Sympathy for the Devil (International Bad Boys Book 4) (3 page)

“Yeah, but she doesn’t want to pay a fortune for the privilege,” Eli said. “I doubt it’d be worth Breanna Tucker’s time to even discuss it.”

Cutter frowned. “Ever heard of an old friend discount?”

“She’s not my friend.” Eli could shut ideas down fast when he wanted to. And right now Eli was shutting this one down hard.

And then Zoey appeared at the top of the stairs that led up to her and Eli’s apartment above the slipway. “Who’s not your friend?”

Eli looked up at his wife and grimaced afresh. “Just an old girlfriend of Cutter’s.”

“Photographer,” Cutter supplied helpfully. “You know those pictures of me, Dad and Eli on the boat house noticeboard? She took those years ago.
Before
she went off and got trained. I thought you might be able to use her.”

“I could. I
can
use her. I love those photos,” said Zoey.

“Let me say it again,” Eli countered stubbornly. “I don’t like her. I don’t want her in our lives again and I don’t want her here taking pictures.”

For reasons known only to Eli, Eli had never told Cutter what he’d seen that night. Never told a soul, as far as Caleb could tell. Caleb, for his part, had taken Eli’s silence as a gift he didn’t deserve and had vowed to love, honor and never betray his brothers ever again. When Cutter got balls-deep in trouble—and he did that a lot—Caleb stood with him, guarding his back. When Eli’s girlfriend had been killed all those years ago and Eli had been drowning in grief, Caleb had been there for him as best he could.

“What about you?” Cutter turned to Caleb. “The way I remember it, you didn’t have much time for her either.”

Caleb said nothing.

“What about me?” asked Zoey. “Don’t I get a vote?”

The power of the vote was sacrosanct when it came to the running of the Jackson family businesses. If voting went against you two-to-one you sucked it up and got on with whatever it was you didn’t want to do. If you
really
didn’t like it, you could ask the elder generations to weigh in, but that was the land of last resort.

“Voting doesn’t work with four,” Eli offered into the silence. “It only works with three.”

“Far be it for me to mess with such a complex and intriguing system,” Zoey began sweetly. “But given that this affects
my
business, maybe I can take over Caleb’s vote, just this once. Or
yours
.”

“Theoretically, yeah.” Eli held his wife’s gaze. “In this case, no. Drop it, Zoey. Please. It’s better if you don’t take a liking to Bree Tucker or her work.”

Zoey glared at her husband in baffled frustration. “But why?”

“Just is.”

Cutter sighed and rolled his eyes. “What my idiot brother is trying hard not to say is that Bree Tucker cheated on me just before she left.”

Eli froze at Cutter’s words.

So did Caleb.

“What? You think I didn’t know?” Cutter eyed Eli narrowly before turning back to Zoey, who’d made her way downstairs. “It was towards the end of Bree’s final school year. I’d already finished school and been working here for a year. Lots of parties—eighteen and nineteen year olds, man, and one party in particular. I knew she’d been with someone—you only had to look at her. I just never knew who.”

“Oh.” Zoey’s eyes had turned big and round. “Didn’t see that one coming.”

“First and only time it’s ever happened to me,” said Cutter. “I like to think she must’ve been at least a little bit crazy for not recognizing my innate superiority over all others. I also like to think that it’s water under the bridge given that neither of us was partaking in a serious relationship. I didn’t ruin Bree’s reputation; she didn’t ruin me for all other women. We’re square. She’s back in town to help her family out, and I like that. I figured she could use the distraction of a job.”

Zoey studied Cutter as if weighing the strength of his words. “You’re not plotting nefarious revenge on her?”

“You have a sneaky mind,” Cutter told his sister-in-law. “Answer’s no. She’s a photographer. You’re looking for one. Contrary to popular belief, my thought processes are usually pretty simple.”

“Really not that hard to believe,” muttered Eli, and Zoey elbowed her beloved firmly in the ribs.

“Play nice with your brothers.”

“Yeah, Eli.” Cutter couldn’t resist. “Play nice.”

“So if Cutter’s good with having this woman around and promises to behave, are you now inclined to cut her a break?” Zoey asked her husband.

“I’ve said what I thought.”

Stubborn Eli.

And baffled Zoey.

“I’ll model the costume for you,” Eli told her, a hint of desperation creeping into his voice. “I’ll model it for you
now
. I’ll even let you take photos, dozens of photos,
hundreds
, until you get a good one. Does that help?”

“It’d help more if I knew what I was doing with a camera.”

“Get Caleb to take pictures for you,” Eli offered. “He knows cameras.”

“Underwater cameras,” Caleb felt obliged to point out.

“Then I’ll model it underwater.”

Cutter smirked as he tossed a third burger at Zoey before starting to peel the paper from his own. “Let Bree take photos for Zoey, man. Bree going off with someone else all those years is no big deal. Never was.”

Caleb didn’t say a word.

And neither did Eli.

B
ree Tucker let
the camera strap pin her hair against her neck as she positioned the tripod in the sand. Next came her favorite camera body and the panoramic lens she’d chosen for this morning’s jaunt. It was windy enough to whip her hair around her face and she hadn’t brought a headband with her. It was also windy enough to make sea spray peel off the backs of incoming breakers and that was all that mattered. Throw in sunrise and a lone surfer and she had enough elements in play to make composition interesting, even if sunrise over the ocean had been photographed a squillion times before.

