She needed to know—had he been looking at her only with desire? Or had there been emotion there, too?
The library had been her own special hideout for the past three weeks. But as Sean held the door open for her and they headed back inside together, it felt perfectly natural. Just as it had when he’d interrupted her reading upstairs, like she’d simply been waiting for him to show up.
He spoke softly to the woman behind the desk. A moment later, she was pulling a set of keys out of a drawer and leading them to the elevator.
“We normally ask you to make an appointment to view the archives,” the woman told them as they stepped into the elevator, “but it’s quiet enough today that I can make an exception. I can spare about twenty minutes right now, but if you’ll make an appointment for a future day, you can stay for up to an hour.”
For three weeks, Serena had said little more than hello and good-bye to the people who worked at the library because she’d been afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing. But now that it looked like connecting with Sean might not be a mistake, did she really need to be so careful all the time? Besides, how much worse could things get, considering there were already photos circulating of her and Sean?
Granted, she really wasn’t looking forward to returning her mother’s call...but she wouldn’t think of that right now, would just shove it down deep where she was used to shoving things she didn’t want to face.
“I’m Serena. I should have introduced myself to you earlier.”
She was pleased when the woman shook her hand and smiled. “My name is Janice. And it’s always nice to see a student who enjoys being in the library as much as I do.”
The elevator doors opened and Janice stepped out to unlock the door to the archival rooms. Serena was about to follow her when she realized Sean hadn’t yet moved from where he was standing, his eyes clouded as if he were somewhere else entirely.
She put a hand on his arm, gently bringing him back to the present. “We don’t have to do this today.”
She watched as he forcefully shook away the darkness. “You know how you feel about the Brontë sisters? That’s Ansel Adams for me. They have a few of his early Yosemite prints down here. Have you ever seen his work up close?”
“No, only in magazines and coffee-table books.”
He put his hand on the small of her back to direct her toward the photos. “Get ready to experience pure genius.”
“These three rooms house the main photo archives,” Janice told them. “We are very lucky that the man who started the photography program at the university in the early seventies was not only a friend of Ansel Adams’s, but also collected his work from the very beginning. Obviously, please don’t touch anything or take any flash photography. I will be in the far room using the computer if you need me to answer any questions during the next twenty minutes.”
Serena was immediately drawn to a majestic black-and-white photo of a waterfall cascading over a rocky cliff. She’d spent much of her life with photographers, and had a deep respect for them, but there was no question that these were more than just photos. They were works of art.
“Adams wanted his photographs to feel like watercolor paintings,” Sean explained. “He was also passionate about the environment.”“There’s so much clarity and depth to his pictures. It’s amazing.”
“I know,” Sean agreed. “He pioneered something called the Zone System. It’s why the exposure and contrast are so perfect.”
She loved learning new things like this. Ansel Adams had just jumped up her list of people to research while here in the library. But at the same time, she was responding to more than just technique.
“It’s almost like his photographs are vibrating with energy,” she said, not letting herself overthink everything, even if what she was going to say might sound a little nuts. “I feel like I can hear the sound of the falls crashing just by looking at the picture.”
As she spoke, she could feel Sean’s gaze on her, rather than the photograph. He didn’t even need to touch her to make her skin feel warm all over.
Finally, he turned back to the photo and said, “That’s exactly how his photographs have always made me feel. Six months ago, I stood in Yosemite, right where he did, to try to capture it the way he did.” His voice suddenly sounded a little raw again and she sensed his trip to Yosemite had something to do with his mother. “It was a good hiking trip, anyway.”
“You love it, don’t you?” Knowing that he was going out on a limb by bringing her down here made it easier for her to step out onto one with him, too. “Not just taking pictures, but aiming for something big. Something that will touch people the way his photos do?”
“The last time I was here, I was with my mother. She—” He stopped, his expression full of such grief it broke Serena’s heart. “It was right before she was diagnosed. She hadn’t been feeling well and had a pretty bad headache that day, but she didn’t let it stop her from coming with me. I went to Yosemite for her, to try to take this picture, to try to bring her back here again somehow.”
She didn’t say anything, couldn’t have found the words even if she’d tried. All she could do was reach for his hand and hold tightly to him.
“She asked me to frame one of the shots and hang it on the wall facing her hospital bed. She said it made her feel good, and happy, every time she looked at it.”
It wasn’t enough anymore just to hold his hand, she needed to put her arms around him, too. But before she could, he took a step back.
“We’ve only got a few more minutes. I should show you a few other things before we leave.”
She knew what he was doing, that he’d gone as deep as he could just now, had shared as much as he was able, and that if he didn’t pull back he’d risk breaking apart. Fortunately, though, instead of letting her go completely, he kept holding her hand as he brought her to the other side of the room and shared what he knew about Ansel Adams’s other framed photos on the walls.
And as she soaked up his passion and knowledge, she realized that maybe she didn’t need to study the pictures of the two of them online to know what he was feeling for her, after all.
Not when the way he was holding her hand told her so much already.
CHAPTER EIGHT