Ten Brides for Ten Hot Guys

by Donna Fasano

  “I don’t think so.” He waved the gun again. “I’m going to need every advantage possible to get out of this park—and then the country And hostages make fine shields.”

  A shudder gripped Cameron from the core of his being. “You’d do that? With a boy who has been like a nephew to you?”

  Michael slitted his eyes. His expression became a treacherous wince. “No harm has come to him and none will.”

  Cameron answered the hard gaze with one of his own. “And what about Julia?”

  “I have no intention of harming the pretty lady—but whether or not I do, that remains in your hands.” He pointed the handgun at the pot in Cameron’s arms.

  The thought of Julia in direct danger gave rise to a sour burning in Cameron’s mouth. His mind blurred between his hope of redeeming his old friend and the need to rescue her. If he could reach Michael, he reasoned, maybe he could accomplish both.

  “Michael, tell me this lunacy hasn’t gone so far that you would think of hurting an innocent woman.”

  Shaughnessy angled his square chin upward. “I would do no such thing.”

  That was the Michael he once knew. Cameron relaxed a bit.

  “Unless you force me to it,” Michael added, his voice dripping venom. “If the woman comes to harm, you will bear the guilt, Cameron, not me.”

  Suddenly it became clear to Cameron why Michael had taken the chance of speaking to the bubble-haired Imogene— even going so far as to get her phone number. He’d needed a second hostage all along because they both knew that the threat of Michael hurting Devin was practically nonexistent.

  By bringing Julia along, by involving her at all, Cameron had provided Michael with the perfect human collateral against capture. A dull, throbbing anguish twisted in Cameron’s chest at the thought of his own imprudent actions and the truly cowardly actions of his friend.

  Only a truly vicious mind would have plotted such a thing. He narrowed his eyes at his once-closest friend.

  “What’s happened to you, man?” Cameron whispered, his head shaking. “Has the thirst for gold and glory choked out all that once was good in you?”

  “I’ve told you, it isn’t me, but you who holds the lady’s fate in your hands.”

  Cameron sighed and anchored the ceramic pot against his chest with his curved arm. “I can’t believe there stands before me the same lad who took his first communion at my side, now with a gun aimed at me.”

  “Shut up and give me the gold.” He stabbed the gun at Cameron, implying his patience had worn thin.

  Cameron pressed on. “Have you gone so far around the bend, Michael, that not even the caring of your life long friend can bring you back?”

  Jagged copper highlights glinted in Michael’s hair as he inched closer still, his eyes hard as flint and his face a grim mask. “I didn’t come for a lecture, Cameron, I came for me treasure. It’s mine. It’s due me.”

  “It’s not yours. And it’s not the family’s. It really has nothing to do with us, you know” Cumberland Falls resounded in his ears. He could feel its power under his feet.

  “Tis the prize of our forefathers.”

  “Tis their curse. This gold and the want of it took everything they had from them—their dignity, their freedom, and eventually their lives.”

  “Don’t you see, Cameron? That’s why we deserve to lay claim to it.” Michael took another cautious step closer to the water’s edge. “Tis the redemption of our family’s honor.”

  chuckled.

  Michael stopped his creeping progress. “What’s so funny?”

  “All these years, I’ve thought our lives were taking us in such very different paths. But we were more alike than not, Michael.” Cameron scooted backward, relying on the traction of his boots to keep him from slipping on the damp rocks. Michael watched with wary eyes but did not move.

  “You thought you deserved to be the one to claim the gold,” Cameron said. “I thought that I alone could retrieve it and redeem the family name. But what a pretty price we’ve both paid, haven’t we, Michael?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Cameron could feel the spray of the crashing falls now. It left a dewy film over his hands, his face, his clothes. “I mean we followed what we thought were different paths and ended up at the same place brought here by the same thing. Two lonely men with neither wife nor home nor children. Just this.”

  He wrapped his hands around the lip of the pot and held it up.

  “Once I have that—” Michael pointed to the pot with the tip of the gun, “—the others will fall into place.”

