by Erin Kern
He didn’t respond to her observation. Yeah, he did have a soft spot for Piper. But that didn’t mean he was fit to raise her.
He blew out a sigh. “Look, Audrey…”
Audrey shook her head. “Don’t you dare.”
Cameron blinked.
“I’ve been on the receiving end of enough ‘Look, Audreys’ to know it’s never good. I can’t legally take her back to Boulder with me,” Audrey informed him. “She’s supposed to stay with you.”
“I know,” he admitted.
The surprise that flashed across Audrey’s eyes matched Cameron’s. Oddly enough, the words hadn’t struck him dead when he’d said them.
“But you have to understand,” he went on, “I don’t know anything about kids.”
“Neither did Dianna, but she adapted and was an amazing mother.”
Cameron shook his head. “It’s different for women.”
Audrey gazed at him for a moment, then leaned back in her chair. “Huh. Annabelle and Stella didn’t mention how sexist you are.”
“I’m just stating a fact,” he argued, because, shit, he didn’t want her thinking that about him. “Plus, women have nine months to prepare themselves.”
“So you’re just going to give up without even trying?” Audrey pushed. “Funny, but I wouldn’t have pegged you for a quitter.”
Dammit, he wasn’t a quitter. “I’ve never been a quitter,” he told her. “But I’m just trying to be realistic here.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” she said with a shrug. “I doubt you could do this. You’d probably screw her up anyway, so you should go ahead and admit defeat.”
Okay, wait a minute.
“I never said that,” he argued, even though he knew damn good and well what she was up to. Audrey Bennett was a crafty little thing who’d picked up on his pride and used it against him. And he hadn’t even seen it coming. “I could do this,” he told her.
She considered him for a moment, running her light brown eyes over him and touching on places that felt like more of a stroke. “I don’t think you can,” she finally said.
Piper scraped the bottom of her yogurt bowl and licked her spoon, totally unaware of the tension brewing like a late afternoon thunderstorm.
Cameron leaned forward and pinned her with the most threatening glower that always had his players shaking in their cleats. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing?” His attention involuntarily dropped to her mouth. How had he not noticed how full her lips were before now?
She offered a shrug, as though she were totally unaffected by his scrutiny. But her dilated pupils gave her away, offering Cameron a moment of triumph. “I’m not doing anything,” she hedged. “Just pointing out the obvious. It’s okay to admit you’re not good at everything. We all can’t be winners.”
Okay, she wanted to play? Cameron knew how to play like an Olympic champion. In fact, he’d practically invented the game. He’d play her so good that she’d never realize the games were finished. He’d be strumming her like a guitar.
Only Cameron didn’t play fair. And he didn’t intend to play the same game as she was. She thought she knew what she was getting into, but she didn’t have a clue.
“Cameron,” Piper said. The kid was bouncing in her seat and had dried yogurt smeared across one cheek. “Can Jellybean have the rest of your yogurt?”
Cameron picked up his empty cup and showed it to her. “It’s empty. See?”
Piper pointed to the empty cup. “But there’s enough left for her.”
Cameron tossed a confused glance at his cup, then realized Piper had spent the last thirty minutes feeding imaginary yogurt to her stuffed cat. “Have at it,” he told her. “I even saved some jelly beans for her.”
Piper’s face lit up like a kid at Christmas. “Those are her favorite!” she exclaimed.
“I know,” he said with a wink.
A glance at Audrey showed her grinning at him as though to say, Aw, I knew you could do it. He half expected her to give him a gold star. Maybe a pat on the head.
It was so game on.
Six
Piper polished off her third pancake, shoving a huge bite in her mouth and getting more powdered sugar on her shirt than down her throat. Audrey nudged a napkin across the table, knowing the kid would just swipe the mess away with her hand. Her Sofia the First T-shirt was beyond help, but the mess of butter and white powder on her cheeks was salvageable. Audrey grinned when Piper used the napkin but missed half her face.
