Uncovering Camila (Wildflowers Book 3)

by Vivian Winslow

  As soon as the door closes behind her, Camila closes her eyes and takes two deep breaths. One to release the embarrassment of having stood half-naked in front of the Chief Judge of New York’s highest court and the other to let go of the anger she wants so badly to unleash on Marshall. She reminds herself she to chose to come home with him. Of course she wouldn’t have if she’d known about Ellen, but still, she made a choice and she won’t allow regret to overshadow what she’ll chalk up to yet another life lesson. It seems her whole summer has been about those, and she can only imagine Shoshana pointing that out to her.

  A quick succession of questions pour through Camila’s mind as she heads to the bedroom to dress and pack. She pushes each one away as they come.

  “There you are,” Marshall says, emerging from the bathroom as naked as she’d left him in bed twenty minutes ago.

  How quickly things can change between two people who up until this moment had been entwined in something so intense and personal. It dawns on Camila then that it doesn’t take much to break the bonds of intimacy when they’re this tenuous.

  He tries to encircle his arms around her, but she steps away. “I’ve got to go.”

  “So early? What about breakfast?” Marshall asks, confused by her cold demeanor. “It’s your favorite meal.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Camila replies, tossing her mask and rope into her bag. So much for daring.

  “What’s changed C.C? You’re not flying back until tomorrow. Why can’t you stay a little longer?”

  Marshall tries to swallow the desperation that’s spilling out in those words. He can’t shake the dream he’d had this morning about being with Camila. Although maybe it wasn’t a dream. Perhaps it was a fantasy he wants to become reality.

  But Camila can hear it in his voice. He’s scared, and she won’t try to figure out why. All she can assume is that he’s like so many guys who want it all, a woman who will commit and then another he can fuck. Maybe he’s not as black and white as she believed him to be. She shakes her head. At this point she doesn’t know what to believe. She thought she could trust him. Actually, she thought she could trust herself and her own judgment, which she believed had failed her with Eliseo. This merely shows her that she was wrong again.

  “Shosh will be here in a few minutes,” she says, already heading toward the door.

  Marshall scrambles into his clothes from last night and rushes after her.

  “Tell me why you’re leaving then. Did I do something to offend you?”

  Camila shakes her head. She can hardly look Marshall in the eyes. She wants to though. She wants to show him that he doesn’t have the power to hurt her, to defy the nagging feelings of disappointment that are beginning to drown her with every passing second.

  “No, I’m not offended,” she replies.

  “Then what?” He reaches out touch her arm, but again she steps back.

  “I think we’ve maxed out our time together. Let’s leave it at that.” She looks over his shoulder at the tree in the driveway, still unable to make eye contact.

  Marshall clenches his fist in frustration. “I didn’t think you’d be this obtuse.”

  Something inside Camila snaps when she hears him say that. “Obtuse? I’m trying not to make things worse.”

  “Worse, what do you mean?”

  “Ask your mother.”

  Camila notices Marshall’s jaw tense. “What about my mother?”

  “She didn’t think your fiancé, Ellen, would appreciate you sleeping with some random ho you picked up at a party.” There she said it and not too soon. The wooden gate begins to slide open, and her cousin appears in her white Maserati convertible. Camila can’t help but think, here’s her proverbial white knight.

  She opens the car door. “I wish I could say that I’ll see you later and not mean it.”

  Chapter 26

  Marshall watches the women drive off, still trying to piece together what she’d said. He spots his mom watching from the door of the main house.

  “What the hell did you say to her?”

  “Do you even know her name? Is she one of William’s common tramps?” She shakes her head in disapproval.

  “Her name is Camila,” he replies. “And for your information she isn’t one of that man’s whores.”

  His mother remains unmoved. “I thought you came here to get away and think things through. Then I see her dressed in your shirt.” She waves her hand at him.

  “And what? It’s my business who I bring home.”

