Calculated Exposure Page 3

  Erica gave her a dismissive wave. “Don’t worry about it. I’m self-entertaining.”

  I bet you are.

  “Good. Uh…” Carla retraced her steps to the stove and center island and knocked lids and covers off everything. “Everyone can help themselves. Dinner’s ready.”

  Grant buckled Adam into his high chair as Erica slipped from the table’s backside and headed toward the center island. She grazed Curt’s front with her side as she passed, and offered no apology.

  “Ladies first,” he said, scenting the hint of violets on the air as she took up station in line in front of him. The aroma was faint, but alluring in the kind of way that made him understand animals’ attraction to flowers. He wanted to hover near her, taste what she was offering, and leave nothing behind for other predators.

  “Curt!”

  He whipped around to see Adam waving a decapitated robot toy at him.

  Headless robot. That’s me. He waved back to the tot, thankful for the momentary distraction, but as soon as he turned back to the island, his stupor returned. Her dark hair’s gentle sway as she reached and filled her plate…and things lower. Curt let his gaze trail down her back, past the cinch of her narrow waist, and settled on the ample backside that pulled the seat of her jeans tight. He reached out and hovered his hand near her ass, seemingly on its own accord, and upon breaking free of the trance, withdrew it and shoved it into his pocket.

  Jesus.

  A surreptitious glance around the room revealed no witnesses, save Adam. Curt blew out a sharp exhalation of relief. He liked women. A lot. Grant knew it. Carla pitied him for it. Still, he tried to keep his hands to himself when around the kids. Wouldn’t do for them to think their godfather was an insufferable letch.

  Hell, am I? He could admit he had been in the past, but he’d been so busy, so distracted lately, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone home with a woman.

  Erica turned ninety degrees, reaching past him for a napkin and grazing his arm in the process.

  The accidental caress felt far too familiar, somehow, although they’d only just met. She must have thought the same because as she drew back, she gave him a saucy wink.

  Shit.

  As nice as her back was, her front was pretty nice, too. He cleared his throat and eased away a couple of paces. He loved dark hair on women, especially when it was long. The shiny, raven tresses hung heavy over her shoulders and framed the perfect oval that was her face. And again, before Curt could help himself, he gave up that space he’d made between them and pulled his hand from his pocket.

  He wound his fingers around a length of the hair near her face, skimming her jaw with his knuckles in the process. She didn’t even twitch.

  “Having fun?” She giggled, seemingly unfazed by his indelicate treatment of her hair. As if it were all so normal for her, she just reached for the mashed potatoes’ serving spoon and heaped a mound onto her dish.

  “Yes, thank you.” He dropped the hair and picked up a plate from the stack.

  “Usually people ask before they touch.”

  He wasn’t like most people. “If you weren’t so brazen about it, going around with your hair let down like a loose woman, perhaps men like me wouldn’t feel so inclined to help ourselves.”

  Shock registered on her face for a moment and Curt, for once in his life, worried he’d offended the woman. Why did he care? He never cared. He hadn’t even gone as far as he was prone to. Normally, he might have suggested she braid her hair, and when she asked why, he’d tell her doing so would keep it out of his face when she was on top of him.

  She studied his face, probably trying to ascertain if he were pulling her leg, so he wriggled his eyebrows.

  That did it. Tension receded. She laughed a deep, throaty laugh that made her full breasts jiggle beneath her clingy pink shirt.

  Jesus. He cast his gaze toward the ceiling and prayed for restraint. That was a new prayer for him.

  She was shaped like a pin-up girl without all the Photoshopping they got nowadays. Perfection in analog, she didn’t need digital correction.

  “Brazen, huh?”

  He returned his gaze to the food spread and reached for the mashed potato spoon. “Oh yeah. Good girls don’t go ’round with all their hair hanging out like that. Maybe a couple of plaits wound ’round your head will temper the effect. Or perhaps a bonnet, darlin’?”