  Cameron laughed a sharp laugh. “Now there’s another example of how alike we are, friend. I’ve told myself the same thing. Once the matter of the gold was settled, my life could begin. In the meantime, my life has been passing me by as I struggled away after this.”

  He gave the pot a shake. The spare change and rocks they’d planted in the container clanked and rattled.

  Michael lapped at his lips like a famished man eyeing a feast, his voice gruff when he ordered, “Enough.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t agree more. Enough.” He glanced at the water that rushed toward the falls then lost control in a beautiful, terrifying flood.

  He shifted the pot into both hands then slowly pushed it outward toward the gunman.

  Michael extended his empty hand.

  The sound of the falls swelled. The earth beneath their feet trembled. Rivulets ran down Cameron’s cheeks and neck and as he turned his head away from Michael, the sun shot through the fine mist and the rainbow appeared.

  “It’s time to give up the struggle, Michael. Because I’ve recently learned an amazing thing.” Cameron smiled and faced his longtime friend and nemesis. “Something better than we have ever imagined for ourselves can happen… if we finally learn to let go.”

  He used the weight of the pot to swing it up and out. The ceramic slid easily from his grip.

  “No!” Michael lunged, flinging the gun aside as he stretched out both his hands.

  Cameron stepped in before Michael’s desperate attempt to capture the pot sent him headfirst over the falls. In one fluid movement, Cameron caught the other man around the shoulders, pinning down his arms.

  “It’s over, Michael,” he whispered. “After all this time, it’s finally over.”

  Chapter 14

  When Irish eyes are smilin’—”

  “Norman!” Julia pushed back from her desk and tossed the pencil from her cramping fingers.

  “Yes, Julia?” Norman Wilson stuck his head in the door of her office and grinned like a cat who had just eaten a canary. Coarse hair, the color of burnished silver, poked out like close- cropped feathers from underneath his red baseball cap.

  Despite her agitation at his choice of performance material, Julia had to smile at the man who had become her best volunteer as well as a good friend.

  “Could you...you know?” She placed her index finger to her lips to ask for quiet.

  He spread his arms wide. “Ah, Julia, can I help it if there’s song in my heart?”

  She supposed not. But why did it have to be that song?

  “It’s a lovely spring day,” he said with a heartwarming exuberance. “The shelter is in great shape, we break ground today on phase two of our Help the Homeless Project, the Reds are at Riverside, and all is right with the world.”

  ~*~

  She could argue that last point. All was not right with her world.

  Yes, these past few weeks had been busy and fruitful. Thanks to the groundwork laid by Cameron, and with Norman’s dogged persistence in follow-up, they had recently branched out into a new project. Renovation of an old hotel would begin soon to create a residential facility to be a stop gap step for the working poor, to keep them off the streets and get them back on their feet while paying a manageable rent. That made her proud and she supposed it would also have made Cameron proud—to learn that she hadn’t rushed in and assumed the responsibility for the new undert
aking. In fact, she hadn’t even asked to be a part of the selection committee for the facility’s director.

  But Cameron did not know that. He couldn’t. After he had turned Shaughnessy over to the FBI and freed Devin and her, they had taken a slow, awkward trip back to Cincinnati. Always aware of Devin’s watchful eyes and ears, they hadn’t spoken of anything personal.

  By now, Julia had begun to wonder if there had ever been anything personal between them at all. Perhaps the loneliness of losing herself in the work of the shelter had made her see things that simply weren’t there. And feel things that Cameron did not share.

  She swallowed to force down the lump in her throat. It lodged hard and high in her chest, settling in with the dull ache she’d felt ever since she’d last heard a certain teasing Irish brogue.

  She thought of his sweet but brief good-bye when she went to see his plane off. With Fiona and Devin beside him, he’d set off to do the thing he’d sought to accomplish for so long. The stolen coins would be returned—and so would his family’s honor.

  That had been over a month ago.

  She forced out a shuddering sigh.

