by Jill Shalvis
was there, it was real, and she…and she wanted to be a part of it. Damn. Damn, that was really unexpected. “Anyone?”
Cam kept his mouth firmly shut.
So did Stone.
Annie crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, my husband is an idiot. There. You’re right. I do feel better.”
“You’re giving him a complex,” Stone told her. “And now he’s trying too hard.”
“He’s trying too hard? Are you kidding me? I’m the one trying too hard!”
“All you do is yell at him.” Cam put his hands up when she whirled on him. “Hey, I’m just saying that you could try something else.”
“Really? Should I try something else, Cam? Like maybe try to seduce him, only first ruin his painting, and then strip naked in front of Stone?”
“Well, Jesus Christ, Annie.” Stone was already cringing. “You’re supposed to scope out the room first. I was standing right there.” He rubbed his eyes, like the sight of her was still burned on them and he needed to get rid of it.
“Well, there won’t be any need to scope out anything,” Annie informed him. “Because he doesn’t get a third shot at me. No way, no how.”
And with that, she stormed off.
Stone looked at Katie. “Yeah, now see, that’s why we don’t do much talking.”
“No, that was good. She’ll feel better for having vented.”
“Maybe some of us should try that,” Cam said, and sent her a long look.
She pretended not to look at him.
“We’ll all be eating our boots for dinner,” Stone said a little glumly.
“Or,” Katie said. “One of you could just go to Nick and have him reverse the damage. Tell him how badly Annie wants to reconnect, that she’s trying to get him back, and if he could just meet her halfway, that would be great.”
“She broke his heart,” Cam said.
“So you think he has no interest in getting back together with her? Are you kidding me? It’s all over his face how much he loves her.”
Cam was already shaking his head. “It’s not that easy, Katie. It’s never that easy.”
“Maybe when it comes to matters of the heart, it is that easy. You just follow its lead.”
“Down Fuck-You-Up Road maybe.”
“Pretty damn cynical.”
“Hello, Ms. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.”
Stone headed toward the stairs. “Tell you what. You two keep snapping at each other. I’m sure that will fix everything.”
Cam sighed and headed toward the stairs as well.
“Cam.”
He turned back. “I’m not sorry about what I said to you,” he said.
“I know you’re not. And I’m not sorry about what we’ve had.”
“Okay, that makes two of us.” He was looking at her with frustration and heat and affection and temper. “So where does that leave us?”
She held her breath. “With a few nights left that we could spend together?”
“Not talking,” he guessed.
“Not talking. Will you come?”
He blew out a breath as that heat in his gaze flamed to life. “Yeah, I’ll come. And so will you.”
Chapter 22
Later that day, Cam walked into Stone’s office and found his brother sprawled back in his chair, booted feet up on his desk, hands folded over his belly as he spoke to the speaker phone. “And Cam just walked in, so you can tell him yourself, Teej.”
“I’m held up by a bitch of a storm in Seattle,” T.J. said, his voice tinny and faraway sounding. “But I should still be there by tomorrow.”
“Just in time.” Cam headed for Stone’s computer. “Annie might kill Stone.” He opened the browser thinking as he typed “Santa Monica bridge collapse” into Google that he should have done this weeks ago.
Nick opened the door. “Holy crap, it’s icy today. What’s going on?”
Stone set his feet down. “What are you talking about? There’s no ice out there.”
“I meant Annie. She’s icy.”
“Yeah, that’s because you’re a little slow on the uptake.”
“Huh?”
“Your wife’s trying to patch things up, and you’re not paying attention,” Stone told him.
“I’m paying attention all right. She’s trying to drive me crazy. Giving out signals one minute and yelling the next.”
Through the speaker, T.J. said, “That’s what women do. Deal with it.”
“Says the guy who slept his way through every woman in town,” Stone interjected. “Several times.”
“Hey, not every woman.”
“No? Name one.”
“Harley.”
“Yes, because she was the only woman who ever turned you down, remember?”
T.J. sighed heartily. “I remember.”
Cam’s gaze was glued to the news reports and pictures of the bridge collapse. Horrifying, devastating pictures of cars smashed into sheets of steel. The fiery fire of the brush on either side of the collapsed bridge. People lined up on the streets trying to find out about their loved ones.
Thirty dead.
One survivor.
Katie.
Jesus. Cam rubbed a hand over his mouth and thought so much about her made more sense every day. Her needing out of Los Angeles. Heading north to snow country, where everything would be new and different, where nothing could remind her of what she’d faced.
But things had reminded her, that couldn’t be helped. And whereas he’d slowly come to accept that, she’d not gotten there yet. Ironic, since all along he’d thought she was the one of the two of them to have their shit together.
If anyone had asked him even a minute ago who’d gotten more out of this past month of knowing each other, him or Katie, he’d have laid down his very last dollar that it had been him.
And yet now he could see, that maybe, just maybe, he’d given her something too. That he had more to give still. Lots more. He turned to face Stone and Nick. “I slept with Katie.”
“Shock,” Stone said.
“I’m going to sleep with her again.”
“More shock,” Nick said.
“I’m sleeping with Katie, and you’re all okay with it?”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “But I’d have figured getting laid would relax you a helluva lot more than it has. You doing it right? Or do you need some pointers?”
All of them laughed except Cam, “You guys are a riot.” He looked at Stone. “Explain this to me. When you slept with the cleaning crew, T.J tried to beat the shit out of you.”
“Because he was an ass,” T.J. pointed out.
“Yeah, it’s not the same,” Stone agreed.
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because I wasn’t halfway in love with either of those women.”
Staggered, Cam stared at Stone. “What?”
“He said you’re halfway in love with Katie,” T.J. repeated.
