Dancing Away With My Heart Page 3

  It was Lexi.

  Had she done these herself? Or had that mystery lover implied by the composition been responsible? Why did the idea of that squeeze a fist in his chest? She was an adult. A single, incredibly attractive adult. Of course she’d had lovers.

  “Sorry about that.”

  By some miracle, Zach managed not to fall out of his chair. But he didn’t manage to school his face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I’ve just been perving on my best friend.

  “Nothing.” Before she could circle the desk, he closed out of the folder and randomly selected something else. “Just admiring your work. You’re really versatile.”

  You’re really beautiful. How did I never really notice that before? Those semi-erotic images of her were etched into his brain now. He couldn’t unsee that, couldn’t go back to seeing her as just Lexi.

  She frowned at him as she crossed over, so he tried to change the subject and mentally started reciting the focal lengths of his entire collection of lenses to get his arousal under control. “Was everything okay with your mom?”

  “Oh, yeah. She was just letting me know that Babette dropped over with dinner. I think she wanted me to know I don’t have to be on duty for a while.”

  He closed the browser entirely and stood. “Does that mean you’re free for the night?”

  “I suppose it does.”

  “Then let’s get some dinner and take a walk down memory lane.”

  Maybe by the end of it, he’d manage to shift her firmly back into the friend column.

  Chapter 3

  “The first time I had a camera in my hands—a real camera—was out here, on a night much like tonight. Do you remember?”

  Lexi didn’t look at Zach in the driver’s seat, her gaze trained instead on the small crowd milling around a bonfire on the banks of Hope Springs. “Of course I remember.”

  It had been her camera. A gift from her father that was supposed to be some kind of apology for not keeping it in his pants and destroying their family. Completely new in town, starting over again, with two whole months before she began high school, her mom had dropped her at a similar bonfire, with a promise to come back for her after an hour.

  “I need you to try, mija.”

  Lexi could still remember the panic clawing up her throat at what felt like being thrown to the wolves, but she’d gotten out of the car, clutching the camera like a lifeline and a shield. And instead of walking up and introducing herself as her mother intended, she’d skirted the group, studying them through the viewfinder. She’d framed and tested shots, adjusted settings, eventually losing herself in the process and forgetting she didn’t really want to be there.

  And then Zach had walked over.

  “Can I try?”

  She’d eyed him with suspicion. The camera had been expensive. Who was this gringo with the open face and easy smile? But he’d won her over with his relentless good humor and general niceness, until she’d let him try the camera out, taking a picture of her.

  “I still have that picture of you at home,” he said, proving his thoughts were running along the same lines.

  Now she did look over, something warm blooming in her chest at his sentimentality. “You’re a lot better now than you were at fourteen.”

  “Yeah. But I think it’s good to remember where we came from. C’mon. Everybody’s waiting.”

  There was something odd to his tone and his expression, but she didn’t manage to put her finger on what before he was climbing out of the car. She thought he was going to head on without her, but he stopped a few feet away and turned back, a hand outstretched as it had been that night all those years ago. Riding on nostalgia, Lexi slipped her camera bag over her head and placed her hand in his. Zach’s fingers closed warm and sure around hers, and she tried not to read anything into it. There hadn’t been more to it then and there wasn’t now. He was just a physically affectionate guy. Always had been. But she was aware of every millimeter of his skin where it touched hers.

  “Look who I found!” Zach dragged her into the light of the fire.

  “Lexi!” A familiar brunette scrambled out of a camp chair and launched herself across the distance.

  Laughing, Lexi absorbed the enthusiastic hug. “Hey, Avery! It’s great to see you.”

  “Hail, hail, the gang is officially all here. Welcome home, chica.” Leo Hamilton scooped her neatly off her feet.

  His twin brother lifted an arm, with a grin she hadn’t forgotten. “Eli, if you even think about putting me in a headlock and giving me a noogie, I swear to God, I will show you every bit of the self-defense I learned in college.”