How many times had she come down here early in the morning, ostensibly to take pictures, more often to get a glimpse of the most beautiful brothers on the planet. Cutter, Caleb and Eli Jackson. Water babies, all of them. Heirs to the family marina and boat brokerage business. Surfers, divers, fishermen, you name it. If it had anything to do with the ocean and the river system around Brunswick Bay they’d been into it. Nice boys—though not necessarily the type your mama wanted you to spend a lot of time with. Handsome boys, although one of them had always stood out to her as more incandescently beautiful than the others. Unfortunately, it hadn’t been the one she’d gone out with.

Cutter Jackson had been a boyfriend a girl could enjoy, but his brother . . .

His brother was the one she’d dreamed of.

She’d run into Cutter again a couple of days ago, at the newsagent. He’d offered his sympathy when she’d told him about her father’s illness and said he ran into her mother every now and then and had heard all about how Bree Tucker was an International award-winning photographer these days. He’d congratulated her and there’d been no mistaking his sincerity.

He’d talked about Eli’s wife the costume designer wanting some photos taken for her website. He’d said that Bree should drop by the marina sometime and meet her.

She’d told him she wasn’t making any firm work plans right now and that she didn’t have all of her photography gear with her. This much was true.

What she’d neglected to tell him was that she
did
have all her favorite cameras and lenses with her. Equipment enough for any job.

She just didn’t want to
do
a shoot that involved the Jacksons and the marina. Too many memories to stumble over, with too many of them painting her in a very harsh light.

There were still a few minutes until sun up, so she pulled out her light meter, adjusted her camera settings and snapped off a few shots just because she could. Digital cameras had changed the world of photography and there was no waiting to see if the shot was a good one these days. Instant feedback and thousands of programmable manipulations meant that photography was no longer just about capturing the purity of a moment on celluloid. These days a photographer had more and more in common with painters and portrait artists.

These days photography was all about intent.

Bree didn’t really know what the point of these pictures was. She was back in Brunswick Bay after ten years away; that was all. Revisiting old haunts and cataloguing the changes. Coming out here this morning because restlessness had driven her to seek out this one favorite spot from long ago—a place where she’d spent too much time daydreaming and waiting for something magical to happen. Maybe that was why she was out here this morning. Maybe she was in need of some magic.

Her father wasn’t getting any better, her mother was taking it hard, and Bree . . . Bree didn’t know what to do with the time that her family had left together.

Almost sunrise.

She sank cross legged into the sand and attached a handle to the swivel tripod. She attached a shutter release cable to the camera as well. No camera-shake for these shots.

Maybe they weren’t going anywhere except on file, but a girl still had her pride.

She got to work, captured the waves she wanted and the broader sweep of beach as pale sunlight crept over the horizon. She changed lenses after a while and zoomed in on the lone surfer stretched flat on his stomach on his board, his head on his arms as he watched the sun rise. No wetsuit, just dark colored board-shorts that rested low on his hips and a mop of shaggy wet hair that curled at his nape.

And then he rolled the board and disappeared beneath the water, popping back up moments later. He sat up astride the board and lifted his arms to sluice the hair from his face, and she knew that profile because she saw it in her dreams. This was no nameless surfer-boy intent on catching the first wave of the day, but a man who’d wrapped his world around the ocean because for him there was no other way.

Caleb Jackson. As he lived and breathed.

If she had one lick of sense she’d pick up and go before he got back to shore, but Bree never had shown much sense when it came to her dealings with this man. Instead, she started taking pictures, mainly because she couldn’t not take them. Caleb Jackson was beautiful in his solitude and his morning ritual and when she looked back on these photos he was going to make her weep.

He stayed out there until the sun broke free of the horizon. Not surfing, just watching. And then he headed for the beach.

Maybe he wouldn’t notice her.

Maybe he wouldn’t recognize her.

Bree pulled the hood of her jacket up over her hair, drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Nothing to see here, Caleb. No one of note.

She watched as he came up out of the water and lifted his board, one handed, and tucked it under his arm. Strong. He always had been. Hard physical labor had seen to that. She kept taking photos automatically, her focus on the camera display rather than on him and didn’t look up when he strode out of shot. He hadn’t even looked her way.

Take some more shots, Bree. Pretend your interest didn’t fade the minute he left the scene. Capture the crest of a wave and the mix of spray and light. Don’t look back.

Don’t think back, either, to what could have been.

And what had been.

She stayed taking photos for another ten minutes, reframing her shots and recording the changing light before finally deciding that Caleb Jackson would be well and truly gone by now. She packed her gear away carefully and then stood and brushed the sand from her rear.

She picked up her camera bag and turned towards the makeshift little dirt car park at the edge of the beach.

Only to find Caleb still there, fully dressed now in jeans and an old T-shirt. He had his hands in his pocket and he wasn’t watching the sunrise any more than she was.

He was watching her.

It felt as if it took forever to reach him. She could feel his attention on her, just like way back when, and she wondered what he saw.

“You’re back,” he said when he reached her, his voice low and raspy. No welcome in it, just careful observation.

“Yes. My father—”

“I heard.”

Did his gaze linger a little too long on her lips? She couldn’t be sure, given that her own gaze had skittered away moments after she’d taken closer stock of the changes the years had wrought on him. A few crinkles now, around his eyes and a maturity about his features that hadn’t been there before. Just enough of a glance for her to realize that her libido hadn’t been dead these past ten years. It had simply been waiting for another glimpse of him.

“You’re looking good,” she offered awkwardly. “The lens still loves you. Not that I knew you’d be here. I used to come here a lot when I was younger, that’s all. Best vantage point in the Bay.”

“I know.”

She should probably stop babbling about now. “I saw Cutter in town the other day.”

“You do have a habit of seeing him first.”

Bree hunched in on herself, shoulders rounded. Nothing she didn’t deserve. Wind whipped her hair across her face and she caught it and tucked it back behind her ear. “Yeah, so I’m just going to, you know, go.”