Falling in love, his ass. Stone had no idea what he was talking about, none. He grabbed the phone from its cradle and put it to his ear. “And what the hell do you know about this?”
“I know love,” T.J. reminded him very quietly. “And I’ve talked to you often enough over the past month to hear it happening to you.”
“Jesus.” Cam slammed the phone back down, ignoring Nick, who leaned over the desk and hit Talk again before T.J. was disconnected.
“Classic sign of being a goner,” Nick said with a tsk. “A quick temper.”
“Shut up.” Cam shoved his hands through his hair and glared at them. “And thank you all for being no help at all.” With that, he walked out and slammed the door, leaving no mistake as to how frustrated he felt.
In the office, silence reigned for a full moment.
“Well, that went well,” T.J. said. “Great idea, Stone. ‘Nudge him in the right direction,’ you said. ‘Let him know we’re behind him,’ you said. Now he’s a flight risk again.”
Stone looked at the door and let out a breath.
“Nah, he’s just being bullheaded, like any good Wilder. He’s sticking.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Katie’s still here.”
“Yeah, well, I’d stay out of his way just the same if I were you, at least until I get there to referee.”
Nick snorted in amusement until Stone gave him a droll look. “Like you have it all together?”
“Hey, I have it more together than you.”
“Really? Think Annie would agree?”
Nick just let out a long breath. “How did we all get so fucked up?”
“Practice, man. Lots of practice.”
Katie wasn’t behind her desk, and Cam’s heart did an odd little lurch. Dammit. He strode down the stairs and found her outside organizing a cross-country trek to Gold Cove, which he was to lead.
“It’s not on my schedule,” he told her.
She looked down at her clipboard. “No, it’s on T.J.’s, but he got held up by that storm.” She looked up into his eyes, her own shuttered for the first time since he’d known her. “Should I cancel?”
“It takes two guides,” he lied without compuncture.
“What?”
“I need an assistant.” He smiled grimly. “Suit up, you’re it.”
“I don’t—”
“You want adventures. You want risk, then take one. Change.” He took the clipboard. “We’ll wait.”
She took less than five minutes, which he appreciated. She didn’t speak much to him, which once upon a time he would have appreciated even more, but things were different now. He didn’t know how exactly, or why, only that they were, and that he missed listening to her talk.
Halfway out to Gold Cove, he slowed. “It’s three miles straight out,” he told the group. “First one there gets the championship title and a framed picture of the group.”
They all took off. Katie, too, but he snagged the back of her coat and pulled her to his side.
She planted her poles and looked at him warily. “What?”
“I thought we could—”
“Here?” She eyed the trees speculatively. “What if one of them comes back?”
“Not that.” But he eyed the trees, too, suddenly liking her idea a whole lot better than what he’d planned on doing. There was a nice thick group of trees just ahead, he could have her in there, wrapped around him like a pretzel in like thirty seconds—
“Oh, if not that, then what? I could have had that championship title.”
“Yes, you could have. For holding back. I know, Katie.”
“Know what?”
“About the bridge collapse.”
“Yes, because I told you.”
“I know the details. How your car was flung out from between the two cement blocks like a piece of toast. How you hung upside down off that cliff for an hour after they got the flames out before they could get to you.”
Staring at him wide-eyed, she tried to take a step back, but the skis tripped her up. He slipped an arm around her waist while hitting the release on her skis with his pole so that she was released from the bindings.
Freed, she staggered away from him. “The details don’t matter. Not to me.”
“Then why are you still dreaming about them?”
The truth of that flickered across her face. “Fine. I didn’t tell you because this is a temp job, and I’m a temp, and—”
“Bullshit. That’s all such bullshit. You didn’t tell me because despite the fact that I’m supposed to trust you, you don’t have to trust me.”
“No,” she whispered, “that’s not it.”
“Then what? What is it? You’re the only one in the whole world who’s ever been in a life-altering situation and wondered what to do with themselves now?”
Her face closed up, and even while the apology was already forming on his tongue, she shook her head and pointed at him. “You, Cameron Wilder, you can go to hell.” She stomped back into her bindings and skied off, leaving him staring after her.
One consolation in this whole mess: She’d learned to ski like a damn pro.
That night Cam was slumped on his couch staring at the game while thinking about Katie. Katie smiling at him and making him smile back. Katie laughing with her whole face, that contagious laugh that made him let out a helpless one of his own.
Katie accepting him for who he was, and making him want to be the best man he could be.
When the knock came at his door, he figured it was Stone. Hoping like hell he’d pick a fight so Cam could cut loose of this tension, he got up and pulled open the door.
Not Stone.
It was Katie, with one of those smiles he’d just been daydreaming about, though it was a nervous one.
“You busy?” she asked
“Nope, I’m just watching a game. You know, before I go to hell.”
“Yeah.” She grimaced. “About that whole going to hell thing. Can I come in?”
“Sure.” He backed up so she could pass by him, and he all but buried his nose in her hair, that’s how desperate he was for the scent of her. She didn’t disappoint, smelling like some complicated, deliciously sexy mix of flowers and woman. “If you plan on yelling at me some more,” he said, “maybe you could wait until the commercial. The Patriots are down but at the ten-yard line.”
“I once accused you of being an ass and you apologized for it.” She turned to face him. “Today, I was the ass. Yesterday too. You didn’t mention it in so many words, but I’m still going to say I’m sorry.”
He looked into her eyes and wanted…wanted to hold her, touch her, be with her.
That terrifying.
That simple.
“You asked me earlier why I didn’t trust you,” she said softly. “The truth is, I didn’t trust me. I’m working on that. I’m working on a lot of things. But for now, between us, maybe we should just go back to doing what we do best.”
Well, he knew what he thought they did best…“You mean…”
“Yes.”
