Naked Read online

  “I’ll be here.” I watched him go, the crowd parting. Heads turned to look at him even when I wasn’t on his arm. I looked back at Devon, whose mouth was still pursed, brow furrowed. “What?”

  He laughed and rubbed my shoulder for a second. “Girl, don’t get your panties twisted on me, now. Man owned up to being your valentine, that’s all. And he’s looking at you like he thinks you’re tastier than any of this candy in here. And you…”

  “Me, what?” I gave him an icy look that didn’t intimidate him.

  “We got ties, don’t we?” Devon’s broad shoulders blocked out the sight of anything behind him, but he wasn’t being aggressive or scary. He looked concerned. “We’re family.”

  “We’re dating, that’s all. I met him a couple months ago. He’s been living downstairs.”

  “At your place?” Devon’s brows rose, wrinkling his bald head.

  “Yes.”

  He let out a low whistle. “Huh. So things are serious.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  He glanced over his shoulder to the ticket booth, where Alex was now charming the volunteer in charge. “He looks like he does.”

  Before I could answer, Alex came back with a string of tickets. “They were selling them in arm’s lengths,” he explained. “I got one for each of us.”

  Devon laughed. “I need to get back to the booth before Princess Pippa makes all the valentines and doesn’t leave any for anyone else. See you all later. Liv, you call me, hear?”

  “I will.”

  We both watched him go, and Alex handed me a strand of tickets. “What are you going to try to win?”

  I ended up putting my tickets in all the baskets, while Alex put all of his in the photography basket.

  “I don’t have a camera,” he said when I laughed at his choice. “I need one.”

  “You could just buy yourself one, Alex. I can’t believe you don’t have a camera.”

  He shrugged, his tickets gone. The session was ending, and we were going to have to leave to make room for the next wave. “I had a camera, but not a digital one, and it broke a long time ago. I just never got another.”

  “Maybe you’ll get lucky and win that one, then.”

  He grinned. Took my hand. “I have a better idea.”

  When he looked like that I wanted to pounce on him, but I restrained myself since we were out in public. “What’s that?”

  “You can tell me what kind to buy. I bet you’ll give me good advice.”

  I laughed. “Uh-huh. Okay, sure. When do you want to buy it?”

  He shrugged as we waited in line to pick up our coats from the coat check. “Whenever.”

  He helped me into my jacket and shrugged into his navy peacoat, looking wickedly delicious. I watched him wrap his long, striped scarf around his neck. He had an effortless style the straight men I’d dated had lacked. It might be stereotyping, but it was true.

  “Today?” I asked, thinking of a visit to Cullen’s Cameras. I hadn’t been in ages, and there was always something there I wanted to buy.

  “Sure. Let’s go.”

  “So…what sort of camera are you looking for? Point-and-shoot or something more expensive?” I eased the car into a spot in the parking lot at the camera shop and turned off the ignition.

  “Whatever you recommend.” Alex leaned back in the seat and shot me a sideways grin. “You’re the expert.”

  “How much money are you looking to spend?”

  “Money isn’t an issue.”

  “Must be nice,” I said.

  Alex’s smile didn’t fade, didn’t wither, didn’t move. His eyes, though, went a little shuttered. “It is.”

  “Come on, then. You ready?”

  “Always.”

  I shifted him a glance as I opened my door. “No kidding.”

  His laugh rang out and hung, frozen in the winter air, on the steam of his breath, almost like a physical thing I could reach out and touch. Like ice that would break if tapped. He shook his head as he closed the car door.

  “You have a dirty mind, Olivia.”

  I scoffed. “Oh, that’s a good one, coming from you.”

  I led the way to Cullen’s Cameras, a tiny shop tucked among the houses of a residential neighborhood. I never knew how Lyle Cullen stayed in business, since he never advertised and the shop wasn’t anyplace anyone would ever look for if they didn’t already know it was there. But the business had been in his family for years and I guessed it had become more of a beloved obsession than a moneymaker.

  I reached for the door, but Alex was there before me, holding it open. Gentlemanly. Inside I breathed the smell of dust and the hot air spilling from the old iron radiators. Underneath it the faint smell of chemicals from the darkroom. Alex sneezed.

  I got my first camera for my birthday when I was three. It was big and clunky, with a plastic view screen that showed pictures of farm animals when you pushed the “flash” button. Nobody told me it wasn’t real.

  It didn’t really matter. The pictures I made when looking through the small plastic hole didn’t have to exist for me to see them. I remember talking to my grandpa about the lady in the long dress in the corner. I asked him if she was an angel. Angels, to me at the time, were always ladies with wings and halos of tinsel, or babies in diapers who shot arrows to make people fall in love. That woman had no wings, but it was clear to me that viewing her through the lens and no other way meant she was special.

  Grandpa only saw the barnyard when he looked. So did Grandma, and my parents, and everyone else I asked. After a while, when there were other toys to play with, I stopped asking about her. I didn’t forget about her. I just moved on.

  Cameras with removable, disposable flashbulbs that came in packs of six. Cameras I had to load and wind by hand, and later, when my parents saw how serious I was about photography, cameras with better lenses. My dad gave me his old Nikon, complete with the original neck strap in a 1970s hash mark pattern of orange and brown, and I discovered bulk packs of film stuffed into the toe of my Christmas stockings.

  The best camera I got, the one I still used, was a Nikon D80 I’d bought for myself with my first check from Foto Folks. It had seemed a fitting use of the money, even though I’d had to cancel cable television for a few months. I hadn’t missed the TV shows, and I used my camera almost every day. I considered it a good trade-off.

  “Olivia. Hello.” Lyle Cullen beamed at me as he came out of the back room. He rested his chubby hands on the glass case displaying several cameras resting on soft blue velvet. “Who’s your friend?”

  “Alex Kennedy.” Alex held out his hand and the men shook.

  “Here for a camera, Alex?”

  “Yes, sir. I am.”

  Lyle’s broad grin widened. “Good, good. Let me show you some lovely models. Tell me a little bit about what you want to do with it, and we’ll see what we can do for you.”

  Alex followed him to the case along the far wall, and I listened with half an ear while Lyle asked what he was looking for. The rest of my attention focused on the Nikon D3 seducing me from a narrow glass case where it sat like a jewel in a crown. Which, in my opinion, it was. It might as well have been a diamond or a ruby for the price, and for how unlikely it was I’d ever be able to afford it. I stared at it longingly as I tried to convince myself it wouldn’t really take better pictures, and I’d be so afraid of breaking or losing it I’d never take it out of the box.

  I wasn’t convinced, but then I’d never been very good at making myself believe I didn’t want something when I knew I did.

  “Olivia? What do you think of this one?” Alex held up a simple point-and-shoot digital camera. “It’s waterproof. And takes video.”

  If Lyle had suggested it, that meant the camera was a good choice for the buyer. Lyle never tried to upsell just because he could. I nodded and crossed to take a closer look.

  “It’s great.”

  “Mr. Cullen says it’s good for taking to the beach or skii