Page 61 of Sucker For You

Honestly, the picturewasn’tin focus: overexposed, blurred, its angle suboptimally low.

Still:perfect.

She’d captured them not during their second kiss, but in the breath before it. Her face was flushed from the fantastic, unexpected, seductive danger of their first attempt at intimacy, her gaze hooded against the sunshine. His fingers were immortalized in the act of tilting up her chin.

It had happened too fast, both of them rattled.

The rasp in her throat, the bolt of desire in his gut.

She’d caught this perfectly imperfect moment, though. She’d frozen it in time and preserved it for their visa interview. For afterward, too, when he was anchored at a pier halfway around the world with theNauti Lassand she was—wherever she wanted to be. Doing whatever she wanted to do.

Whatever that was.

Safe, even happy.

Without him.

“Seems like I’ve got competition in the candid photography market,” he started, before he said something stupid. Or did something stupid: her exhaled breath whispered against his neck while she studied the viewfinder, with a light tang of salt and sea wind. “We don’t look staged. You’ve done a good job with the composition. Maybe you should take all our photos.”

“I-it was accidental. I might’ve had my eyes closed.”

She did, or almost.

When he chanced a look at her here,now, daring to shift just an inch sideways to bring her into view. . . her eyelashes with their glitters of salt were half-masted again. A hint of rain in her irises glimmered, unsettled, roving over the photographin an intent analysis of—what?Her lips were softly open. Close enough for him to breathe her in more fully, to taste her breath, to remember the cool, alkaline sweetness of her mouth.

As if he’d forgotten how she—

No, be normal about this!

“It’s a solid first shot. But we’ll need more.” With trouble heating in his stomach and thighs, he stepped back quickly to power down his camera.Greenland sharks, penguins—think about cold things.Striving for casual, but sounding hoarse to his own ears, he said, “So—have dinner with me now? We could give that picnic a second try.”

Isabel blinked. Her rain and the glitter vanished. Then, “Y-yes, we shouldn’t waste the sandwiches.”

“Great.”

He wiped his damp hands—water or sweat?—a second time, then extracted a fresh memory card from his duffel. He popped the chip into his Nikon and their sandwiches into a nylon backpack. He snagged a beach towel and a mobile tripod for the camera, verified that the octopus was still busy with her second sea snail (cracking it enthusiastically against her rockscape), and walked out to a wedge of sandy shoreline with Isabel. Past the dark, wave-sculpted dunes and the deepening shadows stretching fingers of night and fog across the ocean, the sky was a riot of flame above banks of moisture, scorching in its brief beauty, the daylight blazing even while it dissolved into mist. He uncapped his lens to capture the sight. Once she consented, he memorialized Isabel’s silhouette against the glow as well, sitting cross-legged on their towel with her back to him, her face tilted up in silent appreciation.

A nimbus glinting with the breeze in her hair was technical perfection.

“Can’t forgo a golden-hour opportunity like this. Or such a good shot.” He joined her on the towel to unwrap his stale chickpea sandwich.

“No, that’s true. We. . . we can’t waste our opportunities, whenever they come. Because—” She’d picked up her own sandwich, but now she put it down again, untasted. She shook her head. “Because it’s September third. The octopuses at MORI will have reached sexual maturity and laid their eggs by the time my visa expires next August.”

“You said the spousal Green Card process takes ten months. So we have under a month to get our documentation together, sign the courthouse registry, and submit your permanent residency application?”

“Then we schedule an appointment with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. And sit the interview.”

“Not much time.”

Her fingers fiddled with the sandwich’s plastic wrap. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, Buttercup.”

“But still—”

“Look.” He fished his phone from his pocket. About eighty Monaghan messages scrolled over the screen. Once he and Isabel broke the news of their wedding plans, however?Multiply that by ten. Then again.For now, he dismissed the texts to pull up his dial pad. “I’ll call the Monterey County courthouse tomorrow to get a date scheduled and request the license forms. Remember that you’ll probably have to manage those.”

“I know what to do.”