Uncovering Camila (Wildflowers Book 3)

by Vivian Winslow

  Camila nods absently. Her father doesn’t talk about his life much before meeting her mother. If it weren’t for her cousin, she’d hardly get a peek behind that iron wall he put up to separate that part of his past.

  “It’s one of the reasons we’re neighbors here. William sold part of their estate to my parents.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “People here do that, so they have a say in who their neighbors are. It’s perfectly incestuous.”

  Camila shakes her head. “How do you have a sense of humor about any of it?”

  Shoshana shrugs. “You have to see it for what it is, or it takes over your life.” She motions toward the house. “Wealth is insidious like that.”

  Camila takes a cocktail off a passing tray, wanting to get off the money talk. She wouldn’t mind having a bit more to pay off her law school debt. Recalling her cousin’s words, she says, “It’s time to have some fun.”

  Shoshana smiles and laces her arm with Camila’s. “Let’s go see who’s here.” She leads her through the house and to the back lawn, although to Camila, it’s more like a giant park, where a live band is playing and tables are set up throughout. Dusk spreads over the estate as she looks out onto the beach in the distance. The way the sky illuminates everything one would think the Baron’s paid someone to paint the sky the brilliant orange and reds to make a glowing backdrop for the party.

  “Thanks for the dress,” Camila says, finishing her first drink. By the formal dresses surrounding her, she realizes how she would’ve stuck out if she’d worn the one she packed.

  “It belongs on you. Keep it, please. I don’t have the boobs to fill it out like you anyway.” She looks behind her cousin and points. “Ooooh, look who just came in.”

  “Where? Who?”

  “Don’t be obvious.” Shoshana touches her shoulder. “The woman on the terrace in that tank dress with the ruffled skirt.” She lowers her voice and says, “She’s William’s mistress. My mom said she’s a former Miss-whatever.” She flings her hand up.

  Camila casually turns and nods. “What is she, twenty-three?”

  “As if. I’m a month older than her, if you can believe it.”

  Her cousin gasps when she spots a figure behind William’s girlfriend.

  “What? Age differences aren’t that important.”

  “No, I don’t mean that.” Camila turns away quickly and begins to head toward the pool, away from the growing crowd.

  “C.C., wait.” Shoshana rushes after her. “Slow down, I’m not wearing flats like you.”

  “I’m sorry.” She stops when she reaches the pergola by the pool, grateful for the shadow it casts. Only a handful of people are lingering as the lights begin to give way to the darkening sky.

  “It’s him.”

  “Him who?”

  “Why is he here?” she mutters to herself, wishing she could be back in the familiar comforts of her parents’ house, reading and sweating by the open window in her bedroom.

  “Who’s here?” Shoshana asks impatiently. She flags down a passing waiter and takes two more cocktails.

  Camila downs hers in two gulps then says, “Marshall.”

  Rather than a cluck of sympathy or a pat on the shoulder as she would expect from her cousin, she receives a loud laugh and slap on the arm. “Well, well, wouldn’t you know it, dear cousin. I’d say the Universe has one hell of a sense of humor.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Shoshana narrows her wide, dark eyes at her. “You declared you’re going to have fun, and the hottest and best lay you’ve had in a while walks into a party you happen to be attending.”

  “It’s a coincidence,” Camila replies dismissively. “Or the Universe has the shittiest sense of humor.”

  “Coincidence my ass. This, right here,” she motions toward the house, “Is your moment of truth. The Universe is daring you to have fun.” She gives her cousin a light shove in the direction of the party. “I’d say that it’s truth and dare time.”

  “Don’t I get to pick one?” Camila calls behind her.

  Shoshana laughs, although it’s more pointed than her usual casual one. She’s clearly making a statement. “Either way, the result will be the same,” she calls back to her.

