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and bright.
    “ Thas what I said een it,
a bhobain?”
    Duff chuckled. “Aye, gran,
but sometimes I havta translate fer yer old Scots tongue.” He
ducked the hand that swatted at his ear. “It’s true!”
    “ Och, you.” Gran laughed.
The sound of it warmed him. Lovie laughed too, only hers had an
entirely different effect. How could a laugh be so damn
sexy?
    He’d agreed to take his
gran shopping at the festival, thinking he’d spend the rest of the
evening at the pub watching footie. This was so much better. He’d
deal with the guilt later.
    Lovie stood and reached
for a platter. “Can I help clear the table, Ginny?”
    “ Heavens, no! Yer a guest
in ma house.” Gran deftly stacked the dirty plates and nodded to
him. “Me grandson can help me, and then he can show you some o’ his
pictures.”
    Duff stiffened.
    The photos he carried with
him were personal. There was more than a measure of him in each
exposure. The rest, he sold or shot for work, but his private
collection…those he only showed to a few people.
    “ Gran, I doubt she’d be
interested in those.”
    “ Nonsense.” Gran protested
with a tsk. “He takes lovely photos, dear.”
    “ Oh, I’d love to see
some.” Jesus. With a smile like that, how could he say
no?
    “ Yeah alright, then. I
won’t be a moment.” Why did the thought of sharing a few photos
with her make him so damned nervous?
    “ I’ll be leaving this fine
evenin’ to you two young people.” And now he was even more
nervous. Thanks, Gran.
    Gran shuffled toward the
kitchen but turned to call out over her shoulder. “I expect ye to
come ‘round again afore ye head back home, Lovie dear.”
    “ Of course.” Lovie smiled
sweetly. “I’d like that.”
    Pleased as punch, Gran
disappeared into the kitchen. Duff followed behind and soon they
had the table cleared. Despite Gran’s protests, Lovie
helped.
     
    ****
     
    Lovie couldn’t believe the
quality of his photography. Duff had been modest when he told her
he shot landscapes and portraits. There was such depth and emotion in
every photo. He obviously loved his work, and it showed.
    Composition, perspective,
and light. That’s about all she remembered from her one photography
class, but Duff seemed to have mastered them all. He pulled out one
transcendent landscape after another. The Grand Canyon, Victoria
Falls, a bamboo forest in some exotic locale. The boy got
around.
    His portraiture was just
as breathtaking. Lovie traced the lines in the face of one
particular man, his skin a deep mahogany and his eyes bright and
black. It was difficult to tell how old he was, but easy to see
that he’d had a hard life. His hands were gnarled and twisted like
an old oak tree, the knuckles painfully swollen. They seemed to
tell his story.
    “ I took that in Sri
Lanka.” Duff spoke over her shoulder as she reverently replaced the
photo back into his portfolio. “His name is Anoop. Was...Anoop.” He
looked away, haunted by some old tragedy.
    “ What
happened?”
    “ Floods.” Duff flipped
through some other prints, handing one to her. A small boy, dressed
in rags, sat atop a gilded elephant. They were walking on the
beach, and the sea stretched out behind them to infinity. The
perspective was striking.
    “ Did you always want to be
a photographer?”
    Duff rubbed the back of
his neck. The muscles in his arm flexed, and Lovie was momentarily
distracted. “When I was naught but five or six, me ma bought me
my first camera. It was love at first click.”
    He sifted through a stack
of photos, handing her one of a fruit stand in some tropical place.
She could almost smell the bananas, mangoes, and
papayas.
    “ I spent all of me
allowance on film and development. When I was fifteen, I got a job
after school at the local photo shop. Learned to develop the film.
How to get the most out o’ the negatives.”
    Lovie was beginning to see
him in a new light. He was every bit the bad boy she imagined,
quick tempered and moody, with an