Off Kilter Read Online Free Page A

snort, Tessa clipped up the final series of shots on the cotton cord she’d strung inside Kira’s narrow pantry, which temporarily doubled as her dark room. It was cramped and the juryrigged lighting sucked, but she’d operated in far, far worse conditions. “Figures.”
    She wasn’t surprised. Not really. She’d known exactly what she was getting when she’d started running the shutter. She’d just hoped that maybe, for the first time, her illustrious eye for things might have failed her.
    So much for that.
    With the last of the film processed, she needed to clean up so Kira could have her pantry back before breakfast. But she couldn’t seem to stop staring at the last half dozen shots she’d taken.
    She could tell herself she was interested in the integrity of the shot, the point of view she’d chosen, and how the angle allowed the sun to perfectly filter the light across the tops of the mountains and spill down over the fortress tucked between the peaks. She had an affinity for capturing the natural beauty of any landscape in her scope of vision, and had done it for so long it was second nature to her.
    Of course, what had always drawn her was the juxtapositionof the staggering splendor of nature’s bounty … contrary to the horrifying atrocities committed by man.
    She closed her eyes briefly against any threat of invading visuals, then opened them once more to look at the subject of the photos in front of her. There was nothing remotely horrifying or atrocious about their human subject. In fact, she could argue that his natural beauty almost eclipsed that of the stunning backdrop.
    He wasn’t ruggedly hewn like their island leader, Graham, whom she thought of as Paul Bunyan in plaid. Roan was tall, as well, but where Graham was linebacker big with a square jaw, Roan was rangy and lean, broad of shoulder, lean of hip, his muscles perfectly and tightly defined, and his skin surprisingly golden, which only leant a gleaming, gladiator feel to the whole image. Unruly, sun-bleached brown hair shagged around his head in wayward curls, looking as if he did nothing more than rake a hand through it now and again. There was a shadow of stubble on his cheek, but she sensed it was more a result of the afternoon hour than through any deliberate design. In fact, she doubted he gave his appearance much thought. Mostly because he didn’t have to.
    He was roguish and charming, with a devilish glint of mischief in his green eyes and a deeply grooved dimple that winked often given his penchant for grinning. She was quite certain he was well used to incorporating all of that to further his own agenda whenever it suited him. Probably because it had netted him an alarmingly high, ego-inflating ratio of success.
    She had no patience with people like that.
    She knew her own unusual looks and her taller-than-average height set her apart from the crowd, but she’d spent a lifetime playing them down to get what she wanted, and where she wanted to go. She took a lot of pride in the fact that her work spoke for her. And only her work. No one could argue that she’d earned her way to her current pinnacle of success by employingany asset other than her pure, unmitigated talent behind a camera.
    And yet … she looked at all that rugged, charming beauty, and it tugged at something inside her. Something intensely … female. She responded to it, to him, almost viscerally, and no amount of intellectual arguing with herself could divert her from that singular truth.
    She closed her eyes with the sole intent of ridding herself once and for all of his unwanted hold on her attention, but all that did was drive her thoughts in steamier, more primal directions. She thought about how he’d smiled and dangled that kilt. How he held that sword. His palms were wide, even the muscles in his forearms were rigidly defined, as he’d gripped the hilt. Her lips parted as she imagined him letting go of that tartan, and striding to her, planting that sword