My breath hitches as she lingers for a beat longer than she should for an eight-in-the-morning hello. Then she lets go, and I feel dazed.
From that.
She is dangerous for my heart, and I can’t seem to stay away.
She takes a card from her purse and holds it up between us. “Today, we are scofflaws as we check out . . . our London.”
I lift a brow playfully. “This is ours?”
She bumps her shoulder to mine as we reach the entrance. “Yes. We can share the gallery, I’ve decided. It’s not yours or mine. It’s ours.”
Ours.
How I love the sound of that.
How many other things do I want to be ours?
“I didn’t think we were squabbling over the rest of the city,” I say as we go inside. She shows the card at the membership desk, and the man working waves us in.
“True. But I guess I just like the idea that I can show you something too,” she says.
Oh, Jo, you have no idea what you’re showing me.
What you’re doing for me.
What these coincidental moments mean.
“Then let’s see our Turners.”
She grabs her phone from her purse, taps on the screen, then tilts it my way. It’s a map of the museum. “I plotted out the fastest route to see all the Turners, since we only have forty minutes if we’re going to make it to the office on time.”
“Pretty and witty,” I say. “That’s what I said to my brother the night I met you.”
A crease knits her brow. “About me?”
I shake my head as we keep up a good clip toward the first painting. “No, before you walked into the bar. He asked about my type. I said I don’t have one, but that I like pretty and witty. And fate brought you.”
“Do you believe in fate?” She asks me the question this time, as we bound up the steps.
“I believe fate’s having a field day with you and me,” I say.
“Fate is showing us who’s boss,” she seconds, then we practically race through the floor, stopping at a painting of a burial at sea, then a steam train racing through the rain, then a sunrise.
It’s soft, the colors light, practically shimmering.
She sighs almost reverently as she stares. “I don’t even know why I like it so much,” she says. “Maybe that’s the true puzzle. It touches me and I don’t know why.”
“The mystery of art,” I say.
“Or is it the chemistry of it?” She shifts her gaze to me. My skin warms at the way her eyes linger. “Can we ever truly explain why we fall for something? For someone? Sometimes, maybe most of the time, it just is.”
My chest squeezes, and my body feels alive as the space between us crackles. “Some things just are.”
I turn back to the painting, gazing at it with Jo by my side. I’m keenly aware of each breath, mine and hers. Of how close our bodies are, how near our shoulders. And how alone we are in this gallery.
We’re the only ones here, and it seems a crime not to reach for her fingers, glide mine across hers.
And so, I do.
Her breath catches, and she grabs my hand.
Our fingers thread together, holding tight. Maybe to each other. Maybe to the chemistry.
My heart slams hard against its cage. Perhaps we have both unlocked the puzzle of the Turners.
They just make me feel.
Or really, she does.
A minute later, she lets go of my hand.
Good thing, since I don’t have the willpower.
Quietly, we work our way across her map, stopping, staring, talking again.
The clock ticks closer to nine, and soon it’s time to go.
“We need a picture of Our London.”
We return to the sunrise, and I snap a photo of our hands.
Together.
Then we go to the office where one of us will get the promotion the other so badly wants.
16
JO
That weekend, he takes me on a tour of the bridges.
“To show you that Tower Bridge isn’t the only one,” he says as we meander across Albert Bridge with its pastel greens, pinks, and blues. Heath takes photos of the water, then of me.
“Don’t pose,” he tells me, a man who knows his mind.
“What do you want me to do?” I ask, a little confused.
“Think. Read a book. Stare into the distance,” he offers.
I choose door number two, grabbing a new romance that TJ told me about from my bag. It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.
Flipping it open, I return to where I left off, the moment when the hero is so twisted up in his feelings he can barely think.
I stand at the railing, reading, and from a few feet away, the man I’ve grown to care so deeply for records the moment.
When he’s done, he returns to me.
“Share this one with your friends. This is how I see you here.” He slides next to me, his shoulder brushing mine. A spark rushes over my skin as I peer at the screen on the back of his camera, checking out the shot of my hair blowing in the breeze, my nose in a book.