“I know. You made a mistake. I should have been more understanding.” He briefly touched her arm.

Okay, so maybe he wasn’t such a jerk. She stared at her arm where he had touched it. Why was this stranger, whose one-of-a-kind film she’d ruined, taking care of her? Watching him, she tried to figure it out. “I’ve never screwed up a project like that,” she said.

“So what happened?”

“Everything was going fine until I got a phone call from the local hospital that my daughter had been brought in by ambulance. I dropped everything and ran out the door.”

“The girl I met earlier? Oh, man. Is she all right?”

“Yes. Yes, Julie’s fine. She’s upstairs now, online—her favorite place to be.”

“So what was the emergency?”

“She was in a surf rescue class—most kids around here take it in ninth grade. She hit her head and got caught in a riptide.” A fresh wave of panic engulfed Camille as she pictured what could have happened.

“Thank God she’s okay.”

Camille nodded, hugging her knees to her chest. “I was so scared. I held myself together until . . . well, until you showed up. Lucky you, getting here just in time for my meltdown.”

“You should have said something earlier. If I’d known you rushed off because you got a call about your kid, I wouldn’t have been such a tool.” He offered a half smile that made her heart skip a beat.

At least he acknowledged that he’d been a tool. “Well, thanks for that, Professor Finnemore.”

“Call me Finn.”

She took another sip of wine, eyeing him over the rim of her glass. “You look like a Finn.”

“But not a Malcolm?”

“That’s right. Malcolm is totally different.”

He grinned, flashing charm across the space between them. “How’s that?”

“Well, buttoned down. Academic. Bow tie and brown oxfords.”

He laughed aloud then. “You reduced me to a cliché, then.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“Want to know how I pictured you?” Without waiting for an answer, he rested his elbow on the back of the sofa and turned toward her. “Long dark hair. Big dark eyes. Total knockout in a red striped shirt.” He chuckled at her expression. “I checked out your website.”

Oh. Her site featured a picture of her and Billy on the “about us” link. But a knockout? Had he really said knockout? He was probably disappointed now, because on this particular night, she didn’t look anything like the woman in that photo.

“You look just like your photo,” he said.

Wait. Was he coming on to her? No. No way. She should have looked at his website. Did history professors have websites?

She saw something flicker across his face, an expression she couldn’t read.

“Go ahead,” he said. “You can look me up on your phone. You know you want to.”

She flushed, but did exactly that, tapping his name on the screen. The information that populated the web page surprised her. “According to these search results, you’re a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and a former intelligence officer. You’re now a professor of history at Annapolis, renowned for tracing the provenance of lost soldiers and restoring the memories to their families. You’re an expert at analyzing old photos.”