Risking It All. Stephanie Tyler

and two sodas. She wore a bikini, a pareo and smelled like suntan lotion.

      “Oh, good, I’m starving.” Rina grabbed the food from Stella and placed it on a desk, away from all the equipment. She took one of the cold sodas and placed it against her cheek. “I see you’ve had time for the beach.”

      “Hey, I needed to go over the post-production script. I needed light. And you’re way too preoccupied with your work,” Stella said, as only Stella could. Immediately, Rina knew her friend was morphing from scriptwriter to budding mystic and astrologer, and prepared herself for the coming lecture.

      “Funny, I thought we were sent here to work,” she countered.

      “All work and no play will not help your aura. You need another outlet.”

      “You’re not going to pull out the tarot cards again, are you?”

      Stella eyed her. “You don’t need a reading, sweetie. You need to get laid.”

      “Enough.” She put her hand up before her friend could continue. “I don’t need sex right now. I need to finish this video because we need to get our grant.”

      She did not want to edit X-treme videos for the rest of her life. The money and the experience were both great, but it was all just a stepping stone to the big prize—the annual grant contest sponsored by the World Film Organization.

      Rina wanted to showcase people who made a difference in the world, and by doing so, she’d also be making a difference. It was her Uncle David’s legacy, a continuation of the work he’d started but had never completed. By submitting part of this footage, along with pieces she’d shot herself and Stella’s narrative in a mini-film version of this particular X-treme video—well, this would be the most important part of their grant application.

      “And we will get it. But you really need to give your karma a shine. And I think he’s exactly the one to give it to you.” Stella pointed to the freeze-frame close-up of Cash, and Rina cursed herself for not turning off the footage before opening the door.

      “My karma’s fine.”

      “Your karma hasn’t been cleansed, so to speak, in over six months, and even then it wasn’t properly shined.”

      Leave it to her friend to bring up her last relationship, which Rina could admit to herself was less than satisfying on many different levels. “I’ll bypass the bad boys. You go for it.” But even as she said it and motioned to Cash, her stomach tightened.

      You’re pathetic.

      “So you’re telling me that this guy does nothing for you?” Stella asked, arms crossed as she continued to stare at Cash’s image.

      “I didn’t say that. But he’s not my type.”

      “Because he’s not boring and predictable?”

      “I prefer to think of my past boyfriends as stable.”

      Her friend sniffed indignantly. “Many of the men I’ve dated are stable.”

      “Yeah, sure. That’s a word I associate with a grown man who skateboards off the roof for fun.”

      “I’ll have you know that Dan did that because he was practicing a new stunt. Besides, we broke up and I know you too well. Whenever you want to avoid talking about your love life, you bring up mine. Nice try, though, but I think that surfer’s definitely the one to break your dry spell.”

      “The only thing he’s going to do is help me make this video the best one yet. And I thought you’d agreed to swear off bad boys to cleanse your own karma?” she countered, and Stella sighed with momentary defeat.

      “Did you get the end done?”

      “I did. And you’ve got to see it.” Rina rewound the tape to the spot, as she’d done at least a hundred times in the last hour or so.

      Stella glanced at the screen where Rina had paused the video on an image of Cash, full-on, staring straight ahead toward the camera and smiling. Then Stella stole the remote from Rina’s hand while simultaneously pushing Rina’s chair out of the way to get a closer view. “I can’t wait to write this copy,” she murmured.

      “Hey, I’m not done editing yet.” Rina snatched the remote back out of her friend’s hand. “Besides, don’t you have our grant proposal you’re supposed to be finishing up?”

      Stella sat down, opened her sandwich and still didn’t take her eyes off the screen. “It’s all finished. The only thing left to include is a copy of the most kick-ass piece of work we’ve got.”

      “It’s this one, Stel.”

      “Nothing at all to do with the hottie on the board, right?”

      Rina grinned. “Maybe just a little.” But she certainly wouldn’t do anything about it. A fantasy never hurt anyone—it was when you got to know the guy that the fantasy was ruined. Keeping him on screen guaranteed that he’d stay the perfect man. It was easier that way. She didn’t need to get bogged down in a bad relationship, couldn’t afford to have her focus torn away now, when she and Stella were so close to realizing their dream of being their own bosses.

      Rina wasn’t the type to have her head turned by a pretty face anyway. Part of it was her inherent shyness, and the other part was the intensity with which she approached her work. It was an odd combination that didn’t sit well with many men. Or any men, if her past relationships were a means to judge.

      Instead of spending time looking for love and having relationships, she and Stella had been furiously dedicated to getting the funding to one day make the documentary that would put their partnership on the map. Rina had been involved in documentary filmmaking since she’d graduated college, and she’d taken internships while she’d still been in school. She’d met Stella on one of those jobs, both of them nothing more than glorified gofer for the gofers, but in between coffee runs and changing camera batteries, they’d bonded. And they’d learned everything they could about short filmmaking.

      The main topic of their shared thesis for the grant proposal dealt with the psychology of danger, and showcasing the way that ordinary people were pushed to do extraordinary things. So getting a chance to work on this X-treme series was a fantastic wrap-up session for both of them.

      “Your uncle would be proud of you, Rina.” Stella smiled at her, put a hand on her shoulder, and Rina knew Stella was right. Her Uncle David had been the one to put the camera into her hands in the first place, the one to show her how and why pitch was important, the one to recognize her talent for drawing people out in front of the lens.

      David had been killed by a land mine while filming a rebel outbreak along the Western Tanzanian border where it met Burundi when Rina was just fifteen. He’d also been one of the earliest journalists to embed with troops, long before the term was actually coined and the concept became popular.

      Things were never the same in her family after that. Her mother tried to put her children in a protective bubble, especially after Rina’s father died a few years later and her aunt went wild and ended up impulsively marrying a Navy SEAL who was as much, if not more, of a wild man than her uncle had been.

      And Rina had done a little of both extremes, a little pushing of boundaries and then retreating to safety. And, as much as she wanted the grant proposal to go through, as much as she wanted to travel and see the world and meet extraordinary people—people who made a difference—and continue her uncle’s work, she was scared.

      One year behind the camera on projects that pushed men and women to their physical limits and beyond hadn’t helped matters any. A good filmmaker had to keep an emotional distance from the subject on the other side of the lens, and her fear of getting involved, pulled in to any of that, helped a great deal on this project. Impartiality, being able to look at what the subjects were doing with a critical and non-judgmental eye, was crucial.

      Rina wasn’t sure what had happened when she saw Cash, but nothing would beyond watching the