pool.
But the one that most caught her attention, at which she simply stared for a full minute, was one in which a man, his dark hair mussed like a bad wig, sat slouched in a restaurant booth with his chin in his hand, the light from the window slashing across his handsome face as he watched a woman and a little girl “talking” to each other a few feet away, their hands flying so fast, part of the picture was a blur. The pair were signing to each other, she realized. But the love shining from the man’s eyes, the adoration tilting his lips into a gentle smile as he watched who Sophie assumed were his wife and daughter so leapt from the photo, she almost felt like a voyeur.
She could feel Steven watching her.
Sophie turned, her eyes stinging, to see him buttoning up a blue-and-green plaid cotton shirt over the white T-shirt. “These are incredible,” she said softly. “Anybody can take pictures, but these…” She gestured toward the photos, shaking her head. “It must be very difficult to capture the emotion behind a photo.”
His fingers stilled on the buttons, his gaze bouncing off hers before it floated over to the photos as if he’d forgotten they were there. “It always amazes me, what the camera sees. How incredible the everyday stuff can seem, you know?”
She smiled. “Did you study with someone?”
“I minored in photography in college.” He finished up the buttons, then tucked the shirt into his pants. Frowning. As if there was more he wanted to say.
“Minored? So it’s a hobby, then?”
The colors in the shirt, the wash of sunlight trembling in the air, turned his eyes into a pair of glittering tourmalines when he looked at her. “No. It’s a passion,” he said quietly, and she wondered if she imagined the frustration vibrating beneath his words. “Come on,” he said then. “We can go, if you’re ready.” Before she could even nod, he’d called Rosie, who came skipping to him, the dog nearly knocking her over in his determination not to be left out.
“Yeah, you mangy mutt, I guess you can go, too,” Steven said, striding to the front door and swinging open the wooden-framed screen. Minutes later, all of them piled into his extended cab pickup truck—a minivan sat on the other side of the driveway, she assumed for family outings—Rosie and the dog in the back seat, the bike in the truck’s bed, Sophie carefully strapped in on the passenger side. Which, as luck would have it, put her far too close to both Steven’s scent, which wasn’t even identifiable enough to put into words, and his mood, which she had no trouble identifying at all: rotten.
True, she barely knew Steven Koleski, but she’d never met anyone she’d felt deserved a leg up more than this man did. Not that she thought money was that much of an issue—poverty was easily identifiable by the sense of hopelessness in its victims’ eyes—but this was clearly a man with far too many plates up in the air. Thus far, she guessed, he’d been able to keep them from crashing—through sheer bullheadedness, if nothing else—but for how long?
And, typically, she found herself desperately wanting to help.
But how? As Princess Sophie, she had any number of resources at her command. For one thing, she could easily procure a housekeeper for him, even if it meant “borrowing” one of the palace staff for a few weeks. She could even, with her connections, have his photographs placed in a London or Paris or New York gallery like that. But revealing her identity might cause more problems than it would solve. For one thing, she’d lay odds that Steven Koleski had more pride than blood running through his veins. While she doubted he’d be adverse to any avenue of help that would enable him to keep these children, somehow she suspected he’d eat worms before he’d accept anything he could even remotely construe as charity.
Especially from a princess.
But, as Lisa Stone, what did she have to offer?
Sophie dared to sneak a glance at the set features of the man sitting barely two feet away, an ordinary man with the extraordinary power to capture some part of her that no man ever had before. He made her feel…connected, somehow, to the rest of the human race. She frowned down at her bloodred fingernails, then shifted her gaze out the window.
When she’d come up with this crazy idea, she hadn’t really thought about whatever personal benefits she might enjoy as a “regular” person. She hadn’t known how much fun it could be to be treated as an equal, to have someone tease her, even laugh at her, as if she were “one of the guys.” That felt good. Extraordinarily good. And she’d be kidding herself if she didn’t admit that she had no desire to jeopardize these stolen moments of anonymity by revealing a truth which might cause more harm than good.
But her yearning to help this man, these children, stemmed from something far deeper. For all her dedication to children’s issues, her involvement thus far had always been peripheral, if not downright theoretical. Yes, she’d helped set up the Children’s Home, and she’d done the usual hospital visits, the de rigueur tours of refugee camps, but she’d never been actually involved. Suddenly, here she was, faced with the first real opportunity she’d ever had to personally make a difference in five children’s lives, even if only for a couple of weeks. And she didn’t exactly find the prospect of perhaps being able to help ease the stress lines in Steven Koleski’s handsome face wholly unpleasant, either.
She was taking a tremendous risk, letting herself get close enough to care. But this was an opportunity that might never come her way again.
He’d known Lisa Stone for, like, five seconds, and already he knew to be leery when she got too quiet.
Of course, he wasn’t being exactly loquacious, either. Steve wasn’t sure which of them itched to asked questions more, although he was sure neither of them had a clue how to go about it. And it rattled him the way this complete stranger could sear through his defenses with a pointed question, an astute observation, a simple smile.
No woman, he realized with a little jolt, had ever looked at him like that before. Not so’s he’d remember, anyway. As if she saw…him. Not who she imagined she could eventually turn him into, but who he was.
And as if she genuinely liked what she saw.
Take the business about his photography. It was nuts to think she really had any idea what it meant to him, but something in her eyes sure made him think she did.
But how could she? Nobody did. Nobody knew how often he’d shoved his ambition behind him in the name of family loyalty, practicality, logic. Duty, in other words. Nobody was a free agent in this world. Not really. Everybody’s lives and ambitions were inevitably and inextricably intertwined with everyone else’s in their circle; peace was rarely achieved without compromise.
And he done more than his fair share of compromising over the past few years.
So when Lisa had asked about the photography, he’d been shocked to discover just how poorly he’d handled his disappointment over having to, once again, put his own ambition on hold. To discover a seed of selfishness at his core he’d thought long since eradicated.
But not nearly as much as he’d been to realize how desperately he wanted to confide in her. How desperately, despite all the hard evidence accumulated over the past little while that proved his desire not just foolish, but futile as well, he wanted to be able to trust a woman. Any woman.
This woman.
And the sheer force—not to mention the idiocy—of that desire was making it very difficult to breathe. He could only believe—could only accept, for his sanity’s
