“Yes, and he told me to get some camera equipment. My ex-boyfriend is a professional photographer.”
“You have boyfriends but you did . . . did this?”
“Anything for my job.” She was pulling on a pair of jeans. “Anyway, he knows someone who owns a camera store so he got in while the store was closed. Everything’s in the dining room. And I went to a twenty-four-hour department store and bought us some camping gear. It’s in the trunk of your car. Sure that’s how you want to try to win her?”
“You can’t go with us,” he said.
“You’re Jeff and we’re lovers. There’s no way you can go camping alone with another woman.”
“I think it’s time to start telling Chelsea the truth and drop this idiocy about who I am.”
Pilar went to the bed and leaned close to him. “Sure you want to do that? Admit that you’ve lied to her? Or maybe you want to confess that all Jeff said about her was straight from your mouth. How long before she’ll leave? Ten minutes? Five?”
“But this . . . you and me, will compound the lie.”
“Tell her the truth when you’re kissing her like you did me this morning.” Standing up, she looked down at him. “I never would have guessed you had such passion in you. I thought all you cared about was the greater good. Nothing personal allowed.”
“Passion is passion,” he said as he got out of bed. He had on a T-shirt and boxers. “Great love transfers to anything. And good or bad, you are not going with us.”
“Interesting philosophy,” she said as she watched him walk to the bathroom. Smiling, she left the room and went into the kitchen.
Chelsea was standing at the dining table, which was covered with boxes full of high-end photography equipment. She’d opened most of them. “This card says all this is a gift from Eli. Did you bring it?”
“Yes,” Pilar said. “He said he wanted to apologize to you for something. Mind if I ask what he did?”
“He said what I knew he thought. I deserved it, but it was nice when Jeff decked him.”
Pilar’s eyes opened wide. “He hit him?!”
“Oh, yes,” Chelsea said. “It was rather nice. So you work for Eli but you’re sleeping with Jeff?”
“Looks that way,” Pilar said.
Chelsea held up a lens that was about eighteen inches long. “Do you know how to work any of this? It’s been a long time since I held a camera.”
“But Eli said you liked taking photos.”
“I did when I was a kid. What’s he like to work for?”
“Difficult,” Pilar said. “He expects people to read his mind and know what he needs done. ‘You handle it’ is one of his favorite sayings.”
“So he can think about larger things. What’s he working on now?”
“Can’t tell you,” Pilar said. “It’s all Top Secret. I don’t even know half of it.”
“Robots or computers that can think?”
Pilar laughed. “Looks like his interests haven’t changed since he was a kid. Here, let me show you how to attach that to the camera.”
After Eli showered and put on clean clothes, he hesitated before leaving the bedroom. What would Chelsea think of him after finding him in bed with another woman? Would she be angry? Jealous?
He took a breath before opening the door. Both women were sitting at the kitchen counter, plates of scrambled eggs and bacon before them, their hands full of cameras and lenses.
Pilar was speaking. “I’ve seen great photos taken from a hundred yards away with this lens. And this one does the opposite. It can magnify the eye of a butterfly.”
“When I think of all the pictures I could have taken in my life, I feel regret. But maybe—” Chelsea looked up to see Eli/Jeff in the doorway. “Good morning,” she said cheerfully. “Sleep well?” She glanced at Pilar. “Or did you get any sleep at all?” Her innuendo was clear.
“Some,” he said, looking from one women to the other.
“We made breakfast,” Chelsea said. “Come and join us. I like this woman. Maybe you should buy her a ring, something big and flashy.”
Eli stood there for a moment, not sure how to address that. “I’m going out to mow the lawn. When I get back, we’ll leave.” He seemed about to say something else but didn’t. He practically ran to the front door.
Pilar waited until they heard the lawn mower, then she turned to Chelsea. “You know, don’t you?”
Chelsea looked up from the camera. “That Jeff is Eli? Of course. Can I assume that you’re part of the effort he’s making to win me?”
“I am, but I was Jeff’s idea. I’m afraid I’ve shocked my boss.”
“Tell me the truth about what it’s like working for him.”
“I’m tired of it,” Pilar said. “There’s so much data, so many secrets, and Eli keeps everything in his brain. He’s such an introverted person. Only if Jeff is near him does he loosen up. Are you going to tell Eli that you know who he is?”
“Maybe.” She looked back at the camera. “So what’s it like to kiss him? And how is he in bed?”
“He’s an expert at kissing, but I wouldn’t know about the bed from personal experience.”
“Good,” Chelsea said with a smile. “And just so you know, you ever touch him again, I will hurt you.”
Pilar laughed. “I like that. He needs someone. Besides, I just met a guy. At three a.m. this morning I got a flat tire and some big, gorgeous man stopped and changed it for me. On my part it was instant attraction. I thought he was interested too, but when I thanked him, that was it. I figured he was probably married. But when I got here and took my suitcase out of the trunk, I saw that he’d stuck his business card on it. Lancaster Frazier. His family owns the local car dealership.”
“Good,” Chelsea said. “Stick with him and leave Eli to me.”
“A deal,” Pilar said, and they smiled at each other.
