To Catch a Camden

by Victoria Pade

  Faster he went, and so did she. Working together in finely tuned unison. Bodies asking and answering instinctively until everything inside Gia grew and gathered and then couldn’t be contained no matter how hard she tried.

  Bursting wide-open, ecstasy thrust her into a space where she had no control and could only be carried away with it, by it. Carried away into an exquisite paradise where he waited for her. Where he exploded, too, holding her to cushion the blow and meld them together so tightly she didn’t know where she began and he ended and the only thing she knew for sure was that she wanted it to go on and on and on....

  And it did. Blessedly on and on until it spent itself. Then ebbed. Easing them down a little at a time, as they clung to each other in a meshing of more than bodies....

  “Leave it to you to do dessert first,” Derek joked after a time of just lying there atop her, catching his breath, kissing the side of her head.

  Gia could only smile at his jest, too exhausted for a retort.

  “Are you okay? I didn’t break you, did I?” he asked then.

  Gia laughed and realized she was going to have to find some strength to assure him. “Not broken, no. Are you?”

  He flexed inside of her again. “Parts seem to still be in working order.”

  “Thank goodness!”

  “You’re telling me.”

  He didn’t move, though. He stayed where he was, at home in her, it seemed.

  At some point in the aftermath, Gia’s arms had fallen away from him to the mattress, and now she wrapped them around him again, rubbing his back and absorbing all the sensations she could.

  “I think we missed our reservation,” he said then.

  “You had some reservations? It didn’t seem like it....” she teased him, playing with the words.

  He laughed and nuzzled her ear, then sighed and whispered, “It was too good to be true.”

  Which was what she’d thought earlier.

  What she still thought of him....

  “It was,” she whispered in return.

  “I think we’d better give it a second test to be sure.”

  Gia took a turn at laughing. “Is that what you think?”

  “It is. After a rest....”

  He came out of her then and rolled to his side, his big body still half covering hers, one arm canopied over her head on the mattress again, the other across her chest much the way his thigh was across hers.

  “What do you say?” he asked then. “The sun is going down.... We can try it in the dark now that we know the way....”

  “I’ll think about it,” she said.

  “Good,” he answered, pulsing against her hip temptingly. But his voice had drifted and after another kiss to her temple, she could tell he’d gone to sleep.

  Which beckoned to her, too.

  But she fought it for a moment.

  She just wanted to lie there with Derek as her blanket, enjoying the afterglow.

  And all too happy with the thought that he would still be there when she woke and they could do this all again....

  Chapter Ten

  “Why did we only take half the day off?” Derek moaned when he came up behind Gia. He slid his arms around her waist to pull her back against him and nuzzle her neck.

  They’d both called in to work and said they were taking Thursday morning off. It had seemed like a necessity after being up all night making love. Although part of the morning had been spent that way as well, rather than catching up on sleep.

  “Maybe we should just take the afternoon, too,” he suggested.

  It was almost eleven. When Gia had finally gotten out of bed she’d put on the first thing she could reach—his shirt. That was all she was wearing to make coffee.

  Derek had followed her into the kitchen after pulling on what had remained of his clothes on the bedroom floor. His chest was bare and even though Gia was facing the counter, she could see his reflection in the side of the toaster. And that was enough.

  She melted against him, tipping her head to one side to allow him free access to her neck, closing her eyes and wanting to go back to bed with him so much it was as if they hadn’t made love at all yet.

  “I have a meeting with the owner of the company,” she reminded. “He’s coming in from Fort Collins just for that. I have to be there.” But there was nothing she wanted more than to climb back into bed with Derek.

  Which was beginning to worry her all on its own....

  Making love hadn’t had the effect she’d thought it would. It hadn’t taken wanting him out of her system the way it was supposed to. It hadn’t been the kind of freeing release Tyson had claimed it would be.

  Instead, every minute with Derek had just made her want him even more.

  And more. And more. And more than before....

  And now not only was she facing that, she was facing the fact that his car had been parked out front all night, so Tyson would have seen it. And so would Larry and Marion.

  Plus, the cold light of day was forcing her to face some other things, too....

  “How ’bout I buy the company and then I’ll be your boss, and we’ll hold all of our meetings in bed,” he joked.

  “Harry Cooley would never sell out.”

  Derek grumbled and nibbled on her earlobe. “Okay, okay, okay...” he sighed. “We’ll work this afternoon. Then maybe we can actually get to dinner tonight. Before we start all over again....”

  Gia wanted to do that, too. But that was the problem.

  If she didn’t stop this now, what was she in for? That was what she’d started to ask herself as she’d made coffee.

  Being with Derek all night long, making love, sleeping with him on and off had already gotten her in deeper emotionally than she had been. If she kept this up, she knew she’d get in even deeper. She’d be all the way in.

