“So then tell me about it,” Elise said.
“Where would you like me to start?”
“From the beginning.”
And Harper did. She told her all about the jaguars in the Pantanal, which was the assignment that got her noticed. She told Elise about how she’d spent weeks tracking them down through the wetlands. Then she talked about the leatherback turtles nesting on Trinidad’s beaches, the consequences of human interference on the endangered species, and how patient she had to be to capture their slow crawl from sand to surf. Next, Harper spoke about the dugongs off the coast of Palawan. Elise had never even heard of them, let alone knew what they looked like. And somewhere between dugongs and the salt flats of Atacama, Elise’s attention drifted…
To Harper’s mouth. To the way her lips shaped words. How she kept licking the corner of her bottom lip without noticing. How her voice went higher when she got excited.
And suddenly Elise wasn’t hearing the story at all.
She was watching. And Harper was too. In fact, she had stopped speaking altogether. The only noises in the air were someone laughing nearby and the distant hum of cars. But to Elise, the night was entirely silent. She could only hear her breath, all ragged and wanting, and the tick, tick of Harper’s heartbeat, which she knew wasn’t real, but it felt real.
Before Elise could fully register what was happening, they were both leaning in. Slowly. Carefully. Like they were testing the waters, and then suddenly the air turned magnetic, and Harper’s breath brushed against Elise’s mouth. And then there was no stopping her. Elise’s hand found Harper’s wrist in a way that only muscle memory could explain. Harper’s fingers slid to Elise’s jaw, and their mouths fit perfectly together, like the last ten years had been nothing more than a blink. As if they were still in Sesriem, sitting by the fire, alone but together.
Harper slipped her tongue into Elise’s mouth. Elise slid her hand up Harper’s shoulder for leverage. And then just as she shifted her weight over her—wondering if anyone from the other crew houses could see them—reality set in like a bucket of ice water poured over her head.
Elise broke the kiss so fast that she snapped her head back and hit the base of her skull against the sidewall. “OW!” she shrieked, clutching her head.
Harper’s eyes went huge. She half raised her arms like she wanted to catch Elise’s head before it bounced against the bricks but couldn’t do it in time. “Shit, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Elise said quickly. But she wasn’t fine. She was embarrassed. She was confused. She hadn’t felt anything that intoxicating, that electric, that bone-deep kind of undeniably fantastic in a long time. Ten years to be exact. Which was exactly why Elise pushed herself up and gestured to the open sliding door. “I think you should go.”
Chapter Eleven
Harper liked to think she was unshakeable. The last ten years were surely a testament to that. All the ridiculous, impossible positions she’d found herself in, coming face-to-face with danger, dangling off cliffs, frozen in the wind to get that perfect shot. More than once––less than thrice––that had included the very real possibility that she might die. And all she’d hoped for was that Harry would playAngelsby Robbie Williams at her funeral. She hoped the speeches would be short and that no one would be allowed to cry. She’d always wanted her life to be celebrated. Not mourned.
But waking up this morning with the memory of that kiss and the feel of Elise’s lips on hers was worse than any danger she had faced in her career. The image of Elise jerking her head back so quickly she’d banged it against the wall kept replaying, and the truth was, it left her more than just shaky.
Harper stepped onto the smooth, sun-warmed pebbles and let her gaze take in the Fiordo di Furore. A narrow inlet on the coastline between Praiano and Conca dei Marini. To Harper, it looked like a sharp pocket carved between two cliffs where the Mediterranean shoved itself inland. The water was so blue and so bright, it basically glowed. Above, an old stone bridge arched across the fjord, where cars drove slowly along it. On one side of the water was a narrow path winding along the cliff, and on the other side, limestone rose up sharp and jagged with streaks of green where moss and shrubs clung stubbornly. There were a few small wooden boats hauled ashore, and small pastel-painted houses were stacked on one side like sugar cubes.
Production had, of course, done the impossible and secured the entire inlet for the morning. No tourists. No sunbathers. Just Megan and Amelia, whom she had chosen for the first one-on-one date of the season.
Harper scanned the beach. A handful of camera operators were focused on Megan and Amelia. They were both standing thigh-deep in the water. She was surrounded by the crew. Two camera assistants were fussing with reflectors to Harper’s right, and the sound guys were crouched over their equipment under a small blue teepee to her left.
Elise was nowhere to be found. This wasn’t a surprise. Harper expected her to pop up somewhere, but wished she could do it sooner rather than later. They needed to talk about last night. Frankly, it was absolutely imperative that they did. Harper was beginning to get offended because Elise had once again kicked her out of her house and spent all morning ignoring her.
But Harper had to talk about it. She was desperate to talk about it.
Last night, during the kiss, Harper had felt a seismic shift so big it had rearranged the terrain under her feet. She needed to know if Elise had felt the same way, and if that was the reason she’d ended the kiss so abruptly. Clearly, Elise was scared.
Which was fine. Harper had been scared, too.
“I feel like I’m in a dream,” Megan said, skimming her palms over the sparkly water’s surface. She was wearing a white and turquoise tie-dye bikini with strings tied at her hips. A waterproof mic was taped securely to her sternum. “This place is amazing.”
Amelia was right next to her in a coral bandeau top and matching bottoms. “Well, I think you look like a dream,” she said, then immediately bowed her head, looking embarrassed.
Which Harper thought was entirely appropriate. She even inwardly cringed for Amelia, whom she had expected to know how to flirt. Even Harper, who was terrible at flirting, would never call someone a dream. She was way too forward for that. The night she had met Harry, she’d bought him a Guinness at the little Irish pub off Camden High Street and told him she liked the way his hair fell in the light and maybe they should just go ahead and have sex. They’d gone on a second date the very next night. Then two more before the end of the week, and three months later, Harry had proposed on the Cliffs of Moher while the salty wind whipped Harper’s cheeks.
When it came to Elise, on the other hand, Harper couldn’t remember an exact moment where she had flirted purposefully. Instead, it had been a series of accidents and small impulses. Half-smiles that lingered too long. Hands brushed where either she or Elise would jerk their hands away when someone approached. An offer of a neck rub after a brutal day of filming—which Elise had taken on day fifteen and then proceeded to moan like she was orgasming.
“You’re just saying that because you have to,” Megan said. Her cheeks bloomed pink against her sun-kissed skin. “But please do continue. I haven’t heard this many compliments in the last few days… or ever.”
Amelia laughed and smiled at her so longingly that Harper had to photograph the moment. Which she did. She didn’t even bother checking the screen. She didn’t need to. She knew she’d captured the emotion perfectly.
“Not only do you save lives, but you’ve got a sense of humor as well. I don’t think we could’ve gotten any luckier this season,” Amelia said, dipping her hands in and out of the water.
If Megan’s cheeks could go any redder, they’d probably bleed. She quickly splashed water on her face and then kicked her legs out to float on her back. Her brown hair fanned like ahalo around her face. Amelia followed and did the same. Harper changed her position. In fact, she waded into the water, glad for her hybrid sandals.