Page 46 of Feel the Heat

That’s exactly what she had thought. It was easier to label him a pretty boy charmer who had his uses, but wouldn’t be around for the long haul. The luxury model you take for a test drive before you settle for the Honda Civic. Easier, but wrong.

“Jack, I’m so sorry. I did make an assumption about you.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said gruffly. Showing no surprise at her apology, his face descended to a blank slate. Usually, he wore his emotions freely, and the new look didn’t suit him.

“It does matter,” she insisted to, probably, unmovable ears. “I have this tendency to get smart when I’m nervous. I’m not used to this—”

“Used to what? Seeing beyond the surface?” He coughed out a caustic laugh. “I imagine that must be problematic for an artist.”

If he had slapped her, it wouldn’t have hurt as much. Since finding her home behind the camera, she had used it as both her sword and her shield. In the space between her lens and her subject, she was untouchable. Unbreakable. Ancient slights and cuts vanished into the ether with an open shutter and a definitive click. Framing people in her viewfinder allowed her to box them up, all neat and tidy.

But the flat, shiny planes and darkened contours of her work were two-dimensional, and not much else. Art was neither neat nor tidy, it was messy and deep and most of all, human.

Tonight, there had been a brief moment when she held him captive in her lens and saw something beautifully honest in his fatigue. I have it, she thought, but a click of her Leica later, the moment was gone. Never good enough.

“I need to go,” he said, rough and deep.

Her throat had closed up, but she believed she nodded.

He stared at her with those unfathomable eyes, the exact color of which she could never accurately apprehend with her camera.

“Lili, I have to leave.”

She gulped down her regret and curled her hands into fists at her sides to stop the imminent shake. “I know,” then when he still watched in harsh silence, she offered a more resolute, “Just go.”

He didn’t budge. He just stood in her cramped kitchen, eyes judging, taunting her with his vitality. Reminding her of everything she couldn’t have. Through his tee, she imagined she saw his heart as it pumped his life force to all the pulse points of his body.

“This is just too frustrating for me,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Her breath stopped, momentarily shutting down her lungs. She could not have heard that right. It was like he was continuing a conversation in his head and her words had made no impact. By now, he should have been half way to his hotel, but he chose to stand in her kitchen telling her...

“Frustrating for you?”

“I'm in physical pain here,” he said, his voice strained.

“You're in pain?”

This is what he had turned her into, a simpleton who parroted ridiculous male declarations. At what point in the history of gender relations had women decided that flipping a guy’s statements into questions was a valid argument strategy?

He looked to the ceiling and appeared to be marshaling his strength. “Lili...”

She had given him an out. She had treated him shabbily and had her apology grudgingly accepted. But he had started this thing between them with every hot look he blasted her way since stumbling out of her fridge. Last night, she had offered herself on a silver platter, and her reward was a one-way ticket to Foolsville and the public scorn of his fan club. Tonight, he had shown up at her door with his goat cheese caramel gelato and his fucking tractor beam smile, continuing his mission to plow soul-deep ruts in her mind. And now he had the gall to tell her he was frustrated?

An anger bomb exploded in her chest, hurling bitter shrapnel to every nerve ending. “Jack Kilroy, you do not have a monopoly on frustration. I'm frustrated, too.”

More of the gimme-patience look. “Sweetheart, it's different for a man.”

“Are you saying it's worse for a man?” she demanded in a tone that said he’d better not be saying that.

The man smirked. Smirked! “Yes, I am. It's much worse.”

“That's bullshit. You're prancing around, kissing me—” She jabbed him in the chest, gratified when his eyes flew wide and dark. “Teasing me, and I'm not supposed to be affected by that. My whole body is aching.”

Oh, dear. Inside thoughts, Lili.

“Aching?” he asked, a bourbon-laced rasp.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to will away her admission but she would have more success stopping her heart from beating. She couldn’t stand the thought of him leaving without a kind word or a soft touch. Just a whisper of his hand to ease the pain, a light abrading to return her to sanity. That’s all she needed, then he could go on his way.

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