Mal shook her head, smiling broadly. “No worries. At least I can laugh with you guys. Who knows what the rest of the week will be like.”
“Very well dressed,” Dan said dryly, which made her grin spread even further.
“Mal!” Jenna called, linking her arm with Tom. “The boys just finished a tour of the place, but we want to see it too. Wanna go? You can get ideas for your shoot.”
That was an idea Mal could certainly get behind. She nodded and turned to the others. “Let’s get just primary shots for now, one camera. We can use phones for the others just for landmarking. Anything good we can come back and get.”
All business now, the other two nodded and went to the trunk of the limo to finish unloading. Mal took off her blazer and tucked it under her arm, then grabbed the hair tie on her wrist and twisted her hair back. It was too hot for the jacket if she was going to work, and she needed her arms free. The sheer color-block shell she was wearing wasn’t exactly what she was used to working in, but it would do. She was even more grateful she’d worn a black tank beneath it. With the flock of females parading around here, there was too much being revealed as it was.
“The resort concierge will take your stuff to the houses,” Jenna called as she and Tom headed for the golf cart with Caroline. “Just pull it out of the limo and set it aside. No, wait, Mal!”
Mal turned as she had begun hauling her stuff toward where Taryn and Dan had set theirs. “What?” she called back.
“Silly girl, you’re not staying with them.” Jenna laughed as she got into her cart. “They’ll have their own place. You’re staying with us girls, won’t that be fun?”
“What?” Mal bleated in shock, dropping her blazer on the ground. She glanced back at Taryn and Dan, who mirrored her horrified expression.
Jenna was too busy laughing with her fiancé and sister as they backed up and took off to notice her.
“Mal-Mal!” Lucas yelled as he settled himself into a driver’s seat. “Come on! I called y’all for my cart. Let’s go, heifer!”
Mal swallowed the wave of nausea that rolled over her and picked up her jacket, setting it with the rest of her equipment. Then she took the camera Taryn held out to her and, blinking hard to erase the sudden blurriness, wandered over to her cousin.
Hunter had never seen any woman turn that shade of greenish pale before, particularly over something as basic as staying with a bunch of girls before a wedding. She was the photographer. Why wouldn’t she stay with the bridal party during something like this? And when it was a girl like Jenna, it should have been a natural assumption. But she looked as though she’d rather eat the dirt beneath her ballet flats.
She blinked as she finally seemed to come alert, thanks to Lucas’s annoying honking. It was nice to see her look less zombie-like—and for her to be toned down a bit.
He’d really not been paying any attention to anybody when they’d come back from driving around. Tom and Lucas and the rest of the guys had gone over to mingle and talk, and no doubt flirt, but Hunter didn’t care about any of that. He wasn’t a particularly social person unless he had to be. He was here for Tom and for the years of friendship they’d had, and for Jenna, because he couldn’t help but like her. But as for the rest, he really couldn’t have cared less.
He had noticed enough to wonder why the small brunette and her two friends kept their distance, but it wasn’t until he heard an unmistakable snort that he’d taken a good look.
She was cute, he was honest enough to admit, and he couldn’t have even said if she was wearing makeup, which was an interesting thing to see in a crowd like this. Her assistant wore enough for both of them, but she seemed to be the sort of character that collected attention the way others collected stamps or keychains. The three of them had been huddled together, talking so quietly he couldn’t catch any of it.
Then the photographer laughed.
There was nothing unusual or magical about her laugh. It held no musical qualities. It wasn’t infectious or adorable. It was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Except it was. It absolutely was extraordinary.
It had completely transformed her from being merely cute into something incomprehensible. It lit her eyes and brightened her cheeks and made her hair dance in a way that clawed at him somehow. She radiated light when she laughed, and her smile afterward held glimmers of the same. And from then on, he couldn’t not notice her. It was as if a magnet had suddenly been held up and something, somewhere between the pit of his stomach and the beating of his heart, had caught fire and been tugged toward it. How he’d stayed in place by the golf cart was a mystery, but he was grateful for it.
He was a man of calm and control, usually, and this tiny, strange, confusing photographer was not going to make him a man of impulses and instinct. Not to mention the fact that this was one week of wedding madness, and he was not about to become one of those guys who took it as an opportunity for a free hookup.
That wasn’t him.
She started to get into the cart when her assistant cleared her throat, hands on her hips, tilting her head so that the chopsticks she wore in her two-toned chocolate and maroon hair looked ready to puncture her shoulders. “Uh, boss? You forgetting something?” the assistant called.
Mal—he thought that was her name, at least—turned in confusion. “Huh?”
Her assistant, dragging her stuff to a pile, pointed at a lone suitcase.
Mal’s brows snapped down. “Shasta,” she hissed, marching toward it.
Hunter looked at the other assistant, who was about five feet from him now, getting onto Lucas’s cart. “What did she say?” he asked him.
The young man grinned, loosening his tie. “Mal makes up her own swear words. You get used to it.”
Hunter opened his mouth to respond, then thought better of it. He sat down in his own cart and waited for the other girls to decide who was going to ride and who was going to stay. Meanwhile, he kept an eye on Mal. Apparently, she only had the one suitcase, which was absurdly small by comparison with everyone else’s. He’d seen what the other girls had brought, and he had seen what his sister packed for trips of this length. There couldn’t be much in Mal’s suitcase at all, except for bare essentials, and she had been ready to forget it.
This was the photographer he’d been convinced to hire for the resort? He hoped she was far more organized in other respects than she was with her own stuff.