Dancing Away With My Heart Read online

  Squashing the disappointment that they couldn’t start that catching up now, he pasted on his own smile. “Of course. Give your mom my best. And come on by the studio tomorrow. I’ll give you the grand tour. It’ll be nice to share it.”

  “Looking forward to it.” She lifted the bag in a sort of wave and headed out the door.

  As he watched her go, Zach couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she was running. With luck, he’d eventually suss out why.

  Chapter 2

  Because she needed to burn off a little more nervous energy before she got back in her car, Lexi took the long way, skirting by the fountain. It actually ran now, which was more than could be said for it back when they were in high school. A tiny, foolish part of her wondered if that was why that long ago wish hadn’t come true.

  I wish Zach would see me the way I see him.

  He hadn’t. Ever. The truth of that had been too painful for her to cope with, so she’d put distance between them, hoping time would heal the wound. Apparently, it had. Getting through that whole interaction had taken less acting than she’d expected. She was legitimately happy to see Zach. He had, after all, been her closest friend for many years. She didn’t hate him or wish him any ill will. She just wanted to turn off the feelings that had turned on for her their senior year and go back to only being buddies. Things had been so much simpler then.

  For a fleeting moment, she considered dropping another coin in the fountain, updating her wish. Could you even do that? But ultimately, she let it alone. She’d spent all these years building up what it would be like to see him again. She’d always been so afraid to look him in the eye and see the knowledge of her feelings for him. Maybe to see that he thought it was sweet, or cute, or that she was just a little bit pathetic. And then she’d have to die from the abject mortification. But it had been…fine. Turned out Zach was still as clueless as he had ever been. Sure, she’d felt a little awkward, but not the dry-mouthed, tongue-tied, heart palpitations she’d expected. He was just…Zach. Perhaps it was time she admitted they were all grown up and she’d moved on.

  Thank God.

  Clearly, he still thought they were friends, like he didn’t even notice the distance she’d put between them. The contrast to her own perceptions was jarring. But maybe this was a good thing. Maybe she could put her old crap away and they could find their way back to being real friends while she was here. Wouldn’t that be something? The idea of it had her smiling as she let herself into the little gray house with the bright turquoise front door.

  “I was beginning to think you’d been kidnapped by a drug cartel.”

  Lexi glanced at the TV, where the protagonist of her mom’s current favorite telenovela was engaged in a dramatic stare down with the son of the cartel’s head. “Ricardo totally figured out Maria’s undercover, didn’t he?”

  Her mom gestured expansively toward the screen, wincing a little as her movement shifted the ankle she had propped on a pillow. “Yes, but he doesn’t know why yet.”

  Crossing the small living room, Lexi set the coffee and brownies on the table in front of the sofa before sinking cross-legged to the floor. “She’s going to have to trust him if she has a prayer of finding out what happened to her sister.”

  Eyes never leaving the show, her mom grabbed one of the mochas. “He might turn her over to his father.” Her tone was caught somewhere between dread and excitement. Leandra Morales was a fan of the drama. As long as it stayed on the screen. In her own life, she just wouldn’t have it, divorcing Lexi’s father on the discovery of his infidelity, despite her Catholic upbringing. That had all happened when Lexi was fourteen, and was how she and her mother had landed in Wishful for a fresh start.

  “Never gonna happen. He’s been secretly in love with her from the beginning.” Lexi actually had no idea if he was or not, but she’d watched enough telenovelas growing up that it seemed a safe bet.

  On the screen, Maria’s eyes glimmered as she insisted she could explain, that it was all for the sake of her little sister.

  Lexi tapped a finger against the lid of her cup. “Called it!”

