. She sat on the sand and watched the water go dark as the sky lost its color. Sam’s offer meant the world again. Clint meant staying still long enough to see what happened next. She didn’t know which one scared her more.
She stayed on the beach until the lighthouse beam started its sweep overhead. Then she walked back to Captain’s Watch, opened her laptop, and began editing.
Sally, Jan, Bryan, Emily, Beth Ramsey at her easel. Good work, solid work. Then she opened the folder from the interrupted session with Clint. The images stopped her.
Clint looking out at the water, his shoulders dropped, his face open in a way she’d never seen when he knew anyone was watching. Mid-laugh in the next frame, his whole expression cracked wide. And the one that wrecked her. The image of his hands holding a random piece of driftwood, looking out at the Gulf, unguarded, the late afternoon light cutting across his jaw.
These were the best photographs she’d taken in years. Maybe ever. They were raw and luminous. The honesty only happened when a subject forgot the camera existed. She knew, looking at them, that they were the emotional center of her entire series. Everything else was good. These were better than good.
She also knew he’d never approved them. He’d agreed to veto power over every shot, and she’d agreed knowing she wouldn’t honor it, and at the time that had felt like a photographer’s instinct. Now it felt like a line she was standing on.
She flagged them in a separate folder. She should delete them. Respect what he’d asked and let the images go.
She closed the laptop and sat in the dark, but she didn’t delete them.
Chapter 20
The lighthouse stairs were narrower than Melissa remembered.
She’d been shooting the interior for the town website all morning, working her way up through the ground-floor museum space and the first landing. The staircase curved tight against the interior wall, and the light changed with every step, filtering through the small windows at unpredictable angles. Difficult light, but she used to chase light exactly like this.
Clint was two flights above her, replacing a section of railing that had come loose from the wall. She could hear him working as she climbed, the scrape of a drill, the rattle of hardware in his tool belt. They’d been orbiting each other all morning, trading comments between floors, their voices carrying easily through the open stairwell.
“Watch the seventh step.” Clint’s voice echoed down the stairwell. “Tread’s uneven.”
“I’ve been up these stairs multiple times.”
“And you’ve tripped on that step at least twice.”
She smiled and didn’t argue because he was right.
She rounded the curve at the second landing and found him crouched on the stairs above her, the loose railing bracket in one hand and a drill in the other. The space between the wall and the iron railing left just enough room for one person. He shifted to let her pass, pressing his back against the curved wall while she edged by with her camera bag.
Her foot caught the uneven tread. Her weight shifted wrong, and for a half-second she was falling backward, her free hand grabbing for something solid. Clint dropped the bracket. His arm came around her waist, fast, steady, the reflexes of a man who’d spent twenty years pulling people out of bad situations.
She was against his chest, his arm tight around her. Her hand rested flat on the wall beside his shoulder. The stairwell was quiet except for their breathing and the faint sound of waves against shore below.
He didn’t let go. She stayed where she was.
His face was close enough that she could see the scar along his jawline, the one he’d never explained. She felt his arm tighten, just barely, a pull so slight she might have imagined it.
Then he loosened his grip. She stepped down to the landing below. He picked up the bracket.
“Told you about that step,” he said. His voice was rough.
“You did.”
They went back to work. She photographed and he drilled. Neither of them mentioned it. But every time she lifted the camera, she felt his arm across her back.
She was still feeling it when Grant found her in the courtyard that evening.
He was animated, pacing beside the fire pit with his hands in his jacket pockets. “I’m planning the layout for the coming Art Walk. Emily’s got three new pieces, Beth Ramsey has her watercolors, and I’ve got a spot that’s perfect for a small photography feature.” He stopped pacing and looked at her. “Your portrait series. I’ve seen some of the prints at Emily’s. They’re incredible. Do you have enough for a show?”
She looked up from her camera. A public exhibition. Her work on a gallery wall with her name beside it. The last time that had happened, her career had caught fire and burned a woman’s life down with it.
But this was different. These portraits were earned. Every subject had said yes. Every frame was honest.
