He looked at her, gaze steady. “Don’t I?”
“No.”
Jonas nodded slowly. “I’m making a mess of this.”
“Life is a mess.” She shrugged. The defensiveness had fallen away, and now she saw Jonas exactly as he was—a man in charge of everything, who couldn’t take charge of this. Not yet. “It’s always a mess.”
“You don’t make it look that way in your photos. Always so neat and clean.” A smile flickered onto his face and disappeared.
“It’s my talent.” Rachel took a deep breath. She felt a pull toward him, the same pull as before, only this time she wanted to kiss him, not just be held. Would the same spark ignite between them as it had once before? Energy already thrummed beneath her skin, making her heart beat fast. Even looking at Jonas was an adrenaline rush. “I have a proposal.”
His eyebrows shot up, a questioning expression on his face.
“Not that kind of proposal.” She laughed, her cheeks heating. Scott stopped pushing the truck and grinned up at her, giggling too. It was infectious, irresistible, and Jonas joined in the laughter. “I’m being serious.”
Jonas put on a straight face. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”
Rachel wanted to tell him everything, absolutely everything that had happened over the last two years, but it was Christmas Day, and they’d lose the light soon. That wouldn’t make for the best pictures. And now she knew the stakes were high for them both.
“You can’t afford to miss any more of Christmas Day with your family,” she said briskly. “And neither can I, if you want more lifestyle shots, which you know you do. So, I’m going to get to work.”
Jonas stood, and she followed him to his feet. He was so tall, almost imposing, and Rachel was torn—she didn’t feel on guard, exactly, but not relaxed, either. It was a delicious tension. Why did she like it so much? “And the rest?”
“We’ll figure out what we need to do when it’s not the biggest holiday season of the year,” she told him. “There’s time.”
“There’s not much time,” he countered.
“Enough to make a plan. You hired me to do a job—let me do it.”
Jonas nodded. “Consider me out of your way.”
Yeah, right. He’d be in her way with every step she took on the resort. And Rachel didn’t hate the thought. She stepped forward and reached for Scott, scooping him up into her arms.
Jonas walked the two of them to the door and opened it.
Rachel crossed in front of him, her arm brushing the front of his shirt, and she paused, her face mere inches from his. Blue eyes heated her from the inside out, and her breath hitched. He was close enough to kiss.
Scott wriggled his legs, kicking against her. “Go, Mama.” He reached out one chubby hand and pointed into the hallway. “Go, go, go.”
Her exit cue.
3
Landscape photos were not Rachel’s thing.
The sunlight was perfect, filtering down through the trees at the ski resort, and she snapped photo after photo, trying to make magic. Jonas didn’t just want her to capture the family at Christmas. He wanted a time capsule of the entire resort and all their favorite places in it. That included the trees and the ski hills and everything.
“Mama.” Scott barreled into her legs, knocking her off balance. Her lens cap fell out of her pocket, disappearing into the snow. “Mama. Pway. ”
“Oh, buddy,” she hissed under her breath, pulling off a glove to dig in the snow, hoping to retrieve the lens cap. This job was only slightly impossible. Why she ever thought it was a clever idea to take a toddler with her for landscape shots was beyond her. It would be so much easier to quit, aside from the complications with Jonas. She tipped her face to the sky and let the winter air cool her cheeks.
The problem was the text message she’d received this morning.
Her next big gig had been a wedding in February, and the couple canceled the wedding. A sick relative that required them to fly out to India with an unknown date of return. There went the rest of her fees.
“Sit. Sit,” Scott said, tugging on her jacket.
Her heart ached for them—it did. But it also ached for herself. Losing the money from the wedding made it impossible to leave the Elk Lodge and give up her income from this job. She couldn’t quit no matter how awkward things got between her and Jonas.
Rachel was kicking her past self for not asking more questions about Jonas, the man she’d slept with, and her present self for thinking she could just waltz back into the lodge as if nothing had ever happened. She should have at least recognized his voice on the phone.
She lifted the camera to her face and snapped a few more photos.
Scott suddenly started to cry, and she turned to find he’d fallen in the snow on his side. Perfectly capable of getting up but unwilling to do it, not without mama’s help. She scooped him up, tickling his chin to make him laugh. A two-year-old did not make a photography gig easy, but they’d have to make the best of it. It wasn’t like any of her problems were Scott’s fault.
They made their way back down to the main lodge building, where Rachel half-managed to get some exterior shots. Scott ran toward every flake of falling snow, this way and that, and though no cars were driving on the road, it made her nervous.
Holding his hand and shooting photos was impossible, and she didn’t want to take the risk of the chairlift. She managed to get photos of the ski shed, the bottom of the chairlift, and the hill from the only vantage point she had. Stopping every few minutes to take deep breaths, she tried to find a way to quell her frustration.
It wasn’t working.
“Buddy.” Scott ran around in a tight circle at her feet, making it less and less possible to get any shots. She tried for a few more, then looked down to find her son burying his hat in the snow. “Scott, it goes on your head.”
He looked up at her and shook his head. “No.”
“And where’s your other glove?”
“No,” he said, then delicately put several fistfuls of snow on top of the hat.
“Okay.” Rachel snapped her lens cap back into place and dug his hat out, which made Scott royally furious. His screams echoed over the ski hill, attracting the attention of other guests. Perfect. This could not be going any better. “Maybe we should go back inside and try for some photos there, buddy.”
He wailed, letting himself become a wet noodle at the end of her hand, and finally, Rachel picked him up and took him into the lobby. Jonas wanted photos of the lodge with its holiday decorations, too. But once they were inside, Rachel saw it for the minefield that it was.
Scott wouldn’t be able to leave the decorative gifts under the tree alone, and as they walked past the enormous Christmas tree, he writhed in her arms until she put him down on the floor. “Please, buddy. We’ll go back to the room. We’ll do something fun in just a bit. I promise,” she said, whispering in his ear.
Scott lay down on the floor.
“Just perfect,” Rachel said to no one. The last thing she needed was for him to go into a full-fledged temper tantrum. Not in here. She stood close by, using the attentive but calm expression she’d learned from one of her prenatal parenting classes, and waited.