Captured By You: A One Night of Passion Novella (3 page)

He was looking forward to this.

Chapter Two

Sherona started when she heard Chance call her name and nearly dropped the can of tomatoes she was placing on the pantry shelf. Her nerves had been jumping ever since she’d glanced across the counter and seen him sitting in that booth, all long, lean, careless male virility. A man like Chance Hathoway didn’t come through a town like Vulture’s Canyon save once in a lifetime, and he was bound to cause havoc in at least one female heart during that ephemeral visit.

For some reason, fate had seen fit to make her heart the one at risk, Sherona thought wryly as she nervously smoothed her skirt and rushed into her office, glancing at herself in the cracked mirror on her office wall. Or maybe not her heart, but certainly her body. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d experienced her femininity and sexuality as acutely as she had the other day on the edge of that lake with Chance’s camera trained directly on her. Knowing that he’d witnessed the sudden, sharp awareness of herself as a beautiful, desirable woman made her vulnerable to him.

Or maybe what made her vulnerable was that his
observance
of her was what had
caused
her potent arousal.

She knew who he was, of course. She hadn’t out there at Orchard Lake, but she’d recognized his name when Katie mentioned their houseguest yesterday while she’d been visiting the diner, and Sherona had put two and two together. Her brother, Derek, had bought Sherona one of Chance Hathoway’s books last Christmas when she’d taken up landscape photography as a hobby. Hathoway was one of the best-known nature photographers in the world. His photos had appeared in museums, art galleries, magazines, books and newspapers across the globe. He’d won multiple prizes for his work—actually, a surprising number for a man so young. The fact that he was also the heir to the Hathoway retail fortune and a gorgeous Aussie with a bad-boy, adventure-here-I-come smile only added to his mystique.

This was the man with whom Sherona Legion—diner owner, cook, waitress and lifetime resident of the skeleton of a forgotten town, Vulture’s Canyon—was about to go and view naked photos with.

Nude photos of
herself
.

As she walked out of her office, her gaze flickered across the U.S. lotto jackpot ticket she’d bought the other day. She’d tacked it up on the bulletin board, along with the ten other ones she’d wasted her money on over the past decade. Stupid ritual, she knew, but it hadn’t stopped her from buying one chance a year for the past ten years at an escape from Vulture’s Canyon; one wispy, ephemeral shot at finally springing her life out of permanent stall-mode.

Sometimes you had to take a chance if you ever wanted to truly live.

She applied the no-nonsense, unflappable expression she’d acquired after years of being a cook and waitress in a quirky community of artists and nonconformists and pushed through the swinging doors.

He sat on his stool, his glass of ice water, his laptop and an opened package of mints sitting before him on the counter. She noticed his dinner plate was missing. Her gaze flicked to the sink, and she saw that he’d rinsed it off.

“Make yourself at home,” she said with amused sarcasm.

“I was just trying to clean up after myself,” he said, attempting an innocent look and completely failing. It was a little hard for a rugged, six-foot-and-so-many-inches, shaggy-haired, whiskered male who had seen it all in every location across the globe to come off as angelic. Her wry glance told him so.

“Don’t open those photos out here!” she said, suddenly realizing that his fingers were tapping across the keyboard and his monitor faced the entrance to the diner. Just what she needed, for her customers to see her stark naked. Anger flickered through her once again at his infringement on her privacy.

“Come on,” she said, waving for him to follow. She didn’t look around until she’d reached her tiny, cramped office in the back room and sat at her desk.

“Shouldn’t we lock up out front?” Chance asked as he maneuvered into the only other chair in the office. His knees pressed against the wood panel on the front of her desk when he sat. This room was much too small for him.

Or he was much too big for it. Chance Hathoway seemed much too large for her small, known world in general.

“No one will be in for probably an hour or two, but if someone does come, I’ll hear the door chimes,” she said, hoping she sounded calm and matter-of-fact. In truth, her heart was beating uncomfortably fast.

