Ten Brides for Ten Hot Guys

by Donna Fasano

“We’ve gone over this and over this, my dear.” He sat down on the other end of the horseshoe-shaped seat and leaned forward, clasping his hands between his knees. A deep breath and he fixed his gaze on her, his tone steady as he said, “I can’t be two places at once, so you have to be where I have to be—and this weekend, I have to be in Cumberland Falls, Kentucky.”

  “Well, if you’re so sure Shaughnessy will be in Kentucky, I don’t see why I wouldn’t be perfectly safe here in Cincinnati.” She felt her lower lip slide out into a pout. She probably looked all of five years old, but she didn’t care. She didn’t like being told what to do, and she didn’t like thinking of leaving her shelter in anyone else’s hands. Of course that wasn’t the only reason she was fighting him on this.

  “Oh, no.” Cameron shook his head before his green-eyed gaze latched onto her again. “We’ve wandered down that winding road already, sweet Julia. I won’t risk again thinking Michael is in one place only to have him show up on your doorstep.”

  “Craig could watch over me, or Norman—that is, assuming I need watching over, which I don’t.” Her own words made her weary but she just could not give this up.

  “All right, you don’t need watching over.” He threw his hands up. “I promise the whole time we’re gone, 1 won’t watch over you. I won’t watch out for you. Darlin’, I won’t even ask to see your wristwatch.”

  “And you won’t see it—or anything else of mine.” She fumbled to button her long-sleeved blouse over her bright yellow T- shirt. “Which leads me to one very important question.”

  She pulled in a deep breath and made a show of looking around the cramped quarters.

  “Not to worry, my dear. The drive will take most of the first day.”

  “It’s the nights that concern me.” She fastened another button. “I hope that you don’t think that because we’ve shared one measly little kiss that I would—”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t think that kiss was so measly.”

  She blushed. Seen it all and left a little jaded Julia Reed sat less than three feet away from this man who had the power to fluster her with a look and blushed like a 13 year old. “I’m just saying I don’t think that this is an appropriate arrangement for two unmarried adults.”

  “Why, Julia.” One comer of his mouth lifted in a rakish smile. His fabulous eyes flashed mischievously. “Are you proposing?”

  Any reply she had planned to make slammed into the back of her closed throat. She tried to swallow, to blink, to have any normal reaction at all. Instead, she blurted out a choking cough and gaped at him like a mortified idiot.

  “I’ll take that as a no.” He rose slowly, patted her back lightly and moved to the driver’s seat.

  His hand on her, the thought of them sharing the next days… and nights… together, it all had her head in whirl. Now, more than ever, she wanted out of this situation, out of this close space. She wanted her life back the way it was before she ever looked into those dazzling Irish eyes, before she ever dug up that troublesome gold. The gold.

  “It’s true,” she whispered. “Just like Fiona said.”

  “What’s true?” He twisted around in the driver’s seat, narrowing his eyes on her as if she might have had a sudden epiphany that would solve the whole tangled mess.

  “The gold,” she prompted. “Fiona said it was cursed. I thought it was just a colorful turn of a phrase, but now I think she may have meant it.” Julia pushed her hair back, tucking it neatly behind each ear. “I mean, one day my life is going along fine, and then I come in contact with that gold and bam!” She clapped her hands together. “Suddenly I’m thrown into a world of intrigue and kidnapping and have to leave my shelter unattended.”

  “It is not unattended.”

  “And if that weren’t enough, here I am against my will, being hauled away by a man I hardly know, who expects me to practically live with him… no, worse, go camping with him--”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Darlin’, but that’s not going to happen.” He folded his arms over his chest. “The camping grounds aren’t open until April down there. I received a special dispensation to park the RV in a secluded staff parking lot to use as a base of operations. We’ll have use of the lodge if we need it.”

  She swung her head to look at her surroundings. “So, this isn’t just going to be our home this weekend, it’s going to become spy central?”

