“My god Sarah, what do you have in here? Anvils?” Cameron grimaced in mock incredulity as dragged the last of my bags up the steps and into the foyer. While the luggage had been a pain in the ass for me to get into the car, they were actually a piece of cake for him. He just enjoyed teasing me since I’d brought enough stuff to last through the end of the season as I wasn’t returning to L.A. for quite some time.
A few hours later, I was unpacking my bags when Cameron walked into the bedroom with two cups of steaming hot tea in his hands. “So I wanted to wait until tomorrow, but you know … patience isn’t really my strong suit.” He smirked and set one of the mugs down next to me on the dresser while I finished transferring my clothes from my suitcase.
“Wait for what?” I asked, inhaling the scent of my favorite earl gray from the small teashop in town.
Cameron sat next to my open suitcase and propped his elbows on his thighs so that wisps of steam from his mug swirled in front of his face.
“Um, I …” He raised the cup and took a drink, buying time before speaking. “Okay.” He squared his shoulders. “I want to give you your Christmas present early.”
“Not that I don’t like surprises or anything, but tomorrow is Christmas Eve.”
“I know but this is … well, it’s a special one. But it’s not here.” He looked so adorably nervous that I took pity on him.
“Well then, I can’t wait.”
He smiled that one thousand megawatt grin that always caused a hitch in my breath every time I saw it. “It’s not your only present though. I know how much you love sitting in front of the tree and unwrapping gifts so don’t worry; you’ll have plenty to do on Christmas morning.”
He wasn’t lying. The minute I’d stepped inside the house I’d spotted the ten-foot-tall Christmas tree, sans ornaments, set up in the corner of the living room, its base piled high with wrapped presents of all sizes. When I saw how many gifts he’d bought me, I worried I hadn’t done enough to make our first Christmas special as all of the gifts I had for him fit in my luggage. I reminded myself that tiny things could pack a mighty punch. Besides, what could top a signed Stan Lee signature series comic?
“Okay, so where is this mysterious gift you can’t wait to give me?” I wracked my brain trying to figure out what he could have possibly gotten for me that wasn’t already in the house, but try as I might I couldn’t come up with anything that made sense.
He set his tea down on the bedside table and stood in front of me. “Promise we can do this my way? No complaining?”
“That sounds slightly ominous. Besides, I don’t know what I’m agreeing to.”
“You’re agreeing to not spoiling the surprise.”
“Ummm …”
He sighed, but not in frustration. More like he’d anticipated this and had been prepared for me not making it easy. “Which clearly means I’m going to have to blindfold you,” he said, the right side of his mouth hitching up as he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a black silk tie I had a sneaking suspicion was supposed to have been pressed and waiting for him to don the morning of our wedding.
“Ah, a kinky surprise,” I smirked.
He chuckled and my insides quivered. “Nothing like that, you filthy girl. Although …”
“Maybe later mister. Right now I have an early Christmas present to unwrap.”
He tugged me close and murmured into my neck, nipping and sucking at my skin. “What if I want to unwrap you instead?”
I sighed, nearly read to give in, but damn it, now I wanted my surprise. I laid my hand on his chest and gently shoved him back. “Nope.” Seeing a flash of disappointment cross his face, I added saucily, “But definitely later.”
Taking my hand, he led me down the stairs and out to his rental car. He leaned down and kissed me deeply and for a handful of seconds I forgot anything but the feel of his body pressed against mine in the cold, our lips melding together in perfect harmony. Sighing, he pulled away and placed the black silk against my eyes as he wound the fabric around my head and tied it gently in back. Cameron moved me aside, carefully, opened the door and then helped me into my seat.
When he started the car I felt his right hand come to rest on my seat back and I pictured him looking out the window to execute a three point turn before moving the car up the drive and out onto the road.
“Can you give me any clues?” I asked, breaking the silence.
“Nope.”