An hour later Chelsea and Eli were in the car together and driving out of Edilean.
“So where are we going?” she asked. “There are some beautiful resorts around here.”
“We’re going camping.”
“Is this a joke?”
“No. Pilar bought the gear and it’s in the trunk.”
“I think you should know that I hate camping,” she said.
“Do you? Eli never told me that. He told me everything else about you, but not that. Interesting. Well, it’s only for one night and you need a place to use all the new camera equipment he bought you, don’t you? Sunset over the mountains, that sort of thing. You can—”
“Cut it out, Eli! You very well know that I hate camping.”
He glanced away from the road for a second to hide his smile. He was glad the charade was over. “Just one night,” he said.
“I don’t want to go camping!”
They argued all the way to the campground.
Chelsea stood to one side, her arms folded across her chest, and glared at Eli as he quickly put up the tent. Even though he’d agreed to stop at a huge mall and she’d spent hours shopping, she was still angry. He’d driven through a forest and down an old road, and stopped at a locked gate that had signs reading NO TRESPASSING, GOVERNMENT PROPERTY, and KEEP OUT.
Chelsea wasn’t surprised when Eli had a key to the lock. As he drove down a gravel path, she was too angry to speak to him. He knew how much she hated camping, so why did he bring her here? From the way he’d been kissing Pilar this morning she wondered if he was planning a seduction. But that could have been accomplished at a hotel.
He seemed to know the area well and came to a stop by a pristine lake. It was so clean that it looked as though no human had been near it in centuries.
For a moment, all Chelsea could do was stare at it, but when she glanced at Eli, she saw his little smile of triumph. “We could have come here on a day trip.”
&n
bsp; “And miss the sunset?” He was at the trunk and unpacking the gear.
She stood with her arms folded over her chest and glared at him while he set up the tent and spread two sleeping bags inside. When that was done, he got out two canvas chairs and a big blue cooler, then handed Chelsea a small backpack.
She stepped back, hands raised. “Oh, no you don’t. I don’t hike.”
“Open it.”
When she did, she saw that all the new camera equipment Pilar had bought was inside.
Eli sat down on a chair. “Think you remember how to use it?”
“The last camera I used—other than my phone, that is—had film.”
Smiling, Eli reached into the cooler. He knew that about her, which was why he’d requested a retro-looking camera that would remind her of ones she’d used as a child. He held up a beer. “Want one?”
“No, thanks.” Chelsea sat down on a dry place and removed the pretty Nikon Df camera and an 18–200 lens and attached it, then pointed it toward the lake. For all her protests, she instinctively turned the band on the lens to zoom in and out, snapping at every stop.
Eli drank his beer and watched her as she fiddled with the silver knobs and clicked away. When he glanced away for a moment, she quickly turned the camera toward him and he heard the rapid fire of the shutter.
He looked back at her. “So why did your parents want you to visit me?”
Chelsea put the short macro lens on the camera and began adjusting it to photograph arrangements of pebbles. “I’d rather hear why you brought me to this place.”
“To get you away from all the distractions. You hungry?”
“Starving—as I have been since I first saw you. Ow!” She swatted at a mosquito. “Are there large animals around here?”
“Lots of them. Bears and deer. And a few dinosaurs. But the government has them in electrical cages. I hope they hold.”
“If you’re trying to be funny, you aren’t succeeding.”
Eli got more supplies from the car and began clearing an area to build a fire. “I want you to tell me about yourself. Hold still.”
“What?”
“Don’t move.”
Chelsea froze her body into place but her face moved into a form that told him what she thought of him.
Slowly, Eli stepped around her, picked up a stick, and flicked a rather fat snake away from her. The two of them watched it slowly move away into the woods.
“I’m leaving,” Chelsea said and went to the car. It was locked. She glared at him. “Give me the key.”
“Nope,” Eli said as he squatted down to tend to the fire. “I have you all to myself and that’s where I plan to keep you.”
“This is kidnapping.”
“Probably,” he said, unperturbed. “I had Jeff get all the things needed to make s’mores. Remember how much you always liked them?”
“When I was eight. I’m grown-up now and I like adult things.”
“Do we change?” Eli said as he looked at the fire. “Most of the time I feel like that kid who just wanted to save the world.”
“Isn’t that what you do?” Her tone was angry and she hadn’t moved away from the car, but she knew Eli wasn’t going to give in. If he was nothing else, he was stubborn. Nothing could make him get off course once he’d made up his mind.
Tentatively, and looking where she stepped, she went to the fire. “What are you working on now?”
“Can’t tell you,” he said as he put a marshmallow onto a piece of wire. “What about you? Thinking of starting a ladies’ polo team?”
“For your information, I help Rodrigo with his business. It takes work to stay on the polo circuit.”
“I bet,” Eli mumbled. He handed her a toasted marshmallow. “You’d better tie your hair back or—” He broke off when a breeze caught her long hair and wrapped it around the sticky marshmallow.
Chelsea’s anger showed on her face. “I knew this would happen! What next? A family of bears
shows up?”
“I hope not,” Eli said cheerfully. “How about a sandwich?”
“Only if I can throw it at you.”