He placed his computer on her desk and started hitting a few buttons, his manner focused. The irises of his eyes were hazel flecked with gold, the warm tones perfectly suited to his sandy blond hair. While his skin, eyes and the hair on his head possessed tawny hues, his thick eyelashes, the hair on his muscular forearms and the light scruff on his jaw were a darker brown.

He turned the computer sideways so that they could both see the monitor. His expression had gone every bit as impassive as hers. Sherona felt like he’d just dealt her a hand in a high-stakes poker match.

She stared at the screen. Her mouth went dry.

The photograph had caught her in midstride as she walked toward the shore. The evening sun and the glistening moisture on her naked body made her skin glow . . . luminesce. It was the expression on her face that made her stare in wonder, however. She looked serene, but a small smile shaped her mouth.

It was as if Chance knew perfectly well he’d caught a part of her that she wasn’t entirely sure existed until he’d captured it with his camera.

She knew now.

She felt odd . . . dizzy.

“The delete button is right there.”

Her gaze flashed to his face at the sound of his gruff voice. He seemed somber . . . watchful. She remained unmoving.

“Would you like to see the rest of them?” he asked after a stretched, straining silence.

She nodded. It was all she could manage by way of a response.

His long fingers moved on the keyboard, reminding her of the lover-like way he touched his camera the other day—precise, knowing, masterful. She stared at the screen, overwhelmed by an emotion she couldn’t quite identify. Here was an image of her squeezing the excess water out of her hair, crystalline droplets clinging to her right breast, a thin rivulet streaming down her ribs.

In this one, she stood at the water’s edge. Chance had caught the expression of a woman who was entirely at peace with herself—who liked her own company. Tears burned behind her eyelids.

He clicked a key on the computer. Her breath struck in her lungs at what she saw. She looked across the desk at Chance, her eyes going wide. He stared back at her unblinkingly, just like he had the moment after he’d taken this photograph, when he’d caught her startled wonder as she recognized his presence. Sherona had precisely the same feeling she’d had when he’d photographed her. A heavy, hot sensation of arousal pooled in her sex.

He tapped his finger. In the next photo, her gaze remained fixed on him, her hands by her sides, her shoulders back, her breasts thrust forward, a hint of defiance on her face.

“No,
don’t
,” she said sharply when he lifted his finger.

“Why not? These are the most beautiful shots of all . . . certainly the most honest,” he said, his eyes looking very warm.

He hit a key. Her heart felt like it had lodged itself in her throat. She couldn’t help but look. Stare. In the image, she faced the camera full-on, unafraid. Sherona wasn’t sure if it was the setting sun causing the effect, but her skin looked flushed with a golden pink hue. A few droplets of water clung to her pubic hair and the two fingers she’d placed on her labia to staunch the sharp stab of arousal she’d felt.

Heat washed over her cheeks and chest. She reluctantly met Chance’s gaze and felt that jab of lust all over again. Why did she find his observance of her so potently erotic?

“You can’t possibly mean to delete them now that you’ve seen them,” he said, his low, gravelly voice an audible caress in the tiny, still room. His accent perfectly suited him—lyrical and rough at once. His voice had nearly as palpable an effect on her as his eyes. “They’re some of the best photographs I’ve ever taken.”

She blinked in dazed surprise.

“I mean it,” he said with quiet conviction. “I want to photograph you again.”

“You mean . . . nude?”

He nodded. Their voices had gone hushed and intimate. Another wave of dizziness struck her, but the expanding ache at her sex seemed to ground her, keep her in the moment there with Chance. She couldn’t escape him; she didn’t want to.

“But not
just
nude,” he said.

Confusion flickered through her, but so did another prickle of sexual awareness. It was as if his voice itself were touching her . . . seducing her. “What do you mean, not
just
nude?”

He nodded once toward the photograph on the screen. The captured Sherona stared back at both of them, her awakened sexuality a palpable thing.

“I want to see
more
of that,” he said. “I want to liberate the hint of what I’m seeing there. I want to see it all, Sherona.”

Her heartbeat drummed in her ears in the silent seconds that followed.

“What . . . what would you do with them? The photos?”

“Treasure them, I expect.”

Her heart paused in her chest at his simple response.