  “Julia?” Norman came fully into the room. “You okay?”

  “Sure.” She lifted her chin and shook back the hair clinging to her cheeks. “Why shouldn’t I be okay? I’m just a little—tired and testy.”

  “Sorry if my singing bothered you, then. I just sorta had this sudden outpouring of goodwill and optimism,” he explained, touching the brim of his baseball cap.

  “I don’t mind you enjoying your work, Norman.” She leaned back in her creaking swivel chair. “But could you, um, maybe pick a different song?”

  “You miss him, don’t you?”

  “Who?” She batted her lashes and hoped she looked sufficiently perplexed.

  “Okay, I get it.” He held his hands up. “None of my business. I just hope your mood picks up a bit before the groundbreaking ceremony today.”

  The thought of going before the press and putting on a happy face rattled Julia. She wasn’t much of an actor—that was Cameron’s department. And this was Cameron’s project, to keep the little ones from saying their good night prayers in a cafeteria, he had said when he’d suggested it.

  The memory brought a tingle to the tip of her nose and a burning to her eyes. She set her jaw and swallowed hard. She would not cry. She refused to let these feelings dominate her. She blinked to battle back the tears.

  The trick, she had learned, was simply not to let herself dwell on thoughts of Cameron.

  How could she go to this event and not think of him? How could she think of him and not feel blue? She whisked her hand through her hair and groaned out a burdened sigh. “Actually, I’m pretty busy here today. I don’t know if I can make the time—”

  “Oh, no, you don’t.” Norman wagged his finger at her.

  “Oh, no, she doesn’t what?” Craig sauntered into the office.

  “She’s trying to back out of going to the groundbreaking ceremony for phase two.” Norman turned to Craig, standing shoulder to shoulder with the younger man as if to say Julia was going to have to go through both of them to get out of this deal.

  “St. Patrick’s is the parent facility of this project.” Craig shook his head, touched his glasses then squinted at her, like a trifecta of disapproving gestures. “You can’t just not show up at the phase two groundbreaking.”

  “You could go in my stead.” She said it so sweetly, too. Like she was finally entrusting the man with the responsibility he had wanted for too long.

  He refused it, and let her know he wasn’t buying her act, with a roll of his eyes. “This is upper echelon all the way— directors, CEOs, civic group presidents, the mayor. No one else is sending an assistant and you can’t either. With a group like that nobody will be impressed by a second banana.”

  “Second banana.” Norman hooted laugh and threw an elbow in Craig’s ribs. “Now there’s a doozy of a nickname for you, kid.”

  Craig rubbed his side and scowled, good naturedly. Mostly. “Well, if I’m second banana, what does that make you, pal?”

  “Anything else would sound more appealing,” Norman countered.

  Julia winced and pushed away from her desk, the wheels of her old chair squeaking in protest over the cold floor. “Another bad pun like that one and I’m going, to have to ask you both to split.”

  “Oh, my word, Craig, do you see that?” Norman feigned shock.

  “What?” Craig followed the other man’s line of vision, zeroing his gaze in on Julia’s face.

  “A smile!” Norman tipped back his cap and squinted. “If I’m not mistaken—and I could be since it’s been so long since any of us has had an actual Julia Reed smile-sighting—that’s a bona fide grin.”

  Craig played it up big, blinking and shifted his head to stare at her from more than one angle. “You know, you may be right.”

  “Okay, you two got me. I admit it, you jollied me up a bit.” She held her hands up in surrender. “Happy now?”

  “We won’t be truly happy until you promise to come to the groundbreaking ceremony today,” Norman said.

  “They’re going to introduce the new project director,” Craig sing-songed, as if that might prove too tempting to pass up.

  “They’ve hired someone already?” She sat up.

  The two men looked at each other in a way that made Julia feel they didn’t think she should have to ask that. She rubbed her temple and shut her eyes. How had she gone from needed to control every aspect of the shelter to not even knowing that the board had selected a new director for phase two? That news did shed a new light on the situation. She really should make an appearance if just to thank the right people and meet the person she’d be spending a great deal of time with.

