Calculated Exposure (4 page)

“How are things back in Raleigh?” Grant asked.

“Fine, as far as I could tell. Mom thinks my due date is wrong and swears I’m going to go late this time. I might have accidentally pulled the router cord.”

“Oh, that’s cold,” Erica said with a giggle.

“That’s ’cause you don’t know my mother. She’s this mouthy Italian who thinks her opinions are edicts that have been issued straight from God’s lips. She believes He has appointed her as His holy delivery vessel. I tolerate her fine in small doses, but beyond that we’re not simpatico.”

“Must be easier being all the way over here.”

“Exactly. Easy, but…” They all turned to watch Carla shrug. “Lonely.”

Grant set Adam’s plate onto his tray and pulled his wife into a hug. “Sorry, honey.”

“Don’t apologize. It was my choice, too.”

“So, how
did
you two end up settling down here and not in the US?” Erica asked as she picked up a roll of utensils.

Grant returned to the island with a second dish–a pink one. “Believe it or not, there isn’t much demand Stateside for an expert of Irish history. In Ireland…”

“Gotcha.” Erica carried her plate to the table and assessed the seating arrangement.

“Sit on the side nearest the window. That way I can ogle you close up,” Curt said.
Might as well go for the gusto.

She sucked her teeth. “Who could refuse an offer like that?” Still, she sat at one of the two chairs nearest the picture window and unfolded her napkin onto her lap.

Curt slipped in behind her and gave her hair a flick as he passed.

“You break it, you buy it,” she joked.

“What’s the cost? Might have some Euros in my piggy bank.”

“Don’t like that conversion rate, but we might be able to work out an installment plan in dollars. I know you’re just a poor student and all.”

“Considerate of you.”

“Of course I’m considerate. It’s part of the Latina passion. We like to take care of people.” She lowered her voice to a whisper and leaned in close. “Even pervs with hair fetishes.”

Curt gave her foot a gentle nudge under the table and tucked into his potatoes. “What else comes along with that passion?”

“Nothing I can say in front of a Rated G audience.”

When Curt looked over at her, she was wearing the damnedest smirk he’d ever seen. Was she teasing? He couldn’t tell. He could
usually
tell.

After dinner, the Fennells left Curt and Erica up to their own devices for a while so they could get the children bathed and into bed. The two ambled out into the garden and lingered near Carla’s ill-conceived vegetable patch.

Curt said, “You know, Carla used to–”

“Don’t care,” Erica interrupted. Taking him off-guard, she pushed him against the wall next to the back door and pressed her body against his. She cocked her chin up daringly and quirked one corner of her mouth into a smirk.

He was going to ask her what the game was, but before he could get it out, she shoved her hands into his pants pockets. He didn’t think she was looking for his wallet.

“Not a fan of small talk, darlin’?”

“Not a fan of small
anything
,” she whispered. The fingers of her left hand found his shaft and tightened around it.

“I see.” His reserve had bottomed out and it was all her fault. He’d tried to be good. He skimmed his hands down her back and cradled her bottom, creating a pleasurable friction from her body and hand against his cock. When she didn’t complain, he danced his tongue around the edges of her lips.

In response, she pulled his bottom lip between her teeth with a little growl as she freed her hands from his pockets.

He wondered where she’d put them next, and closed his eyes as her fingertips delved into his hair at the back of his head. She didn’t seem interested in mere fondling, as she fisted his overgrown hair and pulled his face closer to hers, making their kiss rougher.

With a groan of impatience, he pulled the hem of her shirt from her pants and palmed the hot skin of her back, kneading and rubbing the sensitive spots at the base of her spine. She moaned into his mouth as he increased the friction of his cock against her belly. He trailed his fingertips around to the bottom of her ribs and up to her breasts, freed her nipples from their lacy constraints and flicked them with his thumbs.

She drew back from him and sucked in some air. Her dark eyes were wild, cheeks flushed–apparent even in the dimming light.