I waited for him to expound on that one-word but he didn’t. I shifted restlessly in my seat, my knee bouncing in time to my rapidly accelerating heartbeat. We drove for a few more minutes and as I heard the sound of tires on wet asphalt, I knew it must have started raining since it’d been dry when he’d led me out of the house. Without my sight, my other senses were amplified. I took a deep breath and held the scent of water on wood deep in my heart.
“I love it here,” I whispered into the silence. “The smell of the rain on the cedars mixing with the brine of the ocean.” I pulled in another deep breath and exhaled. “I missed this.”
Cameron put his hand on my knee and squeezed lightly. “I missed you.”
It was a simple enough statement, but with my sight blocked by the silk covering my eyes, I heard more to his words than I might have otherwise. There was love there, yes. But something else too. Something wistful and pensive.
After awhile he turned the car into a parking space and killed the engine. Before exiting, he squeezed my thigh and then ran around to my side to help me out. Immediately rain splattered against my hair and trailed down my face.
“Shit, I should have brought an umbrella.”
“It’s okay. It’s just water.” I stopped walking and leaned my head back to let the rain land on my face, loving the feel of the moisture on my skin. “I love it.”
“I sure hope so,” Cameron muttered under his breath as he pulled me along beside him. When we stopped moving I could smell we were still outside but had stepped out of the elements. Keys jangled against a lock and then I heard a door opening as we stepped over the threshold of a warm, dry room. To my rear, a door snicked closed, blocking out the sounds of the town and the falling rain. I felt him move behind me before he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me flush against him, my back to his front. He held me like that for a few seconds without speaking. I could practically feel the nervous energy flowing off him as I leaned into him, his body rigid with tension.
“Cameron?” I asked, my voice coming out barely above a whisper. “You’re kind of worrying me.”
“Sorry,” he said, loosening his hold on me so that I wasn’t quite so caged against him. “I’m just really nervous,” he admitted. “If you don’t like it, I don’t want you to feel like you can’t say so.”
“I told you before, I’m sure I’ll love it. Whatever it is. Now give me my damn surprise,” I said, pulling a laugh from him.
But then he turned serious again. “But if you don’t love it, you’ll tell me?”
“Yes, I’ll tell you,” I assured him, wondering if I would keep my promise.
“It’s just that I got this idea in my head … again and ran with it.” He chuckled ruefully and I leaned back into him, craving the strength of his arms around me.
I wanted him to understand if not through words than through deeds that I loved his spontaneity and cherished him all the more for it. “I’m beginning to love it when you run with an idea,” I answered truthfully.
“I’m going to hold you to that statement,” he said, untying the black silk and pulling it away from my eyes.
In the ensuing brightness I had to blink a couple of times before I could make out what I was supposed to be seeing. When everything finally came into focus I had to blink a couple more times because I wasn’t entirely sure how what I saw related to me. We stood in a brightly lit loft with overlooking the harbor for which the town was named. Off in the distance was an island where, I’d read a couple of weeks ago, every year a pair of bald eagles made t
heir nest. Serendipitously, as I stared out the window, one of them flew away, wide graceful wings flapping in the misty fog. To our right was a cedar-planked wall rising all the way up to the ceiling, which partially obscured stairs that led upstairs. And directly to my left was a modern kitchen outfitted with Viking appliances and a giant island topped with white and grey veined marble.
I looked to Cameron, confused. “I don’t get it.”
He worried his lip between his teeth, a gesture I hadn’t often seen him make. It was one I frequently made, however, when I was really nervous. “It’s ours.”
“Ours?” I asked, a tremor in my voice, as he led me over to a mossy green velvet sectional that took up the left corner of the living room. Sitting down, he pulled me onto his lap where I nestled into him.
“I bought it. Or rather, I’m buying it. Nothing’s final yet. And like I said, you can tell me if you don’t like it. I can stop escrow.”
“Hold on a second. You bought us a vacation home?”
