Second Thoughts: A Hot Baseball Romance Read Free Page A

message.
    Such as this one. From Lauren, Olivia’s babysitter. Home from school.
    Okay. So it wasn’t an important text. But it was one of the regular ones, part of the ebb and flow that carried her through her workday. Lauren’s routine communications knit Jamie into her daughter’s life, sewing up the gaps that had emerged so terribly in New York. And that made each text more valuable than gold.
    Any homework? she wrote back.
    Five pages of reading. One of math. Already working on it.
    Jamie grinned, picturing her daughter sitting at the kitchen table. When Olivia concentrated, she bit down on the tip of her tongue. Right now, she’d be holding one of her sparkly princess pencils. She’d probably have to be reminded of the proper grip a few times. She’d be extraordinarily precise as she drew circles around rhyming words, or underlined spelling mistakes, or whatever else was on the first grade homework agenda for the day.
    She was such a little scholar.
    “Everything okay at home?” Robert asked from across the room.
    She slammed her phone into her bag, feeling as guilty as if he’d caught her shoplifting. “Not home,” she lied. “Just a message from the Raleigh Garden Society. They’re thinking about hiring me to shoot the centerpieces at their annual luncheon.”
    It scared her a little, how easy it was to make up the story. But her tone was perfect, breezy and just a little bored, exactly the way a busy photographer should talk about something as mundane as tea roses.
    But not everyone in the room was fooled. She caught Nick looking at her oddly. His eyes were narrowed just enough to ask a question, and his head barely tilted to the side. He knew her well enough to know she didn’t give a damn about the Garden Society, aside from the fact that those society matrons might turn out to be future customers. Flowers had never been her thing, not even when she and Nick were dating.
    It was time for her to get this photo shoot back under control.
    “Okay,” she said briskly as Robert finished working his magic and whisked his makeup cape off Nick’s shoulders. Nick’s broad shoulders. Nick’s familiar, broad shoulders that she’d last touched…
    Her heart was pounding. She didn’t want to be here. Didn’t want to have an audience as she dealt with her former fiancé. But she didn’t have a choice. Time to pull up her big girl pants and get to work.
    She picked up her camera and looked through the viewfinder. The action immediately soothed her.
    Over the years, she’d learned dozens of tricks to make the subjects of her photos forget the camera was there. She’d perfected the art of lulling them into ignoring the lens. The key was her utter confidence in holding the device. It became a part of her, a practically invisible extension of her hands and eyes. By looking through the viewfinder, she could step away from all her thoughts, all her cares, all her worries in the world.
    Even if her subject was a man who was obviously uncomfortable, a man who clearly didn’t know how to hold himself, what to do, how to surrender to the camera. She hadn’t seen Nick this nervous … ever. Not even when she’d first lured him into posing for her, years before, when she was just starting to experiment with shooting live subjects.
    Her patter began automatically. “Okay, Nick,” she said. “Relax. Why don’t we try a few easy shots with you standing in front of the desk? Point your feet toward the door. Turn your hips toward me. Back straight. Head forward. Chin down. Angle your head a little more this way…”
    She demonstrated the precise line, and he followed her lead. Just like old times. Just like when they stood in his dorm room on campus, when he learned to take direction from her, when she’d learned to compose a decent picture.
    She swiftly drowned the memories in a steady stream of chatter. “Hold the book in your right hand. You don’t need to strangle it; it’s not going anywhere. Look at the