“You keep that up and we’re gonna fuck right here.”

Curt pulled her back into his kiss with a grunt. He liked that idea very much, actually. She was so warm and smelled so good, probably the kind of girl who’d have him up all night…in more ways than one. And probably the kind who’d, after they were done, be content with going home to her own bed without being asked.

She leaned back again, this time with her hands against his chest to put some space between them while she caught her breath. “I want to take your picture.”

“
What
?”

“Of the way you look right now. Stay right there!” She straightened her shirt and hurried into the house, returning before he could voice objection.

He adjusted the crotch of his pants as she focused her camera at his burning face. “What the hell, woman?”

She mumbled “hmm” and stared down at her viewfinder. “Just something to remember Ireland by.”

“We’re not quite done making memories yet. How about you put that thing back where you got it and we’ll finish what we started?”

She smiled wickedly and draped the camera strap over her neck. “Hmm.” From a pocket of her jeans, she pulled a roll of purple mints, one of which she popped one into her mouth while narrowing her eyes at him.

“Hmm, what? Thinking about the next victim you’re gonna deliver a case of blue balls to?”

“Aw, poor baby.” She pressed against him once more and this time pushed her hand down his waistband, inside his boxer shorts.

He sucked in a breath as her warm skin awakened his and ground his teeth. He very nearly shuddered.
Jesus.

“Like that?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you do.”

“What are you gonna do about it?”

“Nothing.” She pulled her hand out and backed away, smirking audaciously as she went.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

She did a slow shake of her head, and never took her gaze from his. “No. I think you’re more fun than a quick, standing fuck. Don’t know why I think that, and I might be wrong, but I’d like to find out. You call me when you get back to the US and I’ll finish what I started.”

He scoffed and crossed his arms over his chest. He paced. He laughed.
Are you kidding me?

Any other woman, he would have called a cocktease and written off, but this one, this woman standing in front of him with a smile that could have made the devil bow down. She was something else.

She might have been his match.

Chapter 3

Seven missed calls. Three new messages. Erica deleted one of the messages without listening after reading the number, and pressed her phone against her ear as the second played.

“Hey, when you comin’ back?” the nasally voice demanded. “I thought you was gonna be back last week. I don’t understand what you’re doing over there. Are you getting paid while you’re there or living on savings or what? I didn’t think photographers made that kind of money. Alright. Call me when you’re back,
gorda
.”

She sucked her teeth and pressed
Delete
. As if her sister Maria-Elena actually gave a shit when she returned. They rarely saw each other, even though geographically, they were the two closest family members with Mary-Elena being in Myrtle Beach and the rest of the family down in Miami. She knew who’d put her up to the call. The same person whose messages Erica had been deleting unheard for five weeks.

She shifted on the bench she’d been staking out in a Dublin park, slouching lower and crossing her legs at the ankles. She stared at happy, laughing children at play on funky geometric apparatuses, and observed pedestrians. They passed in their casual garb, arms linked, chatting amiably, or clamping newspapers in hands, searching for a perfect perch to read them. Her aim was to be as hyper-aware as that student photographer whose diptych she’d admired, but nothing stood out.

Everything was interesting, but
nothing
was interesting. Every time she raised her camera for a shot, she stopped just shy of depressing the button. Not good enough. None of it was good enough.

Her obsession with taking the perfect photograph was a recent mania. In the ten years she’d worked for the
Charlotte Times
, she’d been mostly apathetic about her subjects. She was hardly even present, beyond physically. Speed and quantity were her chief concerns. She got in close, took her shot, and moved out of the way.

Most of the time, she couldn’t describe the people in a photo she’d taken only moments before. They may as well have been statues in a museum, although she’d tried photographing those, too, and the results weren’t anything special.

