Free Barefoot in Lace (Barefoot Bay Brides Book 2) by Roxanne St. Claire Page B

someone who understood fashion photography would ask, and he enjoyed answering.
    “You’re going to kill that assignment,” she said as she pulled into an office complex. “It’s kind of like what you did with that whole ‘flawless diamonds make flawless women’ thing for DeBeers.”
    “Wow, you really do know my work.”
    “I did a huge blog on that campaign,” she said. “It was styled perfectly. Bronwyn St. Marie, right? She’s awesome.”
    The Aussie stylist was one of the best, but he was stuck on a different point she’d made. “You really do blog about my photographs.”
    She cringed a little. “I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of stalker.”
    “Not at all. I’m flattered.”
    “Sounds like I’ll want to blog again on this LaVie campaign.”
    LaVie. Damn, he wanted that job even more now. “But I can’t take the assignment if Alex won’t go.”
    “Maybe she’ll change her mind,” Gussie said. “In fact, if you think it would help, I’d be happy to tell her she’d be missing out on the trip of a lifetime.”
    “I bet she’d listen to you, but you don’t have to.”
    “I want to,” she told him. “And if that doesn’t work, she can stay with me while you go.”
    He inched back, the offer genuinely surprising him. “Are you serious?”
    “For a couple of weeks? I don’t see why she couldn’t play Mario Kart at my apartment as well as she can at her house.”
    For a second, he didn’t respond, but stared at her while a dozen different thoughts popped through his mind. How could he turn down an offer like that? Would Alex want to stay with a virtual stranger? How easily could he arrange it? Would it be legal? Or fair to her? But one thought overrode all the others, the one he had to voice.
    “You might be one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met.”
    Her eyes warmed at the compliment. “Nah, I’m just…”
    He waited for her to finish. To say she was trying to pay him back for the wedding or she was lonely or she needed someone to watch her dogs. Something that wasn’t purely altruistic and giving because…because that kind of person terrified him.
    He could never return that level of selflessness. All it did was make him realize how selfish he’d become.
    “I’m doing what anyone would do,” she finished.
    He had to laugh. “Well, considering no one else has stepped forward and made the offer, that’s not true.”
    “Have you asked?”
    “To be fair, no.”
    “There may be plenty of people willing to take her while you travel.”
    “But you were the one who said it first.” The one who cared the most. “And you didn’t know my sister and barely know Alex.”
    “But I know how she feels.” Gussie looked out the windshield, thoughtful for a moment. “I wasn’t too much older than Alex when I was facing long, sad days in the hospital with my head bandaged and doctors talking about grafts and transplants and dense masses of granulation tissue .” She gave a wry smile. “Med-speak for scar. There were days, and nights, and months, frankly, when I wondered if I could ever be normal again. And I think that’s probably what Alex feels right now, desperate for normalcy.”
    He hadn’t really thought of Alex’s situation like that, but it made sense. “You think that’s what she’s going through? Not grief?”
    “Yes, grief. Mourning, anger, fear.” She turned her green gaze on him. “Didn’t you, when your parents died?”
    He thought back on the days, the mourning and grief so quickly replaced by a low-grade anger that never went away. “I had a sister to take care of,” he said. “And maybe I didn’t make Ruthie feel so great about that situation, either.”
    She tilted her head, a question in her eyes. “Then why would she consider you as a guardian? Maybe you were the best brother in the world, and she wanted nothing but that for her daughter.”
    Shaking his head, he couldn’t agree. “She knew my lifestyle and schedule.”
    “She