“Here.” Audrey gave her a hand, ignoring the kid’s protests. Heaven forbid she should be too clean.
Plus, and Audrey didn’t have the faintest idea why she felt this way, she wanted to make a good impression for Cameron. When he’d invited them to the football team’s pancake breakfast, she’d taken it as a token of peace. Like an olive branch or something. So she’d helped Piper dress, even though she normally exerted independence by throwing on whatever mismatching thing, and slicked her hair back into a pair of twin braids. When they’d left, Piper had looked like she belonged on the cover of Parenting magazine. Now, with one braid coming loose, her shirt in ruins, and a grape juice mustache, she looked like…well, she looked like a kid. And the happiest Audrey had seen her in a long time.
“Can I have some more?” Piper questioned as she wrapped an arm around Jellybean.
Audrey leaned forward and brushed more sugar off the kid’s shirt. “Are you going to eat them or feed them to Jellybean?”
Piper shook her head. “Jellybean’s not hungry.”
Of course she wasn’t.
Audrey stood and took Piper’s hand in hers. “Can we go say hi to Cameron after this?” Piper was bouncing up and down, flopping Jellybean all over the place.
The gym was so crowded with players, parents, and fans that she and Piper had only caught fleeting glimpses of Cameron. The first time she’d spotted him, he’d been surrounded by people congratulating him and the other coaches on the team’s win the night before. He hadn’t spotted them, as least she thought he hadn’t, but just the mere sight of him had sent her stomach quivering. The place was noisy, but it hadn’t been noisy enough to drown out his deep laughter, which had danced down her spine like the feathery touch of fingertips.
Piper tugged on Audrey’s hand. “Audrey?”
The kid was impatiently waiting for an answer to her question. “Uh…” When she looked back at Cameron, he’d already diverted his attention elsewhere. “He’s busy right now. Maybe when you finish eating, we can find him.”
Piper pouted for about two seconds before they reached the long table where players were cooking up pancakes. Then she was bouncing on the balls of her feet again.
Audrey ordered another plate of pancakes, when someone bumped her left shoulder. She turned to excuse herself, but she bit her tongue when she got an eyeful of a gigantic, teased beehive.
Did people seriously still style their hair like that?
Apparently this woman, who looked like she hovered around the five-foot mark, thought the thing had never gone out of style.
“Excuse me,” Audrey finally said.
The old woman blinked her rheumy gray eyes. “Do I know you?” she asked.
Audrey’s brow furrowed. “Nope.” She turned to tug Piper back toward their table, when the old woman grabbed her arm.
“Yes, you’re that woman. The one with the kid.” Her sharp gaze dropped to Piper, who was hiding behind Audrey’s leg. Then the lady leaned forward, overwhelming Audrey with a cloud of Aqua Net. “Cameron Shaw’s baby mama,” said announced in a loud whisper.
Come again?
A wave of heat ambushed Audrey, which she hoped to hell didn’t show on her face, even though she didn’t have a single thing to be embarrassed about. She’d been in town less than a week and people thought Piper was Cameron’s love child? And Audrey was…what? Just one of many? Was she supposed to be some poor jilted ex-lover who couldn’t get over Cameron? Was that what his dating life was lik
e? People saw her and Piper and assumed she was another one of his notches?
“Tell me something,” the woman went on.
Yeah, I’d rather pour a jug of syrup over my head.
She leaned closer, giving Audrey an up-close-and-personal glimpse of sun spots and deep grooves around her eyes. “How’d you get him to stick?”
Oh, dear God.
“Lois, will you leave her alone?”
Audrey melted with relief when Annabelle Carpenter rescued her from the nosy woman and her horrifying questions.
“Well, honey, we just want to know,” Lois said to Audrey. “You’re a looker, and the women of this town have been trying to pin that man down for years.”