  Chapter 20

  Truth and dare. Camila repeats those words over and over. She and Shoshana used to love playing that game when they were little. Camila preferred truth because she was more afraid of the disgusting stuff her cousin would dare her to do than she was to fessing up to some innocuous transgression since she never had anything to hide. Shoshana, on the other hand, loved to be dared. The weirder the dare, the better too. It was a challenge for Camila to come up with something that would scare her. That’s what she wanted to be, scared. And if it was one thing Camila didn’t like experiencing, it was fear.

  It’s not lost on her that now, years later, the same fear she’d felt at the impulse of a dare is returning. The adrenalin moving through her, her body temperature rising with each shallow breath. She wills her feet forward across the lawn as she contemplates her approach. In the end, she wasn’t going to be able to avoid him all night. At least maybe she’ll be able to get it out of the way. No surprises.

  Besides, Shoshana’s right. It’s truth and dare. Neither matter because they’ll each take her to the same place if she were to be entirely honest with herself, which she hasn’t been. The truth is, she’s attracted to Marshall. She likes his smile, the way he rubs his lips when he’s thinking, and most of all that mind of his which she would fuck all day long if she could. Camila smiles to herself, appreciating how freeing it feels to finally admit this to herself.

  And the dare, she’s doing right now, facing the fear that’s choking her, that’s kept her from recognizing her misery. Her smile disappears when she considers how unhappy she’d really been these past couple of months and how complicit she was in her own denial. Anger surfaces when she thinks about how much this fear ruled her life and put someone like Eliseo, a man incapable of loving her, in her path. This fear attracted not only him, but others like him who mirrored her cool approach. She looks back at Shoshana and sees her cousin watching her, willing her toward Marshall with her insane telepathic will. Camila smiles. She isn’t being dared into a relationship with Marshall. She’s being dared to have fun with him. And why not? They’re not in the City anyway.

  Camila squares her shoulders as she comes up to him from behind. Just as she’s about to tap him on the shoulder, she notices William Baron approach. Shit. She starts to turn away, but she hears. “Marshall, I do believe there’s a young woman trying to get your attention.”

  Camila closes her eyes in embarrassment. So much for the cool, under the radar approach. Fuck. She takes a deep breath and smiles, the kind of forced one she developed for her interviews and networking events. The kind that screams competent and kind and willing to work. No other one seemed right at the moment.

  The expression of surprise on his face far surpasses the one when he discovered she was his student. Clearly the Baron’s Labor Day White Party was the last place he’d expected to see her, aside from the classroom that is.

  “Camila,” he finally says. “I’d no idea . . . .”

  She raises an eyebrow. There are only so many ways for him to finish that sentence, and she can’t imagine any of them sound good. This is why she preferred truth over dare. Dares rarely end well, especially for the person doing it.

  “I thought it might be you, Professor James,” she says, putting on her best sweet student impression.

  “Professor?” William asks, gripping Marshall’s shoulder. “Your father never mentioned. Where are you teaching?”

  “NYU Law,” he replies plaintively.

  “Are you, uh, one of his students?” He asks, gesturing between Marshall and Camila. She stifles a laugh when she notices how awkward this is for him.

  “As a matter-of-fact, he’s the faculty advisor for Law Review,” she answers
him.

  “Camila’s Editor-in-Chief,” Marshall mumbles, sipping champagne.

  William snaps his fingers. “Right. You must be Arthur’s niece. He told me he was bringing you tonight.” He leans in to kiss her right cheek. “Pardon my manners. It’s so lovely to meet you.” He steps back and looks at her warmly. “I’m forever grateful to your father for taking me under his wing back in the day. We were on the tennis team together, and he really stuck up for me when I was being hazed by my teammates.”

  “He never mentioned that,” she replies, wishing she could unlock other past mysteries about her father that he and her uncle rarely speak about.

  However, William turns his attention back to Marshall. “I thought you were planning to work at the Department of Justice after your clerkships.”

  “I was.” Marshall rocks back onto his heels. “But I didn’t like the political climate down there. It was becoming clear the DOJ has become more an instrument of politics than the actual pursuit of justice.”