  “It’s a golden opportunity,” Norman chimed in.

  Julia stiffened at his choice of words. Golden. It made her think of the gleam in Cameron’s hair when the sun hit it just right and of the mischievous glint in his dazzling emerald eyes. She slumped in her seat. “I’ve got so much pressing business here today—”

  “Wee-oo. Wee-oo.” Craig placed one hand to his lips like a mouthpiece of a trumpet. “Waffle alert. Lady in sector five is thinking of backing out on her commitments.”

  She straightened her spine. “I do not back out on my commitments.”

  “Then I guess we’ll see you at the new project site in an hour.” Craig gave her a quick salute and slipped out the door.

  Norman tipped his cap and did the same.

  “I am not up to this,” Julia growled an hour later as she tottered on unaccustomed high heels through an open field. She tugged at the collar and then the sleeve of the new kelly green linen suit she had bought just for this presentation.

  “You can do this, Julia,” Craig assured her as they walked toward a cluster of cameras and dignitaries.

  “You’ll be as terrific as you look.” Norman beamed from his place at her elbow.

  “Well, I’m wearing this fancy outfit under protest, you understand. If you two hadn’t shamed me into buying it, I’d be in my favorite jeans and a comfy T-shirt.” Her legs wobbled as she stepped along the uneven ground. “I feel silly. I think I should be dressed like I came here to work.”

  “You should be dressed, Miss Shelter Director, like you came here to do business.” Craig waved his hand. “It’s an entirely different thing.”

  “Absolutely.” Norman’s short legs did double time to match their long strides. “Besides, don’t you want to look your best when you see—”

  Craig cut him off with an abrupt slashing motion across the base of his own throat.

  “What’s going on here?” She paused, and her heels began to sink into the lush grassy ground. “When I see what?”

  “Um, when you see this.” Craig extended his arm in a sweeping motion that encompassed the whole chaotic scene. “We really did it up right, Julia. Press, CEOs, city officials. The Wacky Wake Up Weather Guy.”

&n
bsp; She narrowed her eyes to tell Craig she hadn’t bought his story then glanced at the assembled crowd. Everyone he’d mentioned was there—and then some. A semicircle of people she’d never seen before stood in expensive suits and dresses around a white-flagged stake in the dry ground. Each of them held authentic gardening spades, spray-painted a gaudy gold.

  As she approached, an anxious young man rushed up to her with an identical spade in his hands. He thrust it toward Julia. “So glad you got here, Miss Reed.”

  He escorted her to the end of the semicircle, pausing to whisper in her ear. “Now, the mayor is going to give a short speech, and the CEO of the funding company is going to introduce the new director. After that, they’ll join the group here, and all of you will push your spades into the ground at the same time. That will make a great shot for the newspaper.”

  She nodded to let him know she understood, but he had already scurried up to the makeshift podium to signal the beginning of the media event.

  The mayor’s speech was a benign blend of humor and pathos, ending with a plea for a better world and a reminder that the way to build that world was by voting. He didn’t say “voting for me” could improve the world, but even Julia, in her fog of boredom and despondency, got that message.

  She smiled politely as he passed in front of her to take his place on the other side of the half-circle of groundbreakers.

  The CEO of the company who had provided the start-up funds for the project stepped up to the microphone.

  Yadda, yadda. Blah, blah, blah. He probably said something more significant than that, but to Julia’s ears, it didn’t sound much different. Her feet hurt. The sun scorched the top of her head. The wind whipped her hair into her eyes, and to top it all off, she missed Cameron.

  And still the CEO droned on, extolling the virtues of his company’s philanthropy.

  Life goes on, she told herself. Like the river, like her life’s work, every day it just keeps flowing ever onward. And for all her brave talk of letting go sometimes it was all she could do not to let the old ways barge in and use every resource available to find Cameron. Find him, she thought, and then demand that he tell her why he never called or wrote—or seemed to care at all what had hap­pened to her.