Annabelle rolled her eyes. “It’s nobody’s business, Lois. But if you must know, Piper isn’t Cameron’s daughter; she’s his niece.” Annabelle slid an arm around Audrey’s shoulders. “Now, will you let them finish their breakfast in peace?”
Lois pinched her thin lips and leaned heavily on her cane. After a moment of thought, she shrugged her shoulders. “That’s all right. I’ll just get another shot of him mowing the grass.” Then she chuckled to herself. “The man can never keep his shirt on.”
Audrey opened her mouth to say something. Anything other than What the hell? But Annabelle was scooting them away, back toward the tables and far from the curious old woman whose beehive was almost as tall as Piper.
Annabelle sat beside them. “Go ahead and ask. I’m sure you have tons of questions.”
Yeah, but most were about Cameron, and Audrey didn’t want the other woman to think Audrey had taken an interest in him. “What’s with the hairdo?” she asked instead, because it seemed like the safest question.
Annabelle giggled and watched as Piper cut into her pancakes. “She’s part of the Beehive Mafia. She and her three friends do their hair the same way and go around causing trouble. It’s all harmless,” Annabelle expanded when Audrey looked confused. “They’re mostly just busybodies.”
“What did she mean by getting a shot of Cameron mowing his grass?”
Annabelle’s laughter grew. “The Beehives take up their spare time by taking pictures of the young, good-looking men in town and posting them on their Tumblr page. Most of their obsession has bounced back and forth between Stella’s husband, Brandon, and Cameron. But when Brandon and Stella got married, Cam got the full force of their efforts. Most of their shots are of men without their shirts on.”
Audrey resisted asking for the name of the Tumblr account. The last thing she needed was an image of Cameron in the buff. Her imagination was enough for her to handle, thank you very much. “Is that legal?” she asked.
Annabelle lifted her shoulders. “Like they care. The four of them are overgrown teenagers, if you ask me.” She shifted her focus to Piper, who’d already dusted half her powdered sugar on her shirt. “Are you enjoying your pancakes, Piper?”
Piper nodded because she was too busy shoving food in her mouth.
“Where’s your syrup?” Annabelle questioned.
Piper shook her head and brushed her hair out of her face. “Jellybean doesn’t like syrup. She only likes powdered sugar.”
Audrey rolled her eyes. “Her diet is based solely on what the stuffed cat likes.”
“Is that what it is?” Annabelle wondered. “I thought maybe it was a raccoon. I guess I need to learn this stuff.”
Audrey thought back to her conversation with Stella about morning sickness. “Are you expecting?” she asked the woman.
Annabelle folded her arms on the table and nodded. “I’m due in May.”
Audrey offered a grin because, even though she’d just met Annabelle, it seemed like the woman would make a good mother. “Congratulations.”
Annabelle smiled her thanks, and Audrey tamped down the hint of jealousy. Why should she be jealous? Annabelle was a lovely woman who’d befriended her. And it wasn’t like Audrey was dying to have kids right now, anyway. Hell, she didn’t even have a man. And maybe that was the problem. Annabelle seemed to have it all together. A hot husband, a baby on the way, a network of friends. What did Audrey have? A thriving business, that was true…but what else?
No man, at least not one who could stick for more than three months. An estranged brother she never talked to, a workaholic father who was emotionally distant, and a mother who’d disappeared without a trace and left her family permanently fractured.
There’d been Dianna, whom Audrey had loved like a sister, but…
Now she was gone too.
So yeah, she was a little jealous. Annabelle was blessed in a way she probably didn’t realize with a life like the one Audrey had had when she was young; now she was just by herself.
Audrey blinked when she realized Annabelle had been talking.
“…So now I just have to figure out how to put together a nursery,” Annabelle finished.
“Do you have a theme or focal point?” Audrey blurted out before she could stop herself. Don’t get emotionally involved with these people.
Annabelle scrutinized her for a moment. “Are you an interior designer?”
A sliver of discomfort bloomed inside her chest, because Audrey knew where the line of questioning would go. She should have kept her mouth shut, but the altruism in her didn’t know when to stop. “Not exactly,” she answered. “I went to school for interior design, but now I do home staging.”
