“You can’t single out a part of an idea and lay claim to it.” She ripped off a hunk of bread. “Once it’s out there, it’s out there.”
Gil ate his salad.
“And an idea is just an idea until it’s developed. Jonathan is genius at making ideas workable.”
“Yeah, he knows a good idea when he sees one.” Think about where he gets those ideas, Cammy.
Oblivious, Cammy nodded and tried to drink wine at the same time. A drop or two escaped and she blotted her mouth with her napkin. Gil refreshed her glass.
“Besides, Jonathan gives me credit.”
“Does he?” Gil asked mildly.
“When he lists the people assigned to the account, he’ll put ‘account assistant Cammy Philips’ right there on the page.”
Gil was having trouble swallowing. Apparently Cammy would swallow anything. “That’s great,” he said with forced cheer. “So you get to share in the KTSO pool.”
She stopped in the act of bringing her glass to her mouth. “I…What are you talking about?”
Careful. Careful. “The bonus money. When the clients like the proposed campaign so much they increase their original advertising budget, the account team gets a percentage as a bonus,” Gil explained. Cammy’s arrested expression confirmed his suspicions that Jonathan hadn’t spread the wealth. To be fair, he wasn’t obligated to. Cammy was his assistant, not part of the creative team. “We call it KTSO money.”
She sipped her wine thoughtfully.
Her cheeks were flushed and her hair had gone all fluffy and curly as it dried. Gil liked it that way, but knew she didn’t. At least she hadn’t straightened it and dyed it dark brown for Jonathan, although she’d stopped adding blond highlights.
Gil had always liked the way she looked. She was an under-the-radar girl. Appealing and approachable. A nice girl with stealth good looks. Totally underappreciated until one day something about her expression, or the way the light hits her face, or the way her hair gleams catches a guy’s attention and he thinks, “Hey, she’s really pretty.” And then he falls for her and she becomes stunningly beautiful and the women who were getting all the attention before now look too obvious.
Or at least that’s the way it had been for Gil.
Cammy focused her gaze on him. “What does KTSO mean?”
“Knock their socks off. A presentation so good it knocks the client’s socks off.”
She nodded slowly. “That’s why Jonathan gave Ross those awful green socks he wears to presentations.”
“Yeah. They’re his lucky socks.”
Gil wanted Cammy to think about the bonus money she hadn’t been getting, but their lasagna arrived and distracted her.
“Now this is the way to wait out a storm.” She gave Gil a wide smile.
She looked so happy and soft and fuzzy and pink-cheeked that Gil wanted to wrap his arms around her and never let her go. He forgave her for being hung up on Jonathan because he was hung up on her.
But that didn’t mean he enjoyed listening to her talk about the guy for the rest of the evening.
3
THE NEXT MORNING DID not begin well. In the first place, there wasn’t a whole lot of morning left when Cammy woke up. In the rest of the places, she was incredibly thirsty, reeked of garlic and had fallen asleep in her underwear and top from yesterday.
And in a place all by itself, somebody was knocking at her door. Cammy got out of bed, stepping directly onto the still-damp slacks pooled on the floor.
More knocking. It wasn’t pounding, not yet, but it sounded as if the insistent knocking wasn’t going to stop, either.
She bent over to pick up her slacks. Mistake. Her head protested and her eyes felt funny.
When she flipped on the bathroom light she saw that she hadn’t taken off her make up last night and the industrial-strength waterproof mascara she wore to withstand Houston’s steamy summers had bent her eyelashes. But, by golly, it had not smeared.
Her hair was kinky poofed on one side and kinky flattened on the side of her head that she’d slept on. Her bangs stuck out.
And someone was still at her door.
Cammy gathered her hair into a ponytail, threw on some shorts and went to deal with the knocking.
Her keys hung from the lock. She never left her keys there. As she reached for them, a memory surfaced. She was standing here, yawning, trying to turn the key and a voice outside the door was telling her to turn it the other direction.
