Goddess of Legend (Goddess Summoning #7)(4)

If only I can discover the right woman, the goddess mused as she entered her palace and impatiently brushed away the naiad hand-maidens who surrounded her, singing their desire to serve her every need. And isn't that always the way of the world - the right woman is often the only thing that can dislodge those gods-be-damned Fates ...

Chapter One

ISABEL decided the morning couldn't be more perfect. Well, possibly better if she was sore from a great night of sex, but that wasn't in the cards. Not today, probably not tomorrow. Probably not in this decade. Nonetheless, a beautiful day.

She finished adjusting the tripod that held her favorite camera and then straightened, drawing in a deep breath of the sweet Oklahoma air. She didn't peer through the camera lens as would most photographers. Of course she would eventually, but Isabel trusted her naked eye more than any lens, no matter how clear or magnified or uber-telephoto. So she studied the landscape before her as she sipped from her thermos of Vienna roast coffee.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the silver of her thermos. Distorted as it was, she could tell she was smiling. And her lips, which every lover seemed to comment on, looked like big clown lips. Men seemed to love them. She was always trying to suck them in. She didn't believe for a second that Angelina's were for real. Unfortunately, she knew too well that hers were.

"'When the young dawn, with fingertips of rose lit up the world,' " she murmured, surprising herself with the Homeric quote. "Appropriate, though . . ." Isabel sighed with pleasure. The light here was absolutely exquisite! Oklahoma's Tallgrass Prairie had been the right choice to begin her new photography collection, American Heartscapes. It was early spring, but the ridge in front of her was already covered with knee-high grasses, waving oceanlike in the morning breeze. The air had the scent of impending rain, but there were so many more scents that filled her. The grasses, the lake, the occasional odor of a skunk. Nature. What a high.

The sky was an explosion of pastels washed against a backdrop of cumulus clouds that puffed high into the stratosphere - mute testimony to today's weather forecast of midday thunderstorms. Isabel hardly gave the impending storm a thought - she'd be gone before the first raindrop fell. But even if the weather chased her away, she didn't mind. On the ridge before her, under the frothy cotton candy sky, was a sight Isabel knew would make the perfect cover photo for her collection. The landscape was dotted with bison. Isabel's eyes glistened as she gazed at them, framing pictures - creating art in her mind's eye. The huge beasts looked timeless in the changing light of dawn, especially since they were positioned so that there were no telephone poles or modern houses or even visible roads anywhere around them. It was just the beasts, the land and the amazing sky.

Isabel took another sip of her coffee before she put the cup down and began focusing her camera and setting up the first shots. As she worked, a sense of peace filled her, and Isabel's skin tingled with happiness.

"And you thought you'd lost it," she spoke aloud to herself softly, letting her voice fill the empty space around her. "Well, not lost it," she muttered as she sighted through the telephoto lens and focused on a huge bison bull backlit by the rosebud-hued sky. "Just lost the peace in it."

Ironic, really, that the collection of photographs USA Today had called Peace? had made her lose her perspective on the subject.

"Afghanistan will do that." Isabel clicked off several frames of the bison.

In retrospect she should have known the assignment was going to be a tough one. But she'd gotten cocky. Hell, she'd been a photojournalist - a successful, award-winning photojournalist - for twenty years now. She wasn't a dewy-eyed twenty-something anymore. She was a fearless forty-two, which was part of her problem. Overconfidence in her ability had blinded her to the realities of what really seeing would do to her.

Of course, it wasn't like she hadn't been to war zones before - Bosnia, the Falklands and South Africa had all come before her lens. But something had been different in Afghanistan. I'd been different. Somehow I'd lost perspective and darkness and chaos slithered in, Isabel admitted to herself as she changed the angle of the tripod and shot several frames rapidly, catching a young calf frolicking around its grazing mother.

It had started with the soldier, Curtis Johnson. He'd had kind brown eyes set in a face that was young and more cute than handsome. He couldn't have been older than twenty-five, and he'd flirted outrageously with her as he escorted her to the jeep she'd be riding in - the one smack in the middle of the convoy of supplies they were taking from the U.S. airbase to one of the small native settlements just a few miles down the potholed road.

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.