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  But she already knew he would be different. Less than a day, and her heart was already engaged. No, she couldn’t do this. It would start out wonderful, and then she’d want more . . . hell, she already did. No, crushing disappointment and heartache she did not need. “Maybe it’s better to leave it like this, the perfect interlude.”

  He didn’t say anything, just kept his gaze on hers, his fingers tracing lazy patterns up and down her back. “Tell me about New York. About your work, your life.”

  She sighed, laid her head back on his chest. So he wasn’t going to talk about it. She should resent that, manipulation by avoidance. But what difference did it make? It would all resolve itself in the next couple of hours, one way or the other, anyway. “I live in the Village. I rent a small second floor apartment from an older couple. A coworker of mine actually had the place first, then she got married, and I was tired of living with roommates, so I took it on. It’s been a good fit. They travel often, don’t intrude much. I water their plants, get their mail, and they leave me pretty much alone.”

  “I can see where that would be ideal.”

  He traveled constantly, so it wasn’t surprising he understood the pleasures and simplification of a solitary life. But it touched her anyway. Dammit. “Do you travel by train often?”

  “First time, actually. In the States anyway.”

  At least he wasn’t trying to gloss over the fact that their lifestyles were literally worlds apart. And yet, she couldn’t help but want to know more. “How does it compare?”

  He laughed. “Well, considering my closest companion on my last trip by rail was a woven coop filled with chickens, I’m thinking this is the better deal.”

  “You think?” she said dryly. “Of course, if we’d been stuck much longer, you might wish you had the chickens. At least they could be eaten.”

  He pulled her closer. “I’ll let you know if I start to get hungry.”

  Her heart sighed, even as she nudged him in the ribs. Their easy camaraderie was something she’d miss almost more than the sex. Almost. “You know, I didn’t book a sleeper car because it seemed like an unnecessary extravagance. But now I’m rethinking my opinion on that.”

  He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Me, too.”

  Why did this have to feel so easy, she couldn’t help but think. When it was anything but. Why couldn’t he be some guy she bumped into in SoHo, a guy who lived around the corner from a deli, spent time traipsing through the same museums she did. Now that would at least have given them a fighting chance. No, there was nothing really easy about any of this. “So, when you’re not taking the very exotic Eastern Seaboard train, where else does your work take you?”

  “I should be in Milan right now. Paris next week.”

  She sighed wistfully. “I’ve always wanted to go there. And Spain. Barcelona.” She fiddled with the hair on his chest. “Ever been to Barcelona?”

  He nodded. “They’re both beautiful.” He paused for just a second, toyed with her hair. “You should go.”

  “Yes, I should,” she answered quickly. Too quickly. He hadn’t made it an invitation . . . but her heart had skipped a beat at the mere idea of it anyway. “Unfortunately Atlanta is about as exotic a locale as I get on my business expense account.”

  “Atlanta is an interesting city.”

  “It’s not Barcelona.”

  He smiled. “That’s just another city.”

  “Yeah, to the people of Barcelona.”

  “Well, think how exotic Atlanta would seem to them.”

  She shook her head, laughed. “So, what were you shooting in Atlanta?”

  “I was actually in the Keys.”

  She snorted. “Of course. Shooting women in bikinis and getting paid for it. Tough life.”

  “I’d apologize, but I’d just be lying if I said it was hell.”

  “Thanks ever so much for sparing me.”

  He nodded magnanimously and Del rolled her eyes.

  “So, what were you shooting in Atlanta?” he asked.

  She sighed again, but in disgust this time. “Myself. In the foot.”

  “What happened?”

  “I went down there to salvage a layout we were doing on bachelor pads. You know, the simplistic affordable look in living furnishings for the single male.”

  “Couches. Hate working with them. Always reclining on the job.”

  She pretended to jot something down on an imaginary list. “Makes bad puns.”

  “Still keeping the list, huh? Which column did that go in?”

