Page 26

Today’s visit was, most assuredly, a matter of purpose.

Her first week after moving to Promise, following a deep-rooted impulse, she’d located the library and the lone spot in the building where she couldn’t be seen from the front entrance. A gangster’s reading plan, she thought with a smile.

It was good she could laugh about it now.

She breathed in the scent of disinfectant, moldy pages, and sunshine as the door whispered shut behind her.

The local authors’ rack was at the front, near the checkout desk, which— thank you, God —was currently unattended.

She’d ignored this section on previous visits, the vibrant image on the cover of Campbell’s oversized book scraping against her nerves like a rusty nail, a jarring burst of color in the midst of life’s beige jungle.

From the depths of the dusty stacks, Zoozie Hamilton’s voice drifted past as she instructed someone on the Dewey Decimal System.

Fontana halted before a narrow bookcase, its handmade sign encouraging patrons to Support Your Local Authors !

She glanced over her shoulder, ridiculous since the place was all but deserted with children in school.

Campbell’s book, Luminous Journeys , was in her hand, pressed to her chest like it was going to protect her from a bullet, before a second passed.

Throwing another unnecessary look around, she crept down an aisle holding foreign language titles that received little love in Promise and slid to a sit.

Campbell’s book was imposing and unwieldy, much like the man.

The cover depicted a desert of rolling sand, a golden expanse beneath a startling blue-black sky, lit with so many stars the photograph could barely contain them.

He’d been standing on a high slope to get the shot—she could almost see the wind tearing at his hair, his clothing, his feet sinking deeply into the sand.

The image was so crisp she swore she could feel the grit beneath her fingertips.

He must have felt free and powerful then, connected and completely un connected.

She’d felt powerful, too, with his hard body held over hers, his gaze unwavering, his hoarse words demanding she stay with him as he drove inside and took .

Fontana turned the pages with trembling fingers, then sighed and bumped her head against the chipped plaster wall. She wasn’t as unaffected—or as satisfied with their one-night agreement—as she might have liked.

As she’d promised she would be.

At some point, as they’d lain there, exhausted, sweat-drenched, lungs working hard enough to erase speech, a layer of genuine intimacy had shimmered in the air, drifting down to settle on her wrinkled sheets and their entwined bodies like dew.

Like nothing Fontana had experienced with another person in her life.

The recollection echoed, erotic images shifting beneath her like the desert sands he’d photographed. She palmed her stomach and drew a strained breath. Conquer it, Fontana .

The look in his eyes when he peaked, shuddering, his brow dropping to hers as he groaned against her cheek; his hands diving into her hair, tangling as he urged her hips higher, forcing himself into the very soul of her; his smile—soft and teasing—when he thought she wasn’t looking.

Ah, that last one was a killer.

She flipped pages, searching for glimpses of what she’d seen that night.

Because he’d displayed little of it this week, in a series of cursed, small-town encounters.

Locking eyes over the aisle in McHenry’s Grocery, Pop-Tarts and bread in his hand, tampons, of course, in hers.

A brief interaction while crossing Main on her way to the children’s center, where she stumbled over a rut watching him duck into his cousin’s gallery, that stunning photograph of his filling the entire front window.

There hadn’t been much spark in his gaze either time, just worn shades of frustration. Nothing like the man who had looked at her with such hunger on a dusty baseball field. With such incredible yearning in her bed. He’d built a wall between them, her ugly accusations the mortar between the bricks.

They had heat—but no trust.

Tomorrow, he was going to teach his first class at the center. How were they supposed to face each other after everything they’d shared?

Discouraged, she turned back to his book. One bold, beautiful landscape after another. Yet, something elemental was missing.

There were no images of people.

Not one face in the entire book, except his.

She studied his picture on the dust jacket with an intensity that, she realized, bordered on fascination.

It wasn’t the typical bookish headshot. He stood in a narrow alley between two medieval-looking structures, his shoulder wedged against a rotting timber, ankles crossed, his gaze fixed not on the camera but on the uneven gray stone beneath his feet.

He wore a T-shirt, cargo pants, hiking boots.

The camera was clutched in his hand like a lifeline, his knuckles white against the black metal.

His beauty struck deep—the rangy leanness, the glistening, perfectly disheveled hair. That he looked tormented, dimples nowhere in sight, eyes downcast, lips compressed, only made him more achingly attractive to her.

Torment she understood. Could identify with.

The image was stark compared to his photographs, revealing a taciturn subject uncomfortable, even distressed, by the attention.

His bio didn’t make him more accessible, not to her. New York Times Magazine, Sierra Club, National Geographic Adventure, Audubon, Washington Post.

With a sinking heart, Fontana closed the book and used it as a crutch to push herself to her feet. This man was out of her league—an impossible preoccupation. He was bored, lonely, stuck between a rock and a hard place. Running.

That he’d put distance between them this past week—distance she’d asked for—was clearly prudent, a hot-knife-through-butter solution to an intolerable situation.

He’d agreed to teach a class; she’d agreed to help Kit. They’d agreed to disagree about everything else. Crawling all over each other like two impassioned teenagers didn’t need to be part of the deal.

However, possibly alerting Promise’s gossip patrol, she couldn’t resist checking out his book and staying up late into the night, losing herself in his photographs.

CAMPBELL

That night Campbell lay in bed, the sounds of the Rise settling around him as Hannah’s answer to his question circled.

She stood in my father’s way .

Which hadn’t really answered his question—except it had.

And he thought his family life was chaotic, his past troubled. That was like comparing a head cold to cancer.

The grandfather clock in the hall struck two, and he kicked the sheets off with a sigh.

Same story: sleep was a teasing bitch who wanted nothing to do with him.

There were pills he could take, a bottle at the bottom of his duffle bag, in fact, but he’d gotten too used to those a few years ago, and he wasn’t about to go there again.

Maybe knowing more about Fontana—more being complicated —would slow his fevered thoughts, ease the rush he experienced every time he saw her. Kill the frenetic dreams that had him jerking off like a fifteen-year-old.

Or, maybe it only made him want her more.

Want her passionately . In a way that wasn’t part of his plans.

Because he let himself think about her, she came to him. Vividly .

Neck arched until the crown of her head met the mattress, throat pulling taut as his body glided over, inside her. Her fingers fisting in his hair, teeth sinking into his shoulder. The breathless sound she made just before she came—a sound he now knew too well.

It had begun to grab hold of his mind, that gasping release, and would not let go.

Closing his eyes with a sigh, he trailed his hand over his belly to his cock. If he couldn’t find a 2 a.m. solution to his problems, he might as well benefit by mentally fucking Fontana Quinn.

A fantasy that only involved her body.

Now, if he could forget he’d been given a key to unlock her mind.