a photographer was a bit more than she’d ever thought about doing, but if she started to get hesitant about it, she’d just remember how they always seemed to grab the worst pictures imaginable and then turned around and sold them to the worst gossip rags . . . hey, flipping them off was taking the high road, really.
Stop worrying would be hard, but she needed to do it.
The last one was the one that made her belly cramp and twist with fear.
She’d never had a fling. Yeah, maybe she’d thought about it a time or two, maybe there had been some really hot guys who had caught her eye, but memories of all those guys her mom had brought home? The thought of just casual sex left a bad taste in her mouth. In all of her life, she had two lovers. That was it.
But if she was going to reach out and grab life . . . why not?
She’d needed a plan.
Now she had one.
“I’m going to do it.” She stroked a finger down the list and stopped by number four. It was going to be the easiest, she figured. Get that done, because once she committed herself to the plan, she would be a lot less likely to back out of it.
Tomorrow, she’d take the first step in checking things off her list. It wasn’t going to be the cohesive life plan her last one had been, but maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.
After all, look at where her last plan had landed her.
Chapter Three
“You got company.”
Keelie stood in the doorway, watching him with a disgruntled look on her face.
“Why don’t you handle it?” he said, looking back at the bills spread out before him. They might be partners, but she couldn’t do numbers. The one time he’d made her handle the bills for the month, she’d paid two vendors twice and hadn’t paid the water or the electric bill. Since then, he’d handled the paperwork. But he made her do more of the housekeeping shit. He figured it was fair.
“Because Abby doesn’t want to talk to me,” she said with a smirk.
He stood so fast, he knocked over the lukewarm coffee that he’d meant to dump earlier.
“Son of a bitch!” he snarled, rescuing the bills from the spreading puddle.
“Suave, man. You’re so suave,” she said with a smile. She came over and tugged out the towel she kept tucked in a back pocket, using it to sop up the coffee. “Good thing you already drank most of it.”
“Thanks.” After they’d dealt with the mess, he shot a look at the clock. It was creeping up on nine—almost closing time. This time of year they didn’t get too busy during the week, so he didn’t keep very late hours on weekdays.
He didn’t know why Abby was here, but maybe they could get a bite to eat or something.
“Are you ever going to tell her?”
He glanced up at Keelie. “What?”
A grin twisted her lips and the piercing just above the right corner of her mouth winked in the bright lights of the office. “Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. I know the symptoms of the lovesick.” She shrugged and turned away. “Just wondering if you’re ever going to do anything about it.”
“Ah . . . it’s complicated,” he said softly. Of all the people to see it so clearly, why did it have to be Keelie? She was the one most likely to tell all the wrong people. As in . . . Abby. “I can’t just go and blurt it out, Keelie. It’s too . . . complicated.”
“So is life, but you’re out here living, aren’t you?”
It’s not that easy. He could tell her that. It’s none of your business. Yeah. That would work, too. But in the end, he didn’t say anything. Didn’t see the point. He knew what he was doing. As much as he’d like to tell Abby how he felt, considering she only saw him as a friend and wasn’t interested in anything else, well, he’d rather at least have her as friend. There was no way he was going to risk losing that much of her.
This way, he could still take care of her, as much as she’d let him.
It sucked and didn’t do anything to fill the hole in his heart, but not having anything would leave a bigger hole.
He headed out to the main area of Steel Ink and found Abby standing in front of the