“It could be,” he answered cautiously. “We love it here. You said as much. This place is special. We both recognized it from the minute we landed and since we’ve been here, it feels like something I didn’t even know was missing clicked into place for me. For us,” he amended and I knew exactly what he meant.
We were relaxed here, happy and carefree in a way we could no longer be back in L.A. No one here cared that Cameron was the star of a major movie and they certainly didn’t treat him any differently for his celebrity status. To the residents of Eagle Harbour we were simply Cameron and Sarah, a happy couple who enjoyed spending time outdoors and hanging out with people who were like us in the ways that mattered most in life. Our new friends, these people with varied jobs and interests, had welcomed us into their fold almost instantly.
But it wasn’t just the people of Eagle Harbour either. When we walked through the ancient cedar and spruce rainforests, the sodden pine needles squishing beneath our feet, or stood out on the beach watching a storm roll in, the foamy waves breaking out to sea and then rolling angrily in, we each felt a measured peace descend.
“I don’t want you to go to work for Shanna,” he spoke into the top of my head as he played with a strand of my hair, wrapped it around his finger and then unwound it again. “I want us to live here. Permanently. When I’m off who knows where shooting a movie I want you with me, but when I’m in between projects I want Eagle Harbour to be our home. If you can’t come with me for whatever reason, I like knowing you’d be surrounded by people who want only good things for you. Alex, Drea, Hal, Stewart, and Shea are our people and I think you recognize that as much as I do.”
I saw everything he was promising and recognized it as what we both needed. We could have a life here, away from the glare of Hollywood and the tainted associations the city now held for me. I’d felt it when I’d gone back, hadn’t I? As I’d locked up my house right before leaving, I’d had the overwhelming sense of stepping away from a life that wasn’t my own any more.
“I love it.” I spoke into the protection of Cameron’s safe embrace as my eyes burned with unshed tears.
He pulled me closer and held me tight as happy tears fell, washing away all the fear and trepidation I’d felt over what our future would hold once we’d said our vows and returned to the soul-crushing intensity of our life in L.A. Cameron kissed my forehead, then my cheeks, my eyes, wet with salty tears, and moved to capture my trembling lips with his.
“You’ve given me the best Christmas gift ever,” he murmured, the words filling my mouth, before he lowered me down and covered my soft, pliant body with his larger, stronger, one.
“Have you ever had an experience where one moment life seems like it’s moving at warp speed, but then you blink and then it’s all slowed down to almost a crawl and suddenly everything feels like it’s happening in slow motion?”
Alex blinked at me over the rim of her coffee. “I …” she began, and then paused, giving my question additional thought. “No, actually. I can’t say that I do.”
“That’s probably good because it’s freaky as hell,” I added, laughing nervously. “I keep telling myself life will go back to normal once the wedding’s over, that I’ll catch my breath and this weird sense of being a buoy cast adrift in a storm will subside.”
“It must be hard to give up so much, so quickly.” Her voice held a note of sympathy. I knew she referenced my job – both the one I’d had with Broderick and the more recent offer with Shanna I’d turned down the day before.
“It’s not that I think I’ve made the wrong decision. It just feels so damn weird to have worked so hard for so long and then poof! I’m done. I guess I don’t really know what I’ll do with myself all day.”
“Well, you’ll paint, right?”
“Yeah, but that’s not something I’ve ever spent eight hours a day working at before. Since college, painting has been something I’ve had to carve out time for, working on projects late at night or on the weekends. To know that I can pick up my brushes and palette knife anytime I want and just go at it for as long as I want is a completely foreign concept to me.”
“And you’re staying here while Cameron’s in Vancouver?” Despite trying to keep her voice neutral, I heard the slight disapproval regardless.
I imagined the judgment had something to do with how much time she and Thad spent apart and I wondered if he ever invited Alex to join him in Vancouver. Nothing I’d heard from the indicated Thad was a good guy so I wondered what she saw in him. I was curious if he’d accompany Alex to our wedding. She said he’d planned to come to Eagle Harbour for New Year’s Eve anyhow, so I was both looking forward to meeting the man myself and, for Alex’s sake, apprehensive to do so and in case he lived up to everyone low expectations.