  “My home, Marshall,” she corrects him.

  “For half the summer. It’s dad’s the other time,” he reminds her, not caring if his words hurt. Clearly she’d managed to inflict far more damage on Camila, who didn’t deserve it.

  It’s not as if Norah needs reminding about her time-share arrangement. The Hamptons property was the only one they both wanted and the one thing that kept the divorce proceedings going on longer than they needed to. His father refused to relinquish it, citing he needed it to maintain his business connections since many of his clients spend a portion of their summer there, while she argued that they needed continuity for their son, despite the fact that he was already in high school, and that she had spent a disproportionate amount of her time and money on it. In the end, they agreed to an equitable split during the summer season while the other months of the year it remains empty.

  “Maybe your father would approve of you dragging random women through here, but it’s an affront to me. I expect you to be more tasteful about it.”

  “I’m not going to get into this with you. I’ll leave for the City today.” He turns to head back to the guesthouse.

  “So like your father, walking away when you don’t want to hear the truth.” She follows him.

  “What truth, Mother?” He spins around. “The one that matters to you? You refuse to listen to me, so why should I stay and have this one-sided discussion? I’m not sorry I brought her home. I’m sorry she met you and had the displeasure of inadvertently offending you with her presence. If you spoke with her, you’d realize she’s a good person, far better than Ellen could even aspire to be.”

  “Ellen is a fine woman. At least she had class. This Camila didn’t even offer to change out of your shirt when she saw me.”

  “What were you even doing in the house?”

  “I needed honey for my tea. You’re a sound sleeper. I thought I could slip in and out, and then she confronted me.”

  Marshall raises an eyebrow. “Confronted?”

  “Yes, well. Don’t get me started. And then when she brought me honey from your bedroom . . . .” She shakes her head again, not bothering to finish the sentence.

  Marshall hides a smile. He can picture Camila doing that with her head held high. No excuses, no pretense. That’s why he likes her. And that’s one of the many reasons he could never be with someone like Ellen.

  “I told you Ellen and I are not getting back together.”

  “Just give it time. You two are perfect for each other.”

  Marshall shakes his head. “No, we are not. You kept telling me we were, like you had to sell me on the relationship. And I bought it.”

  “You two were made for each other. I felt it in my bones. There was nothing you two couldn’t accomplish in your careers being together. Between her political ambitions and your work, you two could go as far as the White House. I just know it.”

  “Ellen’s the most self-serving person I’ve ever met. She’d cheated on me multiple times then told me just before we were about to get a place together.”

  “That makes her honest.”

  “No, it makes her calculating. She’s politically ambitious and wanted to make sure we had it all out there so there would be no surprises. That isn’t love, Mother.”

  “Love blinds people to the pitfalls of marriage. You two would have a great partnership. That’s what your father and I were missing. Maybe you need to meet a few more girls like that Camila and then you’ll be
ready for marriage.”

  Marshall turns around and continues toward the guesthouse. This time his mother doesn’t follow. He should’ve known she wasn’t going to be supportive. As much as he loves his mother, she could never see how her own ambitions were just as detrimental as her ex-husband’s, condemning them both to their misery.

  It was a wake-up call to Marshall when Ellen called him out of the blue and told him about her two affairs while they were living in separate cities. What made it worse was that she didn’t once say she was sorry or that she wanted his forgiveness. Instead, she said she wanted his support. Ellen was angling for a position in a certain Senator’s office, and she hoped he could pull some strings with his family’s contacts. All during the same conversation.

  Marshall picks up his phone to call Camila, hoping to apologize for his mother’s crass behavior and to assure her he’s not engaged anymore. Not that it would make a difference. Whatever it was that they had last night is over, and by next week, he’ll still be a Professor and she the law student he can’t touch. However, as he unlocks the screen, he remembers he still doesn’t have her number.

  Chapter 27

  “You know if he’s seeing anyone?”