  And then what?

  Where would—where could—this go for her? she asked herself.

  And the answer to that was nowhere.

  Which, she realized, was the worst of what she had to face.

  So she took a steeling breath and forced herself to wiggle out of his hold, moving away from him to the opposite side of the kitchen.

  “I...” With the second steadying breath she wondered how she was going to do this. “We...”

  “Yeah, I know—we have to go to work,” he complained. “But my head is not going to be in it—I’ll just be watching the clock and counting how many more hours have to pass before I can get back here.”

  “No,” she finally managed. “That isn’t what I was going to say. I was going to say that we...this...” She made a waving motion with her hand that included them both and what was between them. “We can’t do this....”

  Derek frowned in confusion and fell back against the counter. “This?”

  “Everything. Seeing each other again. Dinner. What we did last night...and this morning.... We can’t do any of it after this.” And why did her gaze drop to his naked chest and make her yearn just then to start all over right this minute and make a liar out of her?

  “I’m confused....” he said, as if she’d told a joke he didn’t get.

  Gia forced her eyes to his face—that face that looked impossibly good even scruffed up with morning beard—and thought that this was all hard for her to believe, too.

  But it had to be done.

  “I have to look at the big picture,” she told him.

  “The big picture,” he repeated.

  The big picture. That it was only a matter of time before she woke up and found herself head over heels in love with a man who also woke up and realized that she wasn’t colorful or outrageous or wild or unique enough to keep his interest.

  That it was only a matter of time before she woke up and foun
d herself head over heels in love with another man whose enormous family came first. Another man whose strongest attachments and loyalties were to that enormous family. Another man whose enormous family might not have the same kind of skewed practices and principles as they once had had, as the Grants had, but who no doubt could and would close rank against an outsider like her if things didn’t work out.

  Or that it was only a matter of time before she woke up and found herself head over heels in love with a man who was with her for the wrong reasons. Who had met her at a time when he was trying to please and appease that enormous family that was so important to him by denying his penchant for the kind of colorful women who had so recently caused them all embarrassment.

  But she couldn’t say all of that so she said, “I’m fresh out of a marriage....” Which was also true. “And so are you—”

  “There’s nothing even remotely alike in the end of your marriage and canceling out what I did in a drunken stupor in Vegas.”

  “There is a little,” she insisted. “I came out of my marriage knowing what I do and don’t want. You came out of yours thinking you want to break old habits and turn over a new leaf.”

  “Okay, I guess those aren’t too different,” he conceded.

  “But there are things that come along with you that are like what I just got out of and I don’t want to get wrapped up in those things again. And I don’t think I can be that new leaf that you may or may not be able to stick with....”

  “And you’re not willing to give it a little while to find out?”

  “A little while and...it would just make it harder,” she said softly, unwilling to reveal too much of how she already felt about him. “You said yourself that regular girls always end up boring you. And you know that because your family keeps throwing them at you and you try to like them to please your family, but eventually you just lose interest—”

  “Yeah, I said that.”

  “Well, there’s nothing unique or weird or colorful about me, Derek. So it stands to reason that given a little while, you’ll want a rule breaker or a line crosser or...”

  She stalled and shook her head. “I’m not any of the things you look for—that’s the reality. I’m an ordinary, everyday person, and that isn’t what you’ve ever wanted. But your family is as important to you as Elliot’s was to him, and that carries weight—nobody knows that more than me. You want to please them, to be in their good graces, and instead the Las Vegas wedding shook the foundations. You’re rebounding from it—I get it. You need to compensate for it. Atone for it. You want to prove you can clean up your act.... But I can’t risk—”

  “That I could be using you to make myself look good?”

  Gia flinched. “I didn’t say that. I don’t think that’s something you’d do consciously.... Is it?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “But I know how things work in a family like yours—if Elliot had done something that his whole family came down on him for, the way yours disapproved of the Las Vegas wedding, Elliot would have stopped at nothing to make it up to them. To redeem himself—”

  “So you think my being here now, with you—liking you—is just me proving to my family that I can be a good boy?”

  “Like I said, not consciously. But yes, I think it’s possible.” Likely...

  “And you figure that once the dust settles I’ll look up and it’ll just be ordinary, everyday you who I brought in because it made my family happy, and what, Gia? I’ll put you on a display shelf like your ex did and forget about you?”

  Yes.

  But she didn’t want to say it like that, so she chose to be more diplomatic. “I don’t want to risk it. And I also don’t want this to get to the point where things have gone so far that we can’t come back from them. That I can’t come back from them. You said you still need some help from me with Larry and Marion, and they have too much at stake. I need to be able to call you or see you without it being awkward or ugly or... I need it not to hurt....”