  “Why not join your father’s firm then?” Marshall glances at Camila to his right. She focuses on William instead, happy to glean as much information as possible.

  “Firm life was never for me,” he says. He’s hoping his brief responses will force William to pursue other conversations around them. But to Marshall’s surprise, he seems genuinely interested in the pair.

  “So what about you, Camila? Where did you summer? Is firm life for you?” William asks her, his bright blue eyes lighting up, almost taunting her to challenge Marshall.

  She shrugs. “It seems to be, at least for now. I summered at S & M. They have a strong Foreign Corrupt Practices Act group. I got to help on a few interviews down in Colombia.” Although it sounds incredibly boring, it was the one practice area that she finds interesting, and S & M is one of the leading firms, representing many of the Fortune 100 in so-called “FCPA” matters.

  William laughs. “You hear that, Marshall? Camila wants to work for your father’s firm.” He pats Marshall hard on the back.

  “Your father is a partner at Sullivan & Moore?” She asks, her voice cracking. The adrenalin she’d been feeling leaves her and is replaced by a dread when it dawns on her that not only had she slept with her Professor, but also the son of the one of the senior partners of one of the most prestigious law firms in U.S. Not to mention the first African-American lawyer to make partner at a white-shoe firm. No, the Universe doesn’t have the sickest sense of humor, it has the worst sense of humor.

  William clears his throat. Turning to Camila, he says, “It was nice to finally meet Bernie’s only daughter. Send my best to your father when you see him.” Then gripping Marshall’s other shoulder this time, he says, “Careful, son. If all your students are as pretty as this one, you might just want to get of out academia before you get into any trouble.”

  Camila’s eyes go wide. She had found William incredibly charming until that last statement.

  Marshall shakes his head and stares at William as he joins his mistress, who makes little effort to hide her affections for him. “Fucking bastard,” he says as soon as William’s out of earshot. “I knew he was going to say something stupid like that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he always does,” Marshall replies dryly.

  “You were smiling before,” Camila observes.

  “For appearances. My parents expect me to show up, but I was just about to say good-bye when you appeared.” He pivots to face her and smile. “Now I have a reason to stay.”

  That smile. The one she likes. Camila smiles back. Not her rehearsed one either. It’s the one that says, I dare.

  Chapter 21

  “I didn’t mean to imply you didn’t belong here,” Marshall says as they weave through the throngs of people by the bar.

  “Yes you did,” Camila replies. “You have a terrible poker face.”

  The memory stings a little, but she gets it. Before tonight, all he knew was that she’s a poor student living in a shitty walk-up on the LES.

  “Okay, I admit, there’s a bit of that, but not in an elitist way. I think your life is better than this.” He stops when they reach a quiet alcove near the tennis courts. “I grew up around nice houses and guys like William and my father carrying on in that ridiculous Master-of-the-Universe kind of way.”

  “So you like slumming it?” Camila can’t help herself.

  Marshall shakes his head vehemently. “On the contrary. You see how William’s girlfriend is hanging all over him? This is slumming it. The people here are miserable.” He gathers up the front of his white linen trousers and sits down on a bench.

  “That’s what my father says.” Camila sighs and sits down next to him. She rests her head back and stares up at the sky.

  “The Cohen real estate empire is your family’s?”

  Camila’s head goes up and down. “Technically my uncle’s. My dad gave up his interest when he married my mom.”

  “I thought Jews were more progressive about race.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t the fact that she’s black. It was because she refused to convert, not that my father ever asked her to. But my grandfather wouldn’t accept her if she wasn’t Jewish. He had lost his entire family at Dachau. It was important to him to keep the Jewish tradition alive.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean conversion.”

  Camila shakes her head. “No, it doesn’t. But the way he insisted, using money as a carrot, tore apart the family anyway.” She pauses. “Ironically, my mom doesn’t care about any religion. She just wouldn’t adopt another for the sake of money.”