  She just gave him a look.

  He grinned. Incorrigible, indeed. “So, the couches didn’t show up? What happened?”

  “No. The studio shots my colleague had taken were crap. So I was sent down to salvage the job. But when I went into the studio, nothing I tried was working any better. It was all flat, distant. It was contemporary furniture, very clean lines, Dutch influence, but the setup made them look flat, alien. Unapproachable.”

  “Not what you want when selling furniture.”

  She shook her head. “So it was my bright idea to move the shoot outdoors.”

  “But didn’t Atlanta just get hammered with that freak winter stor—” At her glare he broke off. “I’m guessing the skies opened up after you’d unloaded the stuff?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sleet, ice. Saggy couches, water-stained ottomans. Not exactly the clean, crisp look we were going for.”

  “Is that why you’re taking the train? Delay the inevitable, sneak in over the holidays and pretend no one will notice?”

  “Gee, where were you when I was planning my career?”

  He shrugged, guileless to the end. And damn if it didn’t work on him. “Hard to say.”

  “Barcelona probably,” she deadpanned. “Shooting women with nothing on at all.”

  “I hate to say it, but that is a strong possibility.”

  She smacked at his chest, but was smiling as she did it. “Does it get old? Traveling the globe to exotic locales? Living out of a suitcase?”

  He grabbed her hand, tugged it up to his mouth. He kissed her fingers, then the palm of her hand. But before she could tug it away, he pressed it back to his chest, over his heart. “Lonely at times. But I like what I do.”

  He’d sounded off the cuff, but the look in his eyes was saying something else.

  He noticed her staring, shifted his gaze to hers. “What?”

  She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. I got the impression you were thinking about something else. Are you anxious to get back to work? Do you miss it?”

  He didn’t answer right away. “I love taking pictures. Love what I can capture if I just look at something the right way. But this trip home to see my brothers, well it’s bringing back an avalanche of memories.”

  “About?”

  “A lot of things, but I’ve been reminiscing a little about when I started to get into photography, why it’s always been a dream of mine.” He lifted a shoulder. “I wonder if somewhere I stopped pushing it, stopped dreaming, settled, in a way. I know my way around a shoot, I always give it my best, but I’ve done so many . . . Maybe I rely on what I know, instead of seeking out what I don’t.” He let out a short laugh. “Yes,” he said, “short answer is, I miss it. I want to get back. See what else there is to see. But now maybe, hopefully, I’ll see some things I never saw before.” He tilted her chin up. “Meeting you . . . finding this . . . it makes me think. About possibilities.”

  Del’s throat tightened. She was thinking about them, too. Or, more aptly, impossibilities. She’d crafted a stable career she was good at, that provided well for her. She’d made a home for herself, a secure one, in New York City. Security, stability. Key foundations for her. “Yeah,” she managed, not sure she wanted to know where he was heading with this. Then her stomach chose that moment to growl. Loudly.

  Mercifully, it broke the tension that had been rapidly filling the air betwe
en them.

  “Why don’t I go round us up something to eat,” he said, kissing her forehead, then her lips, before disentangling himself from her.

  “I, uh, I could use a trip to the lavatory,” she responded, letting out a silent whoosh of relief.

  He was already off the bunk and pulling on his pants. He dug around in his duffel for clean clothes. “Do you need to borrow anything?”

  She sat up, watched him move about the small space below. Her heart squeezed. “No. Thanks. I’m going to head back to my seat and grab my bag. I’ve got stuff in there.”

  He tugged on his shirt, then reached to help her down from the bunk. He turned her into his arms. “You want more than coffee? Eggs or a bagel or something?”

  She shook her head, just looked into his face. Memorizing each feature, capturing them with the lens of her mind’s eye. “Just coffee.” Her stomach was a knot, and she felt the stirrings of a headache coming on. Probably a result of her brain cramping from analysis overload.