  “Because there isn’t a doubt in your mind that that’s where it’ll end up—me hurting you? And what else? Are you thinking that I’m a Camden, and if things between you and I end I’ll pull out of helping the Bronsons? Or do worse to them, like your former in-laws would?”

  “No, I hope not. I’m just thinking that if this goes on—”

  “It doesn’t have a chance in hell of working—that’s what you’re thinking. And that when it bombs, the Bronsons could end up collateral damage.”

  And me, too....

  “I’m thinking that if things end later rather than sooner, it would make it hard for us to work together.”

  Because it would be impossible for her to be anywhere near him or even hear his voice without breaking down.

  Which she was oddly close to doing already, just saying what she was saying.

  “So you want to get out while the getting is good,” he summed up.

  What she wanted was him.

  But only if she was what he wanted—ordinary, everyday her.

  Only if she could be sure he would go on wanting ordinary, everyday her forever.

  Only if she could be sure that he didn’t merely want her because she was ordinary and everyday, as a path to redemption. A path that would be a dead end for her.

  And since she couldn’t be sure of any of that on top of everything else, she knew she had to shut this down. And she had to shut it down now or she wasn’t going to be able to shut it down at all.

  “I just think that to be safe, we need to take this back to it only being about Larry and Marion,” she said, wondering how she was going to actually do that.

  “After last night?” he demanded with more disbelief.

  “Especially after last night,” she said so quietly it was almost inaudible. “Even one more night like last night and...it’ll get out of hand and complicated and that’s not good for anybody, and it isn’t what I’m ready for.”

  “So we’ll keep it uncomplicated. We’ll make sure—”

  “I can’t do that,” she insisted, sounding slightly panicky. “I thought maybe I could—that’s what got me into last night. But now I know...it’s complicated for me no matter what.... So no. No more now. Last night was a one-time thing. We go back to me just being the go-between with Larry and Marion, the person who lets you know when their needs change down the road.”

  Her voice had risen an octave and was forceful enough to leave no question that she meant what she said. But still she felt compelled to add, “I mean it!”

  For a moment Derek stared at her, frowned at her, stunned. Then he said, “I don’t know what to say. There’s no way I saw this coming, not after last night.”

  “Say we can go back to this just being about Larry and Marion,” she repeated.

  “I want to say that Larry and Marion, and this—” he mimicked her earlier gesture “—are two completely damn different things.”

  “But they’re intertwined.”

  Even if they weren’t, she just felt as if she had to protect herself. From Derek. From her own feelings for him. She felt as if she’d gone too far out of the safety zone she’d built around herself after her marriage and she needed to scurry back into it before it was too late.

  “So this is it?” he asked, sounding dumbfounded. Then he shook his head in hard denial. “No, it can’t be—things were too good.... I know you weren’t faking it.”

  “No, I wasn’t faking it,” she said, trying madly not to cry and not understanding why she was on the verge. “It was...amazing.”

  Too amazing. Too good. It hadn’t freed her, it had pulled her in the way Tyson had worried it would, and now she knew she had to get out while she still could.

  “It was amazing,” he parroted. “So you want to leave me wanting more? Is that it?”

 
She didn’t want to leave him at all.

  But being left wanting more herself was part of what she was afraid of. Which could happen if this wasn’t real for him. If it was just something temporary, if it was just his attempt to prove to his family that he was sorry.

  “I’m not playing a game,” she told him. “I’m not trying to leave you wanting more. I just think it’s better if it doesn’t go any further.”

  “For the Bronsons’ sake?” he said dubiously.

  “And for mine....” she admitted quietly.

  “So that’s it?” he asked, disbelief still in his voice.

  “I think it just has to be,” she said, holding her ground.

  “Fun while it lasted?”

  Get in, hook up, get out—that was what Tyson had said.

  Gia shrugged in answer to Derek’s question, feeling at a loss and knowing suddenly that she’d been wrong when she’d told her friend she could do this.

  “You didn’t think it was going to be white dresses and wedding chapels and picket fences and bouncing babies, did you?” she said, trying to sound glib and hating that she heard an undertone of hope in her own voice.

  “I hadn’t thought that far.”

  “I can’t let it get to where I do.”

  She looked at him again—the sight stabbing her through the heart because he looked so excruciatingly good to her—and said, “So let’s turn back the clock.”

  “Twenty-four hours?”

  “At least....”

  “And we’re just two people with one goal—to keep two other people together to the end?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hate this, Gia. I don’t know if I can do it....”

  “You can,” she assured him. “You wouldn’t go back on your word, would you?”

  “I wasn’t talking about the Bronsons,” he said. “I will do everything I said I would for them—that’s not and never will be at issue.”

  “And that’s all there can be to it,” she said with finality. “This—” she waved her hand between them again “—was just...one of those things—something that happened along the way. And now needs to end.”