  “I bet I would like your mom.”

  Camila rolls her head to the right and looks at Marshall. “She’s a tough one, but I think she’d warm to you.”

  “Oh, so she’s like her daughter then?” He smiles.

  “Only partly. She’s a nurse, so she’s a more compassionate person than I am.”

  “I don’t know about that. Compassion can also be shown in principles. Your dad gave up a billion-dollar fortune to be with her. That’s true compassion too.”

  “Yeah, it was,” Camila replies, uncomfortable that her family’s wealth is such public knowledge.

  “So one could say that you being with me was kind of slumming it, seeing as how you’re a Cohen and my father is only a partner at a law firm,” Marshall jokes.

  Camila doesn’t reply this time. She points up. “A shooting star.” She stays quiet for a few beats. “You never see stars in the City. On clear summer nights in Brooklyn you could though.”

  She glances over at Marshall and catches him staring at her. In the moonlight, his eyes shine dark as the night sky. Truth, she hears her cousin’s voice in her head.

  “What?”

  “I’m just trying to picture you as a little girl in Brooklyn.”

  “Imagine scrawny and always carrying a book. What about you? You were born into legal royalty. Let me guess, your family had a place on Park Avenue.”

  He nods and leans forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. “Yeah. But that life comes at a price. You’ll soon discover that firm life is not conducive to maintaining healthy relationships. The firm always came first, before my mom and me. Even when he made partner that never changed. He was too entrenched in that world. Eventually, my mom got tired of getting passed up for partner, so she finally left him and the firm.”

  “Your mom was a lawyer too?”

  Marshall nods again. “Of course, a better one than him, but she had enough of trying to prove her worth to a bunch of men.”

  “What does she do now?”

  “The former Mrs. Warren James goes by Chief Judge Norah Douglas now.”

  “Your mother is the Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals?” Camila asks in surprise.

  Marshall smiles proudly. “Now that’s a tougher act to follow than my dad’s.”

  They both allow the quiet to seep through the small space between them. The party appears so distant, as if it’s a movie pl
aying on a large screen. The sound of their breathing is more real than the riotous noise of the party. Everyone appears like a cast of characters playing their roles to a T, women flirting, men drinking, couples dancing. The same roles year after year. What feels real is this moment—two people sitting on a bench, the balmy ocean air sweeping over their heated flesh, neither one wanting to make the first move. Yet they know one of them will have to. Both of them want to.

  Camila continues to stare up at the sky, waiting for something, for what though she isn’t sure. A sign, she figures. She dared to have fun with Marshall, and she finds herself yet again in another conversation with him, revealing more about one another than she planned. There doesn’t seem to be any way around getting to know him. She groans.

  “What?” He caresses the back of her hand. The sensation sends a tingle down her back.

  “It isn’t easy with you,” she confesses.

  He lets out a low laugh. “Why? I don’t think I’m a difficult person.”

  Camila shakes her head. “I mean, I came up to you tonight, thinking that maybe . . . ,” she hesitates and lowers her eyes to his hand resting on hers. “That we could have some fun.”

  “I’m enjoying myself. It’s far better than being out there.” He motions toward the party.

  “But it always seems to involve getting to know each other more than I planned.”

  “Am I that boring?”

  “To the contrary. I find you rather interesting.” How’s that for truth?

  He resumes caressing the back of her hand. “You’re not so boring yourself, C.C.”

  Hearing her nickname sparks something inside Camila. Her heart begins to beat with the flicker of the stars. She won’t remember the how later, but she’ll remember the why. It will occur to her in the morning that she did it because she liked the way his touch felt on her hand, and the way he said her name, like he’d known her for decades instead of a matter of weeks. That intimacy forged in a brief amount of time managed to tear down a small portion of the wall that Camila had built to protect herself from others. She’d realize she allowed it that night because that wall had done little to protect her from Eliseo, someone she had thought wouldn’t hurt her.