If Tomorrow Never Comes (Harper Falls Book 2) (2 page)

"Actually, I was hoping to start right away," Alex admitted. "Today, in fact."

"Well, no one will ever accuse you of being a slacker," Drew laughed. "But even workaholics like us take off national holidays."

"Exactly right." Jack threw a friendly arm around Alex's shoulders. "Wander around, grab yourself some of the excellent food. In other words, give yourself a little while to decompress. It isn't a big town, but Harper Falls has a lot to offer and a lot to see. And here comes my all-time favorite sight."

Alex watched the approach of a gorgeous brunette whose brown, shoulder length hair was shot through with streaks of gold. Tall and curvy in all the right places, one look and he understood what Jack meant. And when she smiled at his friend? Well, a man could go a lifetime and never see such a warm and loving look given to him by such a beautiful woman. Jack would be a fool to ever walk away. No one knew that better than Alex because that was exactly what he had done five years ago. He had once been lucky enough to have a breathtakingly sexy woman smile at him just the way this woman smiled at Jack—and because he hadn't had the brains to hold on tight, he also knew exactly what it felt like to be the
biggest
fool
in the world.

"Sweetheart, come and meet my old friend, Alex Fleming. Alex, this is my fiancée, Rose O'Brian."

Rose laughed and held out her hand. "Welcome to Harper Falls, Alex. The female population is going to love the addition of another handsome, sexy man."

Alex shook her hand. He knew her name. Dani had often spoken of her two best friends, Tyler and Rose. He wasn't prepared to explain so he kept the knowledge to himself.

"Now that we're engaged you aren't supposed to notice other men, Rose. If you do you should keep it to yourself."

"That's a good one," Rose scoffed good-humoredly. "Not five minutes ago you were pointing out the size of Donna Armand's breasts."

Jack had the good grace to wince. "But not in a good way. What I
meant
was that she should cover them up before they got sunburned."

Yup, Alex thought. Rose O'Brian was perfect for Jack. The banter was obviously done with love and affection. Jack had always been such an easygoing guy who was quick to laugh. It appeared he'd found his perfect match in Rose.

"Have any of you seen Dani?"

Alex felt himself tense, but no one seemed to notice. Now that he was in Harper Falls it had been inevitable that he would run into people who knew Dani, he just hadn't expected to hear her name so soon.

"I saw her a few minutes ago over by those trees." Lila pointed to the area where Alex had noticed Dani when he first arrived. Great, his sister knew her too? He was going to have to adjust quickly to living in a small town. "I was about to go over and say hi when Alex came roaring in. Nice bike, by the way."

"I like it." He had purchased it the day after he'd left the Army. Shipping it back to the States hadn't been particularly practical, but he liked the way the BMW felt under him. They'd covered a lot of ground together in the past few months and when the time came he couldn't bring himself to part with the bike.

"I'm sure Dani is someplace around here." Jack pulled his fiancée to his side and kissed her forehead. "She sounded so excited about the fireworks, almost like a little kid."

"It's always been her favorite holiday. When she and Tyler and I decided to move back, I think the Fourth of July picnic was one of Dani's biggest deciding factors. I used to be so jealous when her dad would put her up on his shoulders to watch." Alex didn't think Rose sounded jealous, just a little wistful.

"You're welcome to climb on me anytime you want," Jack said, wiggling his eyebrows.

"Jeez, one track mind." Rose pulled him down for a brief but smoldering kiss. "I see Tyler over by the beer garden. She's just started seeing a guy who has his micro-brews here today. I think I'll go over and check him out."

"She didn't do it on purpose," Jack said after Rose had left.

Alex could tell that Jack was speaking to Drew, but he had no idea what Jack had meant. Apparently it wasn't a mystery to Drew—the guy looked like he wanted to tear somebody a new one. When he answered it was with a shrug, his voice even.

"It isn't any of my business who she dates." His eyes strayed to where Tyler Jones was flirting with a red-haired man. Still, Drew couldn't help but wonder what she would want with a guy who probably smelled of fermented yeast and couldn't even grow a decent beard.