Her heart wasn’t really in it. Yeah, she showed up to work on time, and was polite and engaging to her subjects, but she didn’t try to see
through
them like some great photographers apparently had the ability to do. She’d taken ten years to notice she wasn’t seeing what the “good” shooters were. A
Times
photographer she admired a great deal had moved on to a larger paper and not long after won a Pulitzer. She’d studied that photo and tried to emulate what made it so good. The grit. The immediacy. The simple subject matter.

Nothing. Same old, same old.

Her sabbatical was a last-ditch effort. A palate cleanser, really. Maybe if she surrounded herself with sights she’d never seen before, she could reboot.

Find focus.

Become an artist.

If she could do that, maybe she could move on, in spite of the past that hung like an albatross around her neck.

She ground her teeth and queued up the next message.

“Ms. Desoto, this is Ingrid Lopez from the
Asheville Daily
. I hate delivering this sort of news, especially after we bonded over our shared origins. We were prepared to make you an offer of employment, but there was an issue on your background check that raised some concern with the editorial staff. I’m truly sorry, especially since it was so long ago, but if you’re still interested in working with the paper we do need a stringer in your–”

Erica deleted the message. She knew how the rest would go. They’d offer some freelance, which she couldn’t take while employed by the
Times
.

What was that? Five rejections in four months? It was hard to keep track. The first three, from prominent papers in DC, New York, and Boston, had dismissed her based on her portfolio. She hadn’t even gotten to the offer stage. The fourth hadn’t even called. They’d mailed her a letter with a rejection similar to Ms. Lopez’s, minus the “shared origins” bit.

“Shit. What now?”

There were a couple of smaller papers seeking part-time photographers. She’d still have to make up the difference with freelance, if she could find any. Or maybe find another profession entirely.

With a ragged exhale, she powered her camera on once more and scrolled through her shots. There had to be a paper somewhere that could forgive her for a juvenile mistake and extend an offer. If she’d been a man, she probably wouldn’t be facing the dilemma: quit and hope to find another job, or stay on at the place where she was miserable because it was stable.

As usual, she was unimpressed by her photo roll.

Old statues. “Eh.”

Ruins. “Eh.”

Beautiful, stately chapels. “Meh.”

Some step-dancers in an outdoor festival. “Hmm.” That one she kept, only because she’d accidentally captured a young girl bending down to straighten her socks while everyone else in the line leapt.

Erica kept scrolling and feeling mostly ambivalent at the bland shots until one frame gave her pause and took her breath away. The shot that would never find its way into her portfolio, no matter how damned perfect it was. Or maybe he was perfect.

The blond flirt.
Curt
. That was the face she wanted to remember during the long flight home.

She zoomed in closer and studied his flushed cheeks, the plaid shirt she’d helped wrinkle, and the narrowed set of his eyes. It could have been a picture of
any
man coming out of a nightclub after several rounds of drinks, or perhaps of some sports spectator angry his team hadn’t put their hearts into a match, but this was personal. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he’d asked.

She hadn’t thought she was. In fact, one part of her was going to let him screw her right there against the wall if he’d been so inclined, but then what? Would he call when he got back to the States like he said?

Probably not. Why would he?

The way she saw it, Curt had everything going for him: looks, intelligence, education, career goals, friends. What did she have? A lot of brazen hair and an okay apartment. She might not even have a job much longer.

She took one last look at her camera’s viewfinder before stuffing the device into its cushioned bag. Time to head out. She’d tried. She’d traveled all the way to Europe looking for a muse. Backpacked all over Germany and France with her camera in tow, nearly drank herself to death in England and Ireland hoping to find inspiration at the bottom of a glass, and now was going back to North Carolina no closer to artistry than where she’d started six weeks ago. If anyone asked to see her photos from the trip, she planned to lie. “They got wiped out going through security. I’m so pissed.”

She’d delete all of them except two. The photo of the Irish dancer she’d send to the lab for a print. The photo of the pissed Irishman…well, she had a special folder on her hard drive for that one.

* * * *

Curt leaned against the non-descript Dublin institution’s front gate and twirled car keys around his index finger while he waited.