  “Spoil-sport.” But his blue eyes twinkled as he said it. “Welcome back.”

  She was passed from hug to hug. Jace Applewhite. His cousin, Jessie. Reed Campbell. And then came the introductions to the significant others. Avery’s fiancé, Dillon was a rangy guy who somehow looked like a cowboy despite the khaki shorts and t-shirt. Lexi wanted to get a shot of that profile from beneath the brim of a Stetson. She recognized Reed’s wife, Cecily, from the photos she’d seen in Zach’s portfolio. She was even more stunning in person.

  “It’s so nice to meet you,” Cecily gushed. “Zach’s talked so much about you.”

  Lexi arched a brow and glanced at him. “He has?”

  Zach only shrugged. “You feature prominently in most of my high school stories.”

  “They used to be joined at the hip,” Jace said.

  “Oh, did y’all date back then?” This came from a leggy blonde she didn’t recognize.

  “No.” The word came out too fast, too sharp, and Lexi hoped they’d attribute the flush in her cheeks to heat from the fire. Fixing a smile on her face she managed a passable laugh. “That would’ve been ridiculous.”

  “I thought you were joking.”

  The long ago words echoed through her heart with a stab of pain just as fresh now as it had been when it happened.

  Over and done. Get it together. Stuffing her emotions way down deep, she forced herself to relax and roll on with the conversation, facing the blonde. “You’re clearly new since high school.”

  Jace slid an arm around her waist and beamed. “Lexi, I’d like you to meet Tara Honeycutt, the love of my life.”

  The pair of them oozed happiness and contentment, the kind that couldn’t be faked for pictures. Jace had always been so damned nice, she couldn’t resent that, even if she did feel a stab of envy. “Pleased to meet you, Tara.” A diamond flashed in the firelight. “When is the big day?”

  “Weekend after next. Will you be in town? You should absolutely come,” Jace insisted.

  “Of course, I’d be happy to come.”

  “Actually, I wanted to talk to y’all about that.” Zach snagged a Coke from the cooler and popped the top. “Lexi’s in town for a few weeks, so I wanted to see how y’all might feel about bringing her on to help with wedding photos.”

  Okay, this was not exactly what she’d imagined when Zach had offered referrals. She’d expected client meetings and formal presentations, not putting everybody involved on the spot, last-minute.

  “I’m a groomsman,” he explained. “I can cover all the posed shots, but you and I both know there’s no substitute for an active photographer during the ceremony. I could make it work, but…”

  “It wouldn’t be the same,” Lexi finished. She couldn’t fathom trying to be in a wedding and shooting it.

  “Oh, could you?” Tara shot an apologetic look at Zach. “I know you said you could handle it, but I’ve had reservations.”

  “Completely understandable,” Zach soothed.

  Good thing she’d packed for work, just in case. “I’d love to help. Just let me know where and when.”

  “Awesome!”

  Avery offered her a beer. “So you’re here for a few weeks? Are you back for the reunion?”

  Lexi bought a moment, twisting off the cap and taking her first pull on the longneck. “The reunion?�
�

  “You know, our ten-year class reunion,” Leo prodded.

  She’d done her best to block out the fact that it was even happening. The absolute last thing she wanted was to go back to high school, even for one night. Not even with these people she’d once been so close to. “No, I’m not in town for the reunion. I’m helping out my mom. She broke her ankle.”

  There were the predictable exclamations of concerns and offers to help, which Lexi neatly brushed off. It had been just her and her mom for so long, she wasn’t accustomed to taking much in the way of help. Plus, it was a point of pride that they’d managed on their own after her father’s infidelity.

  “Still, it would be a shame for you not to come if you’re still here,” Avery insisted. “You’d get to see everybody from high school.”

  “I’m seeing everybody from high school I actually want to see right now,” Lexi pointed out.

  “Flattery will get you everywhere,” Jessie declared, toasting with her own bottle. “But the point, dear girl, is dressing up.”

  “Dressing up?”

  “The whole thing’s ending with a grown-up prom. How cool is that as a way to flash back to the good ol’ days?”