  “Something like that.” The keys jangled in his hand. He shoved them into the ignition, buckled up, reached to start the engine, then turned to look over his shoulder at her. “I are you through making excuses, girl? Frankly I don’t see what’s so bad about these accommodations. I’ve lived in apartments that were smaller, had less in the way of facilities and had to share them with flat mates that weren’t half as… lovely companions as you.”

  Were those flat mates… women? Girlfriends? One night stands? A wife? She wanted to ask for details. Not exactly the business of a person who had protested wanting to spend the weekend with this, had dismissed their one kiss with a snarky remark and who knew they had no future beyond the whatever lay ahead for them in the land of waterfalls and moonbows.

  Julia dropped her gaze to her lap and exhaled slowly. “You’re right.”

  He bent his neck to try to steal a look into her face, asking softly, “About what? This space? The shelter? The trip?”

  “All of it.” Julia lifted her head and pulled her shoulders back. “You were right about everything.”

  “Everything?” He did that not quiet smug, not quite sincere smile thing that made her heart melt. “Even about the kiss not being measly?”

  Her breath caught in the back of her throat. All she could do was nod.

  “Good.” He nodded too then twisted around to face the steering wheel. He cranked the key and the engine growled to life. “I think that’s something we both need to keep in mind on this trip. We can’t afford to be distracted by anything like that again. Not until this task is done and Devin is safe.”

  ~*~

  “How much longer until we get there?” she asked as she started to prop her feet up on the dash then stopped herself and settled for shifting restlessly in the passenger seat.

  “It’ll be late afternoon. If you’re bored already, you can microwave some popcorn and grab a pop from the fridge watch a dvd. Before you know it, we’ll be there.”

  “Boy, Norman doesn’t believe much in doing without, does he?” She twisted around to gaze into the back of the RV.

  The movement sent the fragrance of her hair wafting over him. He drew in the warm scent of vanilla and held it a moment as he contemplated her question.

  Doing without? That was more his style, Cameron decided as he exhaled slowly. For years he’d done without a wife or children, without a real home, without the kind of love a woman like Julia could give. His new friend, Norman, had all that and more.

  “No.” Cameron shrugged to release the tension between his shoulder blades. “Your neighbor is the sort of man who believes in having it all. He told me ’twas something he learned as a fire­fighter. Putting his life on the line each time the alarms went off gave him a greater appreciation for the things that mattered most to him.”

  Julia studied him for a moment. Studied was the right word, too. More than just a curious stare less than intense scrutiny. Even without looking at her he could feel the difference. Years doing what he did had honed that skill, made him ever wary, ever suspicious and quick to act, to prefer distance to closeness and and solitude to real human interaction. Maybe that gold was cursed. He realized now, the pursuit of it had robbed him of the emotional richness of a balanced life.

  “You put your life on the line in your work as well, don’t you?” Julia finally asked, never taking her eyes from his profile.

  He gripped the steering wheel. “For me the work is a means to an end, a way of reaching my one true goal to redeem my family’s honor. To Norman, the work was the goal. To help others, to save lives.”

  �
�You can’t tell me your work hasn’t helped others. You’ve saved lives, I’m sure.” She laid her hand on his arm.

  The softness of her touch made his forearm tense. He shook his head. “Don’t you see, Julia? I’m not saying my work isn’t important in general, but that it isn’t important to me. It hasn’t been for many years.”

  “Really?” She lifted her hand from his arm. The broken connection seemed to say more than her words even as she asked, challenge in her voice, “Then why don’t you change professions? Why have you stayed in a line of work so unfulfilling?”

  “Any work I did would have been unfulfilling. Because no work could accomplish the thing I wanted most to accomplish.” His own voice went rough then, almost breaking. He had hardly ever allowed himself to think these things, much less say them out loud. He had to practically wrench the truth free from the depths of his being and that effort resonated in every word. “At least with Interpol I could use the work to further my personal quest.”

  “The gold,” she whispered.

