“You’re welcome. May I join you?”
There was an empty chair beside her, and he filled it the moment she nodded.
“Have you recovered from the ice?” she asked.
“Fully. How’s the dog?”
“Bandit is doing well, and my nephew thinks you are the bravest man in the city. How did you know I would be here?” Her heart still pounded at Luke’s unexpected arrival, for he was as attractive as she remembered.
“Rumor has it that the photographers who work at Interior get their photographs developed here on Friday mornings, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to seek you out.” There wasn’t much room in the crowded lobby, so he was pressed close to her side, and energy and excitement immediately hummed between them.
“I’m glad you did,” she said, seeing no reason to be coy.
His gaze dropped to the book on her lap, and he tilted to read the spine. “Don Quixote?”
“It’s my favorite novel,” she said.
Luke slanted her a disapproving glance. “But you’re reading a terrible translation.”
“I am? I didn’t know there was more than one.”
“Don Quixote has been translated into English eleven times in the last two hundred years,” Luke said. “The twelfth will be out later this year, and it’s the best.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’m the translator.”
She burst into laughter. “No!”
He grinned. “Yes!”
“Why are you bothering to translate a book that’s already been translated so often?”
“Because the other translations are lousy. I’ve read them all, and know I can do better.”
It was such an arrogant thing to say, but it was impossible not to smile at his unabashed boasting, and if he had read eleven different translations of Don Quixote, he must love the novel as much as she did.
“Please don’t tell anyone,” he continued. “This translation is shamefully close to my heart, and aside from my editor at the publishing company, no one knows about it.”
The fact that he shared the secret with her triggered a tiny thrill. “Why haven’t you told anyone about it?”
“It’s embarrassing.” He blushed madly as he spoke, so apparently he was genuinely sensitive about it. This was a man who risked his life to save a stranger’s dog but was embarrassed about his secret translation project. “It’s not a traditional translation. I’ve modernized it. I’m not as long-winded as Cervantes, and English is a very different language than Spanish. I’m afraid I took some literary license. A lot, actually.”
Marianne’s brows rose. “Are you allowed to do that?”
He shrugged. “I’m doing it. The other translations are so literal. A word-for-word translation sounds unnatural in English. I want the text to heave with emotion. I don’t want Don Quixote to be sad, I want him to rend his garments and howl in despair. I want blood and tears on the page. It’s going to be a controversial translation. A lot of people will hate it.”
“Blood and tears on the page? My, we are extravagant today.”
He preened at her comment. “We are extravagant every day,” he admitted. “Passion is what sets the world ablaze and drives men to strike out for the horizon and discover new worlds. It makes me get up in the morning looking for a new dragon to slay or an antiquated text begging for the breath of new life.”
She couldn’t wait for his Don Quixote translation. If he wrote with the same fervor with which he spoke, the book would probably burst into flame while she read it.
“The darkroom is all yours, Marianne.”
It was Abel Zakowski, her fellow photographer from the department, nodding to her on his way out the front door. Never had she been less eager to head into the darkroom.
She sent an apologetic glance to Luke. “I only get an hour, so I can’t loiter.”
“I’ve never been in a darkroom,” Luke said. “Can I join you?”
She longed to spend more time with him, but a darkroom wasn’t the ideal place. “It can be a little stinky.”
“I don’t mind stinky,” he said with a good-humored wink.
She had a lot of work to squeeze into the next hour, so she tucked Don Quixote into her satchel and stood. “Then let’s go,” she said, and he rose to follow her.
Was this really happening? Was the world’s most charming and exciting man only steps behind her as they headed down a narrow hallway toward the darkroom?
She led the way inside, where the sharp scent of silver nitrate was ever-present in the air. She pulled the heavy drape away from the only window to let daylight into the room.
“This is where all the magic happens,” she said. The room wasn’t much bigger than a closet, with a worktable mounted against a wall and shelves laden with jugs of chemicals. She watched him scan the room, noting the bathing trays, the glass plates, the wooden frames, and stacks of mounting paper. Taking pictures was easy. It was developing them that was the challenge.
“I was planning to enlarge pictures today,” she said. “My camera only takes small photographs, but the government needs them to be at least eight-by-eleven inches, so we use an enlarging box to make them bigger.”
“Don’t let me interfere,” Luke said. “Do exactly what you would do on any other day. Pretend I’m not here.”
“As if that would be possible,” she quipped as she took a stack of small photographs from her satchel. She kept the negatives in a tin box but would only enlarge the best of them because paper and developing solution were expensive. “Here,” she said, handing Luke the stack. “Have a look and tell me which you think I should enlarge.”
“I’d rather sit here and watch you work. You’re more interesting than”—he glanced at the top picture—“a photograph of the US Capitol. I see it every day. You, on the other hand, are a living piece of art. A Gibson Girl. A Fragonard milkmaid. A Botticelli nymph.”
“I’m not a Botticelli.”
“No? Botticelli’s women are beautiful.”
“They’re naked.”
His smile was pure mischief. “Not all of them.”
“Most are. Look at those photographs of the Capitol and tell me which you think I should enlarge.”
She watched his expression as he studied them. He moved through the photographs quickly, but the narrowing of his eyes indicated complete concentration.
Then he froze, his expression shocked. “You took this?” he said, his voice aghast as he showed her a photograph of the Capitol dome.
“I did.”
“You had to be crawling on the dome to get this shot!”
“I was.”
“Are you insane?”
She fought not to laugh. “No. And I’m proud of that photograph. I had to work hard for it.”
“You had to risk your neck for it. How did you get up there?”
In truth, it had been rather daunting, but her father had pulled strings to get her access, and he was with her the whole way. The dome was eighteen stories high, and she climbed a series of interior spiral and zigzag staircases to get most of the way up. Things didn’t get truly frightening until she climbed higher, where interior metal trusses supported the weight of the dome. It gave her a claustrophobic feeling, and the windowless space made her feel like she was in the hull of a ship, completely surrounded by trusses peppered with bolts the size of her forearm to hold up the concrete dome.