  “Say that around Carla and she’d smack you.” Grant joined them at the island holding a little plastic dish with three partitions, each decorated with a different type of plane: Adam’s plate.

  “Yeah, Carla probably would. She’s got a mean right hook.”

  “Braids and bonnets, huh?” Erica snorted. “I never said I was a good girl. I’ll leave my hair as it is.”

  As she moved on down the island toward the meatloaf, Curt and Grant shared a wide-eyed look. Grant knew what Curt did: no one was as brazen as Curt. Or at least they’d thought. Erica may have been even more scandalizing with her knowing smirks and flirtatious winks, but she had far more finesse. A woman’s touch. Class, even.

  Well then.

  Curt spooned potatoes onto his plate, plus an additional portion which would have been Emma’s, and moved down the line right as Carla returned with the tot.

  “All better. Had a quick Skype with Nonna and all is well,” Carla announced.

  “How are things back in Raleigh?” Grant asked.

  “Fine, as far as I could tell. Mom thinks my due date is wrong and swears I’m going to go late this time. I might have accidentally pulled the router cord.”

  “Oh, that’s cold,” Erica said with a giggle.

  “That’s ’cause you don’t know my mother. She’s this mouthy Italian who thinks her opinions are edicts that have been issued straight from God’s lips. She believes He has appointed her as His holy delivery vessel. I tolerate her fine in small doses, but beyond that we’re not simpatico.”

  “Must be easier being all the way over here.”

  “Exactly. Easy, but…” They all turned to watch Carla shrug. “Lonely.”

  Grant set Adam’s plate onto his tray and pulled his wife into a hug. “Sorry, honey.”

  “Don’t apologize. It was my choice, too.”

  “So, how did you two end up settling down here and not in the US?” Erica asked as she picked up a roll of utensils.

  Grant returned to the island with a second dish–a pink one. “Believe it or not, there isn’t much demand Stateside for an expert of Irish history. In Ireland…”

  “Gotcha.” Erica carried her plate to the table and assessed the seating arrangement.

  “Sit on the side nearest the window. That way I can ogle you close up,” Curt said. Might as well go for the gusto.

  She sucked her teeth. “Who could refuse an offer like that?” Still, she sat at one of the two chairs nearest the picture window and unfolded her napkin onto her lap.

  Curt slipped in behind her and gave her hair a flick as he passed.

  “You break it, you buy it,” she joked.

  “What’s the cost? Might have some Euros in my piggy bank.”

  “Don’t like that conversion rate, but we might be able to work out an installment plan in dollars. I know you’re just a poor student and all.”

  “Considerate of you.”

  “Of course I’m considerate. It’s part of the Latina passion. We like to take care of people.” She lowered her voice to a whisper and leaned in close. “Even pervs with hair fetishes.”

  Curt gave her foot a gentle nudge under the table and tucked into his potatoes. “What else comes along with that passion?”

  “Nothing I can say in front of a Rated G audience.”

  When Curt looked over at her, she was wearing the damnedest smirk he’d ever seen. Was she teasing? He couldn’t tell. He could usually tell.

  After dinner, the Fennells left Curt and Erica up to their own devices for a while so they could get the children bathed and into bed. The two ambled out
into the garden and lingered near Carla’s ill-conceived vegetable patch.

  Curt said, “You know, Carla used to–”

  “Don’t care,” Erica interrupted. Taking him off-guard, she pushed him against the wall next to the back door and pressed her body against his. She cocked her chin up daringly and quirked one corner of her mouth into a smirk.

  He was going to ask her what the game was, but before he could get it out, she shoved her hands into his pants pockets. He didn’t think she was looking for his wallet.

  “Not a fan of small talk, darlin’?”

  “Not a fan of small anything,” she whispered. The fingers of her left hand found his shaft and tightened around it.

  “I see.” His reserve had bottomed out and it was all her fault. He’d tried to be good. He skimmed his hands down her back and cradled her bottom, creating a pleasurable friction from her body and hand against his cock. When she didn’t complain, he danced his tongue around the edges of her lips.

