His Favorite Distraction (Haunted Kings #2)

Chapter One: The Woman With The Camera

TESSY

The first thing I noticed about the penthouse was the art.

The second thing I noticed was that whoever lived here was either extraordinarily private or extraordinarily lonely — because a collection this beautiful, this carefully curated, had clearly never been meant for anyone else's eyes.

The third thing I noticed was the man who’d just walked in, standing arms-crossed in the doorway behind me, watching me touch his Basquiat like he wanted to hurl me out the curtain windows.

I kept shooting anyway.

I've always had terrible instincts when it comes to beautiful, dangerous things.

*

My name is Tessy Carter. I am twenty-six years old, I own exactly one good coat, I have never once in my life been on time for anything that didn't involve a camera, and I have been a freelance photographer in New York City for six years. I know how to read a room. I know how to read light, shadow, negative space, and the particular tension that lives in the body of a person who doesn't want to be seen.

I read all of these things the moment he walked through his own front door and found me standing in the middle of his living room with my equipment cases open on his imported marble floor and my step stool positioned in front of his most valuable piece.

He was tall. That was the first thing — he was very tall, with dark blonde hair that looked like it had been neat this morning and had since been run through by impatient hands. He wore a charcoal suit with the jacket hooked over one finger and thrown across his shoulder, his other hand loosening the knot of his tie with the grim efficiency of a man who has been doing something he dislikes for too long and is very glad it is over.

Then he saw me.

The loosening of the tie stopped.

His eyes — dark blue and extremely unhappy — traveled from my step stool, to my camera, to the open equipment cases on his floor, to my face. He took this inventory the way a man takes inventory of damage after something has gone wrong.

"Who," he said, in an accent that was crisp and British and not at all what I expected, "are you, and why are you in my home?"

"Tessy Carter." I lowered my camera. I did not get down from the step stool—if someone called me stubborn, they would not be wrong. “Frames & Negatives Magazine. Mrs. Longby, your assistant, approved the shoot three weeks ago. I have the confirmation email if you'd like to see it."

His forehead scrunched in displeasure like I'd just said the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. "I would not like to see it." He dropped his jacket over the arm of the nearest chair.

"I would like you to get down from that and explain to me why no one thought to inform me that a stranger would be standing in my living room when I got home."

I scoffed. “That sounds like a conversation to have with your assistant." I raised the camera again and angled it back toward the Basquiat.

The afternoon light was doing something extraordinary to the upper left corner of the canvas and I was not going to lose it. "I'll be out of your way in twenty minutes. The light is almost gone."

“Excuse me?” He said incredulously. “This is not a negotiation. You are in my house. I could call the police on you.”

I spied a Monet painting and moved my setup to it. Took some shots. “Oh yeah? On what grounds?”

“Breaking and entering, invasion of privacy—the list is long,” he bit out, arms crossed in annoyance. He reminded me of a displeased school principal.

I wasn’t the least bit fazed. I took a couple more shots. “I have evidence of approval to be here. Your assistant definitely wouldn’t have given the go-ahead if you hadn’t given the go-ahead.”

I spared him a glance and added with as much dignity as I could muster, “I’m a photographer, Mr. Collins, not a felon.”

"Hard to believe when you’re still up there even after I politely asked you to get down, Ms. Carter,” he said slowly.

I sighed. His whole presence was messing up my concentration. It was why I worked better without an audience watching me so closely. Better to just do my work and get it all over with. I turned and gave him my full attention.

I pasted on a smile that I hoped was charming enough. “Look, I have three frames left at this light. If you give me twenty minutes, I will have everything packed and out of your way before you've finished whatever you were planning to drink, okay?”

He studied me silently for a moment, and I took the chance to do same to him.

Graham Collins. Anyone who read a business page knew the name. Ace Capital. Private equity. Enormous wealth that doesn't need to announce itself. I had looked him up briefly when Frames & Negatives told me about the shoot — a single photograph in a Forbes profile, standing at a floor-to-ceiling window looking out over Manhattan with the expression of a man who owned most of what he was looking at.

He was even better-looking in person, which seemed unfair.

“Alright. Twenty minutes,” he said finally.

I gave him a quick thumbs up and turned back to resume taking the pictures. All the while, I could feel his eyes on me.

Then, unexpectedly: “How did you know I was planning to drink something?"

I lowered the camera and looked at him over my shoulder. "You walked in loosening your tie before you'd fully closed the door. You've got the look of a man who's been in meetings since early morning and lost at least one argument he expected to win. And you came home at four-thirty on a Thursday instead of staying in the office until seven, like your assistant said you usually do—which means you’ve had a shitty day and a glass of something strong would have to do.“ I nodded toward the bar cart in the corner. "Whiskey, I'd guess. Neat."

He stared at me.

I turned back to the Monet.

"Eighteen more minutes," he said finally. I heard him move toward the bar cart.

I didn't smile. But it was a near thing.

I took my three frames. Then I took six more because the light shifted in a way that made the far wall do something I hadn't anticipated, and I am constitutionally incapable of leaving a shot on the table.

When I finally climbed down from the step stool, he was seated in one of the low chairs near the windows with a glass of whiskey — neat, exactly as I'd said — and his jacket discarded and his tie fully loosened now. He had a phone to his ear and was speaking in quiet, controlled tones.

I began breaking down my equipment. I worked quickly and methodically, the way I always do, each piece back in its case in the order it came out. It took me approximately ten minutes. I was aware the entire time that at some point he had finished his call, and that the silence in the room had shifted from occupied to watchful.

I snapped the last case closed and straightened up.

He was watching me. Not the way men usually watch me, with that particular brand of attention that is really just appetite wearing the mask of interest. He was watching the way I'd watched his Basquiat. Like he was trying to understand something.

"You photograph objects in a unique way," he said.

I paused. "I'm sorry?"

"I was watching you." He turned the glass slowly in his hand. "When you were shooting the collection, you were precise. Methodical. Efficient. But there were two moments where you turned the camera slightly — toward the window, toward the door — and the whole quality of how you were holding it changed. Like you were waiting for something to step into the frame."

I studied him for a moment, impressed. "Huh. You have a good eye."

"I have a habit of noticing things." He said it without vanity. Just as fact.

I picked up my two larger cases. "Thanks for letting me take pictures of your collection.”

He didn't move to help me with the cases. I didn't want him to.

He nodded in farewell. “Ms. Carter.”

I got the door open with my elbow, maneuvered my cases through it, and didn't look back again.

In the elevator going down, I leaned against the wall and let out a slow breath.

I didn't notice I'd left my red scarf behind until I was two blocks from the subway. I’d used it to tame my hair so it wouldn’t get frizzy on my way to the penthouse, and had taken it off before I started working.

This was the thing about ginger hair. People who didn’t have it tended to romanticize it. Oh, it’s so striking. Oh, it’s so vivid.

What they did not mention was that it had the aerodynamic properties of a kite and the temperament of something feral, and on a windy October evening in Manhattan it became less a hairstyle and more a weather event.

I stood on the sidewalk and stared back in the direction of his building.

Twenty minutes to go back. Another awkward conversation. Those eyes doing that thing where they looked at me like I was a composition they hadn't fully worked out yet.

I turned up my collar and kept walking.

But s**t.

I really loved that scarf.