  Camila sets down an orange she’d been squeezing and nods toward the bustling space. “Who? You mean Todd?” She spots her boss talking to a couple at a table, his friendly attitude telling her he knows them.

  “Yeah.” Felicity tucks a long, wavy blond strand behind her ear and gives Camila a shy smile, the kind of sweet, dimpled smile that makes her look sixteen despite having a slim, statuesque body that draws plenty of attention at the bar.

  Camila starts to fill an order for a table of women in the corner: a grapefruit infused vodka cocktail, a Pisco Sour and a Dark & Stormy. “I don’t know him that well,” she replies. Even if she did, she’s not sure how much she’d want to share with Felicity. She’s only been at L for a couple of weeks.

  “You’ve worked for him for what, a few years? When he hired me, he told me you started out at his place over on Spring. So I figured you knew him better than the others.” She shrugs.

  “Todd and I aren’t that close. He’s a cool guy to work for,” Camila says, trying to convey her disinterest in him and the conversation. She’s wishing Jared hadn’t switched nights, declaring his need to keep Saturdays open for his personal life since he’d decided to be monogamous with Scott.

  “Alright, I hear you,” Felicity replies, pouring a shot of Junipero into a shaker. “Can’t blame a girl for being interested.”

  Camila shakes her head. “Not at all.”

  “But you know, there’s nothing wrong with two consenting adults ending up in bed, or wherever together.”

  Camila gives Felicity a sideways glance. She’d heard the same thing from Shoshana on the car ride back from Marshall’s house. They both made a choice to be together. No shame in it. Thinking of her cousin makes Camila relax. She was used to Jared objectifying all the men who came into the bar. She can at least listen to Felicity lust after Todd.

  “Nothing wrong. Just remember he writes your check, so you don’t want it to get awkward.”

  “Oh I doubt it would. I mean, how can you not want to at least try? You see his ass.” She motions toward him.

  “I try not to. I can’t say he’s my type.”

  Felicity turns toward her. “I didn’t realize that you’re not into guys.”

  Camila bursts out laughing. “Just not guys who pay my salary. I’m fine with the rest as long as they’re not assholes.”

  “Oh, sorry,” she laughs nervously, taking a straw to sample a drink before serving it.

  “Don’t be. I’m not sure what vibe I give out right now anyway. My asshole radar’s been broken for a while.”

  “I doubt it’s broken. I think there are so many in this City that it goes haywire. It took me several years to figure out how to manage it.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Well, first of all, I stopped thinking it was my fault for attracting dicks. I mean, I want a dick, I just don’t want a guy who acts like one.” She laughs.

  “Then my friend dragged me to some crazy meditation class that was supposed to balance your, what-do-you-call-them . . . your chakras and help you align your purpose and find a partner.”

  “How much did that set you back?” Camila asks.

  “Too much. The whole thing was a load of garbage, and I would’ve demanded a refund, but the teacher, who was this old Indian guy, said something that I won’t forget.” She stops and turns to talk to a customer at the bar. Camila drums her fingers, waiting for her to finish.

  As soon as she takes the couple’s order, she continues. “He said that people chase love with others and not themselves.”

  Camila purses her lips. “I might still have asked for a refund.”

  Felicity smiles. “Maybe, but it clicked for me. I was internalizing all this judgment about my looks and the way I live my life. I wasn’t being very nice to myself. When he said that, I was like, yeah, why am I caring about what others think?” She shrugs. “I don’t know. It started me on this path of self-exploration.”

  “You and my cousin would get along well. She’s all into that spiritual stuff. But how does it connect to the asshole thing?” Camila asks, wanting, no needing, to know the answer.

  “That was something else he said when we were working on the chakras. He said ‘like attracts like.’ I was attracting assholes because I was so cynical about a lot of things. I mean, you can’t live in this City and not be cynical, am I right? But it goes back to loving yourself. The more you do, the better your radar.”