"Is that supposed to be a goatee?" Drew scoffed. "I thought those went out with parachute pants and ponytails."

It didn't take a genius to figure out that there was some kind of history at work between Drew Harper and Tyler, the leggy brunette who just happened to be another of Dani's friends. But Alex didn't have the time or inclination to worry about his new boss's love life. Right now, all he wanted was to reconnect with his baby sister, catch up with Jack and get something to eat. As for his own past? He planned on sticking around Harper Falls. And that meant sooner or later he would have to find a way to deal with Jordanna Wilde.

DANI WATCHED THE
fireworks from the balcony of her loft.

After the way Alex had looked right through her it hadn't taken her long to realize that she was no longer in the mood for the festivities.

She'd found her mother and begged off the rest of the day. Claiming a headache had seemed pretty lame; Dani had even thrown in that the sun was making it worse. Her mom had made all the usual mom fussing sounds, and in the end Dani had left the picnic with little problem. The fact that she had been able to avoid Rose and Tyler had been a major plus. Her mom looked at her and saw only that her baby was in pain. Her best friends would have noticed the pain but caught on fast that it wasn't in her head, but her heart.

After the final rocket had burst in the night sky, Dani closed her balcony doors and wandered back into her home. Unlike Rose, who had always wanted a house or Tyler, who could sleep anywhere as long as there was space close by for her art, Dani liked her wide open loft.

The old brick building had once been a warehouse used for storage. Even so, Dani saw the potential and bought it despite her parent's warnings. It was too big, they reasoned. Why would she want to live in such a cold, unwelcoming space? To Dani, the moment she had walked in, it had been home.

The first thing she did was start work on her photography studio. It was where she would spend the majority of her time. Looking back, Dani could pinpoint the exact moment she had known photography would be her profession, and even more—her passion.

For her tenth birthday, her paternal grandmother had given Dani a Canon camera that had been up in the woman's attic for years. Basic and simple to use, Dani had instantly fallen in love with capturing any image that caught her fancy.

Luckily, Grandma had supplied her with plenty of film because most of Dani's early pictures had been pretty bad. She would pick an innocuous item, a dandelion for instance, and shoot it from every possible angle. While educational, it hadn't been very practical. Her father's patience had a fairly long fuse, but even he lost it around the time he saw the subject matter Dani chose for her pictures. He refused to pay to have rolls of film developed just so they could sit around and look at artistic pictures of weeds.
But look at how beautiful she made it
, her had mother argued. Her father would not be swayed.

Not to be deterred, Dani became more judicious in her picture taking. Her father had agreed to pay for developing two rolls a week so she learned to make every shot count. As a result, she got better at knowing how to set up a shot and what angle would look good before she ever committed it to film. Even after she got a job and bought her first digital camera, Dani refused to waste her time on any inferior subject matter.

Everything she learned as a novice she later put to use as a professional. It didn't take her long to earn a reputation as a world class photographer. Dani knew how to get in, get the picture, and get out again without putting herself, or anyone else, at unnecessary risk. On top of that, her pictures were always of the highest quality. Her last assignment in the Middle East had earned her a Pulitzer. It had also been the job that had tipped the scales toward slowing down and moving home.

It had started out like most of her jobs. Dani didn't work for any one organization. She liked being a freelance photographer. One week she might be in Afghanistan, the next on the French Riviera. It was exactly the lifestyle she had always envisioned. She didn't have a permanent base of operations. It was all, have camera, will travel. She loved what she did and knew she was fortunate to be in such high demand.

Unlike some of her counterparts, Dani had never been able to see the destruction and walk away with just the pictures in her cameras. The images of blown up buildings and dead children burned themselves into her brain. They weren't just images. She couldn't click one button, send the pictures to her publisher, and forget about it. Dani carried them around like her own personal—and gruesome—photo album.