Gil’s voice.
And her voice saying, “You’re a really nice guy, you know that?”
And he saying, “I know. You’ve told me. Turn the key until it clicks.”
She had told him he was a nice guy. Many times. For taking her to dinner. For driving her home. For helping her up the stairs. She cringed. She’d clung pretty tightly as he’d helped her up the stairs, not because she couldn’t walk up them by herself, but because she’d discovered the lovely muscles in his arms.
Which she’d also told him about.
And then…no. No. She did not pucker up for a goodnight kiss. But, in contrast with the fuzzy memories, there was this horribly clear one of Cammy swaying unsteadily toward Gil’s mouth and missing and landing near his nose. She remembered his hands on her shoulders as he gently, but insistently, disentangled himself, since she’d made another attempt to kiss him and had looped her arms around his neck to improve her aim.
Cammy closed her eyes and touched her forehead to the front door, jumping when whoever was on the other side knocked again.
She had an idea who it was.
“Cammy?”
Yep. Gil.
What had she been thinking? She remembered talking and talking and waving garlic bread all around at dinner and feeling witty, and smart, and warm….
And a wineglass that was always full.
She yanked open the door. “You got me drunk!”
Gil’s gaze swept over her and zeroed in on her eyes, especially the left one she was having trouble blinking. “You insisted you were just pleasantly buzzed.”
“I don’t feel pleasant.”
“You don’t look pleasant.” He, on the other hand, looked new-morning fresh in a black T-shirt with some grunge logo on it and cargo shorts as he walked past her and headed toward her kitchen. A black T-shirt? When had Gil become a black rock-band T-shirt kind of guy? With broad shoulders? And nice abs?
“Wait a minute!” She shut the door and trailed after him.
Gil opened and closed her kitchen cabinets until he found a glass, which he filled with water and carried into her bedroom.
“Hey!” she protested before following him like a puppy.
He was in her bathroom, looking in the medicine cabinet.
When she appeared in the doorway, he handed her the glass, opened a bottle of aspirin and shook out two. “Take these.”
Cammy straightened. “I am not—”
Gil popped the aspirin in her mouth. They tasted so bad that Cammy swallowed some water.
“Drink it all.”
Giving in was easier than arguing with him.
He took the empty glass and gestured for her to precede him out of the bathroom. Then he picked up her slacks and draped them over a towel rack.
“I was getting to that,” she muttered.
He ignored her.
She couldn’t tell if he was angry or trying not to laugh or was totally disgusted with her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“You don’t have a car, remember?”
“Of course I remember,” she snapped and then modified her tone. “But you could have called first.”
“I did. Repeatedly.”
He was back in the kitchen and, oh please let it be, putting a Starbucks cup in her microwave. How had she missed the cup on the counter? It was for her, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?
“I guess I didn’t hear my phone.” Her purse was here on the kitchen bar. She dug through it looking for her phone. Not there. Ha
d she lost her phone last night?
Just as the microwave dinged, Cammy remembered getting ready to call AAA for roadside assistance. Then Gil had pulled up beside her…. “I must have left my phone in my car.”
“That explains why you didn’t answer.”
This was bad. Very bad. What if Jonathan had needed her?
Gil swirled the coffee cup to redistribute any hot spots, and set it in front of her. “Latte.”
“Thank you.” She was pathetically grateful. “You’re very sweet.”
“So you’ve said.” He sounded a little frosty.
Cammy took a restorative swallow of coffee. “I did, didn’t I?” When she hadn’t been telling him he was nice, she’d been telling him he was sweet. She stared at the coffee lid. “I take it you don’t like being called sweet.”
“Little girls in pink dresses are sweet. Kittens are sweet. Grandmothers’ kisses are sweet. The deal I got on my sound system was sweet.”
“Okay. You’re not sweet.”
“No, I’m not.”
