He chuckled. It was rusty, but it felt good. “Checkmate.”
The first problem came when he tried to back up the car. The second came when he tried to go forward.
He attempted it again, but the tires met resistance.
“What’s wrong?”
“The car’s stuck.” He tried again.
“Oh no.”
He got out of the SUV and bent down to look at the tires. They were sunk in the loamy sand. He muttered a curse and straightened.
“We’ll need someone with a winch,” she observed, standing right next to him.
Dev placed his hands on his hips and glanced around. He squinted at a sign tacked on a beam nearby. “We probably should have read that before parking here.”
STUCK? CALL KIM.
“We must not be the first influencers who got stuck out here,” Jia remarked. She pulled out her phone and then sighed. “Do you have reception?”
He hadn’t even taken his phone out of the car. He reached in and grabbed it out of the cupholder. “No.”
“What now?”
His tone instantly went to the same soothing tone he occasionally used with Luna. He was far more comfortable being the soother than the sooth-ee, that was for sure. “It’s not a big deal. This place might not have a lot of residents, but it has a motel, and a grocery store. Someone will have a phone we can use to call Kim.” Dev watched as Jia went to the trunk. “What are you doing?”
“Putting my camera away.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Well, we have this to deal with now.”
“So?” He shut his car door and hit the lock. “Doesn’t mean you can’t still do your work. Take photos as we walk through town. Your job doesn’t need to suffer because my rental isn’t as hardy as I thought it was.”
She stared at him for so long he grew worried. Had he said something wrong? “Are you okay?”
“Yes. I’m not used to someone who treats my work like . . .” She shook her head and slung her camera bag across her body. “Nothing. Let’s go.”
It wasn’t nothing. She’d become uncharacteristically subdued, and he wasn’t sure why. He tried not to take it too personally. Perhaps she was worried about the car, but he’d do his best to take her mind off that. It was the least he could do for how she’d had to literally hold his hand on the beach.
Another thing to stuff into his box of feelings.
Dev had never been in a ghost town before. Hearing and seeing no one as they walked past dilapidated homes and businesses was creepy, but it was also fascinating. They met no other tourists as they sauntered down the empty street, but they did pass a “drive-in” that consisted of junked classic cars and old repurposed roller-coaster seats.
Jia looked interested when he pointed out the installment, but she didn’t slow down to take photos, which surprised him. Was she feeling hesitant to work in front of him?
In case that was the issue, he stopped when they walked past an old house that had been painted with a fresh coat of bright blue paint with the word OPERA painted in elegant cursive above. Here, too, the artists had left their mark. “Look at that. This would look good with your yellow shirt.”
“It . . . would.”
He held out his hand. “Do you want to show me how to use your camera?”
“Um, okay.” She gave him a quick rundown, then set it into auto mode. “Angle it—”
“Down to slim your face, up to lengthen your body.” Dev smiled at Jia’s raised eyebrow. “I told you, I’ve watched a few videos of yours. I learn quick.”
Her smile was more like her normal sparkle. It emerged as he photographed her in front of the bright blue empty house. Though he wasn’t the thirst trap—Rohan’s words, not his—that his brother had been, Dev had to do his share of photo shoots in the past, plus he’d been around enough of them to know what was needed.
Photos. So many photos, so she could pick and choose her shots later. He tried to keep moving. She did the same between every click, but she was still a little stiff. He tried to think of how his brother had teased him the first time he’d gone to get headshots as a scrawny nineteen-year-old, to get him to loosen up. It was a good Rohan memory, and those were few and far between. “Look at you, you’re a tiger,” he said.
“Sorry, what?”
Oh, he’d spoken in Hindi. He switched to English. “Channel your animal side.”
“My animal side?” Her lips turned up. He continued shooting as he walked around her.
“Yes. You’re a tiger, you’re a lion.”
“And a bear, too?”
“An odd animal to wish to be, but certainly.” He had the feeling he had missed some reference, but she was smiling now.
She gave an adorable “rowr” and made a claw. He kept walking around her in a semicircle. “Yes, yes, perfect. You just woke up, you saw the sun. The sun is in your eyes, shield your eyes. Now let the sun in. Squint against it a little. You’re a tiger in the sun now. Now it’s cloudy. Look sad that it’s cloudy.”
“Wait, am I still a tiger?”
“You’re always a tiger.” He wasn’t aware he was smiling until she started laughing. He kept shooting as he walked closer, angling the camera slightly above her to catch her delight. “Perfect.” He stopped and handed her the camera.
Jia quickly swiped through the photos, her face brightening. “Not bad, not bad. You make a pretty good Instagram boy—”
His heart caught, but she didn’t finish. “What?” He didn’t need her to clarify. He knew what she’d been about to say, and he wanted her to say it. Boyfriend.
You haven’t even kissed her yet. The closest you’ve come to touching her was when she was comforting you during a breakdown.
It didn’t matter. He didn’t need their lips to meet to know that he was falling for her. Some things transcended the physical, and their connection was one of them.
Not that he didn’t want the physical, of course, he corrected his brain hastily. But that would come. When it was appropriate.
Wait, will it?
Yes. A confident bubble rose up in Dev, the same confidence he imagined people like Jia and the rest of his family felt on a regular basis.
Jia was his. He’d always been a patient man. He could wait until she came to the same conclusion.
She looked up at him from under her lashes and took a step forward. Her cheeks were pink. She took another step, and Dev wondered what she was thinking. “You’re—” she started, then stopped when a horn blared.
She jumped away and he whirled around, ready to both protect her and be annoyed at whoever had ruined the moment. A truck pulled up next to them, and the driver stuck his arm out the window. He was a thin man, his hair a shock of white, his skin like leather. “That car stuck on the beach belong to you two?”
Dev cleared his throat. Jia came to stand next to him, and he almost shoved her behind him again. “Yes, it does.”
The driver shook his head. “Don’t know when you tourists will learn not to pull onto the beach. We get one of you stuck every couple months. Bet you didn’t have reception down there, did you?”
“We did not. We were going to find a phone and call someone named Kim.”