  In response, she pulled his bottom lip between her teeth with a little growl as she freed her hands from his pockets.

  He wondered where she’d put them next, and closed his eyes as her fingertips delved into his hair at the back of his head. She didn’t seem interested in mere fondling, as she fisted his overgrown hair and pulled his face closer to hers, making their kiss rougher.

  With a groan of impatience, he pulled the hem of her shirt from her pants and palmed the hot skin of her back, kneading and rubbing the sensitive spots at the base of her spine. She moaned into his mouth as he increased the friction of his cock against her belly. He trailed his fingertips around to the bottom of her ribs and up to her breasts, freed her nipples from their lacy constraints and flicked them with his thumbs.

  She drew back from him and sucked in some air. Her dark eyes were wild, cheeks flushed–apparent even in the dimming light.

  “You keep that up and we’re gonna fuck right here.”

  Curt pulled her back into his kiss with a grunt. He liked that idea very much, actually. She was so warm and smelled so good, probably the kind of girl who’d have him up all night…in more ways than one. And probably the kind who’d, after they were done, be content with going home to her own bed without being asked.

  She leaned back again, this time with her hands against his chest to put some space between them while she caught her breath. “I want to take your picture.”

  “What?”

  “Of the way you look right now. Stay right there!” She straightened her shirt and hurried into the house, returning before he could voice objection.

  He adjusted the crotch of his pants as she focused her camera at his burning face. “What the hell, woman?”

  She mumbled “hmm” and stared down at her viewfinder. “Just something to remember Ireland by.”

  “We’re not quite done making memories yet. How about you put that thing back where you got it and we’ll finish what we started?”

  She smiled wickedly and draped the camera strap over her neck. “Hmm.” From a pocket of her jeans, she pulled a roll of purple mints, one of which she popped one into her mouth while narrowing her eyes at him.

  “Hmm, what? Thinking about the next victim you’re gonna deliver a case of blue balls to?”

  “Aw, poor baby.” She pressed against him once more and this time pushed her hand down his waistband, inside his boxer shorts.

  He sucked in a breath as her warm skin awakened his and ground his teeth. He very nearly shuddered. Jesus.

  “Like that?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you do.”

  “What are you gonna do about it?”

  “Nothing.” She pulled her hand out and backed away, smirking audaciously as she went.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  She did a slow shake of her head, and never took her gaze from his. “No. I think you’re more fun than a quick, standing fuck. Don’t know why I think that, and I might be wrong, but I’d like to find out. You call me when you get back to the US and I’ll finish what I started.”

  He scoffed and crossed his arms over his chest. He paced. He laughed. Are you kidding me?

  Any other woman, he would have called a cocktease and written off, but this one, this woman standing in front of him with a smile that could have made the devil bow down. She was something else.

  She might have been his match.

  Chapter 3

  Seven missed calls. Three new messages. Erica deleted one of the messages without listening after reading the number, and pressed her phone against her ear as the second played.

  “Hey, when you comin’ back?” the nasally voice demanded. “I thought you was gonna be back last week. I don’t understand what you’re doing over there. Are you getting paid while you’re there or living on savings or what? I didn’t think photographers made that kind of money. Alright. Call me when you’re back, gorda.”

  She sucked her teeth and pressed Delete. As if her sister Maria-Elena actually gave a shit when she returned. They rarely saw each other, even though geographically, they were the two closest family members with Mary-Elena being in Myrtle Beach and the rest of the family down in Miami. She knew who’d put her up to the call. The same person whose messages Erica had been deleting unheard for five weeks.

  She shifted on the bench she’d been staking out in a Dublin park, slouching lower and crossing her legs at the ankles. She stared at happy, laughing children at play on funky geometric apparatuses, and observed pedestrians. They passed in their casual garb, arms linked, chatting amiably, or clamping newspapers in hands, searching for a perfect perch to read them. Her aim was to be as hyper-aware as that student photographer whose diptych she’d admired, but nothing stood out.