Surprised at his tone, she glanced up and blinked. Something about him was different. “You’re not wearing your glasses.”
“I’m going back to contacts.”
“And you haven’t been wearing glasses since you got here?”
He gave her a half smile that had no business being sexy but was. “No.”
Cammy made an exasperated sound. “How much wine did I drink last night?”
“Most of the bottle.”
“No way!” She narrowed her eyes, feeling her stiff, crooked lashes stab her lids. “I never have more than two glasses!”
“We were there over three hours. You also ate two baskets of bread.”
And still reeked of garlic, he didn’t say.
There was a lot he wasn’t saying. She could see his jaw tense with the effort of holding it back, too. He looked…stern. Detached. And whatever opinion of her he was hiding behind his professionally blank gaze was not good.
And why would it be? She’d been a drunken pig. A garrulous, drunken pig. She’d monopolized the conversation talking on and on about all the wonderful things Jonathan had taught her. Priceless things. Invaluable nuggets of information it would have taken her years to learn on her own. Knowledge was worth a lot more than any sock money.
That was the point she’d been trying to make to Gil, but was aware she wasn’t selling it. As he’d sat across the booth from her, she’d wanted to see the expression on his face change from skepticism to understanding with a touch of envy. Make that a moderate envy.
There was no envy now. He glanced down at the wrinkled blouse she’d slept in. “The rain has mostly stopped. Go shower and we’ll get your car.”
So she was a drunken, garrulous, smelly pig. Lovely.
The drive to the parking garage was silent. Gil wasn’t normally talkative, but this silence was uncomfortable. There was more to it than Cammy drinking a little too much wine and hogging the bread basket and kissing him goodnight. Or trying to.
Maybe he was just annoyed that he had to give up part of his Saturday to take her back to her car. Maybe he had plans. Cammy found herself wondering what plans Gil might have. Obviously, he had a life outside Peck and Davilla, but she knew nothing about it.
The day was cloudy and the wind had died down by the time Gil parked nose-to-nose with her car on the parking-garage roof.
Cammy could hardly wait to get out of his car. Opening the door to hers, she saw her cell phone on the seat. She held it up. “At least I didn’t lose my phone.” As Gil walked over to stand next to her, she checked for messages. “Wow. You did call a bunch.”
“I wanted to be sure you were okay.”
“Thanks,” she said absently as she scrolled through the list of missed calls and texts. “There are tons of messages. Something must be going on.” She started reading.
Cammy, what’s up with Jonathan and the beach house?
I can’t reach Jonathan, is he still going to the beach house?
Jonathan’s mailbox is full. Tell him I’m not going to make it.
She looked up at Gil. “People are asking me about the beach house. Jonathan’s using it this weekend. I guess he’s throwing a party.”
Cammy felt a pang. How many people had he invited? And when was he going to invite her to one of his parties?
She read the text Jonathan had sent right after she’d told him the beach house was available. And suddenly, there it was at last—her invitation. She beamed up at Gil, smiling so wide she felt it in her cheeks. “Jonthan’s throwing a party and he asked me! I’m supposed to bring the steaks and breakfast.”
LOOK AT HER FACE, Gil ordered himself. Cammy was glowing and twinkling and radiating happiness. Because of Jonathan. Because Jonathan had finally noticed her in the way she’d wanted him to notice her. Memorize her expression and think of it every time you want to pass up the chance to be with another woman in case Cammy’s available.
Cammy Philips would never be his. She would never look at him as though he lit up her whole world, no matter how much he wanted her to. Her drunken attempt at a kiss last night meant nothing. She probably didn’t remember.
But Gil remembered. He remembered how her body had felt against his as he’d walked her up the stairs. He remembered that one moment when she’d stood outside her door and looked at him and something had changed in her eyes. In that instant, she’d forgotten about Jonathan and had finally become aware of Gil as a man. When she’d tilted her head up, his heart had pounded because he was going to kiss her at last. But then she’d wobbled and his heart had slowed. He hadn’t wanted her to kiss him because she’d drunk too much wine. He wanted her to choose him. Choose him over Jonathan.