  His expression grew serious. “Del, I—” He broke off, shook his head just a little, then took her mouth in a kiss so fierce, so sudden, it took her breath away.

  And when he broke free and left the room without saying another word, he took a piece of her heart with him.

  She pulled her clothes on, thinking how foreign her body felt in them. They’d been so comfortable without them. He’d made her feel . . . worshipped. Tended to.

  “Fantasy,” she muttered, wishing like hell she still believed that. It would make what she was about to do a hell of a lot easier.

  She unearthed her camera, then looked around for something to leave him a note with. She picked up his camera instead. Turning it on, she spied the small speaker on the side, then fiddled with the buttons until she figured out how to toggle the movie mode on.

  She took a moment, blew out a deep breath, aimed the screen at the pillows where their heads laid, and hit Record.

  Then she began telling Austin good-bye.

  Chapter Ten

  Austin knew the moment he stepped back into his private car, even before he saw his camera propped on his pillow, that she was gone. As in not coming back.

  He was torn between panic and anger. The former made him want to canvass every single car on this train until he found her. But the train had made a stop while he was picking up breakfast. He suspected Del had debarked early. The anger took over then. Although he wasn’t sure who he was angrier with. Her for not having the balls to say good-bye. Or himself, for pushing her. Or maybe not pushing her enough. Hell, he didn’t know what to feel. Except lost.

  He shoved the drink carrier and the paper bag with their food onto the unused berth, then reached for his camera. When he flicked on the screen, he was further disappointed to discover she hadn’t left him with an image of herself... but of their empty bed.

  Then her voice drifted from the tiny speaker . . . and he realized she’d said her good-byes after all.

  He sank onto the bench seat and tried to slow his heartbeat down enough to hear her words.

  “You’re probably pissed off at the moment. I would be. But . . . this . . .” There was a break, and he could hear her draw in a breath. “We shared something . . . indescribable. Such a short time, and yet I feel altered in some way. Permanently. I—I didn’t want to leave you. Not in my heart. But, my heart, well, I’ve been safeguarding it for a very long time, and I guess I’m having a little bit of a hard time dealing with the shock you’ve delivered it. So effortlessly, too. I don’t know what to do with that.” There was another pause, then, “We’ve obviously connected in a way that is hard to explain, or at least I can’t. We’re both independent, both the captains of our own destinies. That’s probably part of it. But those destinies have played out very differently. I need to operate from a secure base. You need to be able to move at will.” A little sigh, then, “I don’t know how long this thing records, so I hope you hear this. It’s so trite, so cliché . . . and yet I’ve never meant anything more. I’ll never forget you, Austin Morgan. You taught me to step a little closer to the edge of that secure base. Reach out a little, take a chance. I—it was a good lesson. One I’m going to try to learn from. But I can’t—I’m sorry—I can’t take any bigger of a leap. I hope—” She broke off, then he heard her swear, rather fluently, which made him smile despite the fact that he felt like his heart had just been ripped out and handed to him on a platter. But it was the unshed tears he heard in her voice when she ended by saying, “Good-bye, Austin,” that haunted him.

  For the rest of the train ride. All the way back to Rogues Hollow. Through the reunion with his brothers. Through the reading of his father’s will. She haunted him.

  He supposed he should thank her. He’d been so preoccupied, thinking about what he could have done, what he should have done, how he could have convinced her to stick around and at least give them a chance to figure things out . . . that the homecoming he’d been dreading passed by in sort of a distracted haze.

  It didn’t help that his younger brother Jace had crossed paths with his childhood sweetheart Suzanna York, that the two of them had just spent a tumultuous, snowbound weekend reuniting. Or that, from the look of things, they might stay united . . . for life. He was thrilled for them both, but seeing them together, so obviously besotted, made his heart squeeze in a way that at any other time in his life would have surprised him. Or terrified him. Instead it made him hunger. Made him ache.

