What I Love About You by Rachel Gibson Page B

dish and reached for the phone. Everyone knew that Natalie couldn’t keep anything to herself, and Lilah was going to love this.
    How was she possibly going to look at her neighbor now? she asked herself as she dialed. How was she ever going to look at him as just the jerk who’d stuck her with a part-time dog?
    Of course Blake had sleazed out on the dog agreement. The day after he’d stood in her kitchen and told her he had a monster penis, he’d stopped by Glamour Snaps and Prints to tell her that he was going out of town for a while. He didn’t know how long he’d be. That had been two weeks ago. Two weeks of full-time care of the part-time dog.
    Natalie lifted her camera and took several shots of the newborn asleep in her daddy’s hunting beanie. The camouflage hat was tucked around the tiny girl’s shoulders and she wore a stretchy camo band around her small head. Behind Natalie the young mother wept with pride.
    Natalie paused to move a few of the autumn leaves scattered on the table the baby lay on. Then she took several steps back and adjusted the focus of her Canon EOS. Personally, she was not a fan of the camo. She got down on one knee and took a few more shots before the mother carefully put the sleeping baby in a blue egg and laid her in a bird nest. Natalie changed the backdrop and moved the white reflective bounce card. The egg and nest were lined with lambskin and Natalie tucked the infant’s hands beneath her chin. Much better than camo.
    It was November first. Except for archers and muzzleloaders, hunting season was over. Natalie was happy the men in town had packed away their hunters’ camo for another year. And it just went without saying that she could stand looking out the window of Glamour Snaps and Prints and not see an elk head riding down Main Street strapped to a car. Or pulling into the grocery store and not seeing deer legs sticking up from the bed of a truck. Or not hearing her child cry about poor dead animals.
    As she snapped pictures of the baby girl, she remembered when Charlotte had been a baby. She felt a little nostalgic, and she might have been struck with a raging case of baby fever if she thought there was a possibility that she could have another child without going through infertility treatments again.
    She paused to look at the pictures through the display screen before she showed them to the mother. Of course, before she even thought of IVF, she’d have to find a husband. A good man who’d be around to help raise his child. A good law-abiding man who’d love her and Charlotte. A man who wasn’t a colossal liar.
    “Turn the egg a little to the right,” she told the young mother, and snapped several more photos.
    Since Michael’s release day was looming, she’d actually taken his call the other day. She wished she hadn’t. He’d told her that he planned to spend a lot of time with Charlotte and acted like she should just want that to happen. He’d been real pushy. Pushy like he’d always been when she’d been young and naive and allowed it. She was no longer that person. She was a grown-up. A big girl. A woman and mother. She wasn’t intimidated by Michael, but the closer it came to his release, the more she felt anxiety.
    While the young mother changed the baby into a christening gown, Natalie staged the next composition. She changed the backdrop to a gray damask and pushed her great-grandmother’s red velvet settee in front. The Victorian couch was bare in a few places but gave a photograph character and balance.
    One of the last people she’d photographed had been Mabel and her smoky eyes. Thinking of Mabel made her think of Blake. Thinking of Blake made her think of his hand brushing her cheek that night in her kitchen. Maybe he was right. If the touch of a man’s hand on her face made her go all tingly, maybe she did need to date. But not the kind of date he’d been talking about.
    Tonight Charlotte was staying with the Coopers and Natalie was going on a