And that would never happen. So from now on, he was also going to dress the way he wanted, cut his hair and wear his contacts. If molding himself into Cammy’s ideal man hadn’t worked by now, it was never going to.
“No wonder Jonathan was surprised to see me after the meeting,” Cammy was saying. “He told me to go on and he’d see me later—he meant last night! I was supposed to meet him there last night.” She looked stricken. “I’m calling him.” She hit the speed dial. After several moments during which Gil tortured himself by remembering her ecstatic expression, she closed her phone. “His voice mail is still full. Something must have happened to him!”
“Nothing happened to him.” Gil should be so lucky.
“I’ve got to get to the beach house!” She was talking in exclamation points now.
“See if your car will start first.”
Cammy sat and jabbed her key into the ignition. Gil stood by the open door and felt a little sick at the way her hands shook with excitement.
No. He had no chance with her.
The car clicked. Cammy stared in disbelief. “I thought it would start once the rain quit. Do you think it’s still wet? This hasn’t happened before.”
“Pop the hood, and I’ll take a look,” Gil told her.
Cammy released the latch. “Do you know much about cars?”
“No,” he answered from beneath the hood. “But I know that when water and electricity get together they do bad things to wiring. Come see.”
Cammy joined him and Gil pointed to some wires with bits of rust and corrosion on them. “Looks like something arced when moisture got to it.” He had no idea if that was true, but he’d heard a guy say it once and it sounded impressive. Besides, the bottom line was that her car wouldn’t start and he didn’t know how to fix it. He shut the hood.
“But what about Jonathan’s party?”
Gil shook his head. “Sorry.”
She clutched his arm. “You don’t understand, there are people there and Jonathan is depending on me to bring food!”
“Cammy, they’re not going to starve.”
“But what if something bad happened? He’s not answering his phone!”
“Maybe he’s sleeping in.” With a woman who is not you.
“Or maybe
the house collapsed in the storm and he’s lying unconscious in the wreckage!”
“We would have heard.”
“How?”
Her fingers hurt his arm. Gil peeled them off and looked into her hysteria-tinged eyes. He was going to regret his next words. “Okay, I’ll drive you to the beach house.”
Hope flared in her expression. “Gil, I can’t ask—”
“I’m offering.”
Unbelievably, she hesitated. “I…I don’t want Jonathan to think…I mean, when he sees us together…” she trailed off.
And Gil understood. His heart might have even turned to lead right then. “Don’t worry. I won’t let him get the wrong idea about us. I’ll make sure he knows you’re available in every way.”
4
HOURS AND HOURS AND hours—Gil couldn’t believe how many hours—later he and Cammy were stuck in a line of cars headed toward the coast. This was after they’d driven all over Houston for supplies Cammy thought she should take to the beach house. Supplies such as bottled water and candles and charcoal and batteries and canned food and all the popular items that people had already cleaned off store shelves like locusts attacking a field of corn.
It was torture watching her frantic preparations, but seeing her going crazy over Jonathan was a necessary step in his getting-over-Cammy process.
Next to him, Cammy fidgeted and fretted about the time. “I should be there. I always organize these events, so it’s not going to occur to Jonathan to bring water and ice and food.”
It was like watching a train wreck. He couldn’t look away. “Cammy, Jonathan and his party pals can always get back in their cars and drive home.”
“But it’s my job to take care of the details! I was supposed to be there last night and I wasn’t. Jonathan’s going to look bad and it will be my fault.”
“What’s he going to do, fire you?”
She gasped.
Oh, hell. “He’s not going to fire you. Trust me on this.” Gil stared at the long line of slow-moving cars in front of them. “The party sounds like a casual spur-of-the-moment thing, not like an official company event you were supposed to arrange.”
His Little Black Book Page 15