  They all clearly had vastly different memories of high school than she did. Flashing back to the worst stretch of her teenage life was not how she wanted to spend an evening or even a minute. She’d done it often enough over the years without having a practical reenactment of the event.

  “I’m not much one for dressing up.” And she wasn’t. The number of times she’d willingly worn a dress in her adult life for non-business purposes could be counted on one hand. She was a tomboy. Always had been. Jeans and Chucks and an assortment of vintage t-shirts were her uniform. What business did she have trying to be someone she wasn’t? That hadn’t ended well for her before.

  “Seriously? Your mama is, like, the most talented seamstress in town, and you don’t take advantage of that?” Avery asked.

  Lexi’s fingers tightened reflexively on the bottle in her hand. “Nope. She despairs of me, I promise. But it doesn’t make me like dressing up any better.”

  Jessie opened her mouth, presumably to continue her campaign, but Zach interrupted. “Leave her be. She’s never liked dances.”

  It was the truth as far as he knew, and her one attempt to change that had blown up in her face.

  “How can you not like dancing?” Jessie asked.

  “I like dancing just fine. I just prefer to be comfortable while doing it. No pointy-toed shoes that break my feet. No panty hose. None of the torture device trappings that go along with dressing up.”

  Leo pulled out his phone and stabbed a few buttons. Music spilled out of a speaker by the cooler—something with a beat that made her hips twitch. “No time like the present.”

  More appreciative than she could express, Lexi tipped back the rest of her beer, then set the bottle aside. “You, Mr. Hamilton, are on.”

  Over the next few hours, Zach watched Lexi unwind, losing herself in music, memory, and more than a little bit of alcohol. Why not? He was driving, and he suspected she cut loose little enough in her day-to-day life. It was the reason he’d brought her, hoping to coax her into relaxing and remembering the easy friendship they’d all shared for years. That and he’d wanted to spend time with her. As if in one night he could make up for years of distance.

  But the night hadn’t done for him what he’d wanted. It hadn’t reminded him that they were friends. Hadn’t neatly nudged her back into that box and locked any kind of a door. Because he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Couldn’t stop soaking in the sound of her laughter and the way the firelight illuminated that gorgeous, bronzed skin. Skin his hands itched to touch, to see if she was as soft as those pictures had made her look. She’d let her hair down. The heavy mass of waves spilled down her back, bouncing as she swayed to the beat. What would they smell like? Feel like against his fingers? They’d danced together in packs, as friends were known to do. But he’d never danced with her. He found he wanted to.

  So, of course, he kept his ass parked in a camp chair on the other side of the fire, well out of touching range, since he’d lost his damned mind.

  “Earth to Zach.”

  He blinked, realizing Leo had been talking to him and he hadn’t heard a word. “What?”

  “Dude, what is up with you?”

  “Nothing.” First line of defense, always denial.

  “I’m calling bullshit on that.” Leo looked across the fire to where Lexi danced with the other girls to somebody’s Girl Power playlist in a sort of tipsy, tribal display of the modern feminine. “It’s not exactly like old times, is it?”

  Uncomfortable with where that question might lead, Zach jerked his shoulders. “We’re not in high school anymore.”

  Leo lifted his beer. “That’s for damned sure. You never looked at her like this in high school.”

  “Like what?” But he knew.

  “Like you want to take a bite out of her. When did that happen?”

  Zach rubbed a hand over his face, as if he could scrub the image of scraping his teeth down the long, lovely column of her throat out of his mind. Wonderful. Now he had new fantasies to add to the ones she’d inadvertently planted in his brain herself. But it hadn’t just been the boudoir shots. Things had felt different the moment he’d laid eyes on her in The Daily Grind. “Hell if I know.”

  “What are you gonna do about it?”

  “Do?” He skewered Leo with a look. “Not a damned thing. She’s one of my best friends. I’m not going to fuck that up.”