  They lapsed into silence for the last few minutes of the episode, which ended with the star-crossed lovers in a passionate embrace. It was ridiculous and over the top, as most telenovelas were. And still her heart gave a little twinge. When was the last time she’d had somebody kiss her like that? Hell, when was the last time she’d been on a date at all? She’d done her share of dating in college, though nobody had been serious. Since then she’d been far more focused on finding a way to make a living with her art. There’d been a couple of guys she’d seen more than once, but nobody worth making the effort for a real relationship. In truth, she didn’t think the right relationship would feel like work. So, either she simply hadn’t found the right guy, or she was fooling herself.

  Leandra clicked off the show and pounced on the brownie. “Now, tell me what took so long.”

  Lexi twitched her shoulders and bit into her own brownie. “It’s Wishful. You know there’s no such thing as coming back to town without having to chat with everybody and their brother.”

  “Which everybody did you run into?”

  “Mrs. Landon. She’s planning to bring a casserole over, by the way.”

  “That’s nice of her. Who else?” Per usual, her mother’s sharp eyes missed nothing.

  Lexi wondered if maybe she had a blinking neon sign above her head. She kept her tone as casual as possible. “I saw Zach.”

  A delighted smile bloomed on Leandra’s face. “Oh good! He always asks about you whenever I run into him. I know he’s been wanting to see you.” She didn’t say it, but the implied question of why Lexi hadn’t made an effort to see him on her previous visits home hung in the air between them.

  Lexi knew better than to bite. And she knew that her mother wouldn’t push. She’d never pushed Lexi to handle things with Zach any other way but how she wanted, even when it meant that Lexi had moved three states away. Not that she’d ever admitted he was the reason.

  “Well, he’ll be seeing a fair bit of me while I’m home. He’s offered me a job. Sort of. He’s got more business than he can handle—nice problem to have, right?—so he’s going to make some referrals.”

  “That’s wonderful, mija, and a big relief to me. I didn’t want to ask you to come for so long—”

  “Don’t be silly.” She was all her mother had. No way was she shirking that responsibility. “Of course I was going to come. And we’re lucky I have the flexibility to do exactly that.”

  But the relief of probably getting some kind of work while she was here couldn’t be overstated.

  “How do you feel about spending time with him again?” Leandra’s eyes were full of far too much sympathy.

  Lexi had never told her the whole story, but she’d always suspected her mom knew anyway. She’d worn her heart on her sleeve back then. Before she’d learned how to armor up and shove those more tender feelings in a deep, dark basement room of her heart.

  “I don’t know. It’s good to see him.” In those minutes she hadn’t been freaking out, she’d drunk in the sight of him. The easy smile, those shoulders—broader now—that tapered down to narrow hips, the crinkles around his blue-gray eyes…

  When she didn’t continue, Leandra nudged her knee. “But?”

  Lexi mentally shook herself, choosing her words carefully, so she didn’t reveal too much. “We have a lot of history. Mostly good. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried it’ll be a little weird.” Then again, the weird was only ever on her side. She was the one who’d changed. Zach seemed just as blissfully unaware now as he had been in high school. There’d clearly been no epiphany on his part about why she’d up and almost disappeared.

  Whatever. She was a successful adult, with a full life elsewhere, who was no longer crushing on her best friend. His obliviousness didn’t matter.

  “Friendships are like the tide. They ebb and flow. You’ve been at an ebb with Zach for
a long time now. Maybe now the tide is turning.”

  “Maybe,” Lexi conceded.

  She just hoped she could keep her head above water.

  Zach minutely adjusted the level of highlights in the image on the screen, but his attention wasn’t on the smiling teenagers in the shot. Another glance at the clock confirmed it was nearly five. Lexi hadn’t shown. He was starting to think maybe she wasn’t going to. Maybe it just wasn’t a good day for this. But if that were the case, why hadn’t she let him know?