  So, by the time his older brother Tag took him aside to ask him what in the hell was up, he was more than ready to pour it all out.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Austin finished, having given Tag the basics, leaving out any specifics. What had happened between him and Del would stay between him and Del. He dropped his head to his hands, raked them through hair that was likely standing on end by now.

  They were sitting in what had been his father’s study. It was a place that held memories he could go his whole life not thinking about. This was where the lectures were delivered. And the whippings. This was where, when his father discovered that his second son’s dream was to become a wildlife photographer, that Austin’s endless hours spent cutting grass had been to support the rolls of film he went through every month, he’d been very deliberately told he’d never measure up. That, in his father’s eyes, he was a failure. That he was not only letting Taggart Morgan Sr. down, but every Morgan before him. And probably every Ramsay and Sinclair along with them.

  Of course, as he got older, he understood that anything shy of actually becoming his father was going to make him a failure as a man, a human being, and a Morgan. Not that their father would list them in quite that order.

  Taggart Morgan Sr. had thought his sons were daydreamers, wastrels of the worst sort, because they refused to follow in his footsteps. Taggart Sr., the first reputable Morgan. In his eyes, anyway. First Morgan to go to college. First to become a lawyer. First to become a judge. A respected citizen by all who lived and breathed.

  Well, Austin had always thought of himself and his brothers as simply carrying on the Rogue tradition. The original Ramsay, Sinclair and Morgan, Scots highwaymen who had left a life of crime in their homeland, followed their dreams to the colonies, and began anew. Building a life that had eventually become a legacy spanning, so far, hundreds of years.

  A legacy he’d run from and happily never looked back on. He’d always thought his great-great however-many-great grandfather Teague Morgan would have been proud of him for chasing his dream.

  When Austin heard his father had died, he’d spent some time wondering if he shouldn’t have come back sooner, tried to at least begin some kind of dialogue. That maybe as grown men they could have found some way to communicate, to learn who the other really was. Sitting here now, in his father’s library, staring at the imposing desk and the rows and rows of leatherbound legal texts that lined the walls . . . he knew he never would have. And he couldn’t find it in his heart to regret it.

  “So,” he
said, blowing out a breath. “That’s what I did on my Christmas vacation. Fell head over heels for the first time in my life . . . and got dumped for the effort.”

  Tag was leaning against one of the bookshelves, arms folded. “Sounds like a lot of that going around. Except Jace managed to figure out that last part better than you. Makes me glad I drove in. Alone.”

  Austin leaned back, braced his hands behind his head. “Yeah, yeah. Easy for you to be smug. You won’t be when it happens to you.”

  Tag snorted. “Never gonna happen.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s what I said.”

  Tag pushed away from the shelves. “So, what are you going to do about it?”

  “What can I do?”

  Tag just rolled his eyes. “You’ve built a career out of nothing more than a roll of film and the cheesy Kodak you and Burke earned cutting the Sinclair’s back forty. And yet you can’t manage to figure out how to hold on to the only other thing that has captured your full attention since?”

  “She said good-bye. Or did you conveniently not hear that part?”

  “Oh, I heard it. I also heard that she didn’t want to say good-bye. So, because it’s not easy and smooth you’re going to agree with her that walking away is the best option?”

  Austin shrugged. He felt miserable. He rarely felt miserable. Of course, it didn’t take a degree in psychology to figure out that was because he’d long since made a practice out of not feeling much of anything. “You know,” he said quietly. “I never realized how cut off I’ve become. I give everything to capturing a moment on film. But I don’t exist in any of those moments.” He stared at his hands. “Then I opened the caboose door, and—bam!—there she was. I even tried to keep her framed in my mind. A shot to be taken, something to observe, study. But she wouldn’t let me retreat like that. And the thing was, I didn’t want to. And more than that, she’s a lot like me in that respect . . . and yet she didn’t retreat, either.” He didn’t have to add “until it was too late.”