Page 12 of Tyler

“It’s amazing,” Piper said, making a mental note to book a hair appointment with her soon.

“Thanks, but that’s where my creativity lies.”

Piper nodded then turned to Rylee. “What about you?”

“It’s not really in the Bryson DNA,” she said with a shrug. “Except for Ty. He used to sketch when he was a kid. Always airplanes, and extremely detailed. Actually, they were very good.”

Piper’s stomach tightened. How was he coping? Airplanes had been his life from an early age. This is a huge change for him.

“He’s also a great photographer,” Rylee said. “Bugger makes it look so easy, but we could both stand here and take a photo of the same thing, and his would be amazing, but mine would be boring, dark, or blurred. It’s unreal and a bit frustrating.”

“I know what you mean,” Abby said. “Most of the pictures I take of Mindy have her wee little head cut off.”

Mindy was the woman’s cute little toddler. In fact, Mel and Piper were the only ones in the room without children. Her stomach clenched. She would’ve had several by now if Zane had lived.

After reaching for her coffee, she took a big gulp. That was in the past. It couldn’t be changed. She needed to think about the here and now, and right now, she was taking steps to build a new life in Texas.

“Hey, Ty, can you come here a minute?” Rylee said into her phone.

Piper did her best to ignore the jump in her pulse and congratulated herself on taking a much smaller sip of her coffee.But she couldn’t stop her gaze from straying to the doorway while waiting for her neighbor to pop into the breakroom.

Darn it.

She didn’t want her pulse to race. It complicated things.

“Yeah, sis, what’s up?” he asked, stepping into the room, and Piper’s pulse promptly jumped again.

“Did you bring any of your photos with you?” Rylee asked.

Ty’s gaze narrowed. “What photos? The ones on my phone?”

“No.” Rylee chuckled. “The landscapes and stuff you take with your Nikon.”

His head lifted and brows furrowed. “I think I have a few files on my laptop and a couple of backup sticks. Why?”

“You should show them to Piper. She’s going to showcase local talent when her gallery is open, and I told her about your photography.”

“I’d like to see them,” she said.

“But why?” His frown deepened.

She raised her brow at his unexpected response. “Because your sister says you’re good.”

“He is,” Rylee insisted.

He chuckled. “And you’re biased. It’s just a hobby. Nothing professional, and far from perfect.”

“It doesn’t need to be perfect to be good,” she said. “In fact, I’m not looking for perfection. I’m looking for feeling, emotion, heart. You don’t have to be a professional to capture that.”

“Well, I still think you’d have to be good to do that, which I’m not,” he insisted. “But if you’d like to see them for yourself, it’ll have to wait until tomorrow afternoon. We just caught a case. I’m heading to Houston with RJ and Dean within the hour.”

“Okay, no problem,” she said, a little surprised that he’d agreed to show her at all.

His reluctance was telling, she just wasn’t sure what it said.

“You should exchange numbers so you can text her when you get back,” Rylee said.

It took all she had not to shake her head at the request, mostly because it had come from Rylee and not Ty himself. She didn’t want him to feel like she was being forced on him, even though it did make sense for him to have a way to contact her if she wasn’t home when he returned tomorrow.

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