  “Yes.” He scanned the horizon and the road arching over the next long, sloping hill. “Getting the gold, that’s what mattered to me. I thought only that could mend my family and remove the taint of my grandfather’s crime."

  “The son shall not suffer for the sins of the father,” she reminded him with quiet conviction. “That’s from the Bible.”

  “I know. I was good Catholic lad in my youth, you know. I even still have my own Bible from those days.” He marveled that he would tell her such a trivial thing that had no bearing on their quest but it had come out so easily. “Aye, yes, I have a Bible but no bookshelf to put it on. No lamp to read it by. No home or hearth to shelter it or me.”

  The leather of the seat sighed and groaned as she moved around, almost like she was hunkering in to hear a good story. “You don’t even have an apartment somewhere?”

  A heaviness settled in his chest. He pinpointed some distant speck far, far down the road. “I’ve had one on and off through the years, but I never wanted the idea of home to become too dear to me. Nothing could take precedence over my goal.”

  She waited, probably for him to say more. After a moment, she turned her own gaze to the windshield and shook her head. “I don’t know. Doesn’t sound like much of a life, Cameron.”

  “Says the woman whose own home isn’t much more than a place to grab a night’s sleep between shifts at the homeless shelter,” he muttered.

  She turned her face down. “Guilty as charged.”

  “I’m not condemning you, Julia. At least your work has had meaning.” The constant vibration of the cumbersome boat of a vehicle made his teeth grind together. “Not like me, throwing it all away after a self-styled ideal.”

  He shook his head. “After all this time, I’ve finally found the gold and with it only a hollow victory. My nephew is in danger, separated from his dear mother. The remnants of the only family I have are tom apart, and it’s my fault.”

  “I won’t listen to you blame yourself.”

  “You’re right. Tis a sad old song.” He conjured up a roguish grin for her. “I only meant to say that a man like Norman, he has his priorities straight. He sought to help others, and yet he didn’t forget to love and cherish his own family He has a lovely wife, two grown daughters—the man even has two homes, one of them on wheels.”

  “You have a lot, too, Cameron.”

  “Me?” He chuckled with a sad sincerity. “I have a pot of stolen gold waiting for me to return it to Ireland.”

  “And people who care about you.”

  He guided the huge vehicle around a larger and even more lumbering truck carrying a wide load. When he eased into the slower lane again, he used the swerve right to study the woman with the earnest blue eyes and careless mass of black curls. He wondered if she counted herself among those who cared for him. And if so, how deeply?

  Something unfamiliar throbbed with a dull ache inside his chest. If she didn’t care, he decided, as he let his gaze linger on her, he didn’t want to know. He wanted to pretend, if only for these few days they had left together, that she could care, that the future could hold more than just the shell of his wasted obsession.

  “You’ve got a great gift for connecting with people, Cameron,” she went on.

  His thoughts flashed back to how he had connected with this one beautiful woman. Even as he concentrated on maneuvering the RV through traffic, his lips tingled with the memory of their kiss.

  “I mean, look at your record just since I’ve known you.” She ticked off on her fingers as she spoke. “There’s Norman, who has hardly known you a week, yet he lets you take off in his fifty-thousand-dollar recreational vehicle. Corporations, who wouldn’t even take my phone calls, fell over each other to hand you huge checks. All the staff at the shelter like you, and, of course, you have Devin and Fiona. I think even Craig is warming to you.”

  “Craig is pretty fond of you, as well.”

  “He’s a good friend to me.” Her straight white teeth gnawed at her lower lip. “I wish 1 had been as good a friend to him a moment ago.”

  “I have a feeling he understands how hard it is for you to be out of—” He paused. “—the loop.”

  “You were going to say ‘out of control,’ weren’t you?” she asked with no hint of anger in her voice. “You’re right. I like being in control of my life, my work. But I will tell you something, if you promise not to gloat too much.”

  “What’s that?” He wondered if she noticed he hadn’t agreed to anything.

  “I can see some validity to your way of thinking. The farther we get away from the shelter and the more I trust Craig is handling things.”