Dani's assignment should have been an easy one. The magazine wanted shots of a village rebuilding after decades of unrest and the lovely spring morning had provided her with the perfect backdrop to get her shots. Small children played by the huts, women hung out the wash. It was all very routine. Dani knew enough of the local dialect to strike up a conversation with a woman and her two young daughters. Things were getting better, they told her. Life was slowly getting back to normal.

Dani spent the morning taking pictures and talking to as many villagers as she could. That night when she was back in her hotel reviewing her work, she felt a ray of hope that was rare when she was in this part of the world. By the next morning, all that hope had been shot to hell—along with the little village.

Sometime just before dawn a truckload full of rebels had gone on a rampage. From what Dani could gather there hadn't been any political or personal reasons involved. One of her colleagues, Wallace Offerman, called it their way of letting off steam. He had said it in such an offhand, matter of fact way, Dani had almost been sick.

They had returned to the village and it had been all Dani could do not to dissolve into a puddle of grief. She did a damn good job of holding back the tears, but when she saw the carnage, the bodies of the women and children who had been so alive and happy less than twenty-four hours earlier, she lost it. Needing an outlet, she had turned on her blasé colleague and punched him in the mouth.

Wallace hit his knees, mouth bleeding. The other two men in their group stared at her in shock. Meanwhile, Dani took her pictures, got in the jeep, and called Rose and Tyler the moment she was back in the United States.

She'd never regretted her decision. In Harper Falls, Dani could take her time, pick and chose her assignments and never feel the constant pressure to be on the move. Best of all, she would never have to add another image of a dead child to the ones that already periodically invaded her dreams.

She had been fortunate that money wasn't a worry. The reason for her financial independence wasn't because of her salary, though she made a very nice income. No, Dani had acquired her tidy nest egg because a wealthy man had taken a liking to her and given her some
very
profitable stock tips. His only condition? If anyone asked, she wasn't to deny that they had been lovers.

Some women might have thought that an odd request—Dani had not only been fine with it, but she understood the motivation. Robert Plank loved the idea of everyone thinking that an eighty-year-old man had a twenty-three-year-old lover. No one but the two of them knew that their relationship was completely platonic. Bobby thought the gossip was hilarious, and so had Dani. They had laughed about it often—how when they were at dinner people would stare and whisper. How the paparazzi would follow them back to his huge Beverley Hills mansion and park outside the gate until Dani left—usually not until the next morning.

No, Dani understood that after a lifetime of hard work, grasping ex-wives, and ungrateful children, Bobby enjoyed the company of a woman who only wanted one thing—the pleasure of his company.

They had met at the Venice Film Festival. Dani had been covering the event, Bobby had been trying to enjoy it. He had his yacht, and a dozen or so hangers-on and he had been bored to tears. Dani had still been new enough at her job that she would occasionally find herself gaping when she should have been capturing it all for posterity. Even so, she raised her camera often, and the results were exactly what her bosses at the magazine wanted. It turned out to be a win-win for everyone. Her employer got glossy pictures of glamorous people, and Dani rubbed elbows, if only peripherally, with the rich and famous.

To look at her, a stranger might have thought Dani would be a pushover. Delicate in appearance; she was anything but. With her long, blonde hair and classically beautiful features, people often underestimated how bull-doggedly determined she could be. As a result, she more often than not had to prove herself every time she was on a hard news assignment. But her colleagues soon found out Dani Wilde was a force to be reckoned with. Her brother had always teased that she was a two hundred pound man trapped inside the body of a fairy princess. That wasn't true. Even though Dani had grown up the quintessential tomboy—scraped knees and bruises in varying shades of blue being her norm—she could be as girly as the next woman. She had just been lucky enough to have parents who believed in letting their children be themselves.
And
Rose and Tyler as best friends.

Between the three of them someone always had an adventure up her sleeve, and the other two were more than willing participants. Tyler's mother had tried, unsuccessfully, to temper her daughter's wild ways. Dani's mom, God bless her, would send her daughter out into the world every day with a call to be brave, be fearless, and to always watch out for the underdog.

It was that last call to action that cost Dani a very expensive camera. And it brought her into contact for the first time with one of the greatest men it would ever be her honor to know.