Page 69 of The Oscar Escape
“Okay, but don’t move a lot.” She went to the camera bag, hoping to find a particular item. She moved a few lenses out of the way, and there it was. She held up Oscar’s childhood Polaroid instant camera. “Say Cheese, Louise,” she crooned like Oscar used to say when they were kids. She held him in the viewfinder, then snapped a shot of the chef at work.
“What are you doing?”
“Capturing the magic,” she answered and plucked the photo from the dispenser.
He drank her in. “Get your lobster-clad, pretty little ass over here and take this spatula.”
She wasn’t sure what he had planned, but his voice was a sultry rumble, and she was all for that.
She set the camera on the counter and took his place. “You want me to cook?”
He picked up the Polaroid. “Yeah, I do. Flip the row.”
“Why?”
“Because, Aria Paige-Grant,” he continued in that toe-curlingly sultry tone, “no matter where you go or what you do, you are the magic.”
God help her. Talking like that had her ready to beg the man to rip those lobster panties clean off her pretty little ass. But more than that, she loved him. She loved him, and there would be no more secrets and no more distance between them.
“Don’t move. Keep thinking whatever you’re thinking.”
She couldn’t have stopped even if she’d wanted to.
He lifted the camera, then took the shot.
Oscar had snapped hundreds, perhaps thousands, of photos of her over the years. But there was something different to the Polaroid’s mechanical buzz as it printed her image—a promise that hung in the air with the savory scents of butter and melted cheese.
She concentrated on the man. “You’re wrong about me being the magic. It’s us. We’re the magic.”
He looked at her with such devotion it caused her breath to catch. But his dreamy expression was short-lived. “The sandwiches!”
She gasped. She’d totally forgotten about them. “Take over, take over! We both know I excel at eating food, not cooking it.”
She tossed him the spatula.
Oscar plucked it out of the air. “You’re on drinks duty, kid. Grab pitchers of lemonade, cups, and plates. I’ll take care of the sandwiches.”
They moved around the kitchen quietly, completing their tasks. There was an ease about inhabiting close quarters with the man. Of course, they’d grown up together and were familiar with each other—but this was different. Whateverthiswas, it was more than two lovers working side by side or two old friends preparing a meal. It bordered on a partnership, which was strange to her. In her life, she called the shots and ran the show.
“Let’s use these,” Oscar said, removing a few picnic baskets from a high shelf.
It didn’t take long before they’d packed up and hit the trail.
“Do I need to go over the ground rules with you?” he asked over the crunch of their feet meeting the gravel path.
She shifted her grip on the basket with the plates and cups. “What are you talking about? What ground rules?”
“We’re dropping off lunch. In and out. No muss, no fuss.”
She balked at the man. “Who says ‘no muss, no fuss’?”
“I do,” he answered and adjusted his camera bag.
“What do you think I’ll do? Rip off my clothes and jump in the harbor again? Break another window in the chocolate shop and stuff my face with sweets? Or maybe you’re concerned I’ll dance barefoot on their sacred artifact bench?”
Oscar sighed and peered at the path. “I know how you can get.”
“HowIcan get? What aboutyou, Mr. Brooding Artist?”
