Through the Lens (Click Duet #1) (Bay Area Duet Series) Persephone Autumn (black authors fiction TXT) 📖

a meeting. Everything has been laid out since the beginning, so I wasn’t sure if something had changed. I’m relieved everything’s good.” She takes a sip of her water, sets the glass down, and then points her finger at me. “You, on the other hand, I’m a little peeved at.”

I knew I wouldn’t be let off the hook so easily, but I feign innocence for shiggles. “Me? What did I do?” I press a hand against my chest and pop my mouth open in mock horror.

“Please,” she drawls out the word, lacing it with sarcasm and making me smile. “You’ve asked me to have dinner with you twice. Both times I’ve told you no. So instead of hearing a third rejection, you tell your I’ll-kiss-your-ass-every-day-of-the-week agent to orchestrate a phony dinner meeting and not be at said meeting. Am I missing anything?”

Her spunk and tenacity spark a thrill in my chest, a fire I haven’t felt in years. If anything, her spunk seems to have grown. I would give up everything to keep our fire burning. To keep her.

“You kept saying no. How else am I supposed to get you to have dinner with me?” I joke.

She rolls her eyes. “I don’t know, maybe ask another time or two. I would’ve caved.”

That’s an admission I wasn’t expecting. She would have given in? She would have said yes? This adds a whole new layer to our already complicated situation. I open my mouth to respond, but have absolutely no idea what to say. So, I close my mouth and simply stare at her awestruck.

“Yes. Eventually I would have said yes,” she admits.

Wait… what? “Did I just say that out loud?”

“If you mean, she would have said yes? Then yes, you said it out loud.”

Fuck my head for not operating at full capacity.

“Well, I’m humiliated,” I tell her, heat crawling up my neck and scorching my face. I pick up my water and down half the glass.

“Gavin…” she says my name like it’s her favorite, and not, at the same time. “I need this contract. This is huge for me.” Her words are a plea for understanding. “I can’t risk messing it up. This shoot will be the most valuable item on my future resume. When future clients see that I’ve done a shoot for Global Beach Magazine, it’ll push me to the next level. Open doors I’ve dreamed about for years.”

I stare at the empty white plate in front of me, nodding in realization. Me asking her to dinner could royally screw her career. The contract we each signed explicitly stated no fraternization between the model and photographer. And my selfishness could fuck that up for her. “Sorry,” I whisper.

She reaches over and places her hand on mine. The heat from her skin penetrates mine, sending a ripple of emotions from my fingertips to my core. I have no idea how I survived the last thirteen years without her. Without her touch, without her embrace, without her lips on mine.

“Don’t apologize. I just need you to understand. This career is my life and I have to be careful not to jeopardize it,” Cora states as her forehead scrunches.

“I get it. Things are somewhat the same for me. Sure, I could justify us having dinner together as being old friends, but I know it’s more than that. At least it is for me.”

Cora opens her mouth to respond, but is cut off when the server sidles up beside the table and asks for our drink orders. We order drinks, telling the server we need a few more minutes before ordering our meals.

The moment he walks away, I catch her watching me. Her green eyes soft and caring. She doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t have to. We lock eyes for twenty rapid beats of my heart before my eyes break away first.

I am so fucked.

“We should probably decide what we’re eating before the server returns,” I tell her.

With a nod, she removes her hand from mine and picks up her menu. The heat she ignited minutes ago… it evaporates the second her skin leaves mine.

And now, I will do whatever necessary to have it again.

Chapter Eleven

Cora

After the server takes our dinner order, Gavin and I fall into comfortable conversation. Although we had once known everything about each other, there is so much we don’t know now. We spend the time, before our dinner arrives, playing twenty questions.

I ask him about California. What he likes and dislikes. His favorite places there. Where else he has traveled for work. What he does when he isn’t working.

As challenging as it is, I do my best to steer clear of the topic of him leaving. The first time as well as the next time. It’s inevitable he will leave again. And as much as I hate the idea of him leaving, I remind myself of this regularly. His home is thousands of miles from here. Everything he has is there—family, career, friends—waiting for him to return.

Another topic I dare not mention… relationship status. His or my own.

The way he has acted around me, I am unsure how to digest it all. Is it just old feelings coming to the surface because he is here again? Does he act like this with other women photographers? Or women of interest in general? Is he a player? Is he playing me?

But the biggest of them all… does he have someone waiting in California for his return?

After all these years, there is no way Gavin is single. It isn’t possible. Yes, he is busy with his career. But a busy career doesn’t equal single status. Not with his good looks.

My endless mental list of questions is disrupted when the server sets a plate of coconut shrimp and coconut almond rice in front of me. I lean over the plate and inhale the delicious aroma, moaning my delight.

Gavin laughs, “Now that’s a sound I haven’t heard in a long time. Not quite the same as your breakfast today.” He gazes