Actually, Curtis had been so cute and clever that she’d been daydreaming about loosening up her rule on not having a fling when she was on assignment. She’d been counting the years between them and had decided that, what the hell, if sexy young Curtis didn’t care that she was almost twenty years his senior, then why the hell should she care?

And that was when the roadside bomb detonated. Isabel had switched to photographer autopilot, and in the middle of the smoke and fire, darkness and horror, she’d captured some of the most profound images of her career—images that had included Curtis Johnson, whose strong right leg and well-muscled right arm had been blown completely off. She’d never meant to capture him. She hadn’t even realized he’d been part of the blast. She’d meant only to do what was instinctive; capture the truth. And then the truth bombed her in the face, and she nearly fell apart.

Curtis’s eyes had still been kind, even as they’d clouded with shock. Before he’d lost consciousness, he’d been worried about her—been warning her to get down . . . get under cover . . . Then he’d bled out on the cracked desert sand and died in her arms. All hell broke loose around her, and all she remembered after that was screaming to keep her camera. She absolutely had to have the pictures of Curtis in life. For his family. For her.

Isabel shivered and realized she’d stopped taking pictures and was standing beside her tripod. She lifted a hand to the chill on her cheeks. They were wet.

“Focus on what you’re doing!” Isabel told herself. “This is your chance to regain your center—your normalcy.” And to get over your grief.

She did the buck-up thing her father had always taught her, got rid of the tears and the memories and focused on her job.