  Camila smiles at her, unsure of what to make of this advice. It’s definitely something she’s heard her cousin say over the past few months. But it seemed easier for Camila to avoid the issue altogether by cutting herself off from dating. Finding out about Marshall’s engagement was the final nail in the coffin. It made her think if she didn’t stop, she was bound to end up with someone worse.

  “Well, I’ve known Todd for almost three years, and I’ve never seen him with anyone and haven’t heard of him dating anyone.” Let alone any of his employees. Camila leaves that part to herself.

  Chapter 28

  “It’s not finished,” Marshall says, sliding the article back to Camila.

  “What do you mean? I checked all the footnotes myself. Edgar did a fine job proofing it.”

  Marshall leans back in his chair and sighs. He flips to the second page in the article and reads aloud. “While it’s often left up to the high courts to make the nuanced distinctions in how law is interpreted, we can no longer justify the limited accountability of local laws and the lack of enforcement. This Article . . . .” He tosses it onto his desk and runs his hand over his face.

  “Edgar didn’t write that. It was submitted by an immigration lawyer.”

  “Whose writing obviously hasn’t improved since law school. We can’t print this. There are too many bald assertions and not enough citations.”

  Camila doesn’t argue. She thought the same but knew her editor did the best he could. “That leaves us one article short for the next publication.”

  “You have other submissions?” He says.

  “Yes, but . . . .”

  “I’m sure you can manage one more,” Marshall says, not taking his eyes off Camila. He dreaded this meeting as much as he’d looked forward to it. Now that they’re in his office he can’t wait for it to end. She hasn’t made eye contact with him at all, and he can’t find a way to say he’s sorry.

  “Of course,” Camila replies, not wanting to drag out her time with him any longer. “I’ll figure out something.” Now she can kiss off the four hours of sleep she’d planned on getting. “Anything else?” She rises from the leather chair.

  “Yes, as a matter-of-fact, there is.” He clears his throat. “About the other day . . . , I’m sorry.”

  Camila holds up a hand. “Please, let’s not talk about it. It’s forgot
ten.” Not really, but at least it’s far enough in the back of her mind that it’s not the first thing she thinks about when she wakes up in the morning.

  “I haven’t forgotten. My mother acted reprehensibly. It wasn’t personal. She’s upset with me for breaking off my engagement and took it out on you.”

  “Why are you apologizing for your mother’s behavior? She can judge me for finding me almost naked in her guesthouse. But you sit there and half-ass some apology for not telling me that you’re engaged?”

  “That’s the thing, C.C. I’m not now, and I wasn’t then. Things were over a long time ago. I ended things with Ellen before I came to New York. I would’ve never . . . .” Marshall shakes his head. “That’s not who I am.” His voice is hard when he speaks those words. Infidelity was one of the many reasons his parents divorced, and he promised himself he wouldn’t become like his father or his father’s friends. It disgusts him to see so many couples live the lie by ignoring each other’s transgressions. The last thing he wants is for Camila to assume he’s that person.

  “It doesn’t change anything,” she declares, stuffing articles haphazardly into a folder.

  He places a hand on her wrist. “It does for me. I want you to know that I wouldn’t lie to you.”

  His grip is strong, reminding her of the rope. She looks down at his hand and nods. “Yeah, I know,” she says, finding some reassurance that her asshole radar wasn’t so off.

  Marshall releases his hand. “Now for our final order of business.” He motions for Camila to take a seat. She doesn’t.

  “I’m hosting a cocktail for BLAPA next month,” he says, referring to the Black, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander Law Students Association. You’re a member I presume?”

  Camila nods. “I was President last year.”

  “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” He smiles and leans his forearms on his desk. “It’s my interest to promote diversity, not only among our student body, but among the school’s networks. I’d like for placement to expand beyond government work and the usual firms. There’s more to having a law degree than becoming an indentured servant in some partner’s fiefdom.”