you agree that’s a good idea, we’d like a few personal photographs to work with in addition to the shots we’ll take when everyone arrives, so that we can have those available at the venue shortly afterward.”
Jason thought about it. “It does sound interesting, certainly unique, but will it be secure? I know you would never give any of the photographs away or try to sell them to the press, but people are so good at stealing things online. Besides, I’ve never met a photographer who didn’t want to play with their pictures forever.”
“If you deliver the photos to us on a USB stick, we’ll store them in that form, and we won’t put them anywhere there could be outside access. And obviously, the photographs would just be early versions,” she explained. “But if anyone can take great pictures without needing to retouch them, it’s Daniel. I’m very lucky to have such a great team to work with.”
“I doubt luck had anything to do with it. I bet you went out and hunted down the people you really wanted, the best ones for the job. I know you, Liz. You don’t give up when you have your mind set on something.”
Only, she had given up, hadn’t she? The one time it really mattered...
“Thanks for agreeing to do this,” he said in a deep voice that set fire to her insides. “I know it’s a ton of work to get everything ready in time.”
Maybe she should have downplayed how much work it was, but with everything going topsy-turvy inside of her—from being in the same room with him, from thinking about the past, from going around and around inside her head with all the mistakes she’d made and how she wished she could have done things differently—she found herself saying, “The trouble is that there are so many different jobs popping up from moment to moment. I truly do have the best people on task, but even so, I’m wondering if we simply don’t have enough pairs of hands.”
“I can help.”
Liz froze. “No, I can’t ask you to help. I mean, you have your writing to take care of, and—”
“Like I said, the first draft of my book is done, and I don’t want to edit it right away because I need to let it settle for a while. Besides, right now, there’s nothing more important to me than making sure that Amber gets the perfect wedding.”
Okay, so maybe Jason did have the time, but that didn’t mean it was a good idea. “I know you want her wedding to be perfect—and I do, too—but it wouldn’t feel right for you to work with us when you’re paying us to do the work.”
“There must be something I can help out with—errands, manual labor, whatever you need. Come on, Liz. You just said you could do with some more help, with an extra pair of hands.”
She did need the extra pair of hands. But even more striking was that a man this successful, this wealthy, this famous, would actually offer to do menial errands and manual labor. She’d fallen in love with him for so many reasons, and again and again, she could see that those reasons hadn’t been wrong.
“All right,” she said. “Thank you. We could use the help.” She tried to make her response sound friendly, but not too friendly. Professional, but not cold. “I’ll get back to you soon with a list.”
She expected him to get up and leave then, but instead he continued to gaze at her. She could see his mind working...and what she saw in his eyes scared her. Scared her enough that she couldn’t figure out how to head him off at the pass. Couldn’t manage to get her feet to move her out the door, either.
“Thank you for telling me why you left, Liz.” She could hear the emotion in his voice, the same emotion she’d been trying unsuccessfully to tamp down ever since she’d left his house days ago. “It wasn’t easy to hear some of what you had to say, but you were right. I wasn’t ready to be with you then. We were just kids. I tried to convince myself that I didn’t need adventure, that I didn’t need to see the