in his jeans like a teenaged boy. He didn’t know. Passing a hand over his face, he sucked in a breath and tried to reach for some modicum of control. It didn’t seem to want to come and he didn’t know if he could keep it together.
And it didn’t matter.
He had to see that picture.
Then he was going to get Zane on the damned phone and rip his head off, even if he had to reach through the phone lines to do it.
That decision made, he flipped to the photo, eyes closed. Once he thought had himself ready, he opened his eyes . . .
And just stared.
It wasn’t the erotically beautiful image he had been expecting.
Zane had a way of capturing emotions with his camera. It was his gift. Something he’d been able to do even from the time he’d been a kid.
And the image he’d captured on film was the image of a woman in love.
She was sitting down, still wearing the shirt, with one knee drawn up. The look on her face was . . . her eyes stared into the camera lens, and although Zach knew she wasn’t looking at him, he felt like she was. He felt like she was finally seeing him clear down to his soul.
And she was just fine with what she saw. Fine with it, hell. She wanted it. Needed it.
He blinked hard and then looked back at the picture again, trying to make sure he wasn’t seeing something that wasn’t there.
But it was.
He was almost certain he was seeing the same damn thing in her eyes that he felt every damn time he looked at her. Every damn time he thought of her.
Swallowing the knot in his throat, he gathered up the pictures and then laid them carefully on the coffee table. When he pulled out his phone to call Zach, he tried to figure out what to say, how to convince him to talk. The words weren’t coming, though.
Damn it.
He’d just have to fly blind on this.
The phone didn’t even make it through one ring before Zane answered.
“Don’t kill me, Zach,” Zane said. “She wanted the damn pictures and it wasn’t like I could let somebody else do what she was wanting.”
Zach pressed the heel of his hand against his eye. He could handle, barely, the thought of Zane seeing Abby naked. She was like a little sister to him and Zach knew that. He could handle it . . . barely. As long as he didn’t think about it. “Just tell me where in the hell she is,” he said quietly. “I need to talk to her.”
Zane was quiet a minute. “You’re not calling me to rip my head off?”
“No. But I’d rather not think about it. The photo fairy took those as far as I’m concerned. A female photo fairy.”
“Okay. She’s a talented fairy, though, right?”
“Very. They are amazing. Now where in the hell is Abby?”
Zane blew out a breath. “I don’t know. But before you rip my head off, she had a message. She left here yesterday and I haven’t seen her since, but I did talk to her. She said she’d find you today. So . . . make yourself findable.”
* * *
As Marin cut through the Phoenix traffic, Abigale pulled out the battered journal and flipped through it. She needed to do more of the stuff in it, she decided. Hang it in a public place . . . she smiled a little and decided she’d find a way to string it up at Steel Ink and have people draw in it there.
She flipped to another page and almost winced at what she saw there.
Spill coffee . . .
Eyeing the cold coffee in the console, she caught her lip between her teeth and reached for it.
“What are you—Abigale!”
She snatched up a napkin from their fast-food lunch and dabbed at the coffee trickling down the pages. “I’m following instructions,” she said softly.
“You’ve lost your mind!” Marin shot her a look. “You just spilled coffee on a book.”
“The book told me to,” Abigale said soberly. Then she flipped it around and displayed the messy result. “Look.”
Marin kept her gaze locked on the highway. “That book has got to be the craziest thing on God’s green earth. What in the world are you doing with it?”
“It’s the journal Zach gave me,” she said softly. “I made myself a new plan with it, you know. Stop worrying so much . . . flip off photographers . . .”