“Cameron’s flying over there on the second to start filming. So far they’ve done blocking and a couple of indoor scenes, but once he lands he’ll pretty much be busy for the next five straight weeks. Given the scrutiny on our relationship and the problems it’s already caused for the director, we thought it best I stay away for a while. He’ll come back as often as he can, but it’ll be hard being away from him so long,” I acknowledged. “Those two weeks down in L.A. without him were brutal.”
“Sadly, I’m all too familiar with the concept of a long distance relationship,” she said, and a melancholy look crossed her face. She glanced away quickly, pretending to stare at a customer across the shop, but when she turned back, her eyes were suspiciously bright. “It’s not all bad though,” she said, her lips tilting up in a small smile. “The making up for lost time can be quite nice.” And then a full, knowing grin crossed her face and I had no problem interpreting that look.
“There is always that,” I snickered as I stood up and grabbed my purse and wrapped my scarf around my neck. “Speaking of which, I have a hot lunch date. I’ll talk to you later?”
“Yeah, give me a call after 8 o’clock. There’s a bad playing at Gather a few of us thought we’d go listen to.”
“I’ll see if I can pull myself away from my other entertainments,” I joked, wagging my eyebrows.
She stood up and hugged me goodbye and then I was out the door, grabbing Duke from the pole he’d been safely tied to just outside. I hadn’t worried too much about leaving him alone since I could see from my perch in the window that about every two minutes someone new walked by and gave him snuggles. He ate up the attention like the ham he was.
The walk from the coffee shop to the loft was less than two minutes away but since Cameron was still out surfing with Hal, I decided on a quick detour to a beach down the road that was off the tourist path. I let Duke run off his leash, into the freezing cold waves and out, barking at the water as it rolled ashore. An hour later Duke soaked from snout to tail, covered in cold sand, and refusing to let go of an old weathered piece of driftwood he’d found on the shore. As we made our way back to the warmth of our new home, the sun set on one of the last days of the year.
After di
nner, Cameron and I met up with Alex, Hal, Drea, Stewart, and Shea at Gather, claiming our regular spot in front of the fireplace. As I looked around the room at all of the smiling, happy faces around me, it astounded me to think that less than three months ago none of these people had been a part of our lives. And now we were living among them, a permanent fixture in the group. No matter where the life Cameron and I built together would take us, these five would forever be a part of it, I was sure.
“To Sarah and Cameron,” Stewart called out. “There's nothing more admirable than two people who see eye to eye keeping house as man and wife, confounding their enemies, and delighting their friends.”
“Hear, hear!” the group proclaimed us as they raised glasses of beer to toast our happiness. Our own drinks held aloft, we saluted them back and everyone drank heartily.
“Where’d you hear that one?” Shea asked.
“Homer,” he admitted sheepishly, as if there was anything to be embarrassed about in quoting an ancient Greek poet.
“Wow,” I remarked, impressed with his depth of knowledge.
“Before you think me too smart for my own good, you should know that when all of my college friends started getting married, I memorized a handful of toasts so that I’d never stand there sputtering something stupid like, ‘way to go guys.’ I don’t often get a chance to pull this one out, but given your circumstances it seemed the most apt.”
“Confounding our enemies …” Cameron pondered the words. “Yeah, I like that one.”
“Well, I’m partial to the part about delighting their friends!” Drea interjected gleefully, and then added more seriously, “You guys have to know how wonderful it is for us that you’re staying put.” She reached over and squeezed my hand. “From the second I met you, I knew we were kindred spirits.”
Cameron coughed nervously next to me, and I knew he was trying to cover up how emotional their words made him. We’d had so few good wishes cast our way recently that they meant all the more to us now.
Lucky Star: A Hollywood Love Story Page 33