  Everything was interesting, but nothing was interesting. Every time she raised her camera for a shot, she stopped just shy of depressing the button. Not good enough. None of it was good enough.

  Her obsession with taking the perfect photograph was a recent mania. In the ten years she’d worked for the Charlotte Times, she’d been mostly apathetic about her subjects. She was hardly even present, beyond physically. Speed and quantity were her chief concerns. She got in close, took her shot, and moved out of the way.

  Most of the time, she couldn’t describe the people in a photo she’d taken only moments before. They may as well have been statues in a museum, although she’d tried photographing those, too, and the results weren’t anything special.

  Her heart wasn’t really in it. Yeah, she showed up to work on time, and was polite and engaging to her subjects, but she didn’t try to see through them like some great photographers apparently had the ability to do. She’d taken ten years to notice she wasn’t seeing what the “good” shooters were. A Times photographer she admired a great deal had moved on to a larger paper and not long after won a Pulitzer. She’d studied that photo and tried to emulate what made it so good. The grit. The immediacy. The simple subject matter.

  Nothing. Same old, same old.

  Her sabbatical was a last-ditch effort. A palate cleanser, really. Maybe if she surrounded herself with sights she’d never seen before, she could reboot.

  Find focus.

  Become an artist.

  If she could do that, maybe she could move on, in spite of the past that hung like an albatross around her neck.

  She ground her teeth and queued up the next message.

  “Ms. Desoto, this is Ingrid Lopez from the Asheville Daily. I hate delivering this sort of news, especially after we bonded over our shared origins. We were prepared to make you an offer of employment, but there was an issue on your background check that raised some concern with the editorial staff. I’m truly sorry, especially since it was so long ago, but if you’re still interested in working with the paper we do need a stringer in your–”

  Erica deleted the message. She knew how the rest would go. They’d offer some freelance, which she couldn’t take while employed by the Times.


  What was that? Five rejections in four months? It was hard to keep track. The first three, from prominent papers in DC, New York, and Boston, had dismissed her based on her portfolio. She hadn’t even gotten to the offer stage. The fourth hadn’t even called. They’d mailed her a letter with a rejection similar to Ms. Lopez’s, minus the “shared origins” bit.

  “Shit. What now?”

  There were a couple of smaller papers seeking part-time photographers. She’d still have to make up the difference with freelance, if she could find any. Or maybe find another profession entirely.

  With a ragged exhale, she powered her camera on once more and scrolled through her shots. There had to be a paper somewhere that could forgive her for a juvenile mistake and extend an offer. If she’d been a man, she probably wouldn’t be facing the dilemma: quit and hope to find another job, or stay on at the place where she was miserable because it was stable.

  As usual, she was unimpressed by her photo roll.

  Old statues. “Eh.”

  Ruins. “Eh.”

  Beautiful, stately chapels. “Meh.”

  Some step-dancers in an outdoor festival. “Hmm.” That one she kept, only because she’d accidentally captured a young girl bending down to straighten her socks while everyone else in the line leapt.

  Erica kept scrolling and feeling mostly ambivalent at the bland shots until one frame gave her pause and took her breath away. The shot that would never find its way into her portfolio, no matter how damned perfect it was. Or maybe he was perfect.

  The blond flirt. Curt. That was the face she wanted to remember during the long flight home.

  She zoomed in closer and studied his flushed cheeks, the plaid shirt she’d helped wrinkle, and the narrowed set of his eyes. It could have been a picture of any man coming out of a nightclub after several rounds of drinks, or perhaps of some sports spectator angry his team hadn’t put their hearts into a match, but this was personal. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he’d asked.

  She hadn’t thought she was. In fact, one part of her was going to let him screw her right there against the wall if he’d been so inclined, but then what? Would he call when he got back to the States like he said?