Full Surrender

“Thank you.” She felt better for easy acceptance from an unexpected source. “I have some people in my life who aren’t terribly supportive of my work, so that’s...really nice to hear.”

Her mother, for instance, hadn’t looked at her photos once even though Stephanie had been working in the business for three years. Her father, never a strong personality, simply followed suit. His main concern was always for his wife.

“Are you hiding from me again?” Danny’s hulking brother Axel strode into the living room and flipped on a lamp, his blue eyes locked on Jennifer as they seemed to share a private joke.

“Not this time,” she answered with a wink. “I was just looking at Stephanie’s photographs and thinking we should ask her to do a picture of us with Bobby Orr.” She handed the tablet to Axel to share the photo of Cody.

“Sweet,” Axel declared, just as Danny entered the room.

“What’s sweet?” Danny held a hand out to Stephanie to help her to her feet.

She hadn’t seen him since one of his aunts had claimed a dance from him, but he’d been a truly attentive date considering this shindig was for him. While that was thoughtful of him, it also made it tougher for her to stick to her plan of keeping this light between them.

“Stephanie’s work,” Jennifer explained while Axel flashed the tablet screen toward his brother. “She’s incredibly talented.”

Beside her, she felt Danny tense and wasn’t sure why.

“She’s an incredible woman,” he agreed. “Steph, can I see you for a minute?”

“Sure.” She gave Bobby a quick pat on the head before she turned her attention to Jennifer. “We could shoot some pictures out on the ice once it gets colder. I’d love to work with you.”

Following Danny out of the room, she was surprised when they didn’t go back to the party. Instead, he led her up a staircase to an empty office decorated with tapestries, romantic paintings and notable quotes spelled out in calligraphy and scrawling all around the walls. It had to be his mother’s office, the feminine touches obvious.

She was about to comment on how beautiful it was. Then she glimpsed the serious expression on Danny’s face and remembered the way he’d tensed back in the living room.

He pulled her toward a window seat tucked into one corner. “How come I’ve never seen your photography?”

* * *

DANNY KNEW HE WAS doing a crap job of keeping things light, and that had been his one freaking goal for the day.

But seeing Stephanie share something personal about herself, something she’d never shown him in all the hours they’d spent together, told him a little about his standing with her.

“I don’t know.” She sat on the edge of the window seat, her dress settling around her with a flounce. “I guess we’ve never talked about our jobs that much, have we?”

“That first night at my house, while we stood in the surf, I asked you about it. Told you I’d like to see your work sometime.” He didn’t take the seat beside her, trying like hell to give her the space she seemed to crave. Instead, he leaned a shoulder into the window casing nearby. “Actually, never mind. I don’t mean to make a big deal about it. Do you want to go back outside or would you rather hang out up here for a while?”

Proud of himself for dropping it, he still found it tough not to get any answers. He drew the curtains across the bank of windows looking out over the back lawn where white lights were hung in all the trees and strung around the party canopies.

“It’s not that I’m not proud of my work.” She surprised him by answering his question. She picked up a desktop stone labyrinth his mother kept on a shelf above the window seat and traced the ridges with a pink-painted fingernail. “It’s just that a lot of people find it tough to reconcile my current job with my roots in journalism. At least the book I wrote—while a critical flop—was ‘serious.’ Pet photography, on the other hand...”

“Would you think for a minute that I’d find fault with any job you enjoyed? Steph, if I was ever going to chime in about your work, I damn well should have opened my mouth five years ago and begged you not to go to Iraq.” In those days, he’d been a whole hell of a lot better at keeping things light. Laid-back.

And look how that had worked out.

“Well, my parents think my business is a joke.” She reached the end of the twisting stone maze and then worked backward from the center. “So do a lot of my old colleagues. But it’s been really therapeutic for me. And I’ve helped a few animals in the process, too.”