Page 48 of Building Courage
Taking her tea, she wandered over to the couch, sat down, and closed her eyes. When her cell phone rang, she groaned and opened her eyes to glance at the number. Her heart kicked into a fast, heavy rhythm. Tucker. Was he deploying? She tapped the screen to answer the call.
“Are you busy?” Tucker asked.
“No. I had a long shoot today, so I’m relaxing now.”
“I’m on my way home. Can I swing by?”
She didn’t give herself time to think about it. “Yes, sure.”
“I’ll be there in half an hour.”
She glanced around the living room-kitchen area. The one-bedroom apartment served her needs, but it had little space. The kitchen looked like a bomb had gone off in it, and her padded camera and light bags were still piled in one corner of the small living room. “Shit!”
She rushed to carry the heavy bags into her bedroom but took time to secure her cameras, lenses, and lights in a cabinet in the corner and plugged the batteries into the chargers.
As she left the bedroom, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the dresser and sighed. Her hair was a wreck, her makeup non-existent, but Tucker had seen her without makeup and her hair glued to her head with water and still seemed to find her attractive. She made a detour to the bathroom and washed her face, applied some moisturizer to soothe her wind-burnt cheeks, brushed her teeth, and then her hair.
She put her fanny pack with the SD cards in the bottom drawer of her desk in the living room to download the photos and work on them later.
Returning to the kitchen, she attempted to clean up the mess. She’d just wiped up the counters and set the newly washed cutting board in the drainer with the pots and pans when the buzzer on the intercom went off.
She rushed to dry her hands and get to the intercom to press the button and unlock the front door to allow Tucker to come up. She scanned the room one last time to see that everything was in its place.
When a knock came on the door, she opened it quickly, only to find Jess and Oliver standing there.
Thrown for a moment, she scrambled to say something. “Hey. How’d the car run go?”
“We made it to the dealership just barely. They’ll work on it tomorrow,” Oliver answered.
“Car trouble’s a pain. I’ll get the casserole. All you have to do is pop it in the oven and bake it until it’s bubbling and the cheese has melted.”
“You actually cooked?” Oliver staggered against the wall like he was having a heart attack.
“Just for that, you’re not getting the pictures of Jess I took on the yacht today.”
“Pictures?” Jessica asked. “I thought you only took one.”
“I may have taken some candids during the day.”
“Are they nudes?” Oliver asked hopefully.
Jess backhanded his belly. “It wasn’t that kind of shoot.”
Brynn laughed.
The elevator door down the hall opened, and Tucker stepped out. The green T-shirt with camouflage sleeves stretched across his shoulders and chest, subtly accenting the muscle beneath. His camouflage pants hugged his trim waist. Her earlier complaint about not seeing him in uniform came to mind and triggered a fantasy of helping him take it off. Shocked by her own thoughts, she bit her bottom lip.
Jess turned to see what she was focusing on. “Is that Tucker?”
“Yeah.”
“O-M-G!”
“Who the hell’s Tucker?” Oliver asked.
“Brynn’s scuba instructor,” Jess said. She pushed past Brynn into the apartment. “I’ll get the casserole, and we’ll make ourselves scarce.”
Tucker reached them just as Jess appeared at the door, holding the casserole dish.