  “You mean as long as you don’t have any other choice in the matter,” he translated.

  “Was that a gloat?”

  “What?”

  “That gleamy thing in your eyes.” She waggled her fingers in his direction. “That frisky hint of delight in your tone. It reeks of gloating.”

  He raised an eyebrow at her. “I have to remind you I never promised not to gloat.”

  She crossed her arms.

  “Besides, it wasn’t so much of a gloat as it was an observation. I mean, it’s pretty easy to embrace a walk the walk when you’re being driven in a luxury RV”

  “Busted.” She smiled, taking his assessment with an uncharacteristic grace that made Cameron believe she could actually learn to surrender more of herself. “And since there seems to be only one thing I have any say over on this trip—I think I’ll go pick out a movie to watch and stop pestering you. But before I go, I just want to know one thing.”

  “What’s that, my dear?”

  She thrust her lip out in an exaggerated pout. “Am I really that transparent?”

  “Transparent? You?” He sputtered out a laugh. “With that iron will of yours? Those nerves of steel?”

  “Don’t forget my heart of gold.” She rose from her seat and headed back to rummage through Norman’s video tapes, leaving Cameron to consider her words.

  A heart of gold. It fit her well and it haunted him. That, he realized with a troubled spirit, was the only gold he should have been seeking on this earth. He wondered if it was too late to begin now?

  Chapter 10

  Of course since Julia was in a hurry, every single person around her in the mini-market at the giant service station/store/restaurant where Cameron had suggested they stop and stretch their legs was taking their time with everything.

  “Hope you don’t mind me saying so, but honey, you sure do have yourself one cutie of a husband.”

  “A—huh?” Julia blinked at the petite woman with her white-blonde hair teased... or maybe a better word would be traumatized… into a scrunched-but-sassy bubble. “My what?”

  “Your husband.” The woman lifted the trash-can sized soda she’d been filling for, oh, what seemed like the last twenty minutes, in salute.

  Julia followed the line of the offered toast to find Cameron O’Dea leaning ag
ainst a wall chatting amicably with a black ­haired scarecrow of a man in a polyester western-cut jacket and black jeans.

  “I met him over at the tourist information center. ’Course at the time I didn’t realize he was spoken for, you understand.” The woman gave a little wave.

  Cameron responded in kind.

  The woman’s raised soda popped and fizzed, spewing icy drops onto Julia’s hot cheek.

  Julia planted her hands on her hips and cocked her head at him, as if, somehow, she expected him to send her a mental message to explain the situation.

  He winked at her.

  Her heart skipped.

  “I started up a conversation with your man on account of I heard his accent when he asked where tourist brochures might be.” She stabbed a red-and-white-striped straw into her hissing drink. Julia moved her gaze from Cameron to sweep their surroundings, in hopes of finding a way of excusing herself from an obviously pointless conversation. She supposed she could fake a sudden craving for one of the glistening frankfurters rotating on steel racks in the glass case a few feet away.

  The babbling blonde yanked a paper napkin from its holder and snapped it open with a flick of her wrist, sending the aroma of the roasting hot dogs wafting over Julia.

  The smell made her stomach lurch. So much for quick evasions, she decided, as the woman began again to speak in a drawling, high-pitched voice.

  “Now, don’t you get mad at me for sayin’ this.”

  “Get mad?” Julia wondered, she didn’t even know this woman.

  “But I sidled right up to your husband on account of I thought he might be, you know, the friendly type.” She wriggled her penciled eyebrows. “Like this other fellow I met today with that same darlin’ European accent.”

  Julia felt her forehead crease as she waded through the bizarre conversation to make some semblance of sense out of it. “Year-a-pin accent?” She parroted the woman’s exact pronunciation.

  “Now, ain’t you cute? Your husband said it jus’ like that, too. Two peas in a pod.” She shook her head and not a single blonde hair fluttered. “Well, anyway, my brother Rex and I— Rex is that fellow over there talking to your husband.”