He smiled at her. “Jeff sent a bucket of KFC. Sound good?”
“Fried?! You want me to eat something that has been fried?”
“It’s your choice. You’d better get your camera equipment because it’s starting to rain.”
A fat drop hit Chelsea in the face. “I hate you, Eli Harcourt,” she muttered as she grabbed her gear and zipped the lid of the case closed. She started toward the car but as the rain began to come down harder, Eli held the tent flap open.
Grimacing, she went inside.
A moment later Eli entered, a big red-and-white paper bucket in his arms and four bottles of beer.
It was two hours later that Eli looked at Chelsea, asleep in the down-filled bag, and smiled. It had taken work on his part but he’d managed to get her to use the container of wet wipes to remove all the makeup from her face. She’d pulled her hair back in a ponytail and had eaten heartily of the fried chicken.
And in between she’d talked. Over the years, he’d been able to deduce a lot about her life from photographs and tidbits he’d heard from people. But he couldn’t know the whole truth from being on the outside. Was she truly in love with her latest boyfriend? Had she found something that occupied her life so she felt as she had when they were kids? Whenever one of their projects worked, they’d put ginger ale in champagne glasses and toasted, “To saving the world.”
To Eli’s mind, he was still trying to do that, but what was Chelsea doing now?
The rain pounding down on the little tent, the light from the lantern, the closeness, plus the food and beers, had made Chelsea open up as he doubted she had in years—or ever.
As he looked at her sleeping, he didn’t lie to himself. His desires were all selfish. He still wanted her for himself. There was something about her that . . . well, made him feel as though the half of him that had been missing for so very long had been returned to him.
As he snuggled down in the bag beside her, he knew the camping trip had worked. Of course he knew she hated camping. One of his favorite memories of their childhood was when Chelsea had climbed a tree to avoid the “creatures of the night” as she called them. Since they’d been in her parents’ backyard, there hadn’t been a lot of danger.
But to Chelsea’s mind, it had always been “one of the worst experiences of my life.”
As he’d hoped, this camping trip, short as it was, had made her so angry, had so completely taken her out of her comfort zone, that she’d told him more than she would have if they’d been in some pretty hotel. He’d seen that she tended to dazzle everyone around her and he didn’t want that.
Smiling, he went to sleep.
He awoke to a flood of complaints. It was as though their camaraderie of the night before had never happened.
“I can’t appear in public like this!” she said as she tried to comb marshmallow out of her hair. As other women before her had discovered, it wasn’t possible.
To Eli’s dismay, Chelsea pulled a little case out of her big handbag and proceeded to darken her eyelids to the point where he hardly recognized her.
By the time they were ready to leave, it was strained between them.
“Is there a bug in my hair?” Chelsea asked as they got out of the car. “Or maybe a thousand of them?”
Eli grit his teeth. “No bugs. No dirt. No mosquito bites anywhere. You are model perfect.”
“That was mean,” she said. They’d been driving back to Edilean and had stopped at an off-road diner to have lunch.
“Sorry,” Eli said. “It’s just that your incessant complaining is getting me down.”
“I told you I didn’t want to spend time in the woods. No bathroom, no—”
“No hair
dresser,” Eli said. “I get it. It’s just that the Chelsea I knew—”
She threw up her hands. “Don’t start on me again! The Chelsea you knew was a myth. Something you made up. I became an adult.”
“And chose to dedicate your life to your hair,” Eli said under his breath.
“I heard that. At least I have a life! All you do is stare at a computer screen and make up games that live out your fantasies. Where are the real women in your life?”
He turned to her. “Maybe they’re dating the men who are no longer in your life.”
Glaring at him, she stepped around an old car that was parked over the line. She wasn’t surprised when the rusty bumper reached out and grabbed the side of her white jeans and held on. She heard the fabric rip. “Perfect,” she muttered, then tried to unfasten it, but it stuck.
Eli was holding open the door of the restaurant for her. Not only had she remade her face as though she were about to go on a photo shoot, she’d put on some white outfit he was sure had a designer’s name attached. When she kept fiddling with her clothes, he went back and stood there watching.
“You could help, you know.”
He unsnapped the leather holder at his side, withdrew a big knife, and opened the blade. Before she could protest, he cut the fabric that was being held by the rusty metal.
“You just cut a hole in my pants. Do you have any idea how much these cost?”
Eli wasn’t paying any attention to her. “This would never pass a road inspection.”
“You mean my trousers?”
He gave her a look.
“Oh, yeah, right. The car.” It really was a dreadful piece of junk. The body was covered in several shades of paint, all of it worn and dirty. The front windshield was cracked and the wipers had no blades. The passenger door was wired shut. “I wonder if it still runs.”
“Unless it was towed here, it has to.”
Chelsea walked around the vehicle. The trunk was tied down with burlap string and a taillight was missing. She looked around at the road. To the right was just forest. There were four cars besides Eli’s parked in front of the diner, and the old junker stood out from the others for the sheer horribleness of it. But something about the car wasn’t right. It was almost as though it were disposable, something to be discarded once a job was done. She looked at Eli. “You don’t think there’s a robbery going on, do you? Or maybe there’s someone tied up in the trunk.”