  He could call her mom’s house. It wasn’t like he didn’t still know that number by heart. But somehow it felt desperate to call her up to say, “Hey, where are you?” when they hadn’t even set a formal time to meet. He wasn’t desperate—not exactly—just…antsy. And he couldn’t figure out why. There was some part of him that worried she’d disappear on him again. Or maybe that he’d imagined yesterday’s encounter entirely, just because he’d missed her. Until he’d laid eyes on her, he hadn’t realized how much. And that was…crazy. Right? Not the missing her part, but this sense he had of needing to hang on. Maybe it was just his subconscious prodding him not to let things go back to this polite distance they’d had the last several years. She’d pulled away so gradually, somehow he’d missed it. What kind of a dick did that make him that he hadn’t noticed until it felt like it was too late to do anything about it?

  Well, I’m doing something about it now.

  A chime sounded, indicating someone had opened the door. He sprang out of the chair and bolted for the reception area.

  Lexi stood in the front office, a camera bag slung cross-body as she looked around at the gallery of photos on the wall. The sight of her was like the sun coming out, banishing the vague shadow that had hung over his day. He didn’t bother trying to tame his grin.

  “Hey! I was beginning to think you weren’t going to be able to make it.”

  “Sorry. I had to go by Brides and Belles to pick up the latest alterations. Mom insists she doesn’t need her ankle to do them, and neither Babette nor I could talk her out of it. Then it took a while to get her settled in her sewing room.” She shoved her hands in the back pockets of her jeans, an old tell he recognized. He didn’t want her to feel awkward here with him.

  “No problem. I was just doing some editing. Come, have the grand tour. It’ll only take about five minutes.”

  He led her back to the studio and watched her take everything in with those dark eyes that missed nothing.

  “It looks so different from when we interned with Byron.”

  “After he retired, I had the guys come in to help me paint from top to bottom. And as soon as I could get rid of the early eighties era furniture, I did. I didn’t need too much. I do way more on-location shoots than studio work.”

  They picked their way over the snaking cords of flash stands and around reflectors. “Same. It’s how I could get away with not having a proper studio all this time. I never liked working with backdrops.”

  “They have their place, but there’s no substitute for natural light.” He showed her the prop room, full of everything from an assortment of chairs and artificial plants, to empty picture frames, to the buckets and baskets he often used for newborn shoots. And he took great delight in showing her the dark room.

  She turned a circle in the small space. “You actually still do film?”

  “Not as often as I’d like, but from time to time. There’s just something about doing the development yourself, you know?”

  “Oh yeah. I have fond memories of the time we spent in the dark room back in high school.”

  Coming from anybody else, that would’ve been a double entendre, but from Lexi it was nothing more than the truth. The dark room had been about confidences and confessions, and plenty of laughter. They’d had some of their best conversations there.

  “Maybe you’d like to try your hand at it again, while you’re here.”

  Her lips curved. “Maybe I would. For now, I’d like to see more of your portfolio. See the kind of thing your clients are expecting.”

  “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

  She nodded and followed him into his office. Zach pulled up his digital portfolio and nudged her into the seat, trying not to loom as she clicked through.

  “I thought I’d know more people.”

  “You’ve been gone a long time. Things change, even here in Wishful.”

  Lexi twitched her shoulders and didn’t look at him. “True enough.”

  Damn. He hadn’t meant that as any kind of recrimination.

  “Reed Campbell is getting married?”

  Zach peered over her shoulder at the engagement photos he’d taken. “Got married last fall. Cecily is a blue blood from Connecticut, but we forgive her for being a Yankee since they’re besotted with each other.”

  “It shows. She’s lovely.”

  Lexi continued to scroll, commenting on others she recognized who’d gotten married or had kids. Eventually she sat back, a strange vulnerability to her expression. “It feels weird.”

  Zach leaned against the desk, crossing his arms. “What does?”

  “I don’t know. It’s like they’re all grown up, and I’m still playing at this adulting thing.”

  “There’s no deadline on when or if those things happen. They’re not for everybody.”

  She angled her head to study him, her full lips quirked in a sardonic smile that was a shade more of the Lexi he remembered. “You? Is there a prospective Mrs. Warren on the horizon?”

