She opened the attachment with a trembling hand. She stared at the image of herself lying on her side, naked and bound. Her eyes looked enormous. How had he managed to catch the nuances of expression on her face, those unlikely combinations of wariness and curiosity, anxiety and blatant arousal?
She shut her eyes and felt the burn. Damn him. He knew she’d longed to participate in the fantasy, to leave with him . . . to see the world. Did he think that tempting her in this fashion would alter the limits of her world?
The captured image of her eyes in that photograph haunted her that night, making sleep elusive.
Fortunately, Derek returned home the next afternoon, giving her something to focus on other than herself and her morbid thoughts. Her brother was in good spirits after his fishing trip and gladly agreed to help her unload a new shipment of supplies that had been delivered.
“You know how Mike’s dad is an accountant over in Carbondale?” he asked her as he helped her carry some packages of paper into her office for the printer. Sherona nodded. “Well, he’s offered to let me intern with him next summer. It won’t be paid or anything, but he says I can stay rent-free at their house, and I think it’d be great experience, don’t you?” he asked, dropping the armload of paper onto the copier table with a loud thump.
“Yeah, I do,” Sherona agreed, her eyes going wide. “Wow, I didn’t expect you to be working at an accounting internship until your senior year.”
“I know, that’s why this is so great,” Derek enthused. “What?” he asked when he noticed her staring at him, a small smile on her face.
“Oh, nothing. You’re just growing up so fast.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m in college, Sherona, not the third grade.”
“I know. Oh, never mind,” she said, waving her hand as if she were making her emotional moment vanish. “Let’s go finish before the dinner crowd gets here.”
“Okay,” Derek agreed, pausing next to her bulletin board. “Hey, they drew the numbers today for the lotto jackpot. Mike and I heard about it in the car on the way home from Prairie Lake.”
“Did they?” she asked distractedly, her mind already on what she needed to prep for dinner. “I’ll have to check them.”
“You don’t have to. I memorized them.”
She glanced back, something about the flat quality of Derek’s voice grabbing her attention. She wasn’t surprised that he’d memorized the numbers. Derek had an exceptional talent for numbers and math, thus choosing accounting as a major. Was it her imagination, or did Derek’s face go pale as he stared at her ticket?
“Ha. Don’t tell me,” she joked uneasily. “I picked all the winning numbers.”
“No, you didn’t,” he said.
“Of course. Story of my life,” she said, grinning and turning toward the storeroom.
“You picked five of them, though.”
Sherona came to a dead halt on the threshold at the sound of Derek’s quiet voice.
“I did not.”
The color had definitely washed out of his face, she realized. He turned to look at her, his dark eyes wide with shock. His nod of affirmation went through her like a lightning bolt.
“You paid for a multiplier for the five numbers. I think they said the five-number winners got two hundred and fifty thousand each. With the four-times multiplier, you just won a million dollars, Sherona.”
* * *
Two weeks later, Chance sped down the familiar country road, his mind ablaze with anxious anticipation. Sherona had called him four days ago, but he’d been on a shoot in the dune fields of the Empty Quarter in the United Arab Emirates, where cell phone coverage was nonexistent. He’d only received her message when he’d checked into his hotel in Najran.
He’d been on a plane within six hours of hearing her message.
She’d said she’d received some important news and hoped she could speak with him as soon as possible. He’d been sending her e-mails and a single photo a day, as promised, bu
t she’d never once acknowledged his messages. Her phone call had sent a shock through him. He’d tried to call her, but the reception was spotty. He hadn’t been able to get through to her until he was at Heathrow, waiting for his flight to the states.
“Is everything all right?” he’d demanded immediately when he’d finally heard her voice coming clearly through the phone connection. He’d begun to suspect that the difficulty in contacting her wasn’t on his end, but with the remote location and surrounding hills of Vulture’s Canyon.
“I’m fine.”
He’d breathed out a sigh of relief.