  Leo studied him for a long moment, like he knew the truth—that Zach and Lexi hadn’t been best friends for a long time. And maybe he did. Maybe they all knew what he hadn’t been able to admit to himself.

  “So you’re just going to…what? Hope this goes away?”

  Yeah, that’d be good. He’d go home, get a good night’s sleep, and when he woke up tomorrow, he’d be sane again, and they could resume working together with that easy, uncomplicated friendship they’d always had. “Sure. Why not?”

  Leo snorted. “Good luck with that, brother.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just that there’s a reason the opposite sexes rarely make it long-term as platonic friends. Somebody’s feelings always change. Hell, I had a front-row seat to that most of my life with my brother and Autumn, and look where they ended up.”

  Married with a baby and blissfully happy.

  “That’s different.” Everybody knew Judd and Autumn had been in love with each other since they were six years old.

  “I’m just sayin’.” Leo stood, finishing off his beer. “I need to be getting on. The work day will start way too soon.”

  “You good to drive?”

  “Yeah. That was just my second over several hours. I’m good.”

  Zach rose too, thinking he should probably cut Lexi off before she had to face Mama Morales with a hangover. Nobody wanted that. She was belting out an enthusiastic, if slurred, rendition of “Titanium”, using a wine cooler as a microphone.

  “Okay, Miss Bulletproof. Time to go.”

  “Awwww.” She broke into a spate of Spanish he didn’t understand.

  Oh boy. She only retreated to her first language when she was really tired, really emotional, or, apparently, well on her way to drunk.

  “Your mama’s gonna kill me.”

  Giggling, she held a finger up to her nose. Zach could only presume she’d been aiming for her lips, miming keeping a secret. He wondered if he’d be able to sneak her into the house and pour her into bed without Mama Morales finding out. Only one way to find out. He began herding her toward the car, a process encumbered by the fact that she kept running back to give everybody big, sloppy hugs.

  “I missed y’all so much!”

  Zach was glad she’d remembered that much, at least.

  By the time he leaned over to buckle her safely in the passenger seat, he knew there wasn’
t a chance in hell of retrieving her car from the studio tonight. At least it gave him another excuse to see her tomorrow. But maybe after all this he wouldn’t need excuses. Maybe they’d fall back into things the way he wanted.

  Tipping forward, she pressed her face into his throat. “You smell good.”

  Zach froze, feeling half the blood in his body drain south at the feel of her lips against his skin. His fingers fumbled the seatbelt. Yeah, their old friendship was definitely not what he was wanting right now. Electing not to comment, he fastened the belt and shut her inside.

  Just get her home.

  She hummed the whole way to some playlist in her head. It took him until he parked in her driveway to recognize what it was.

  “Are you humming that mix CD I made you freshman year?”

  She rolled her head toward him against the seat. “It’s one of my favorites. You’re one of my favorites. Always were.”

  “You’re one of my favorites, too, Shutterbug. C’mon. Let’s get you inside.”

  He told himself he only kept his arm tight around her because she was stumbling, but he was aware of every inch of her body moving against his on the way to the house. The door wasn’t locked, for which he was grateful. A single light burned from the entryway table. Moving past it, he carefully navigated her down the hall to her old bedroom. When she started to giggle, he shushed her.

  “Do you want to get us both in trouble?” he whispered.

  Lexi pressed her face against his arm and shook with silent laughter.

  They made it into her room without incident—a miracle. He reached for the desk lamp, relieved it was still exactly where it had been in high school. Depositing her into the chair and shrugging off her camera bag, he studied her flushed face. Oh yeah, he should have cut her off one or two sooner.

  “Don’t go anywhere. I’m gonna get you some water and aspirin.”

  The glasses were still in the cabinet above the dishwasher. He filled one and found the painkillers—they’d moved since high school—then returned to Lexi’s room. It felt weird being here at night, in the dark, trying to be quiet while her mom slept down the hall. Like they were doing something illicit. Which was ridiculous. Naked thoughts notwithstanding, he was just putting his drunk friend to bed. Then he’d leave.