  It was a casual and obvious question to ask, but he was oddly relieved to admit, “Nah. The dating pool here is shallow, as you well remember. I’m enjoying my life exactly as it is.” And if he’d been feeling the pinch a bit with his friends starting to get married, that was natural. Wanting to change the subject, he slid off the desk. “So show me what you’ve been working on.”

  She logged into her online portfolio and they traded places. Where his stock-in-trade was traditional weddings, family shoots, and senior portraits, her work was far more artistic and varied. He clicked open a folder titled “Home.” The gallery loaded, one image after another showing the coast in miniature. Zach opened the first thumbnail, a sunset shot of the iconic Biloxi lighthouse that had miraculously survived Hurricane Katrina.

  “You went back.”

  “It was time,” she said softly. “I went back on the ten-year anniversary.”

  The anniversary of when her family had lost everything. Their home in Bay Saint Louis had been entirely washed away. Without the money or will to rebuild, they’d relocated to Houston, Texas, crammed into a little apartment for a few years, before her parents split, and she and her mom had moved to Wishful. All these years later, few people outside Mississippi remembered that New Orleans hadn’t been the only city hit. Even when it had happened, The Weather Channel had referred to the space between New Orleans and Mobile as “a land mass” rather than an actual state, for which they’d been mercilessly mocked by other networks. The fact of it was, the Mississippi Gulf Coast had been obliterated. Lexi clearly remembered. And yet the photographs she’d taken chronicled the things that had survived, what had been rebuilt.

  He understood what that trip had meant to her. Facing that loss. “I’d have gone with you.”

  Her hand squeezed his shoulder before falling away again. “I know. I needed to do it alone.”

  Once they’d done everything together. Zach didn’t understand where or why things had changed.

  Not trusting himself to bring it up, he kept scrolling, admiring the breadth and scope of her talent. He was impressed, and a bit envious. “I’m a little jealous of all this.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m good at what I do, and I enjoy it, but there’s a sameness and expectation to traditional photography. What you’ve done here? This is art.”

  “I’m going to disagree that your traditional photography isn’t art, but there’s nothing stopping you from exploring other things, too.”


  “There’s not much time for that with everything else on my plate. Bills to pay, and all that.”

  “Art doesn’t always pay. Or hasn’t yet, for me. Not a living wage, anyway. That’s part of why I started my own studio. I have do the one to enable the other.”

  “I’m hoping I can do a little branching out and experimenting with you here.”

  Her lips curved. “Still into weather photography?”

  Before Zach could reply, her phone rang. “Excuse me.” Stepping back she answered, “Hey Mom,” and wandered out of the room.

  Zach kept clicking through her galleries. She’d done everything from landscapes to abstract macro studies and everything in between. And then he hit on the folder of boudoir shoots. It was a style of photography he’d never thought of doing. There was an unavoidable intimacy between subject and photographer, and he couldn’t fathom it not being awkward with his friends and neighbors. But Lexi clearly had no issues on that front. The pictures were sexy and tasteful.

  One particular sequence of black-and-white images captured his imagination. The model was clearly nude, but nothing could actually be seen. It was all sensual curves, the suggestion of intimacy. Tastefully erotic. He could almost feel the softness of that skin beneath his palms. The next shot captured the same model from behind, rising from tangled sheets. There was no lover in view, but her mussed hair implied a night of passion. The angle showed only her back and the top curve of her hip. In the next one she slipped on a cardigan long enough to cover the essentials. He could practically hear the whisper of fabric as it settled over her. The one after that, she stood at a window, her face turned away, but every line of her lovely body suggesting wistfulness, as if she were waiting for that imagined lover to come back. He clicked to the next, a waist-up shot where she was turned partly toward the camera, the gap in the sweater showing a tantalizing suggestion of breast as she glanced back over her shoulder. And his breath backed up in his lungs.