Annabelle tilted her head. “Home staging? Is that like when you’re trying to sell a house?”
Audrey nodded. “Right. We contract out to Realtors who bring us in before a home goes on the market. We generally bring in our own decorative items to make it look like a model home. They usually sell better if they looked unlived in.”
“But…you can pull together a room and make it look good, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“I would really love if you could give me a hand,” Annabelle said with urgency. “I’ll pay you whatever your going rate is.”
Audrey shook her head. “I couldn’t. I don’t know how long I’ll be here, and you still have a while before you have to worry about your nursery. Don’t you want to know what you’re having before you decorate?” Geez, she was grasping at straws and sounded completely desperate doing it.
“Oh, we’re not going to find out the sex beforehand,” Annabelle answered with a shake of her head. “And see, I’m a planner and have some mild control issues. I need to get this done before anything else.”
Audrey opened her mouth and closed it again.
“And you don’t even have to do anything. Maybe you could just come by and give me pointers.” The desperation in the woman’s eyes pleaded with Audrey to help. “Just point me in the right direction.”
“Maybe…” Audrey’s words died off because she honestly didn’t know what to say. “Maybe I could come by and take a look at the space. Do you have a room picked out?”
A sigh of relief caused Annabelle’s shoulders to sag visibly. “It’s our office right now, but I’m making Blake move all the furniture into the other bedroom.” She placed a soft hand on top of Audrey’s. “You have no idea what a help this is. The paint color alone was overwhelming me.”
Most people really don’t know anything about putting a room together that flows, one that isn’t overwhelming or disjointed with too many themes or colors going on. That’s why she and Stevie did such a good business. They came in and cleaned things up, made the homes look professional and uncluttered.
“How’re things going with Cameron?” Annabelle asked, throwing Audrey’s thoughts in a jumble. Decorating rooms was a much safer, and less stressful, train of thought.
“Good,” she lied. Okay, maybe it wasn’t a total lie. The situation they were in was odd, to say the least, but they got along okay. And by “got along,” she meant they kept their conversations to a two-sentence maximum, ensuring no arguing, ego matching, or sexual tension that felt like a barbed wire around her throat.
Annabelle narrowed her eye
s, as though she didn’t believe Audrey.
Hell, Audrey wouldn’t believe her either.
“I don’t know,” Audrey admitted. “He’s great with Piper,” she said with a glance at the girl, who was scraping the last of the powdered sugar off her plate.
“But not with you?” Annabelle pondered.
How was she supposed to describe her relationship with Cameron when she didn’t know what it was?
“No, he’s…he’s fine, I guess.” Audrey tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I don’t know,” she said again. “He’s a hard man to read.”
Annabelle nodded her understanding. “Cameron’s one of a kind, that’s for sure. But don’t let him push you away. He’s a good guy.”
Of course, she sensed that about him. He couldn’t be so kind and gentle with Piper if he didn’t have a streak of chivalry somewhere underneath that death stare of his. But how was she supposed to bring it out in him? If Piper was going to live with him, he needed to open up. Soften the edges a bit.
“He wants me to take Piper back to Boulder with me,” she admitted.
Annabelle watched Piper for a moment, as though pondering their situation. “He won’t do that. He may be gruff and rude sometimes, but he’s loyal. And that’s his blood. He’ll do what needs to be done.”
“But see, that’s the thing,” Audrey added. “I don’t want him to take Piper out of obligation, and then end up resenting her. He needs to develop a relationship with her.”
“He will. Just give him some time.” Annabelle shifted in her seat. “Cameron’s been burned in the past. He holds himself back out of self-preservation.”
Yeah, she’d kind of figured that.
“So how do I get through to him?”
Annabelle twisted a glance over her shoulder to where Cam was joking around with some players. “Something tells me you already have. You just have to get him to admit it.”
