He gave his slow, eye-crinkling smile. “I’d be honored.”
It was the first time Jordan had taken him—taken anyone outside the family, really—down these steep, separate steps under the front stoop to her private enclave. She threw the switch, pointing out Gerda and Margaret looking down from the wall, her equipment. Tony wandered around, looking at everything. “So this is where you spend all your best hours.”
“Some bad hours too. Whenever I cry about Dad, it’s always here.” Not quite as often, now—grief was beginning to be overlaid by the first layer of skin and time. Jordan supposed that layer would get thicker and thicker, and in a way she was sorry. Grief cut, but it also made you remember. “Whether good or bad, everything that’s important happens here,” she said, inhaling the familiar smells.
Tony touched the long table, looked up at the lights. “I like it.”
“I want something twice the size. I want printing assistants, I want other photographers to share it with.” Jordan slipped out of her shoes. “There are so many things I want.”
“I’d tell you I’d give them to you, but you want to earn them.” Tony leaned against the wall. “Go ahead, get to work.”
“I start working, I lose track of time,” she warned.
“I’ve got time. Nina’s taking over a shift of work from Ian, and he’s hogging our only telephone. I’ve got nothing to do but watch you.” Tony linked his hands behind his head. “And you are an unbelievably tempting sight when you are lost in work.”
“Really, now.” Jordan turned for the scrap of yarn she used to keep her hair out of her face. Lifting her hair off her neck, she felt his eyes on her nape like a kiss and looked back over one shoulder with a smile. “It’s dull, watching film get developed. You’ll be bored to tears.”
“You nibble your lower lip when you’re concentrating,” Tony replied. “I can be happy for hours watching you do that.”
“You’re a charming liar, Tony Rodomovsky.”
His smile faded. “I try not to be.”
Part of Jordan wanted to cross the floor and drag his head down to hers on the spot. Part of her was enjoying the rising anticipation too much to hurry. “Well, let’s see how well I can work with someone watching and thinking impure thoughts.”
His grin returned. “Very impure thoughts.”
She switched on the red safelight, pulled out her film, and got started, happily conscious of his eyes. Lifting the prints out and clipping them to the line one by one, she stood back.
“Verdict?” Tony asked behind her.
“That one, maybe. Possibly that one.” Pointing. “I need to enlarge it, focus on just the hands against the propeller blade.”
He wrapped his arms around her waist from behind, looking at the prints over her shoulder. “How do you know?”
“How does anyone know how to do anything?” Jordan caught her breath as his jaw scraped the side of her neck. “Classes. Practice. Years of hard work.”
He nipped her earlobe. “Fair enough.”
She tilted her head back against his. “Tell me a secret.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re in the dark, and people trade secrets in the dark.”
“You first.”
“I sometimes call myself J. Bryde. It’s the name I want for my byline, but I talk to her like she’s real, sometimes. The famous J. Bryde who travels the world with a camera and a revolver, men and Pulitzer Prizes falling at her feet.”
“I’m no Pulitzer, but I’ll fall at your feet.”
He kissed the other side of her neck, and Jordan reached up to slide her hand through his soft hair.
“Your turn. What’s your secret?”
He was still for a while, chin resting on her shoulder, arms tight around her waist. “There’s one I want to tell you,” he said slowly, “and can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Not mine to tell. Not yet.”
“You have a wife and six children in Queens?”
“No wife. No girlfriends. No kids. That I promise.”
“Prison record? Warrant out for your arrest?”
“No.”
“All right, then.” Jordan might usually have been curious, but in the dizzying warmth of this red-lit room, she didn’t care. She wasn’t bringing Tony home for inspection as a future husband to trot out his credentials. He could keep as many secrets as he liked; she had a few of her own. “Just tell me a secret then. If not that one.”
“I’m Jewish,” he said.
“Really?”
“Yes. Want me to leave?”
Jordan reached behind her and swatted him. “No!”
His voice had a guarded wariness. “Some people don’t like hearing it.”
“Was there a girl who didn’t like hearing it?” Jordan guessed.