“I’ll never let another soul see them, save you. Please. I want the opportunity to show you what I see when I look at you. I want the chance to celebrate you. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

That
pierced through the fog of mesmerized arousal he’d formed around her, striking her as patently ridiculous.

“Give me a break,” she said, standing from her desk, feeling vulnerable. She lowered the screen on his computer, hiding the offending—compelling—image. “You probably say something similar to women in every city, village and hamlet you visit across the globe in order to get a woman to take off her clothes for you.”

“No. I don’t.”

His quiet forcefulness caused her to pause. The door chimes tinkled in the distance.

“I don’t photograph people. I’m a landscape photographer.”

She swallowed thickly. She believed him for some reason. Maybe because he was so patently sexy, there’d be no reason for him to have to think of stupid scenarios to get a woman naked and into bed with him. Besides, she’d seen his magnificent nature photos. Something told her he’d never sully his camera by using it regularly for taking photos of naked women for lewd purposes.

But those photos of her naked were the exact opposite of lewd. They were sexual, yes, but powerful to the extreme. They didn’t debase her sexuality; they celebrated it.

“I . . . I have to go. There’s a customer,” she said, coming around the desk.

He stood and took a step toward her, halting her exit.

“Sherona?”

“Yes,” she muttered, staring at the buttons on his shirt, keeping her head lowered so that he couldn’t see the throb of her pulse at her throat.

“Will you think about it?”

“I . . . I’m not sure.”

Her eyes went wide when he touched her cheek. She looked up, startled. His face was suddenly very close, his features striking her as bold and chiseled, rugged and masculine, yet perfectly harmonious. She could smell his aftershave and something that reminded her of fresh air and the woods.

“You have every right not to believe me, but I’m completely captivated by you,” he said gently, his warm, fragrant breath striking her lips. He brushed his mouth across hers in a questing kiss. Without thinking, she submitted to his heat . . . his touch. She moved her lips against his, sliding and shaping. She blinked when he made a low, gruff sound of arousal. He placed his hand along her neck in a possessive gesture and bent over her, sliding his tongue between her lips.

Liquid heat surged between her legs at the feeling of his tongue plunging into her mouth. His taste flooded her, blinding her to all else—peppermint and some subtle flavor she couldn’t put a name to, but recognized with every cell of her female body. Her world narrowed to the sensation of his tongue dueling with her own, exploring her possessively, sucking on her sweetly until she moaned as if in answer to his call.

He shifted his hands to her waist and pulled her tight against him, his thumbs caressing the sides of her body in a lazy circular motion that caused pleasure to curl tight in her lower belly. She instinctively pressed closer to his body, seeking out the evidence of his arousal and gloriously finding it. He was warm and male and so hard, it sent a thrill of sexual anticipation through her unlike she’d ever experienced in her life.

He moaned roughly into her mouth. She whimpered in displeasure, shocking herself, when he broke their kiss. He nibbled at her upturned lips with a barely restrained hunger.

“I’ll take such good care of you, Sherona,” he murmured. “Let me capture you with my camera. I want to see pleasure blazing from your face. I want to see you wet like you were the other day when you came out of the lake, but this time with desire. I want to
show
you how you can look, how you can
feel
.”

Sherona stared, overwhelmed, confused and blatantly aroused by his tensely uttered words. It was hard to think with his body pressed against hers, the taste of him still on her tongue, his large hands holding her so possessively, a hot promise in his eyes. She stepped back, breaking their embrace, her hand covering her lips as if she foolishly thought she could wipe away the memory of that kiss.

As if.
She’d probably be able to perfectly describe that kiss on her dying day.

She gave him a wild, desperate glance and headed toward the diner. She was making some coffee for her customers a minute later when he came out of the back room.

“Is there a good time to come back tomorrow so that you can show me the cooperative farm and anything else you think should be featured in the brochure?” he asked her.

She glanced at him sideways. His voice had been decidedly neutral. She appreciated his backing off sufficiently so that she could think. Viewing those photographs with him, hearing him say those outlandishly sexy things, kissing him, had been a highly unsettling and intimate experience.